Would you trust CW in the PL again?

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I'd trust him as he will be more streetwise, however the club needs a better scouting system which includes international scope. Also if big time money was available for signings and wages .... we can always dream!
 

DeanLearner'sCat said:
Jack O'Connell, not good enough for Brentford, hasn't improved under Wilder? Egan hasn't? Fleck, considered not good enough by many Coventry fans in League One, didn't develop? Compare Chris Basham, K. Freeman and Paul Coutts when managed by Chris Wilder versus them managed by other managers. He improved pretty much every player at this club. Even in the PL, Mousset looked better under Wilder than he ever did under Eddie Howe.
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All history I'm afraid. It's the here and now that matters, Chris said that himself. At the moment we are dire.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Just out of interest how much more would we have needed to spend this year to make us competitive? Without getting too deep into wages etc? 2 more £20 million players?
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For us to stay up this year it would’ve taken whatever has happened to fleck and Norwood not happening. For us to be comfortably lower mid table it would’ve taken JOC not getting injured. For us to have kicked on from last year it would’ve taken another Herculean effort from everyone. That said I think we’re 3-4 players off being competitive problem was no one knew we needed those players in the summer.
 
bongleblade said:
i dont know why we changed strategy so drastically, yes we had £50m to spend. But why go for £20m players, and then at best mid- championship backup (robinson, osborn, rodwell) when we could have easily gone for 4-5 players in the £5-10m mark and theyd have all been fairly decent

For example instead of:
Ramsdale 18m
brewster 20m
burke (swap)
Lowe & Bogle - 12m

We could have had:
Foster - £3m?
Toney - £7m
Roofe - £4.5m
Bogle and Lowe - £12m
Burke (Swap)
Jake Cooper - £10m

my point is - why did we not hedge our bets more? if we use this strategy we not only give ourselves a bit more room for failure, we also give squad depth for key areas. It’s closer aligned to our strategy in previous years. The minute we had a snuff of money we spunked it as we did not have the experience to know how to use it properly, It’s still a gamble (what transfer wouldnt be with our current finances) but less high risk.
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I think we changed our strategy as we were clearly wrongly confident that senior players could produce consistently again this year. Thus allowing the young players to be slowly introduced and as wilder says learn their trade. Theoretically these players have done more at a younger age than those older players listed so we hoped we could build a core which could compete in the upper mid table range of the prem without paying the prices to bring in those players ready made.

The price tag on a few of those players is a bit off imo no one is getting cooper for 10 million whilst ever he’s got a reasonable amount of time on his contract he’s a 15+ player.

Toney likewise whatever Brentford paid for him he would’ve cost us more. Brentford’s offer wasn’t accepted until one from us didn’t materialise. Peterborough’s chairman is many things but daft isn’t one of them and we would’ve been paying a prem premium.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Take your point on those individuals but certainly not every player at the club. It was a more Wilder signs an awful lot of players who feature once or twice never to be seen again. Therefore is it through skill and knowledge he develops them or is it more keep trying different things until they work i.e how much is down to the "system" because he seems rather reluctant to change it.
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To be fair, your the best undercover pig on here 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
 
I don't know what the answer is and I've certainly not got any alternative managers as a solution.

My only feeling really at present is one of sadness at how it's all gone pear shaped.

Whilst recognising completely that if this run continues for most of the season, it is likely to be much harder to turn around than some seem to think, if Wilder was to go it would undoubtedly be the saddest I'll have felt at a manager leaving.

Only Bassett would compare and things had gone stale by then with boardroom issues.

I've thought we've sacked many managers at the wrong time c) McCabe but none have left me with the sad feeling that Wilder going would.

It's all so Sheffield United.
 
Davalon said:
I don't know what the answer is and I've certainly not got any alternative managers as a solution.

My only feeling really at present is one of sadness at how it's all gone pear shaped.

Whilst recognising completely that if this run continues for most of the season, it is likely to be much harder to turn around than some seem to think, if Wilder was to go it would undoubtedly be the saddest I'll have felt at a manager leaving.

Only Bassett would compare and things had gone stale by then with boardroom issues.

I've thought we've sacked many managers at the wrong time c) McCabe but none have left me with the sad feeling that Wilder going would.

It's all so Sheffield United.
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I agreed whatever happens with the manager we aren’t staying up. The club needs to show sign of having a plan for another 5-6 year cycle that means finishing the complete rebuild of the first team squad with players in their early to mid twenties and creating the off field infrastructure capable of supporting a team which operates at upper champ/ prem level
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
The best case scenario is we keep Wilder and come straight back up but that brings a problem in itself. As Chairman would you want Wilder spending any of your money considering how badly it has been spent in the last 18 months? Wilder will be promoted for a second time but this time as a manager that failed to adapt and took us down on what is a likely to be a very low points total ie without the "momentum". If the 10 year plan is to yo-yo between the divisions then fine but if you want to establish us as a Premier League club we need coaches that improve players individually and can adapt whether that's along side Wilder or in place of I don't know but has Wilder improved any player for us?

Maybe beyond our budget or ambition but coaches like Rafa Benitez, Howe etc improve players and develop them. Wilder doesn't he just chops and changes away at the system until it works which is fine in the lower leagues where wages and fees aren't an issue but you can't keep buying £20 million players until one of them clicks. In my opinion the strategy Wilder has taken is high risk high reward. If Brewster had come in and scored 7/8 goals by now we'd be saying bargain and thats a £40 million striker the same with McBurnie. I don't buy into this idea of if we go down him and McBurnie are still £20 million players we will end up taking a big hit if we did have to sell. And again should be promoted again you've two strikers who failed last time they were in the PL.
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Yes
 
This reminds me of that I'll fated day when we were last in the Premier league against Wigan, before the game in the pub I asked the question, 'if we stay up do you want warnock next season, if we go down do you want warnock next season' we all agreed, stay up new manager, down, keep warnock.
Regarding Wilder (and Knill obviously, nobody mentions him at the moment for some strange reason), I would 100% back them to continue.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Just out of interest how much more would we have needed to spend this year to make us competitive? Without getting too deep into wages etc? 2 more £20 million players?
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Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we should have spent less on transfer fees, brought less players in, but paid higher wages.
Wages are the important thing in the Prem, they make deals happen

Wilder probably thought that there was no way his team, his lads, could be so bad, so buying a few young players with a big future, for big money seemed like a good idea.

However, every one of our transfer deals is a pantomime, and it isn't about the transfer fee which is usually agreed pretty quickly. The pantomime over terms does nothing but alert the whole world of who we are looking at trying to sign, and after weeks of pissing about somebody else comes in and wraps the deal up in 5 minutes..........It's all about wages.

United have all the excuses of course which they use to placate the fans

We won't be held to ransom (well not by our first or second choice targets anyway)
Our top secret negotiations ( Ironic because they do so much fucking about that everybody and his dog knows about it )
We won't risk the financial future of the club ( Yeah right, we'll spend a fortune on loss making players who were our third or fourth choice squad filler)
Agent was to blame ( you won't get anywhere without them, the club knows this, but a nice easy excuse that shoves the blame elsewhere and dumb fans will swallow)

Too late now, another chance gone, and if they aren't going to behave like a Premier League club I'm not sorry to see them go down
 
So the issue many see it is with recruitment......
So why all the blame at Wilder's door?

Get some infrastructure in the club that scouts other places than just the championship.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Just out of interest how much more would we have needed to spend this year to make us competitive? Without getting too deep into wages etc? 2 more £20 million players?
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£20m on a JOC replacement/cover

£20m or maybe even £15m on a creative midfielder.

Wages are an issue, though.

Far too much spent on squad filler players that don't improve the team. We look threadbare.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Take your point on those individuals but certainly not every player at the club. It was a more Wilder signs an awful lot of players who feature once or twice never to be seen again. Therefore is it through skill and knowledge he develops them or is it more keep trying different things until they work i.e how much is down to the "system" because he seems rather reluctant to change it.
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The fact he got us to the premier league for a net spend less than Adam Reach really kills you, doesn’t it?
 

I imagine some Burnley fans were asking the same question when Dyche took them straight down after his 1st promotion with them.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Just out of interest how much more would we have needed to spend this year to make us competitive? Without getting too deep into wages etc? 2 more £20 million players?
Click to expand...
more like a couple of 40M players, 20 million players are normally buying youth and hoping they develop, from the start of this season it has been obvious we didnt have that luxury and needed the finsished article ASAP
 
DeanLearner'sCat said:
Jack O'Connell, not good enough for Brentford, hasn't improved under Wilder? Egan hasn't? Fleck, considered not good enough by many Coventry fans in League One, didn't develop? Compare Chris Basham, K. Freeman and Paul Coutts when managed by Chris Wilder versus them managed by other managers. He improved pretty much every player at this club. Even in the PL, Mousset looked better under Wilder than he ever did under Eddie Howe.
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Sorry there is too much looking back, doesn't help where we are or where we should be going forward. Yes players were improved but then they have regressed. The mistake is to dwell on past glorious /successes. We are where we are and Wilder has not shown he is a Premiership manager, cannot adapt tactics or recognise player qualities and the Board should be looking around(and probably are) for someone who is. It's not easy but being stuck in the past is fatal.
 
bongleblade said:
i dont know why we changed strategy so drastically, yes we had £50m to spend. But why go for £20m players, and then at best mid- championship backup (robinson, osborn, rodwell) when we could have easily gone for 4-5 players in the £5-10m mark and theyd have all been fairly decent

For example instead of:
Ramsdale 18m
brewster 20m
burke (swap)
Lowe & Bogle - 12m

We could have had:
Foster - £3m?
Toney - £7m
Roofe - £4.5m
Bogle and Lowe - £12m
Burke (Swap)
Jake Cooper - £10m

my point is - why did we not hedge our bets more? if we use this strategy we not only give ourselves a bit more room for failure, we also give squad depth for key areas. It’s closer aligned to our strategy in previous years. The minute we had a snuff of money we spunked it as we did not have the experience to know how to use it properly, It’s still a gamble (what transfer wouldnt be with our current finances) but less high risk.
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Admittedly some big money signings haven’t worked out. No offence but your post is being wise with the benefit of hindsight

Ramsdale
Was an England number 1 prospect last season. We now know that he can pull off a worldy but struggles with catching. Seemed a great replacement for Henderson. In hindsight hasn’t been as good but regarded as one of the top two or three English keepers when we signed him.

Brewster
Highly rated by the fans and manager of the English, European and World champions. So much so that LFC put a buy back clause in his contract. Reyt signing or so so it seemed. In hindsight, the kid looks lost.

Lowe and Bogle.
Bit parts for both. To be fair if they’d signed last year they’d have been seen as shrewd add ons to a good squad but this season held to account.

Burke - WBA fans said he was crap but far better than Robinson. One of the few threats we carry.


We could have had:
Foster - £3m?
Toney - £7m
Roofe - £4.5m
Bogle and Lowe - £12m
Burke (Swap)
Jake Cooper - £10m

The above could have been twice as good or twice as shite, we’ll never know ( unless we go back in time, sign them, then fast forward and review on here.)

I love this club, it’s going to be painful until May. He’s got some stuff wrong (stuff that few of of would’ve got right without the benefit of hindsight). Keep the faith ⚔️⚔️⚔️
 
A lot of good points in this thread regarding the current situation. CWAK's biggest issue is their own success imho. Having risen too quickly the squad now lacks depth and is quite one dimensional. Some may say that is down to Wilder and Knill, but I don't think anyone was advocating easing off and consolidating when the club was pushing for promotions. They improved many of the players so much they are now Premier League players having been seen as League 1 or perhaps having the potential to play in the Championship. So there are no doubts they can improve a player.

The other main issue as mentioned is that CWAK would never have believed the same squad that had excelled in the last couple of years could now look so bad and out of their depth. A lot of players have regressed badly and the confidence is completely shot. I would be surprised if anyone on here would have predicted such an almighty collapse like this season? That means that Wilder was hoping to add the likes of Brewster and Ramsdale into a team with confidence, stability, momentum and one that would likely be consolidating their Premier League status. Unfortunately they have been thrown in to the deep end into a squad lacking confidence, belief and that all powerful momentum. The pressure on the likes of McBurnie is now paralysing these players and it is sad to see. Had the team not regressed so badly Brewster and Ramsdale may not look so bad, it is fine margins and being young still they have time on their side so the saying 'you are taking the score too early' springs to mind on the signings.

No doubt CWAK have made mistakes. They possibly should have been working on having a better plan b. and bringing in players who could fit into other systems. They also probably should have added more creative players as no doubt the big difference between the likes of Villa, Leeds and even Brighton is the number of creative players they have as opposed to the Blades. Again though it comes down to wages and the ceiling you are working under, so no doubt the overseas market should have been tapped into, however, the risks are often higher. For every Raphinha there are 3 or 4 players who cannot settle or get to grips with English football, particularly now during COVID where International travel back home is so heavily restricted. You would also have to say that Wilder himself also has to take some blame on his change of attitude over the last 18 months. He's gone from 'Lets go toe to toe' to 'we don't deserve to be on the same pitch as these guys'. Only he knows why, perhaps he was trying to highlight the gulf in finances and send a message to the owners about competing on the wage front or to better highlight his own achievements, who knows but it certainly is a marked shift in attitude and you wonder how the players view this. I think COVID has impacted on Wilder more than any other manager. The success of the past few years has been built on the synergy between, fans, players and Wilder being a fan himself. He was much like a composer energetically pulling it all together and manipulating all the energy into the beast it was.
 
GuangzhouBlade said:
Just out of interest how much more would we have needed to spend this year to make us competitive? Without getting too deep into wages etc? 2 more £20 million players?
Click to expand...
Double the wage Bill and bring in the three ( hopefully ) he wanted not buy those further down the list - if at all on it
 
The club's approach to recruitment is all wrong. If we're going to establish ourselves as a Premier League club we need to have vastly better scouring and youth structures.

If we're only going to sign British or players playing in Britain then we have no chance.

People talk about wages but we all agree that Sander Berge is a class player and we sonehow manage to afford him. It's not rocket science. Most other leagues in the world pay their players a lot less than in the top two English divisions.

Wages are only a problem because of our British only transfer approach.
 
The OP is a great question, my honest answer is I don't know at the moment, the recruitment has been terrible with the most expensive signings the biggest cock ups. We don't know who was on his list and wether he's had to make do signing players for lower wages than his original targets but you can only comment what's here now and that's a mess. I have been unwavering in my support and still am for next season where a massive team overall is looming..... maybe that's a question too can CW reconstruct a new effective team?
 
dont think it matters who is the manager to be honest if we havent got the finances to sign premier league players or pay premier league salaries you just cant survive in this day and age if chris had been able to bring all his targets in im sure we would have survived this season its as simple as that
 
HD8 Blades said:
Admittedly some big money signings haven’t worked out. No offence but your post is being wise with the benefit of hindsight

Ramsdale
Was an England number 1 prospect last season. We now know that he can pull off a worldy but struggles with catching. Seemed a great replacement for Henderson. In hindsight hasn’t been as good but regarded as one of the top two or three English keepers when we signed him.

Brewster
Highly rated by the fans and manager of the English, European and World champions. So much so that LFC put a buy back clause in his contract. Reyt signing or so so it seemed. In hindsight, the kid looks lost.

Lowe and Bogle.
Bit parts for both. To be fair if they’d signed last year they’d have been seen as shrewd add ons to a good squad but this season held to account.

Burke - WBA fans said he was crap but far better than Robinson. One of the few threats we carry.


We could have had:
Foster - £3m?
Toney - £7m
Roofe - £4.5m
Bogle and Lowe - £12m
Burke (Swap)
Jake Cooper - £10m

The above could have been twice as good or twice as shite, we’ll never know ( unless we go back in time, sign them, then fast forward and review on here.)

I love this club, it’s going to be painful until May. He’s got some stuff wrong (stuff that few of of would’ve got right without the benefit of hindsight). Keep the faith ⚔️⚔️⚔️
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yeah hindsight and all, however my point is not about buying the certain players i mentioned, but the strategy we went for, everyone saw it was a little risky to put it lightly...

Rather than splashing out on 1-2 young lads, we could have spread our bets across 4 players with the £30-40m we spent on Brewster/Ramsdale - and had a mix of proven and potential - one eye on survival, one eye on the future.

Burke, Bogle and Lowe were an example of this strategy and very good transfers imo - good value, high potential for success.

I'm just not sure a £30m+ spend on a striker and GK was required, when we clearly had deficits in squad depth in other areas - we really should have aimed to spend as much on a LCB and CM as a striker and GK. For example, a £30-40m outlay between all 4 positions could have got us - Swift, Cooper, Toney/Balogun, Hendo on loan for 1 season - all players we were linked with at the time - hindsight and who knows they could have flopped - but it does look less risky than 2 players at 30-40m
 
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