The Promotion XI That We Sold (minus a keeper)

[Taz]

That's not THE promotion X1 though is it?

[Davefevs]

23 minutes ago, Taz said:

That's not THE promotion X1 though is it?

I think he’s suggesting it’s a team capable of promotion from the Champ.

[Taz]

57 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I think he’s suggesting it’s a team capable of promotion from the Champ.

That's what I've assumed, but it's not what the title suggests...

[Guest]

4 hours ago, 054123 said:

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

The principle is that under Lansdown and Ashton we have reached the position we have.

Yes, Steve has the pockets to make up for the  his mistakes and duly does so.

Thank goodness for that.

The Lansdowns have got us to.....just where we were about 50yrs ago......good effort....not.

[Redtucks]

3 hours ago, maxjak said:

I have sympathy for the original poster...and his dreams.   Whatever your viewpoint, the talent we have squandered is without doubt a sad travesty?

Can't agree that we have squandered talent. Selling players for, in most cases, a decent fee is probably the only way we can compete with the parachute payments many other clubs have received.

 

[Taylor10]

It still amazes me people can’t seem to grasp we sold the majority of our better players to prem sides. For those who have been critical of the club for this I’ve not seen a valid solution put forward on how we could of avoided this?

Any club who doesn’t get promoted from this level is likely to be a selling club or will have to sell their best players. OK so some clubs can hang onto players, for example Sheff U/Fulham this season but the clubs that can are always the ones likely to get promoted after coming down from the prem or the ones with the biggest budgets. They will often be a club on the up or a club that has actually achieved something. We are neither. Some of these clubs, for example Brentford, have a succession plan. We don’t.

My gripe never was or will be regarding players being sold. Unfortunately we have to be realistic, as frustrating as it is. The real disappointment as many have mentioned has been in our approach to recruitment. Not just wasting money or wages on players but also not recruiting to a system, a redundant scouting system and at best a scattergun approach in the last 3/4 seasons. Don’t even get me started on MA’s involvement in all this.

We’ve been wasteful and careless with fees and wages but also some of these signings in theory have been set up to fail. The last time we properly recruited to a style and system was under SC.

[054123]

58 minutes ago, gl2 said:

The Lansdowns have got us to.....just where we were about 50yrs ago......good effort....not.

I would broadly agree with this. I started watching in the mid eighties and roughly the the first 18/20 years were very similar to the last 20 years.

A couple more seasons in Div 2 I’ll grant you, but essentially a couple of football league trophies, a couple of promotions from Div 3 and a league cup semi, in both periods.

Gary Johnson did reach a playoff final.

Edited December 28, 2021 by 054123

[JoeAman08]

The issue has never been the sales. As a matter of fact the sales are the only good thing brought to the table by Ashton. And with hindsight, the daft market did most of that work for him. 
 

I’d even say recruitment wasn’t awful. I think we probably picked up useful players for the most part. The main issue was they were signings from all over the place and didn’t fit a main style of play. Signed players from France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, England, Spain and Portugal. Some good in defensive sides who soak up pressure. Some good in pressing teams. Then whatever they were good at, we asked them to do the exact opposite. Not to mention playing half of them out of position because they signed so many it was the only way to play a lot of them. 
 

Oh well. The damage has now finally been assessed and pretty much all of those sales have been wasted. The scale and timing could not be worse. 

[1960maaan]

Something to consider .

The last time you could say we did really good work in the Transfer market, was the Promotion year.  That year the net spend was about £0, because we sold out top scorer. The difference that year was, we had a manager with an idea how he wanted to play, and how he wanted o set up. We had a recruitment team that helped the manager and didn't go their own way. 
To me Lansdown was uncomfortable Cotts, for whatever reason, so when things looked dodgy he brought in Ashton and that was it. The manager, recruitment staff and all focus went, and you can imagine Ashton feeding SL with BS to get the set up HE wanted. From then on we signed player after player without ever seeming to buy to a plan. Apart from the odd, we need a striker & we buy a striker. Even then with Fam, scouted him for a while but I'm not convinced we ever played to his strengths. 
The players we sold for decent money, were the ones that worked. It's the dozens of others who we made a loss on, or ditched before they managed 5 games for us we should be critical of. 
 

[Phileas Fogg]

14 hours ago, RobArnold10 said:

And if we hadn’t we’d be up excrement creek without a paddle, or are we completely ignoring the accounts that were released today?

We have to move on from this very, very quickly.

Not quite that simple - the issue is we sold players for large fees and didn’t adequately replace them. There’s always going to be player turnover regardless.

[RobArnold10]

Just now, Phileas Fogg said:

Not quite that simple - the issue is we sold players for large fees and didn’t adequately replace them. There’s always going to be player turnover regardless.

No, sorry, ongoing player recruitment is widely different from what the OP was saying which was basically “wahhh why don’t we keep players and not sell them”, which anybody can pull apart. Ongoing incomings needs to improve, and never more so then now, I grant that and it should be a discussion, but this hark back on the past sales and should we/shouldn’t we? Move on, please.

[ashton_fan]

14 hours ago, cidercity1987 said:

The strategy of selling high and reinvesting partly in transfer fees but mainly in larger salaries to attract a higher base of players, has been a total and absolute failure.

So what's the answer then, while keeping within the FFP structure?

[shelts]

13 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Baldock….had to sell our top scorer!

The memory ain’t like it used to be , I’d forgotten that . Still getting a game at Derby !

[shelts]

13 hours ago, Fordy62 said:

We sold all his players. 

I thought he kept the majority at the start of the next season, that season we should’ve kicked on and didn’t for a variety of reasons .

[GrahamC]

1 hour ago, ashton_fan said:

So what's the answer then, while keeping within the FFP structure?

The answer is exactly what we are doing now, bringing in players from the lower divisions (Atkinson, Tanner) who even with a wage rise are going to be on far less than the Championship average, then a few experienced players (James, King) that the manager knows & trusts, plus keep playing & developing our Academy prospects.

Problem with this is that it is a slow (did someone say 3 year ) process, against sides with parachute payments & those who have run tighter ships than us in the past, so don’t need to cut back as much as we do.

Every time we lose a game there is an outcry on here from the usual suspects, plus the serial RB contributors (& podcasts) but unless you think there is someone out there with a better track record than Pearson, who is desperate to work in the South West, he is our best option.

If he improves our position year on year whilst implementing this policy he’ll have done a very good job.

Edited December 29, 2021 by GrahamC

[maxjak]

13 hours ago, Redtucks said:

Can't agree that we have squandered talent. Selling players for, in most cases, a decent fee is probably the only way we can compete with the parachute payments many other clubs have received.

 

YEP....Great Plan?   One that has left us languishing in 18th?  if u want success you have to reach a compromise between selling some players, but showing enough ambition to retain some of your more important individuals.  The list of players who have left our club would probably form a good enough side to reach the play offs at least?    You say it allows us to compete?   Please explain to me how we are competing, by barely staying out of the bottom of the table??

[LondonBristolian]

1 hour ago, GrahamC said:

The answer is exactly what we are doing now, bringing in players from the lower divisions (Atkinson, Tanner) who even with a wage rise are going to be on far less than the Championship average, then a few experienced players (James, King) that the manager knows & trusts, plus keep playing & developing our Academy prospects.

Problem with this is that it is a slow (did someone say 3 year ) process, against sides with parachute payments & those who have run tighter ships than us in the past, so don’t need to cut back as much as we do.

Every time we lose a game there is an outcry on here from the usual suspects, plus the serial RB contributors (& podcasts) but unless you think there is someone out there with a better track record than Pearson, who is desperate to work in the South West, he is our best option.

If he improves our position year on year whilst implementing this policy he’ll have done a very good job.

I think the other major thing with Atkinson and Tanner is that they are players who play in positions we really need who play in a way that reflects how Pearson wants to play. There is still no guarantee that they will work out but there is more of a chance than the scattershot approach under Ashton and Johnson. So many of our previous signings - Eliasson, Nagy, Diedhiou, Szmodics, Palmer and Wells being examples - didn’t seem to fit any sort of recruitment strategy as well and, regardless of quality, were set up to fail because they just did not fit how we wanted to play.

We’ve still got the legacy of those days, such as three strikers who don’t really fit together in any combination, but it feels we are moving the right way forwards.

[LondonBristolian]

2 minutes ago, maxjak said:

YEP....Great Plan?   One that has left us languishing in 18th?  if u want success you have to reach a compromise between selling some players, but showing enough ambition to retain some of your more important individuals.  The list of players who have left our club would probably form a good enough side to reach the play offs at least?    You say it allows us to compete?   Please explain to me how we are competing, by barely staying out of the bottom of the table??

I think the more important thing is to understand what players bring to the team and how to replace them. If you look at Brentford, they have continually sold their best players but immediately replaced them with players who don’t just have potential but seamlessly slot into the team.

Selling players is not an issue if you have a clear system, style and list of potential replacements. It only becomes an issue when you don’t know how to replace the players and totally change your style as a result.

[ashton_fan]

1 hour ago, GrahamC said:

The answer is exactly what we are doing now, bringing in players from the lower divisions (Atkinson, Tanner) who even with a wage rise are going to be on far less than the Championship average, then a few experienced players (James, King) that the manager knows & trusts, plus keep playing & developing our Academy prospects.

Problem with this is that it is a slow (did someone say 3 year ) process, against sides with parachute payments & those who have run tighter ships than us in the past, so don’t need to cut back as much as we do.

Every time we lose a game there is an outcry on here from the usual suspects, plus the serial RB contributors (& podcasts) but unless you think there is someone out there with a better track record than Pearson, who is desperate to work in the South West, he is our best option.

If he improves our position year on year whilst implementing this policy he’ll have done a very good job.

This system isn't without it's faults, eg you haven't mentioned Simpson who was recruited as one of the experienced players who has contributed little and King is in and out of the side, it also relies on player sales coming from our best development players as the experienced ones have no resale value, and we have signed several players from lower league (eg Eisa, Schmodicz) who haven't made it into the first team and have been released with a loss. I don't think the old system was far off, we should have made the top 6 at least one of those seasons and had a shot at the Prem, probably LJ to blame while he was learning on the job rather than the quality of players available at the time. The current system is ok for attempting to retain our Championship status but isn't likely to get us promoted.

[Davefevs]

1 hour ago, LondonBristolian said:

I think the more important thing is to understand what players bring to the team and how to replace them. If you look at Brentford, they have continually sold their best players but immediately replaced them with players who don’t just have potential but seamlessly slot into the team.

Selling players is not an issue if you have a clear system, style and list of potential replacements. It only becomes an issue when you don’t know how to replace the players and totally change your style as a result.

In Brentford’s case, they didn’t replace them immediately, in most cases they were already here a season bedding in.

Vibe to Maupay to Watkins just one example. They did have to do an immediate “swap” with Watkins to Toney, however even then they were trying to to that deal 6 months ahead of when it actually happened, just that Peterborough wouldn’t sell that Jan.

[Tin Soldier]

19 hours ago, 1960maaan said:

The one questionable one, and at the same time plenty would have agreed with, was Korey Smith. I think he was worth a new contract , he's played 52 out of 72 games at Swansea,  so still not 100% starter.
Of the rest, they all wanted to leave.
The "selling your best players" Mantra is a bit unfair. Yes we have sold our best players, we've also sold a lot of not so good ones. Of all of them possibly only Pack was a bit out of the blue, even Flint (who had seemed happy) was swayed by a pay day. 

I'm a little bored with this accusation , yes we have sold the best players. They are always going to be the ones better teams want. But name a team that hasn't sold players they didn't't want to. 

As for wasting money on that list of players, they were signed during the time we signed the ones on the other list. Plenty to criticise the club for, but selling a player that didn't want to be here, for a good fee isn't one. 

The criticism should be levelled at recruitment and organisation , we signed too many "clubs for the bag " and didn't focus on quality. Which lead to the good players wanting to move on when promotion wasn't a possibility . 

To emphasise my point, check out who Southampton have signed, and lost. They do the same as us, but better and a higher level It's the game.

Agreed. And you have answered your own question to some extent.
The club has been run as a shit show of a shambles for several years. Would you want to work for an employer that has quite frankly been running a business atrociousally, especially if you had a high value to another employer.

Hindsight is great and I accept that. But Bristol City fans have been let down by the suits etc who claimed to “run” the club. If the club had been professionally run via a business structure mentality with an accountable chairman, board , coaching structure etc, maybe some of those players may have stayed, accepting some would have still left for bigger paydays. 

Many of my mates and myself have given it a miss this season, after 40 years of supporting the club. We now watch local sport and am quite enjoying it to be honest. Not really missing a soulless Ashton Gate currently.

Most business losing MEGA ££s like Bristol City FC would be subject to a full root and branch independent audit identifying where this mess was allowed to snowball. 

 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Tin Soldier

[Redtucks]

2 hours ago, maxjak said:

YEP....Great Plan?   One that has left us languishing in 18th?  if u want success you have to reach a compromise between selling some players, but showing enough ambition to retain some of your more important individuals.  The list of players who have left our club would probably form a good enough side to reach the play offs at least?    You say it allows us to compete?   Please explain to me how we are competing, by barely staying out of the bottom of the table??

By competing I am talking about finance.

Please explain to me where you suggest we achieve the income to compete with the 20 million that Bournmouth received from being relegated.

 

[The Bard]

21 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

Add to that list Paterson and Magnússon

He said promotion XI

[maxjak]

On 29/12/2021 at 14:00, Redtucks said:

By competing I am talking about finance.

Please explain to me where you suggest we achieve the income to compete with the 20 million that Bournmouth received from being relegated.

 

Who's talking about Bournemouth?.....................there 16 clubs between them and us.  I give up....you have no idea.

[maxjak]

On 29/12/2021 at 11:52, LondonBristolian said:

I think the more important thing is to understand what players bring to the team and how to replace them. If you look at Brentford, they have continually sold their best players but immediately replaced them with players who don’t just have potential but seamlessly slot into the team.

Selling players is not an issue if you have a clear system, style and list of potential replacements. It only becomes an issue when you don’t know how to replace the players and totally change your style as a result.

Well said....great to hear from someone who gets it.

[Numero Uno]

On 29/12/2021 at 11:52, LondonBristolian said:

I think the more important thing is to understand what players bring to the team and how to replace them. If you look at Brentford, they have continually sold their best players but immediately replaced them with players who don’t just have potential but seamlessly slot into the team.

Selling players is not an issue if you have a clear system, style and list of potential replacements. It only becomes an issue when you don’t know how to replace the players and totally change your style as a result.

This is what happens when the Owner allows a CEO the freedom of Ashton Gate to run riot on recruitment (******* shit recruitment at that). When you look at the mess we are in I think you have to give Pearson credit for trying to turn this round when he is fully aware we don’t have a proverbial pot to piss in. Plenty of Managers would have quietly cleared their office at midnight and been reported as missing by now. Yet nutters on here genuinely thought we only had to approach Chris Wilder or Eddie Howe and we would all be aboard HMS Piss the Championship…………..

[Redtucks]

3 hours ago, maxjak said:

Who's talking about Bournemouth?.....................there 16 clubs between them and us.  I give up....you have no idea.

OK Einstein, what about all the others that have been rewarded for being relegated?

You haven't answered my question as to where we get money to compete with parachute payments. You say that I have no idea, so let's hear yours.

 

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Redtucks

[maxjak]

6 minutes ago, Redtucks said:

OK Einstein, what about all the others that have been rewarded for being relegated?

You haven't answered my question as to where we get money to compete with parachute payments.

 

By retaining our best players and getting promoted instead of propping up most of the division ..............I really don't need a high IQ to work that one  out?

[Redtucks]

1 minute ago, maxjak said:

By retaining our best players and getting promoted instead of propping up most of the division ..............I really don't need a high IQ to work that one  out?

Next for your IQ, how do you retain our best players who want to leave?

 

[maxjak]

1 minute ago, Redtucks said:

Next for your IQ, how do you retain our best players who want to leave?

 

oh go away...........if you don't have the capacity to work that out for yourself..........i'm not gonna help you.