Harry

And my point is exactly this. We probably have plenty of fans across the country who might get to National League/other games when they can’t make it to City. Why shouldn’t we have a fan be able to enter a Chesterfield fixture under an official scout badge and write a full report on the chap. We need to expand the scouting network. What better than having fans, with a huge personal interest in our clubs well-being, to be out there providing reports at zero cost to the club. You personally should be encouraged to go to the next Chesterfield match and report on this lad. There should be a facility for you to be able to contact our Head of Recruitment and say “I’m going to the Torquay Chesterfield match on Saturday, I’ll provide a report on Tshimanga”.

And that’s exactly the point Will. The donkey work was not being done early enough to make any impact in the summer window. Nige had to rely on very little support from the existing structure. Clearly the 3 Leicester connections were all his own work, but I’m reliably informed that Atkinson was also a lot of his own work too. Nige may not have signed Weimann and King were he in conversations from March onwards with his recruitment head, who in turn had been in daily conversations with the people in charge of placing those players at new clubs. There was plenty of transactions made in the summer window that would’ve been easily within our budget and desires. But we weren’t even in the conversation. Don’t get me wrong, Gould’s arrival is a positive. But he’s still not the person filling the massive void in the recruitment structure.

As said, he was no doubt involved in the financials at the closure of the deals but he certainly isn’t the person who would have been hosting meetings with agents throughout the spring and summer, ie, way before 22nd June, when the real player identification and availability was happening. We were behind the 8-ball in the last window. I’m just very very keen to make sure we aren’t behind it again. And we need a HoR to make sure the professionalism and experience is there. And we need a more robust scouting set up to aid that.

Not any more thanks Henry. We need proven experience in the role. However, I am 100% of the opinion that a HoR should utilise their fan base to the max. We have fans based all over the country, able to watch matches anywhere and everywhere. We should have a system where fans can refer players into the HoR - maybe even be given ‘official’ accreditation and can walk into Grimsby v Halifax with a BCFC scout badge, free of charge, as an official scout. So long as they provide a specific report with specific criteria, not just go for a jolly. Such a system suddenly gives you hundreds of potential scouts and zero cost to the club.

Given he didn’t start work here until 20th June. Weimann had already extended. James, King & Atkinson were all signed 1st-3rd July. Gould may well have been involved in the final financials on their deals but if he told you he was involved in agent talks from the very start he’s lying to you. If you seriously believe that we hadn’t already spoken to James before 20th June and the signing was all sealed and delivered 10 days later, well.

My expectations for this season are low. Hence why I made the point early in my initial post that Nige has to stay. It’s a long rebuild. But we can’t ignore the fact that the rebuild is already behind schedule because we’ve had 1 window already where we’ve signed 7 players, 5 of which are expensive, 4 of which were unnecessary. And the reason was because we have no one with any experience in charge of recruitment. We had a summer of missed calls from agencies and were literally bottom of the list when we did finally want to talk about anyone. Too late to the party. It can’t happen again.

Gould wasn’t here for the majority of the transfer window and his role would be more on the financial side of things anyway. He’s not someone who is suitable for the head of recruitment position. He’s good for a ceo position and will undoubtedly have input into recruitment from the financial perspective but he’s not the person who is going to be identifying players. We’re missing a key part of the process.

I’m fully aware of Jay Socik. Luton still have a Chief Scout though (Phil Chappell) that sits above him. Someone who’s been a pro and also been a chief scout at other pro clubs. And as you say, Harford also plays a key role. I don’t think Socik spent the summer talking to agents. He probably focussed on his skill set, the one they hired him for - analytics. It’s a huge hole at the moment. And it needs fixing asap.

Sorry. I misinterpreted your post. You are correct. It’s a long rebuild ahead. But it should have started in Summer 21, with a professional recruitment team in place. We’re already playing catch up from where we should have been.

No stirring. Just huge concern that we have an amateur recruitment department. Be honest - do you think a club with Premier League ambition should have a recruitment department being run by a handful of data analysts with absolutely zero pro-game experience?

It’s not a bad 7 days. I refer to the summer recruitment and the limitations that we were under - simply because we had no one in place of any experience who was able to engage with player agents to bring the right people in. I’ve only posted this now because it was actually a half-defence of Nige and the stick he’s been getting. I was trying to point out that a 3 year rebuild needed to start as soon as Nige was appointed and that we really should have professionalised the recruitment team at that time too. It’s an essential part of the necessary rebuild. Either this is a very naive post or an intentional fishing trip. I’m assuming the latter.

No emotional baggage here mr finker. The article you linked is the article to which I referred in my opening post. So I’ve not attempted to hide anything. I have no chip on my shoulder at all. I’m simply extremely concerned that one of the most important roles at a pro football club is being run by amateurs. As for the agents I refer to; it’s not a small selection with minor clients. These are worldwide agencies, hugely respected. I know from personal conversations that our current set up is viewed as a laughing stock. It has to change. Immediately. I get it - Mr Gilhespy must be a friend of yours. That’s fine. And good on you for defending him. I have no doubts, as I said in my post, that he’s a nice chap and a competent data analyst. But do you really think he should be in charge of player recruitment for a club with Premier League ambition?? Be honest.

I had a huge axe to grind when Ashton was here as I knew exactly what his game was and that it wasn’t healthy for this club. I had personal dealings with him and knew he was a rotter. And now I have an axe to grind because Lansdown has let the club go from 1 man controlling everything to no one in control of recruitment at all. I don’t have anything against the data analysts whatsoever. They are a perfectly normal part of the modern game. But I do have a mountainous problem with a data analyst running the whole recruitment department and not taking phone calls from agents. Do you agree that a proper Head of Recruitment is needed?

I’ve had a long break from otib. But I’ve conceded and just had to come back given the debate of late. Firstly, let me be quite clear on this. I don’t want to see Pearson sacked, but he has an awful lot to prove, for me. However, there is something that I’ve not seen mentioned in the Pearson debate/state of the club debate in these recent turgid weeks. Recruitment. And specifically, the Recruitment Department. Let me explain. When Pearson arrived, we’d been a few years down the line of a pretty horrendous player recruitment process. You all know my thoughts on Ashton (and I’m glad you all finally saw what I was telling you all 4/5 years ago!). The recruitment team basically consisted of Ashton and…..ummmm, no one else. He was the CEO, but was essentially acting as the Director Of Football, the Head of Recruitment and the Chief Scout, all rolled into one. Too much power for one man. Yes we know, we’ve been through that story all summer and autumn. Once he departed, what were we left with. Well, you’ll see it was made very clear in the Post article a couple of weeks ago. We have a chap called Sean Gilhespy and he has a team of 3 or 4 data analysts and a couple of interns. Yep. That’s your lot. Gilhespy himself was historically a data analyst too. So in short, we’ve got 4 guys and a couple of unpaid uni-leavers who all come from a background of number crunching and data slicing. Yes, they’ve all done their uni courses in football analytics, but none of them have any experience of professional football, nor of actual player talent identification. Gilhespy is now the person who is taking the calls from the agents and is the first port of call for any recruitment queries, player availability, transfer talk etc. Now, if I was to tell you that I know a number of agents in the game, all with a healthy bounty of players, and I said to you that Mr Gilhespy doesn’t answer his phone or his emails, you might be pretty disappointed. I have no cross to bear and no reason to doubt that Mr Gilhespy is a nice enough chap and may well be a good data cruncher, but he is not the person who should be talking to agents about player transfers. I know through these agents with whom I have contact that he is seen as utterly useless and completely out of his depth. Data cruncher - no problem. Acting Head of Recruitment - wow!!! Unreal. I think, though I can’t be 100% sure, that we are probably the only professional football club in the country who doesn’t currently have a Head of Recruitment or Chief Scout. That is the real scandal that is currently going on at our club. We’ve got a chap who did a uni course on football data analysis as our Head of Recruitment and 3 of his data crunching pals running the show. We’ve got an absolute amateur in charge of taking calls from agents, which he invariably doesn’t answer. It’s an utter utter shambles. Steve Lansdown seems to be happy continuing with this amateur recruitment set up that Ashton left him with, a set up which SL is probably happy with as he thinks we’re finding gems from an in-house database and not having to talk to those dirty agents touting their players around. Oh, how sweet and innocent. **** your morals Steve. This is football. You alone are not going to change the moral fibre of this sport. If you want to run a recruitment department which ignores player agents then you’ll always be 24th in line in this division for a players signature. Let’s bring this back to Pearson. We all know the Leicester story. Nige was a strong manager, with trusted assistants, but backed up with a head of recruitment in Steve Walsh, who pretty much signed the title winning team. The recruitment position is so so essential. Without Steve Walsh and Craig Shakespeare, Nige doesn’t put that Leicester team in the position he got them. That’s not to play down his achievements, Nige clearly had a major influence on that squad, but he was not responsible for putting that squad together and he also had an assistant coach, without whom he hasn’t really achieved any modicum of success (for reference, look at Pearson’s record with and without Shakespeare). It ain’t very pretty. Fast forward to February 2021. Pearson joins us. It’s clear that Ashton is departing. It’s clear that Pearson is a manager who needs his trusted back room team. We know for an absolute fact that Pearson is not a man who likes/wants to deal with agents. It’s clear that we are under financial constraints. Given all of that, what’s the most important thing we needed. Yep, you’ve guessed it - a Head of Recruitment. I must confess, I was absolutely amazed that we didn’t manage to bring Steve Walsh in. He should have been the first person SL needed to call once Ashton was on his way. We’ve left a huge void in one of the most important roles at a football club. Even more so given what was required and the financial situation. Ultimately we’ve made 7 signings so far under Nige. 3 of them were clearly his own call from the Leicester connections. Obviously 2 young prospects with very very little pro football on their cv’s. But we have to add Weimann and Baker too, both of whom should easily have been released. Both were on high wages and hadn’t really proven anything over the previous season or 2. Yes, they both took pay cuts, but they are still incredibly handsomely paid and still 2 of the higher earners we have. Both should have gone. But the problem was this - we had no head of recruitment. So we had no idea of any other players we could realistically have brought in to replace them. So I’d imagine Nige had to reluctantly accept their return - there was nothing else on the table!! If we’d employed a proper experienced head of recruitment when Nige joined in Feb, and also employed some proper experienced talent spotters (ie Scouts and a Chief Scout) to actually physically get out there and watch 10-20 games a week, rather than crunch some numbers on a computer, we might’ve given Nige a very different looking squad this season. The simple fact that we have a Manager who doesn’t like the recruitment/agent side of the game, a new CEO who isn’t particularly responsible or experienced in that part of the game and a data crunching head of recruitment who ignores calls from agents, topped off with an owner who seems to actively encourage us to steer away from those pesky agents and try to implement our own holier than thou model, basically puts us at the bottom of the list for player availability. There were plentiful deals that could have been had in the summer had we acted early enough or shown any semblance of interest in, and we could’ve improved this squad without having to shell out high wages to 2 returning players and 2 other 35 year old has-beens. The fact there is a tight financial situation is the very reason we shouldn’t have signed Simpson, King, Baker & Weimann. It’s the very reason we needed proper experienced people running the summer recruitment and dealing with the players and agents, the very reason we should’ve been in conversation for the best deals we could possibly get rather than ignoring the calls and thinking we could do things our own way. Nige has effectively signed 7 players. 5 or 6 of them featured in pretty much every game this season. So whilst this is still far from being “nigels squad”, half of the outfield first team each week IS his squad. Therefore, yes, we can begin to judge Nige on this teams performances as he has 7 of his own players around him and he really really should have been doing much better than what’s gone so far. But, in his defence, he’s being handed an absolute shit-show of a recruitment team. My thoughts - Pearson will be given time. No doubt. But he should rightly take some flak for performances this season. He really should be getting more fight from these players. But, we are going absolutely nowhere - correction, we are going backwards at a rate of knots, until we get a proper recruitment team on board. Lansdown needs to pull out whatever stops he can, and bring in a Head of Recruitment as a matter of absolute urgency. This needs to be supplemented by a host of scouts (not just 2 or 3 part-timers, we need countless bodies in every area of the country, an army of scouts watching 20+ games a week between them and reporting to a Chief) - actual physical scouts going and watching players and having conversations with agents and other scouts at games - it’s called networking. And you can’t get that from looking at a bunch of numbers on a screen. Without that network, there is zero relationships, and without relationships with agents, you are bottom of the list when it comes to an agent placing their player with a new club. I have zero problem with the data analysts. It’s a perfectly valid part of the modern game. But they shouldn’t be the first port of call on player recruitment. They should be there to back up any scouting reports, not to be the instigators of player ID. And Sean the number crunching shy-guy certainly shouldn’t be the person responsible for speaking to the agents. This is where change is paramount. And must be effected immediately. Everything else that’s being argued about on here is purely secondary - without a properly functioning recruitment team, we will go backwards, fast. Anyway - good to be back. ?

Also very unlikely I’ll make the July date now. Had a pretty stiff back after the last couple of runs - an old football injury in the lower back - so went to see the osteopath this evening. Had the old ‘crack yer back’ treatment and it didn’t all loosen up so I gotta go back on 30th July, and he said “no running and definitely no football until then”!! I’ve had a torrid year, one injury after another since the end of Jan. now at least another few weeks rest!

I see stage 7 & 8 come through Wotton. Are you going solo or part of a team. And which stage are you doing?

It’s amazing how every signing has eyes of despair

Another new signing. Another happy camper.

Again. I disagree. If a handful of fans start calling it out, others will follow.

I disagree. If it was us I’d be calling for us to hold our hands up.

Honestly can’t be arsed to go back through your previous posts - the whole situation bores me. It’d just be nice if you and your other fans could categorically state that your club has done wrong and to not defend it. I couldn’t care whether you get a £1 fine or a 75 point deduction. Just admit your club have broken the rules.

Do you genuinely believe that your club have been above board and within the rules? If your answer is Yes, you are blinded by your bias. If your answer is No, you really should be calling it out. Yet you seem to be happy, nay, even arrogant, about the whole situation.

Ha ha. Couldn’t give a shit to be honest pal. However, if it was my club, I’d be a bit more humble about it. In fact, I’d be happily calling my owners out on it. All these clubs who seem to be under investigation have a fan base in utter denial. The only fans I ever knew who were humble and acknowledged the wrongdoings of their owners were QPR. Get over yourself.

I’m sure you are very proud

Owner is a City season ticket holder too