Spot on. The people on here who are against this sort of approach always very tediously cite the amount of money that Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth have put into doing it, as if they are the only examples we can possibly look at. Whereas all of the clubs you have mentioned above have achieved what they have by being very smart in a way that we aren’t. Professional and modern, with long term thinking and vision and the patience to see it through.
The other side of it is that these are the ones who've been successful in a specific period of time and that there will be many other clubs following a smart process, which just hasn't clicked. There are fine lines between success and failure with any system.
Pafos FC can be cited as a club that also has a very ambitious and smart recruitment policy. From the formation in 2014, they have developed and grown as a club, they recruited extremely well and also have a developing academy. They won the cup a few years ago which gave them a route to Europa conference league qualifiers and then on the back of that they won the league and play offs last season which gave them a route to the Champions League Qualfiers. They made it to the Champions League proper and just missed out on going to the next phase play offs after the group games.
Midway through the season, the coach who they'd had a lot of success with left for Russia and the manager that came in next , at the same time as Rosenior for Chelsea just before they played each other has already gone, like Rosenior. The domestic play off campaign wasn't great, but they've recovered enough to qualify for Conference league and with a cup final win next week they will go to the Europa League.
Pafos have benefited from the traditional bigger clubs in Cyprus struggling with issues such as financial and hooligan elements, which has affected those clubs.
In 2020, we were also seen as a club with Smart recruitment. The same player that Hull City signed on a free to get them to the Premier League was signed by ourselves for £20m and struggled to be consistent in our best season for decades. Egan and Lundstram were success stories in that season. Regan Slater at that time had limited opportunities because of the success of other players at that time and his development.
Undoubtely the James Bord and Selles experiment didn't work. The principle was to try something different and it was sold to the club as the future of smart recruitment, many were supportive of this change last summer. It was a disaster.
Its not to dismiss the successful clubs and criticise what we have at the club, going back to when this all began with Wilder, the recruitment and pathways from development to the first team was praised, because we were able to get things right.
Over the years we've had a lot of setbacks and we've not managed our money well as we've tried to grow, not achieved promotion back to the Premier League at the first attempt (or second now) and the revenue streams have diminished, whilst long term player contracts have rolled on at high costs.
We desperately need to change things and get back to those pre 2019 levels, the promotion and relegation cycle has hurt us, as has the changes of managers and staff on a regular basis.
Its easy to look at small clubs that come from nowhere and just say that we need to do what the do. We did that ourselves. The sustainable models of Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth are certainly better to look at long term, but they are also expensive. The English Premier League also has the most money. Its perhaps also less forgiving and higher risk for high reward, something we've found and that transition from EFL to PL established club is very hard to sustain. So we have to find some sort of balance.
Can we bring the Hearts, Bodo/ Glimt or Pafos FC models to the Championship and Premier League? Perhaps partially, but we are better to look at models in our own domain as they will also be more realistic. Sunderland will be interesting next season. We also had a good first season and they have been the darlings of success this season, but the interesting part will be whether they can sustain it
