Jump to content
IGNORED

Two years ago this week ....


Recommended Posts

5 minutes ago, marmite said:

Selling our best players will always put us back. We should build a squad around our best assets to propel us forwards. However its not the City way.

Perhaps why we have only been in the Top Flight once ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, marmite said:

Selling our best players will always put us back. We should build a squad around our best assets to propel us forwards. However its not the City way.

Selling is one thing. 

Selling and not replacing is another. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, marmite said:

Selling our best players will always put us back. We should build a squad around our best assets to propel us forwards. However its not the City way.

If we're going to play moneyball we have to get recruitment correct, the way I see it right now is we are happy to sell players for large amounts of profit but not so savvy when it comes to signing replacements. We're doing the basics wrong and until we get recruitment correct there is no point playing moneyball let alone thinking about promotion.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Pezo said:

If we're going to play moneyball we have to get recruitment correct, the way I see it right now is we are happy to sell players for large amounts of profit but not so savvy when it comes to signing replacements. We're doing the basics wrong and until we get recruitment correct there is no point playing moneyball let alone thinking about promotion.

You are very astute!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, CotswoldRed said:

Selling is one thing. 

Selling and not replacing is another. 

It’s a consequence of SL ‘sustainability’ strategy or ‘ have your cake and eat it’ if you like.

Developing academy players is a sound policy but then selling them on kinda defeats the object of the strategy of having them becoming first team regulars.

I see the sustainability strategy as flawed and played a part in why LJ wasn’t able to get us to the play offs.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Robbored said:

It’s a consequence of SL ‘sustainability’ strategy or ‘ have your cake and eat it’ if you like.

Developing academy players is a sound policy but then selling them on kinda defeats the object of the strategy of having them becoming first team regulars.

I see the sustainability strategy as flawed and played a part in why LJ wasn’t able to get us to the play offs.

 

 

This correct, but there is also more to it.

In this league and doing well there is always the risk that you are going to get offers for your better players, that is simply a fact of football.

Any player that is subject to these offers is highly likely to want to move on,

1. Money

2. Playing at a higher level

As a Championship club this will always happen and it makes getting out of this league even harder.

Most of the players are not ‘supporters’ of the club they play for, yes, there are exceptions, but to most it is a job and if they get a better offer they will want to take it.

From the clubs point of view we run at a huge loss and when a big offer comes in we will almost certainly accept it.

That is not going to change sadly.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where is the football team that I love and cherish?............Who the pheck has stolen it, and can I get it the pheck back?.  And Can the the wage stealing charlatans who purport to be footballers please leave our club and never come back?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Robbored said:

It’s a consequence of SL ‘sustainability’ strategy or ‘ have your cake and eat it’ if you like.

Developing academy players is a sound policy but then selling them on kinda defeats the object of the strategy of having them becoming first team regulars.

I see the sustainability strategy as flawed and played a part in why LJ wasn’t able to get us to the play offs.

 

 

There’s nothing wrong with the sustainability strategy, so long as you are completely transparent about it. 
What we’ve had from Lansdown is “we want a sustainability strategy” but also “we want premier league”. 
I’m afraid to tell you Steve, the 2 do not go hand in hand. 
If you want Premier league then you have to spend big and be very close to FFP. There are very few (if any) clubs that have achieved the Prem on a ‘sustainable’ budget. 
They’ve all gone well above their finances to get there. Once there, some have then become sustainable, others have blown it, but you can’t get there on a sustainability strategy. Time to shit or get off the pot. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Harry said:

There’s nothing wrong with the sustainability strategy, so long as you are completely transparent about it. 
What we’ve had from Lansdown is “we want a sustainability strategy” but also “we want premier league”. 
I’m afraid to tell you Steve, the 2 do not go hand in hand. 
If you want Premier league then you have to spend big and be very close to FFP. There are very few (if any) clubs that have achieved the Prem on a ‘sustainable’ budget. 
They’ve all gone well above their finances to get there. Once there, some have then become sustainable, others have blown it, but you can’t get there on a sustainability strategy. Time to shit or get off the pot. 

I strongly fancy Brentford to prove you wrong this season. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, robin_unreliant said:

I strongly fancy Brentford to prove you wrong this season. 

I hope so. But they’d be the only ones. 
They’ve not done it cheap mind you - they’ve spent but spent well from what they’ve recouped. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Harry said:

Time to shit or get off the pot. 

Nicely put. 

Personally, I can't help but be sceptical - what was driving the owner to appoint a person of Pearson's quality?

Was it a genuine desire to do whatever it takes to win promotion or was it the desire to avoid relegation at all costs (because relegation would make the club significantly less attractive when you're trying to attract investors)?      

Sadly, I think it's the latter.

So time to get off the pot, old boy.

12 minutes ago, robin_unreliant said:

I strongly fancy Brentford to prove you wrong this season. 

I'm afraid that's a terrible comparison though.

Brentford are a one off. No other club is trying to do what they do. So the point still stands - of the club's trying to do it they way we are, how many have succeeded? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, CotswoldRed said:

Selling is one thing. 

Selling and not replacing is another. 

 

33 minutes ago, robin_unreliant said:

I strongly fancy Brentford to prove you wrong this season. 

Exactly my thoughts. They lost Watkins and Benrahma in the summer, and all their goals and assists. 
Replaced by Toney. That is excellent business and I expect them to do it again soon when Toney moves on.

If we had a recognised system we’d find it far easier to recruit, and we’d also have a much better chance of getting it right. Szmodics, Eisa, Adelakun, Henrikson, Engvall, Eliasson, Watkins, Rodri, Marinovic, Woodrow, Leko, Kent, Diony, Brunt etc. 
 

Did a single one of those players improve us? Were they better than what we had? So much wasted money.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Robbored said:

It’s a consequence of SL ‘sustainability’ strategy or ‘ have your cake and eat it’ if you like.

Developing academy players is a sound policy but then selling them on kinda defeats the object of the strategy of having them becoming first team regulars.

I see the sustainability strategy as flawed and played a part in why LJ wasn’t able to get us to the play offs.

I would say it is sustainable and you could get promoted that way but recruitment has to be excellent, we have a major problem with that though - as far as I can tell every club lower than us prefers to sell to Brentford who have a track record of selling for more money - so they have a self for filling prophecy and virtuous cycle going, that makes our recruitment second best and nothing we can do about it - we end up with the second best and I think we have learnt if you pick up the second best from the lower leagues or even this league then that's not good enough to replace players that we are selling to the prem. Not sure how we solve this problem as throwing money at the problem doesn't seem to be the answer. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Moments of Pleasure said:

... we beat West Brom 3:2 at home.

That win lifted us to 5th after 40 games, where Barnsley are now (and almost as many points). We won one of our final six games. 

We then sold Webster in the summer. And Brownhill the following winter.

And that was that. How we have crumbled since then. 

 

The bottom line is we kept LJ for too long, we needed to be ruthless and realise he wasn’t going to take us to the next level.
We should have got rid of him that summer whilst our stock was high and got in a Pearson or Hughton type in then.

The problem with SL is he isn’t proactive enough, he waits and dithers and this is how we have ended up in the mess we are in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

 

Brentford are a one off. No other club is trying to do what they do. So the point still stands - of the club's trying to do it they way we are, how many have succeeded? 

This is so very true.

Fed up of repeatedly seeing people mindlessly say “we should copy Brentford”, because no one else actually does.

You want us to scrap our Academy? Brentford don’t have one.

Run a B team instead that only plays friendlies?

Own a club in Denmark? There is a good reason their squad has 6 Danish players in it.

Operate a stats based recruitment policy?

Certainly there is a good argument for the last of these (and to an extent we probably do, both Eliasson & Szmodics were allegedly recruited in this way), but their overall model is unique and no amount of mindlessly parroting “copy Brentford” changes the fact that we don’t and we won’t.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, marmite said:

Selling our best players will always put us back. We should build a squad around our best assets to propel us forwards. However its not the City way.

City sell their best assets to offset the £30m or more they lose each season acquiring and retaining The Carousel Of Crap. This season they're unlikely to sell their best assets as they, unfortunately, are utter sh*te, the footballing equivalent of broken biscuits in torn packaging at Poundland.

As for 'not replacing' - then who the hell were the 65+ bodies WeeLee signed, all handsomely remunerated, most of whom have at last been called out by NP, a message many of us having been broadcasting these past two seasons.

The truly amazing thing about all this is fact some folks are lately surprised where we are. The 'never criticise anything in a City shirt', rose tinteds. They're the same punters who demand Lansdown invest fortunes in also-rans. But that's the problem, it's easy spending others money and when their clamoured for 'ace' turns out to be another turd on the pile, they simply demand another be acquired.

That's the City way......

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, BTRFTG said:

City sell their best assets to offset the £30m or more they lose each season acquiring and retaining The Carousel Of Crap.

Boom ?

Yep, it’s exactly that.  If you have to support a wage bill, amortisation profile and other cost base as big as you’ve allowed it to grow....then the flip-side is you have to sell your valuable assets.

This season they're unlikely to sell their best assets as they, unfortunately, are utter sh*te, the footballing equivalent of broken biscuits in torn packaging at Poundland.

yep, I posted over 2 years ago....what are you gonna do when the valuable assets have all been sold off.  Why did I think this then?  Because I actually saw a similar trend (on a much smaller scale) with our friends in the north.  They kept going for years selling their prized assets, Stewart, G.Taylor, Ellington, Hayles, Roberts etc.  But when that stream of players trickled dry they plateaued very quickly and descended even quicker.  Testimony to Darrell Clarke to get them back up...and up again.  I thought they’d never come back.

Now I’m not saying we are going to do the same.  In many respects we are fortunate that there is gonna be a plethora of free agents this summer, grateful for a wage, and also we might be able to bully some of the more cash-strapped clubs, so we should be able to start from a much lower cost base for 21/22.  But the damage has been done.  A £49.8m cost base (purely Bristol City FC not BC Holdings) with a £16.2m revenue stream in 19/20, where Covid hadn’t really gripped.  I don’t see that cost base reducing by much, but revenues will be down for this season.

What a cluster#### our seniors have presided over?

As for 'not replacing' - then who the hell were the 65+ bodies WeeLee signed, all handsomely remunerated, most of whom have at last been called out by NP, a message many of us having been broadcasting these past two seasons.

world class basics my arse!

The truly amazing thing about all this is fact some folks are lately surprised where we are. The 'never criticise anything in a City shirt', rose tinteds. They're the same punters who demand Lansdown invest fortunes in also-rans. But that's the problem, it's easy spending others money and when their clamoured for 'ace' turns out to be another turd on the pile, they simply demand another be acquired.

I’ve been predicting this for over 2 years. Webster and Kelly saved our bacon.

That's the City way......

it certainly is....defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Pezo said:

I would say it is sustainable and you could get promoted that way but recruitment has to be excellent, we have a major problem with that though - as far as I can tell every club lower than us prefers to sell to Brentford who have a track record of selling for more money - so they have a self for filling prophecy and virtuous cycle going, that makes our recruitment second best and nothing we can do about it -

Absolutely right, we certainly haven’t replaced those youngsters that were sold adequately and this season along with injury list we are now paying the price of four years of poor recruitment. Nige’s post Coventry summed it up very nicely.

I remember under LJ having some sympathy for him losing his better players season on season but it was pointed out that virtually all clubs of our size have to sell players as well - Brentford being a perfect example.

Its common sense that the recruitment system could with an overhaul for the sustainability policy to work well.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Robbored said:

Absolutely right, we certainly haven’t replaced those youngsters that were sold adequately and this season along with injury list we are now paying the price of four years of poor recruitment. Nige’s post Coventry summed it up very nicely.

I remember under LJ having some sympathy for him losing his better players season on season but it was pointed out that virtually all clubs of our size have to sell players as well - Brentford being a perfect example.

Its common sense that the recruitment system could with an overhaul for the sustainability policy to work well.

 

I think the challenge as I see it is LJ knew who he wanted and got them - Brownhill, Webster ect a lot of the others seem to have come through our normal recruitment process, it's difficult to figure out which is which and hence to figure out which method was successful. I think we need to at least bring up the idea that LJ wasn't the problem and what we might have done is get rid of the one thing holding everything together when we got rid of LJ (I still think removing him was the right thing to do at the time). If the problem was with everything else then no manager/coach is going to be able to fix that and the problem lies with the CEO to turn things around. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...