Good footballers don’t choose to come to clubs permanently locked in survival mode unless they have no better options .
Or you pay exorbitant wages for average players .
We need to take risks on younger players really , but fear of relegation limits us,
If you risk nothing you gain little.
We have been playing it safe for three decades.
It’s a game of diminishing returns.
Currently I don’t see us making any effort to break the cycle we are locked into.
The sad state of affairs is your main targets have to be among the following.
1. Quality players with some doubt about them meaning they now drop into the obtainable orbit for the club. Could be injury history, a bad dip in form etc, but steer clear of the super veteran players already 30/31-35 plus who are after one last payday.
2. Players from lower league sides who see the step up as a huge move for them.
3. Solid pros to fill out the squad.
If done right and with a bit of luck you can have that perfect storm moment like we had in the 80s, or dare say Leicester managed a few years back too.
If done wrong or the focus is not even amongst those three categories then you can end up with a god awful mess.
1. The first relies on just being a good judge of a players character. For every Andy Gray or Peter Reid or Gareth Barry type you have a dozen Schneiderleins, Beatties or Walcott etc.
2. It's all about balancing out the squad, the likes of Richardson, Harper etc Neville and Butt at United, McDermott, Henderson at the rs, players that fill the gaps in a squad and bring the ability to play even when done more talented players are out injured etc. the utility player so to speak, too many you become crap, not enough your squad be ones easy to derail with a few knocks.
3. Just about scouting and finding the young players willing to really push the selves and ones with a bit of loyalty - again character, do it right you get a Steven, Stephens, Southall, Cahill, Arteta, do it wrong you end up with Kean, Drenthe type who are cancers at the club.
If you take out baseline squad right now, we have little in the first category, the veterans we have are either too old, or simply too bad. The loans by and large have failed even though this is the obvious way we are using the system to try get those players in without the risk of buying... Maybe Ndiaye (Tarks at a push)
Second category we have a few, the likes of McNeil, Garner, are truly this type of player, but both are way too important a time at the club - same as Phil Neville was at us too.
Third category we have a couple - Branthwaite, possibly Tim, Armstrong and Dixon but beyond that nothing really, Pickford was a great example but the teams been that bad that long we failed to develop the club with the player (Richy maybe in that category too)
It's why DoF get paid big it's also why managers input on signings but need to be ones that see themselves building something long term at the club to avoid the instant fix method which ultimately loads all of category 1 in the team
Long rambling post over and out
