Red Wing Blade
Cook Pass Babtridge
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2017
- Messages
- 5,480
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The EFL has changed considerably now where you're either a parachute payment team bankrolled for a couple of seasons by your failure to stay in the Premier League. The payments aren't intended to bankroll a promotion push to get back up there. They're intended to help stabilise you financially whilst you make the appropriate changes needed to acclimatise to life back in the Championship. Too many clubs see it the first way and end up in financial trouble when they fail to go back up.
The other type of club you are is one bankrolled by a Sugar Daddy ergo Wrexham or Birmingham, though Wrexham receive a lot of money through sponsorship and TV revenue that they created for themselves. Like them or loathe them, smart business. If you're not in either of these brackets then you're in the category of sell to buy, which more and more teams have adapted to.
Up and down the EFL more and more teams are switching to having a Director of Football/Technical Director, akin to that of a General Manager in US Sports. The "manager" is no longer a manager. They are a head coach. Their role is to coach the players, improve and develop the players whilst picking the best system to utilise their strengths as well as winning football matches. Improving the players is equally as important as winning games, though the two go hand in hand if you do improve your players. The DoF is in charge of scouting, recruitment, contracts, promotion of academy prospects to the first team, and the sales of players and finding replacements, as well as data analysis of the current team to map progress and improvement.
We are none of these. We are Chris Wilder United. All decision must be his. It doesn't matter what players scouts find or recommend, he will sign who he wants to sign and that's that, enabled by the inept and awful Bettis who appears to only be able to negotiate one deal at a time and takes an age over it. Worse than that is his obsession with average players who have played for him before. Every season is planned for promotion this year or bust. There is no team building or plan to improve the team, not squad, every season. Hence all the short term loans with a do or die mentality to each season.
Let's say Wilder leaves and we bring in a new head coach and a DoF. Where will that leave us with building a team for promotion and beyond? The honest truth is we are way off it. Let's say for arguments sake that we bring in a new coach and he tells a DoF that he wants to build a team around a 442 diamond formation. Who do we have who would fit into that system and be reliable and consistent for this season and beyond when we're still in the Championship? (excluding loan players).
GK - Cooper
RB - Seriki
CB - ?????
CB - ?????
LB - Burrows
RW - ?????
DM - ?????
AM - Peck
LW - ?????
ST - Bamford
ST - ?????
I've not included One, Cannon and Baptiste as they'd be in the squad but not necessarily starters.
So that's 5 positions nailed down with 6 to go. So how do we get the other 6 players through the door? It's not popular but it's the way most teams in the EFL do it now. You sell one of your top players and reinvest and this is where the DoF comes in. Let's say for arguments sake that Seriki and Peck are having blinders by Christmas and offers are expected for either of them around £15mil each. The DoF should be one step ahead and already have scouted out potential replacements so that when we do sell one we already have the replacement lined up. Let's say they choose to sell Seriki for £15mil to a Premier League club. They spend £4mil on a replacement and another £3-4 on a left winger and £3-4mil on a right winger. These may well come from League One or from a foreign team, identified through good scouting and data analytics. Yes we've lost Seriki but now we're 7 players into a rebuild instead of 5 and we've replaced him adequately. There's no guarantee that these three players will hit the ground running but that's the risk with any signing. Foreign markets and League One should be the shopping grounds as you can find Championship standard players but the wages are fees are less than signing players from rivals in the Championship where fees would be double then £3-5mil that you're looking to spend on a player.
Come the summer the DoF has already planned to sell Peck since January, who's had an outstanding season, to a Premier League club for £15mil. Between January and the end of the season they've already identified a replacement and which other 1 or 2 positions can be strengthened with the money generated from his sale. Perhaps we spend £7mil on each player brought in instead of £3-4mil depending on where they're being signed from. The point is that we'd lose Peck but already be up to 8 players in the rebuild by losing him. By January of the next season they've already identified the next player to sell, who will replace him and where else they can strengthen through selling him. That works started as soon as the season kicked off.
Teams up and down the EFL and even in the National League and beyond are doing this. Bristol City this season are a prime example and have made some great signings for relatively low fees funded by the sales of other players. Coventry bankrolled their promotion through 3 seasons of using this model including selling Hamer to us. Norwich are in the process of doing this.
We have nothing close to this. Our scouting is non-existent other than unearthing gems for the academy like Ndiaye, Osula, One and Baptiste who Wilder won't likely give a chance to other than coming off the bench as that would involve actually coaching and developing a player. Our recruitment is woeful. It's not clear what out best formation or team is, nor which players have been signed as part of a rebuild of the team and not a rebuild of the squad. His constant over rotation of players and tinkering with formations and line ups doesn't help with this and results in a lot of inconsistency on the pitch. How can you possibly steady as a team and gel when you don't know what formation you're going to play or who is going to play every game?
Our whole set-up on and off the pitch is flawed with no apparent long-term plan. Everything is geared up to this season and we'll see what happens after that at the end of the season. If we sell a player it seems to have taken us entirely by surprise with no plan for replacements other than a panic signing (usually a loan).
We badly need a DoF and there are some great managers out there doing well in the EFL and lower leagues. John Moutinho, Tom Cleverly, Ian Evatt, Dave Challinor, Robbie Savage. Savage is an interesting one as he worked with a DoF at Morecambe and now at Forest Green Rovers. He also mainly makes changes to his formation only to suit what is available to him. If he favours a 442 and his left winger gets injured and he doesn't have a replacement available then he'll drop both wingers and change formation to suit what players he has got, so that he puts out the best team that he can in their best positions. That's good management rather than shoe horn players out of position to stubbornly stick with a formation. His managerial record at both clubs is very good. Like him or loathe him he's becoming a very head coach.
I can handle remaining in the Championship so long as there's a sign of progress on and off the pitch. We are stale and ground to a halt where the momentum seems to be heading backwards and an inevitable fall back into League One.
Wilder needs to go for the long term sake of this club and we don't need Hecky or Sharp in the meantime because they "get this club" as this will only encourage more of the same and unwillingness to progress and change. Our fans would desperately back and support boring football so long as we're winning and we'll never move forward as a club. A lot of our fans prioritise the result over performance and will often justify and defend a poor game of football so long as we win. This acceptance of mediocrity is something else that needs to change as this is partly why we are where we are. The performances in the play off season were largely poor with teams outplaying us home and away despite us winning, and it was obvious that we would not get to 92 points again playing that way as we should have never have gotten that number in the first place.
We need to recruit a good head coach with a proven record of improving players and a Director of Football to oversee the rebuild of the team and squad beyond just this season. I'll take 3 years in the Championship if it means seeing our best final team move from 5 players to 7 by the end of the season. That said, I'd take Hecky as a DoF for reasons I've put on other threads.
Sheffield United need the reset that they wanted to try last summer but got wrong through rushing the appointment of Wilder's replacement, and hiring a Poker player as a make shift DoF who conned us into buying and selling players to and from clubs he was linked financially too. They had the right idea but executed it poorly and I don't trust Bettis one bit with any involvement in this.
The other type of club you are is one bankrolled by a Sugar Daddy ergo Wrexham or Birmingham, though Wrexham receive a lot of money through sponsorship and TV revenue that they created for themselves. Like them or loathe them, smart business. If you're not in either of these brackets then you're in the category of sell to buy, which more and more teams have adapted to.
Up and down the EFL more and more teams are switching to having a Director of Football/Technical Director, akin to that of a General Manager in US Sports. The "manager" is no longer a manager. They are a head coach. Their role is to coach the players, improve and develop the players whilst picking the best system to utilise their strengths as well as winning football matches. Improving the players is equally as important as winning games, though the two go hand in hand if you do improve your players. The DoF is in charge of scouting, recruitment, contracts, promotion of academy prospects to the first team, and the sales of players and finding replacements, as well as data analysis of the current team to map progress and improvement.
We are none of these. We are Chris Wilder United. All decision must be his. It doesn't matter what players scouts find or recommend, he will sign who he wants to sign and that's that, enabled by the inept and awful Bettis who appears to only be able to negotiate one deal at a time and takes an age over it. Worse than that is his obsession with average players who have played for him before. Every season is planned for promotion this year or bust. There is no team building or plan to improve the team, not squad, every season. Hence all the short term loans with a do or die mentality to each season.
Let's say Wilder leaves and we bring in a new head coach and a DoF. Where will that leave us with building a team for promotion and beyond? The honest truth is we are way off it. Let's say for arguments sake that we bring in a new coach and he tells a DoF that he wants to build a team around a 442 diamond formation. Who do we have who would fit into that system and be reliable and consistent for this season and beyond when we're still in the Championship? (excluding loan players).
GK - Cooper
RB - Seriki
CB - ?????
CB - ?????
LB - Burrows
RW - ?????
DM - ?????
AM - Peck
LW - ?????
ST - Bamford
ST - ?????
I've not included One, Cannon and Baptiste as they'd be in the squad but not necessarily starters.
So that's 5 positions nailed down with 6 to go. So how do we get the other 6 players through the door? It's not popular but it's the way most teams in the EFL do it now. You sell one of your top players and reinvest and this is where the DoF comes in. Let's say for arguments sake that Seriki and Peck are having blinders by Christmas and offers are expected for either of them around £15mil each. The DoF should be one step ahead and already have scouted out potential replacements so that when we do sell one we already have the replacement lined up. Let's say they choose to sell Seriki for £15mil to a Premier League club. They spend £4mil on a replacement and another £3-4 on a left winger and £3-4mil on a right winger. These may well come from League One or from a foreign team, identified through good scouting and data analytics. Yes we've lost Seriki but now we're 7 players into a rebuild instead of 5 and we've replaced him adequately. There's no guarantee that these three players will hit the ground running but that's the risk with any signing. Foreign markets and League One should be the shopping grounds as you can find Championship standard players but the wages are fees are less than signing players from rivals in the Championship where fees would be double then £3-5mil that you're looking to spend on a player.
Come the summer the DoF has already planned to sell Peck since January, who's had an outstanding season, to a Premier League club for £15mil. Between January and the end of the season they've already identified a replacement and which other 1 or 2 positions can be strengthened with the money generated from his sale. Perhaps we spend £7mil on each player brought in instead of £3-4mil depending on where they're being signed from. The point is that we'd lose Peck but already be up to 8 players in the rebuild by losing him. By January of the next season they've already identified the next player to sell, who will replace him and where else they can strengthen through selling him. That works started as soon as the season kicked off.
Teams up and down the EFL and even in the National League and beyond are doing this. Bristol City this season are a prime example and have made some great signings for relatively low fees funded by the sales of other players. Coventry bankrolled their promotion through 3 seasons of using this model including selling Hamer to us. Norwich are in the process of doing this.
We have nothing close to this. Our scouting is non-existent other than unearthing gems for the academy like Ndiaye, Osula, One and Baptiste who Wilder won't likely give a chance to other than coming off the bench as that would involve actually coaching and developing a player. Our recruitment is woeful. It's not clear what out best formation or team is, nor which players have been signed as part of a rebuild of the team and not a rebuild of the squad. His constant over rotation of players and tinkering with formations and line ups doesn't help with this and results in a lot of inconsistency on the pitch. How can you possibly steady as a team and gel when you don't know what formation you're going to play or who is going to play every game?
Our whole set-up on and off the pitch is flawed with no apparent long-term plan. Everything is geared up to this season and we'll see what happens after that at the end of the season. If we sell a player it seems to have taken us entirely by surprise with no plan for replacements other than a panic signing (usually a loan).
We badly need a DoF and there are some great managers out there doing well in the EFL and lower leagues. John Moutinho, Tom Cleverly, Ian Evatt, Dave Challinor, Robbie Savage. Savage is an interesting one as he worked with a DoF at Morecambe and now at Forest Green Rovers. He also mainly makes changes to his formation only to suit what is available to him. If he favours a 442 and his left winger gets injured and he doesn't have a replacement available then he'll drop both wingers and change formation to suit what players he has got, so that he puts out the best team that he can in their best positions. That's good management rather than shoe horn players out of position to stubbornly stick with a formation. His managerial record at both clubs is very good. Like him or loathe him he's becoming a very head coach.
I can handle remaining in the Championship so long as there's a sign of progress on and off the pitch. We are stale and ground to a halt where the momentum seems to be heading backwards and an inevitable fall back into League One.
Wilder needs to go for the long term sake of this club and we don't need Hecky or Sharp in the meantime because they "get this club" as this will only encourage more of the same and unwillingness to progress and change. Our fans would desperately back and support boring football so long as we're winning and we'll never move forward as a club. A lot of our fans prioritise the result over performance and will often justify and defend a poor game of football so long as we win. This acceptance of mediocrity is something else that needs to change as this is partly why we are where we are. The performances in the play off season were largely poor with teams outplaying us home and away despite us winning, and it was obvious that we would not get to 92 points again playing that way as we should have never have gotten that number in the first place.
We need to recruit a good head coach with a proven record of improving players and a Director of Football to oversee the rebuild of the team and squad beyond just this season. I'll take 3 years in the Championship if it means seeing our best final team move from 5 players to 7 by the end of the season. That said, I'd take Hecky as a DoF for reasons I've put on other threads.
Sheffield United need the reset that they wanted to try last summer but got wrong through rushing the appointment of Wilder's replacement, and hiring a Poker player as a make shift DoF who conned us into buying and selling players to and from clubs he was linked financially too. They had the right idea but executed it poorly and I don't trust Bettis one bit with any involvement in this.
