Forward planning

[ThatJa]

Sell the lot for as much as we can get

Keep:

Arblaster
Peck
Brooks
Osula
Curtis

Build the team around them with equally exciting youngsters and a few PL loanees. Championship is their platform, let them shine.

Get the ball rolling now and be ready for August.

 

[Houston_Blade]

I saw the thread title and then saw I was on General Blades Chat and assumed it must have been posted in the wrong forum.

We don’t plan.

Promoted at the WBA game and still scrambling around on 31st August signing shit players.

 

[Champagneblade]

Probably easy to say but we have no backbone at times.

We had plenty of time to get Ndiaye signed up or not. It was clear he had value. So why not have set an early deadline, accepted whatever the outcome and in the meantime, gone about signing his replacement, knowing he would be sold at a later date?

Instead, we have seemed so hand to mouth.

Slimane, Larouci and Traore seem pointless signings and needless punts and probably cost us 10m in fees and wages and 10m would be very useful to a Championship club.

Archer would have been a decent replacement for Sharp. He absolutely wasn’t a replacement for Ndiaye. There would have been a lot of sense in reuniting Archer and Akpom, to have had a ready-made 9 and 10 who knew each other’s game. God knows we had plenty of time to wrap that up but were so short-sighted.

Imagine losing Sharp and Ndiaye and getting a ready made pairing.

We changed the required formula of the team when we signed who we did and I’m not sure the Manager, Hecky, was really onboard with it. Just getting decent players isn’t a strategy if you don’t have a plan how to use them.

Ultimately Doyle went elsewhere but we could have got him if we weren’t so picky on a relegation wage clause. If you want better players then you need to compromise at some point. It’s not as if we couldn’t sell him if we wished, he’s a good player.

Alternatively if we’d have gone for an Archer/Akpom combo, we wouldn’t have needed to wait for McAtee and we’d have probably been able to loan Doyle long before he became a bargaining chip for Wolves. We could have foregone Hamer too.

It just feels there is not a lot of strategic thinking going on at the club and it isn’t clear who is going to ignite that.

 

[Stegosaurus]

Hi Stegosaurus here,

I think it's long past time we merged with Sheff Wednesday.

Double the amount of fans means double the income, we can move to a slightly bigger ground and sell The Lane to refill the coffers. We will have a bunch of players we can sell and combine the best of both teams. A merger is the only way for us to be a success

I am sure there will be some contentious issues--such as whose name to keep. I think going pure a simply with Sheffield would work.

 

[Bell4]

Probably easy to say but we have no backbone at times.

We had plenty of time to get Ndiaye signed up or not. It was clear he had value. So why not have set an early deadline, accepted whatever the outcome and in the meantime, gone about signing his replacement, knowing he would be sold at a later date?

Instead, we have seemed so hand to mouth.

Slimane, Larouci and Traore seem pointless signings and needless punts and probably cost us 10m in fees and wages and 10m would be very useful to a Championship club.

Archer would have been a decent replacement for Sharp. He absolutely wasn’t a replacement for Ndiaye. There would have been a lot of sense in reuniting Archer and Akpom, to have had a ready-made 9 and 10 who knew each other’s game. God knows we had plenty of time to wrap that up but were so short-sighted.

Imagine losing Sharp and Ndiaye and getting a ready made pairing.

We changed the required formula of the team when we signed who we did and I’m not sure the Manager, Hecky, was really onboard with it. Just getting decent players isn’t a strategy if you don’t have a plan how to use them.

Ultimately Doyle went elsewhere but we could have got him if we weren’t so picky on a relegation wage clause. If you want better players then you need to compromise at some point. It’s not as if we couldn’t sell him if we wished, he’s a good player.

Alternatively if we’d have gone for an Archer/Akpom combo, we wouldn’t have needed to wait for McAtee and we’d have probably been able to loan Doyle long before he became a bargaining chip for Wolves. We could have foregone Hamer too.

It just feels there is not a lot of strategic thinking going on at the club and it isn’t clear who is going to ignite that.

Far too sensible for this owner

 

[Gaini Blade]

Hi Stegosaurus here,

I think it's long past time we merged with Sheff Wednesday.

Double the amount of fans means double the income, we can move to a slightly bigger ground and sell The Lane to refill the coffers. We will have a bunch of players we can sell and combine the best of both teams. A merger is the only way for us to be a success

I am sure there will be some contentious issues--such as whose name to keep. I think going pure a simply with Sheffield would work.

I think you're doing your team an injustice there by saying it would double our fan base. The figure would be much higher.
Minus 1 though. Me.

 

[Stegosaurus]

I think you're doing your team an injustice there by saying it would double our fan base. The figure would be much higher.
Minus 1 though. Me.

Hi Stegosaurus here,

Fair point. Given Wednesday's prestigious history I think it likely they do have more fans than us. So adding their fans to ours would more than double our fanbase. Good spot.

 

[bornablade]

Probably easy to say but we have no backbone at times.

We had plenty of time to get Ndiaye signed up or not. It was clear he had value. So why not have set an early deadline, accepted whatever the outcome and in the meantime, gone about signing his replacement, knowing he would be sold at a later date?

Instead, we have seemed so hand to mouth.

Slimane, Larouci and Traore seem pointless signings and needless punts and probably cost us 10m in fees and wages and 10m would be very useful to a Championship club.

Archer would have been a decent replacement for Sharp. He absolutely wasn’t a replacement for Ndiaye. There would have been a lot of sense in reuniting Archer and Akpom, to have had a ready-made 9 and 10 who knew each other’s game. God knows we had plenty of time to wrap that up but were so short-sighted.

Imagine losing Sharp and Ndiaye and getting a ready made pairing.

We changed the required formula of the team when we signed who we did and I’m not sure the Manager, Hecky, was really onboard with it. Just getting decent players isn’t a strategy if you don’t have a plan how to use them.

Ultimately Doyle went elsewhere but we could have got him if we weren’t so picky on a relegation wage clause. If you want better players then you need to compromise at some point. It’s not as if we couldn’t sell him if we wished, he’s a good player.

Alternatively if we’d have gone for an Archer/Akpom combo, we wouldn’t have needed to wait for McAtee and we’d have probably been able to loan Doyle long before he became a bargaining chip for Wolves. We could have foregone Hamer too.

It just feels there is not a lot of strategic thinking going on at the club and it isn’t clear who is going to ignite that.

Just to pick up your final sentence. 'Strategic thinking' This is what what we require now.

There are two statements that have been used recently. One, is the term used on here 'We need to Re-set for next season', and the second one is to quote Paul Heckingbottom (on Talk Sport) 'We have lost our identity'.

Before we start listing players that we want to keep or get rid of or sign we initially need to look at what style of play we need to adopt in order to create some type of success over the next (say) 3 seasons.

Everyone at the club from the Prince down needs to be involved in the process and sign up to it.

There's been a lot of talk about the Brentford model and the Brighton model. Now's the time to create our new model.

Once we have created the model we sign & retain players that will fit that model.

Strategic thinking, planning, directing and getting everyone on board is the leadership we require now.

I fear that there's no one (at present) at the club who possesses the neccessary qualities.

 

[Bladezz]

Sell the lot for as much as we can get

Keep:

Arblaster
Peck
Brooks
Osula
Curtis

Build the team around them with equally exciting youngsters and a few PL loanees. Championship is their platform, let them shine.

Get the ball rolling now and be ready for August.

Forward planning needed to be done 24 months ago. But we just never started.

You say build a team around them…. That would currently be a good league one team. In a few years they will be championship ready I beleive. But to expect 18/19 year olds to perform at the top end of the championship isn’t possible.

Leeds are 3rd with a team that cost £100m +

Southampton are 4th and they don’t have kids playing. They have top level signings like Brooks sometimes on the bench.

 

[Rodley]

From the damning article about SUFC in todays Times:-

The culpability for Sheffield United’s miserable state, however, ultimately lies with Prince Abdullah, the club’s Saudi owner, whose meagre financial backing and rank incompetence makes it an enduring mystery that he presided over promotions from the Championship twice in four years. Both of those ascents, though, owed everything to stellar work by Wilder and Heckingbottom, and were achieved in spite, not because, of Abdullah’s stewardship.
It is hard to recall a promoted club beginning a campaign with a team so clearly diminished from the last. Berge and Ndiaye were in the final years of their contracts and, after failing to agree new deals, the club chose to sell them for a combined total of about £32 million, on the eve of a campaign that would generate six times that sum if they survived for only one season.

 

[Champagneblade]

From the damning article about SUFC in todays Times:-

The culpability for Sheffield United’s miserable state, however, ultimately lies with Prince Abdullah, the club’s Saudi owner, whose meagre financial backing and rank incompetence makes it an enduring mystery that he presided over promotions from the Championship twice in four years. Both of those ascents, though, owed everything to stellar work by Wilder and Heckingbottom, and were achieved in spite, not because, of Abdullah’s stewardship.
It is hard to recall a promoted club beginning a campaign with a team so clearly diminished from the last. Berge and Ndiaye were in the final years of their contracts and, after failing to agree new deals, the club chose to sell them for a combined total of about £32 million, on the eve of a campaign that would generate six times that sum if they survived for only one season.

Could have had a calculated gamble and kept them until January.

If the game was up then better to have accepted around 16m for the pair.

You could argue that was a risk worth taking.

 

[jt64]

I saw the thread title and then saw I was on General Blades Chat and assumed it must have been posted in the wrong forum.

We don’t plan.

Promoted at the WBA game and still scrambling around on 31st August signing shit players.

Never mind scrambling around in the transfer window, can just look at the lineups we picked after that WBA game - something I've said before, but the number of minutes that were given to aging players whose time at PL (if not the Championship in some cases) was long gone in dead rubbers rather than seeing what the younger fringe players can do was severe negligence

 

[jt64]

Could have had a calculated gamble and kept them until January.

If the game was up then better to have accepted around 16m for the pair.

You could argue that was a risk worth taking.

Some of us were saying this was the play at the time to be fair, although I'm not sure how you expect to get a fee in the JTW when both can just sign pre-contracts with whoever they want

 

[OLDBLADE43]

Hi Stegosaurus here,

Fair point. Given Wednesday's prestigious history I think it likely they do have more fans than us. So adding their fans to ours would more than double our fanbase. Good spot.

What prestigious history?

 

[Bladesman]

Could have had a calculated gamble and kept them until January.

If the game was up then better to have accepted around 16m for the pair.

You could argue that was a risk worth taking.

They can sign a pre-contract in January and walk away for free anyway at the end of the season.

It's a gamble but not a good one.

 

[Bell4]

From the damning article about SUFC in todays Times:-

The culpability for Sheffield United’s miserable state, however, ultimately lies with Prince Abdullah, the club’s Saudi owner, whose meagre financial backing and rank incompetence makes it an enduring mystery that he presided over promotions from the Championship twice in four years. Both of those ascents, though, owed everything to stellar work by Wilder and Heckingbottom, and were achieved in spite, not because, of Abdullah’s stewardship.
It is hard to recall a promoted club beginning a campaign with a team so clearly diminished from the last. Berge and Ndiaye were in the final years of their contracts and, after failing to agree new deals, the club chose to sell them for a combined total of about £32 million, on the eve of a campaign that would generate six times that sum if they survived for only one season.

Good

Press like this is what is needed . On a national level the Prince being called out for his utter negligence.

Much more of this is needed

 

[Stegosaurus]

What prestigious history?

Hi Stegosaurus here,

Beating Peterborough after a four goal defecit. Probably the greatest footballing comeback of all times. That was being discussed all over the footballing worlds, with kids on the streets of Mexico City and Buenos Aires tossing aside their Messi and Neymare shirts and instead pretending to be Barry Bannan and Lee Gregory. Michael Bay is in talks to create a movie about the "comeback of the century" with Jamie Foxx in the lead role as Darren Moore.

 

[bakeblade]

Probably easy to say but we have no backbone at times.

We had plenty of time to get Ndiaye signed up or not. It was clear he had value. So why not have set an early deadline, accepted whatever the outcome and in the meantime, gone about signing his replacement, knowing he would be sold at a later date?

Instead, we have seemed so hand to mouth.

Slimane, Larouci and Traore seem pointless signings and needless punts and probably cost us 10m in fees and wages and 10m would be very useful to a Championship club.

Archer would have been a decent replacement for Sharp. He absolutely wasn’t a replacement for Ndiaye. There would have been a lot of sense in reuniting Archer and Akpom, to have had a ready-made 9 and 10 who knew each other’s game. God knows we had plenty of time to wrap that up but were so short-sighted.

Imagine losing Sharp and Ndiaye and getting a ready made pairing.

We changed the required formula of the team when we signed who we did and I’m not sure the Manager, Hecky, was really onboard with it. Just getting decent players isn’t a strategy if you don’t have a plan how to use them.

Ultimately Doyle went elsewhere but we could have got him if we weren’t so picky on a relegation wage clause. If you want better players then you need to compromise at some point. It’s not as if we couldn’t sell him if we wished, he’s a good player.

Alternatively if we’d have gone for an Archer/Akpom combo, we wouldn’t have needed to wait for McAtee and we’d have probably been able to loan Doyle long before he became a bargaining chip for Wolves. We could have foregone Hamer too.

It just feels there is not a lot of strategic thinking going on at the club and it isn’t clear who is going to ignite that.

Having been so badly burnt with the Brewster deal (5 year + contract and no relegation clause), I can understand why we didn't want to repeat it with Doyle.

 

[Champagneblade]

Some of us were saying this was the play at the time to be fair, although I'm not sure how you expect to get a fee in the JTW when both can just sign pre-contracts with whoever they want

Perhaps a club thinks Ndiaye could be the difference between getting Europe or not for instance? Or might help them stay up?

 

[Champagneblade]

Having been so badly burnt with the Brewster deal (5 year + contract and no relegation clause), I can understand why we didn't want to repeat it with Doyle.

But isn’t that like being dumped by your first girlfriend and then vowing to never fall in love again?

We are a football club and football is our business. We have to be prepared to make these calls if we are looking to move the club forwards with confidence.

A faint heart never won a fair maiden