Striking options

[jlove]

It's not as if the recruitment team are not talking to the players and their agents. They will know nicely which players are unlikely to sign a contract extension if it is offered or are looking for an improvement that the Club cannot offer. We only hear about it when an offer (or not) is made public or is actually signed.

It's clear to us now that Vibe was planning on a move the China last summer; that Jota wanted more than we could afford; that Dean and Colin was looking to secure their family's futures. It's also clear that Woods was close to a move that was probably avoided by lack of offers meeting our valuation but that offers for Mepham were resisted by the Club, with the approval of the player.

Goal-scorers are the most valuable commodity and are always vastly over-valued in January – the time to sell, not the time to buy and the Club is exceptionally good at holding its nerve in transfers dealings, with a longer-term perspective than the fans. It may be that a view was taken that we're creating so many goal opportunities that time, effort and budget may be more effectively spent on improving the conversion rate, with better decision-making, than get stitched up with a striker. The objective is more goals and there's no guarantee another player will deliver; belief in the ones we have may be better at this time.

 

[Lionel Bart-At]

It's not as if the recruitment team are not talking to the players and their agents. They will know nicely which players are unlikely to sign a contract extension if it is offered or are looking for an improvement that the Club cannot offer. We only hear about it when an offer (or not) is made public or is actually signed.

It's clear to us now that Vibe was planning on a move the China last summer; that Jota wanted more than we could afford; that Dean and Colin was looking to secure their family's futures. It's also clear that Woods was close to a move that was probably avoided by lack of offers meeting our valuation but that offers for Mepham were resisted by the Club, with the approval of the player.

Goal-scorers are the most valuable commodity and are always vastly over-valued in January – the time to sell, not the time to buy and the Club is exceptionally good at holding its nerve in transfers dealings, with a longer-term perspective than the fans. It may be that a view was taken that we're creating so many goal opportunities that time, effort and budget may be more effectively spent on improving the conversion rate, with better decision-making, than get stitched up with a striker. The objective is more goals and there's no guarantee another player will deliver; belief in the ones we have may be better at this time.

Great perspective jlove. Thank you.

 

[rebus]

It's not as if the recruitment team are not talking to the players and their agents. They will know nicely which players are unlikely to sign a contract extension if it is offered or are looking for an improvement that the Club cannot offer. We only hear about it when an offer (or not) is made public or is actually signed.

It's clear to us now that Vibe was planning on a move the China last summer; that Jota wanted more than we could afford; that Dean and Colin was looking to secure their family's futures. It's also clear that Woods was close to a move that was probably avoided by lack of offers meeting our valuation but that offers for Mepham were resisted by the Club, with the approval of the player.

Goal-scorers are the most valuable commodity and are always vastly over-valued in January – the time to sell, not the time to buy and the Club is exceptionally good at holding its nerve in transfers dealings, with a longer-term perspective than the fans. It may be that a view was taken that we're creating so many goal opportunities that time, effort and budget may be more effectively spent on improving the conversion rate, with better decision-making, than get stitched up with a striker. The objective is more goals and there's no guarantee another player will deliver; belief in the ones we have may be better at this time.

Agree with this completely.

I think we are short of two out and out strikers and hoping this will be resolved in the summer. It's the only weak spot on our procurement over the past three years and is complicated due to the vast sums front players can attract, which put us at a disadvantage.

 

[andyrew]

We are also short of a left back. Josh tries hard, but we have been making do for most of the season although it has given Yoann Barbet an opportunity to get regular game time

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

We are also short of a left back. Josh tries hard, but we have been making do for most of the season although it has given Yoann Barbet an opportunity to get regular game time

We're not short of a left back.....we're just waiting for a certain short left back to come back
(Kosh has done very well for us at full back in his absence (and Barbet did a decent job considering he's a CB))

 

[Norfolk Bee]

Possibly we can expect some B teamers to play a game or two towards the end of the season if mid table respectability has been achieved.

 

[andyrew]

We definitely need genuine cover at left back...not a centre back or a right sided player filling in.

 

[sonofabee]

We definitely need genuine cover at left back...not a centre back or a right sided player filling in.

I reckon Mads will be pushing for a place soon

 

[andyrew]

Mads is a left sided centre back. In order to execute our attacking plans we need a genuinely progressive left full back. This shortcoming has been particularly noticeable over the last month pr so.

 

[GP200]

I reckon Mads will be pushing for a place soon

.............ticket office will be a poorer place............

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

We're really going to have to call the guy by his surname like everyone else

 

[Les Beeavinu]

Stop it, stop it, STOP IT.

 

[German Bee]

Well well well,So far my doubts have been made to look very foolish!!!!.

I hope the powers that be ram it down my throat

 

[josht]

Scoring goals in and around the 6 yard box hasn't always been our greatest strength this season, but the positions Maupay has been taking up recently have given us much more threat in that area of the pitch.

 

[Bush Tuckerman]

Despite the context I think this is an excellent example to highlight how we might address the balance in our own squad...it’s all very well having a lot of technically excellent, busy footballers...but...

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43371816

 

[rebus]

Despite the context I think this is an excellent example to highlight how we might address the balance in our own squad...it’s all very well having a lot of technically excellent, busy footballers...but...

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43371816

It's a great signing for them but his wages and loan transfer fee were well out of our range. No doubt we'd love to have this kind of option and the Hof was meant to deliver in this respect, but we all know how that turned out.

 

[Bangor Bee]

It's a great signing for them but his wages and loan transfer fee were well out of our range. No doubt we'd love to have this kind of option and the Hof was meant to deliver in this respect, but we all know how that turned out.

The Hof was a great example of why it also pays to check out what fans think of a player. Having seen him play for the German Under-21s, my initial response was that he'd be a great signing. However, the Kaiserslautern forums were full of comments about him being lazy, self-important, and basically not worth keeping. If most supporters of a club don't rate a player, it's advisable to steer clear.

 

[brighton bee]

The Hof was a great example of why it also pays to check out what fans think of a player. Having seen him play for the German Under-21s, my initial response was that he'd be a great signing. However, the Kaiserslautern forums were full of comments about him being lazy, self-important, and basically not worth keeping. If most supporters of a club don't rate a player, it's advisable to steer clear.

I am very confident we do this sort of research, so this is surprising. Maybe the Hof was a rushed signing when first choices didn’t work out?

Back to topic, maybe Shaibu will eventually give us this option? Seems a way off championship football still though sadly.

 

[Full Metal Jacket]

The Hof was a great example of why it also pays to check out what fans think of a player. Having seen him play for the German Under-21s, my initial response was that he'd be a great signing. However, the Kaiserslautern forums were full of comments about him being lazy, self-important, and basically not worth keeping. If most supporters of a club don't rate a player, it's advisable to steer clear.

I suspect clubs increasingly do look at fans' forums when they are scouting a particular target. After all, the fans see the player every week and are very well aware of how he has been performing. Theirs is a non-professional view but it is free, easily accessible and often quite well informed. I would feel a bit queasy about signing a player that those fans thought was useless.

 

[Brain-dead Bee]

Despite the context I think this is an excellent example to highlight how we might address the balance in our own squad...it’s all very well having a lot of technically excellent, busy footballers...but...

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43371816

I wonder how much Fulham are paying for that half-season loan. If he gets them up, it will have been worth it, but spending serious sums on loanees isn't a long-term way forward. If they got him for nothing, it was great business, but I doubt that was the case

 

[Bush Tuckerman]

It's a great signing for them but his wages and loan transfer fee were well out of our range. No doubt we'd love to have this kind of option and the Hof was meant to deliver in this respect, but we all know how that turned out.

Totally agree...the hof was supposed to be the plan b option, and I hope we haven’t abandoned the search on the basis he didn’t work out! I don’t see anyone of that Ilk in our squad not the B team to develop,

And whilst I have absolutely no complaints about where we are as a club at the moment, I wonder if there is a school of thought at DOF level, that once we have a ‘bit more of a war chest’ from player sales with the the squad currently largely replacing itself with like for like replacements, whether we might potentially take a punt on a player who only served a 5-6 month role to get us across the line!

I’m not really that interested in us playing in the premiership if I’m honest, other than the 3 years guaranteed money would secure our future if we didn’t break from our underlying philosophy and would be more than happy to come straight back down on that basis...I’d just love us to get there not least to reward MB’s commitment to the club and relieve some of the burden!

 

[rebus]

I’m not really that interested in us playing in the premiership if I’m honest

I was interested up to this point....

 

[Leonardo]

What you are referring to is a strong an Ox player who plays with his back to goal. I don't think we've played that way for a long time. Possibly Shaibu is the nearest to that but he's not banging them in at League 1

 

[AB]

We play with one striker. We can't get in a back up who is Mitrovic standard - we can only decide to get a Mitrovic (at a fraction of the cost and prior pedigree) as our new Plan A or a potential Mitrovic who will be developed over time. The club has clearly decided that Maupay and Marcondes are the players it will be looking to develop into strikers who can up our conversion rate, maybe Shaibu might get there too after his loan. It is massively frustrating, particularly when we've had players like Hogan who'd be ideal but who we've not had fit enough for long enough before they got offered too much to allow us to keep them.

I think we have a model which pretty much guarantees top 10 and a degree of sustainability of the level of subsidy MB can put in, but which can only make the jump up towards likely promotion if we are lucky with a generation of players coming of age at once and being in contract. We had that luck in 14-15, in part because as a newly promoted, unfancied club our players were somewhat below the radar and/or had just made a big jump from Conference/L2 to join us. Now, everyone we have who performs creditably is already by definition a top end Championship player who is almost certainly on bottom end Championship/top end L1 money and so easy to tempt.

The glimmer of hope is that if we don't somehow manage to sneak up this season (and it is looking fairly unlikely after the two narrow defeats to Leeds and Millwall) both Maupay and Marcondes might start next season well with the experience behind them but we'd probably be able to hang onto them to the end of next season because they hadn't set the world alight this season. Add to that that elsewhere in the team, where organisation and being able to play our style means that we can switch in and out less flashy players, we can keep the overall structure and style the same - what has meant that we've been able to carry on without missing Dean, Colin, Jota, when they were arguably the core of our right hand side, and we've been able to live with Henry's injury. It'll probably set the GPG on fire, but it is why I'd be entirely unsurprised to see new contracts for the likes of McEachran and McLeod.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

We play with one striker. We can't get in a back up who is Mitrovic standard - we can only decide to get a Mitrovic (at a fraction of the cost and prior pedigree) as our new Plan A or a potential Mitrovic who will be developed over time. The club has clearly decided that Maupay and Marcondes are the players it will be looking to develop into strikers who can up our conversion rate, maybe Shaibu might get there too after his loan. It is massively frustrating, particularly when we've had players like Hogan who'd be ideal but who we've not had fit enough for long enough before they got offered too much to allow us to keep them.

I think we have a model which pretty much guarantees top 10 and a degree of sustainability of the level of subsidy MB can put in, but which can only make the jump up towards likely promotion if we are lucky with a generation of players coming of age at once and being in contract. We had that luck in 14-15, in part because as a newly promoted, unfancied club our players were somewhat below the radar and/or had just made a big jump from Conference/L2 to join us. Now, everyone we have who performs creditably is already by definition a top end Championship player who is almost certainly on bottom end Championship/top end L1 money and so easy to tempt.

The glimmer of hope is that if we don't somehow manage to sneak up this season (and it is looking fairly unlikely after the two narrow defeats to Leeds and Millwall) both Maupay and Marcondes might start next season well with the experience behind them but we'd probably be able to hang onto them to the end of next season because they hadn't set the world alight this season. Add to that that elsewhere in the team, where organisation and being able to play our style means that we can switch in and out less flashy players, we can keep the overall structure and style the same - what has meant that we've been able to carry on without missing Dean, Colin, Jota, when they were arguably the core of our right hand side, and we've been able to live with Henry's injury. It'll probably set the GPG on fire, but it is why I'd be entirely unsurprised to see new contracts for the likes of McEachran and McLeod.

Good post.
I do wonder though if there will come a moment/season where Mr B fancies doing a "one off" and shelling out a bit more for a striker in an attempt to make that final push to get us to the Prem (as it's such a key role for us and always going to be tough for us due to the cost of strikers and the moment we develop one to a good standard they'll get pinched).

 

[jlove]

I wonder how much Fulham are paying for that half-season loan. If he gets them up, it will have been worth it, but spending serious sums on loanees isn't a long-term way forward. If they got him for nothing, it was great business, but I doubt that was the case

The loan fee is rumoured in the toon to be £600,000... plus a not inconsiderable wage and probably even larger bonus for targets such as play-off place and promotion. It would be millions.

 

[AB]

The loan fee is rumoured in the toon to be £600,000... plus a not inconsiderable wage and probably even larger bonus for targets such as play-off place and promotion. It would be millions.

It is a lot but so far seems good value compared to the rumoured £3m loan fee Brum are paying for Gallagher!

 

[jlove]

It is a lot but so far seems good value compared to the rumoured £3m loan fee Brum are paying for Gallagher!

Yes. The key thing to remember is that these numbers are over what we generally pay for a contracted player.

 

[wanderer paul]

It is a lot but so far seems good value compared to the rumoured £3m loan fee Brum are paying for Gallagher!

The loan fee was £1.2m. His wages and agents fees take it up to £3m for the season.

 

[No_sting_Bee]

Strikers are expensive for a reason. Marginally good ones cost LOTS more so rather going for the clinical finishers at 10m a pop we look at providing opportunities with knock off midfielders at 1m a go and hope some get converted. It's a finance thing.

 

[rhbee]

Strikers are expensive for a reason. Marginally good ones cost LOTS more so rather going for the clinical finishers at 10m a pop we look at providing opportunities with knock off midfielders at 1m a go and hope some get converted. It's a finance thing.

Knock off midfielders?
Gray? Hogan? Vibe?
Fine knock off midfielders they were...

 

[No_sting_Bee]

No. Midfielders creating LOTS of chances for non clinical strikeforce that incl. Them. Our strikers when we have them and come to us as such not converted midfielders are good.

 

[rhbee]

No. Midfielders creating LOTS of chances for non clinical strikeforce that incl. Them. Our strikers when we have them and come to us as such not converted midfielders are good.

OHHHHH.
Apologies, jumped on that without reading that probably.
Oh and yeah, I agree we do.

 

[Gee Bee]

Mo Eisa at Cheltenham knocking goals in at a struggling league 2 club. Stepped up well from Dulwich could he be the next Ian Wright? Only 23.