will Nigel walk away?

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Best signings we made that may have ended up at our rivals in this League were probably Alcock, Wallace and Davies. I also reckon Bristol spent about the same amount of money on their squad as we got as a transfer fee for Maguire.

JCR as good as he has been for us is very much a journeyman and I think he just signs for any club that gives him a call.

None of our signings have made others clubs lose any sleep that is for sure.
 
I hope he doesn't for the simple reason that at the moment there is no one better out there.

I am not convinced he can win us promotion but we won't be in danger of relegation any time soon like we would have been under Weir or if (God forbid) Morgs ever got the reigns full time.
 
Harry's Game said:
I hope he doesn't for the simple reason that at the moment there is no one better out there.

I am not convinced he can win us promotion but we won't be in danger of relegation any time soon like we would have been under Weir or if (God forbid) Morgs ever got the reigns full time.
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He won't walk away but I reckon he will be having an open and honest chat with the board tomorrow for sure. If I was him I would want to know what I really do have at my disposal. He had 3 deals on the go before the transfer window closed yet none of them came good.
 
gaffer said:
very despondent on R/S tonight re no planning of signings pre window closure. my guess is they promised him a lot and delivered nothing. as per usual
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Can only speculate as to why we didn't get the players he wanted and what he was promised. However, to answer your question, no I don't think he'll walk away.

Like his father (rip sir Brian) he's a man of principles and Nigel certainly likes to stick around and see the job through. He's the best thing to happen to our club, he's certainly no mug and I expect him to see the job to promotion through in full
 
Bladesman said:
Best signings we made that may have ended up at our rivals in this League were probably Alcock, Wallace and Davies. I also reckon Bristol spent about the same amount of money on their squad as we got as a transfer fee for Maguire.

JCR as good as he has been for us is very much a journeyman and I think he just signs for any club that gives him a call.

None of our signings have made others clubs lose any sleep that is for sure.
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Do you think other players do something different?
 
SwissBlade said:
Can only speculate as to why we didn't get the players he wanted and what he was promised. However, to answer your question, no I don't think he'll walk away.

Like his father (rip sir Brian) he's a man of principles and Nigel certainly likes to stick around and see the job through. He's the best thing to happen to our club, he's certainly no mug and I expect him to see the job to promotion through in full
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Even if it takes 10 years eh ;)
 
blader said:
The scouting system cannot be blamed, as it shouldn't be required. What we as a 'financial powerhouse' (lol) in the division should have done is just sign PROVEN players at this level. How many of Bristol City's signings had you heard of? I imagine all of them, certainly all the starting players. We know them because they have performed well at this level or above.

You didn't need to be a scout to recognise Freeman, Little, Wilbraham, Agard etc were good signings as they have been good performers for a while. Basically we've taken players released by other league 1 clubs or from Holland/Scotland where they are complete unknown quantities. To get out of the championship you need an excellent scouting network to find hidden gems, but the best way to get out of league 1 is by simply buying good league 1 players. We saw it with wolves last year too.
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In one sentence you say our scouting network can't be blamed and shouldn't be needed,yet in another sentence you say we've taken released players from league one,or UNKNOWN players from Scotland and Holland.Now correct me if i'm wrong but surely this is where the scouting network should come into play and propably has done.If we're not going to get proven as you put it,then the scouts should be doing their jobs properly,so that we can buy players that are going to suit how we play,if not,then what is the point of them being here.

It's either one or the other,they either do their jobs properly and scout the players required,or if they can't be blamed then there is no need for them to be here in the first place,not both blader .
 
wizadry said:
In one sentence you say our scouting network can't be blamed and shouldn't be needed,yet in another sentence you say we've taken released players from league one,or UNKNOWN players from Scotland and Holland.Now correct me if i'm wrong but surely this is where the scouting network should come into play and propably has done.If we're not going to get proven as you put it,then the scouts should be doing their jobs properly,so that we can buy players that are going to suit how we play,if not,then what is the point of them being here.

It's either one or the other,they either do their jobs properly and scout the players required,or if they can't be blamed then there is no need for them to be here in the first place,not both blader .
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No my point is, we shouldn't be signing unknown quantities. All of Bristol city's signings were known and proven, hence the redundancy of their scouting network. As I say, did you know that Agard was a good player? And are you a professional scout? No, they've bought proven quality, so my point is we should be signing players where no scouting would be needed at all.
 
Much as I would like to think all is well I wouldn't count on it. He did seem very downbeat in the interview on Saturday and alluded to the fact that through poor planning we didn't get the players he wanted at the end of the window. I took it as a clear dig at the hierarchy but perhaps I misunderstood him.

He clearly feels we are at least a couple short and isn't happy with the squad despite saying he was before.
 
blader said:
No my point is, we shouldn't be signing unknown quantities. All of Bristol city's signings were known and proven, hence the redundancy of their scouting network. As I say, did you know that Agard was a good player? And are you a professional scout? No, they've bought proven quality, so my point is we should be signing players where no scouting would be needed at all.
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I take the points made mate,but then i get on to mine.We aren't making any signings where we don't need any scouts,so this means in actual fact that our scouts are needed while ever we don't sign the players you refer too and they can also be made culpable for some of the signings we have made.It would be great to do what you said regarding the signings of players where scouts aren't needed but we're Sheff Utd and things never turn out that easy.
 

Can I ask where this idea that Clough hasn't been given what he's asked for by the board has arrisen from?
I've not seen anything that would back up such a claim, in fact local reports seem to think he has total say on transfers.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Can I ask where this idea that Clough hasn't been given what he's asked for by the board has arrisen from?
I've not seen anything that would back up such a claim, in fact local reports seem to think he has total say on transfers.
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Mainly because we respect him as a manager and are struggling to believe he would willingly sign the heap of shite that he has!
 
blader said:
Mainly because we respect him as a manager and are struggling to believe he would willingly sign the heap of shite that he has!
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I'll take that as a no then.
If you respect the man, then you have to respect his judgement. Surely that stands to reason?
 
I think blader raises some decent points re. scouting. A few years ago, I was at some match and got chatting to Derek French (who's the zone man? etc) who was scouting for Reading. It got me thinking about what I would report if I were scouting at a match and looking at the Blades? I've got a long-standing pal who used to scout for Oldham. What he knew about football could fit on the sharp end of a pin. (He once told me that 'He wouldn't get a touch if Lawrie Madden was marking him.' Who was 'he'? Lionel Messi.)

Scouts are like academies. Save the money, let some other mugs do it and spend the money on players that anybody can see are decent. If we were a team like Halifax - i.e. very low expectations - we could maybe get away with investing in promising players, and hoping that some would 'come good'. But we're not. This is an absolutely pivotal season for us. Already it looks like being tougher than last season. If we're still in Division 3, expect a good 3-4k drifting away.

We're in an utterly false position. That tonking at Swindon has been on the cards since day one of the season. We were even lucky that the MKD game was called off - we'd have lost.

If we can't afford players like Assombalonga or Wilson, I'd understand. But to let a player like Agard go from - literally - under our own noses is criminal
 
I thank Clough for bringing respectability to the club but is he the man to lead us back where we belong I've now got my doubts.
If we go to clubs like Colchester, Swindon etc sitting back inviting them on we are in trouble.
The players look lost at the moment.
Mid table at Xmas and he's gone
 
I hope he's not 'gone' any time in the near future. If this uninspiring run continues however and he is unable to place talent into the squad, then I do see him walking away from this before people start uneccesarily blaming him for what is happening out there with a team full of footballers playing way above their ability level. If this happens, the board should resign.

pommpey
 
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Cyprus Blade said:
I don't disagree with you vis a vis the relative quality of Bristol's signings and ours. And yes there are top division one players out there - several of whom moved in the summer. Your post does though seem to suggest that a good scouting set-up isn't necessary in League One. That is what I am questioning.

The difference between us and Bristol seems to be that Bristol identified the right targets (its where the scouts come in) and had the infrastructure and resources there in place to make sure they landed them. Our scouts seemingly only had bus passes to Walsall, the "bargain" basement store at Blackpool, plus a red rover ticket for Scotland. Targets we identified we didn't land - be that because of lack of funds or incompetence in the bidding team (none of us really know what the transfer allocation was/is and whether it has been used up). It was a similar scenario at Derby with Simon Clough as head scout.

He might have been a good scout in the conference and division 2 level but it seems to me he is out of his depth at this level ( and size of club) looking at his performance at Derby and here to date . And I do wonder how nobody noticed that Higdon (setting aside talent level/suitability) looks like he has to shift about two stones to reach target weight ( Evans is more likely to be match fit before him).
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I have to disagree with your assessment of Simon clough. When derby reached the play off final it contained much if Nigel's team, this included Forsyth, keogh, Buxton, Bryson, Martin, Russell, ward and eustace. Most if not all will have been scouted and would walk into our team. Oh, and don't forget who found the beard !
 
Its fair comment to some extent scoobBlade, but the list of players you cite are largely free transfers, Scottish, non-league or from their previous club Burton and it perhaps shows the limitations of the scouting network we have in place. Some of them were also bought after a period of loan. Rampage, the Derby fan, described the Cloughs' transfer performance at Derby in the following way in an earlier post

"He was a lot more hit than miss.......I’m all for scouting the lower leagues and Scotland, but that was as far as his scouting network ever went, which I’m sure made the job much more difficult than it needed to be.......We did miss out on a lot of targets though. He point blank refused to have a Director of Football, and his brother Simon was our head scout. The way we went about our transfers felt a bit…amateurish. If you don’t ask, you don’t get – but with Clough’s management team, we asked and too often we didn’t get, and it really held us back. It’s one of the things the board were allegedly growing tired of...... Clough was also very frugal with money and it’s said that he didn’t spend some of his available cash ......"

There does seem to be some resonance in the transfer performance at the Lane compared with the Derby experience and I do wonder if this un-necessarily artificially restricts the pool of talent we are surfing through and our scouting would benefit from some modernisation similar to what Bristol City did in 2011/12. However, I agree that it might also reflect the transfer investment monies available and what we could afford.
 
It's not NC's style to walk - you can see that from his career in management so far with Burton and Derby

But IF he did - then you can know for sure the state of the club behind the scenes and the real value of GCI
 
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