The recruitment over the past few months has been poor with a smattering of players proving their worth , a lot coming to the club are not the standard we require and in a lot of cases were similar to what we already had and not what we needed and that is blatantly obvious to SAFC supporters who tend to be quite knowledgable on the whole. If we are to progress as a club development and recruitment MUST improve and I do not think the existing job holders can be trusted looking toward to the January transfer window . What is everyone else’s view .
I admit not knowing Hill if he passed me in the street but I expected better from coton. We are not far off if the players start demonstrating their ability, which for most of them is decent at league one level.
Recruitment has been poor in the sense that we've got loads of CMs and hardly any LBs or RBs, the squad balance is awful. You can pick loads of holes in the quality of the players brought in, lack of pace and strength being the obvious ones, but I don't know for sure how much of that is their fault specifically. After we spunked the budget on Grigg we've been feeding on scraps and it's possible they wanted players who would fill those gaps but the money wasn't there or the players weren't interested.
Recruitment has been poor imo. But Parkinson knows the players in this league, where Jack Ross was (perhaps) going for attributes due to not knowing the league particularly well, I think Parkinson will be giving them names to get in Jan. He said in his interview that plans are already underway and I hope it's true and they are lining them up now. .
The biggest single mistake has been grigg. We will assume he will cost 3m not 4m. Coton and hill must have pushed hard with donald to get him and maybe based on record there was virtue in that. Allegedly ross thought he wasnt worth it. Nevertheless Donald ( prompted surely by the gruesome twosome ) kept going back and donald kept upping the price till wigan agreed to sell a player who wasnt getting a game!!!. I'd be surprised if charlton or luton spent 3m on their entire teams last season. It was way over the top for this league. We really should have had 3 more than adequate players for that sort of money and instead we got ANOTHER injured unfit player who still hasnt anywhere replicated the form that earned them a move to the leagues biggest club. Hill especially is there to prevent such waste. 1 injured player ( wyle) I could tolerate. 2 is sackable imho. Other than macnulty the loans have all been at best meh. The style of football hasnt helped them no doubt but still... It's very depressing tbh
Hill’s only qualification for the job is he knows SD. Coton’s Only time scouting for a club our size was Villa, who were relegated within a year. They are failures and continue to be so.
Was the Donalds trump card to get us promoted quickly to flog us on. The poor stupid fool clearly didn't know that sort of stuff is never clear cut with Sunderland.
We seem to have signed players who are league 1 standard, surely we must be looking to sign players that will be able to perform in the championship or are we so skint we don’t want promotion as we won’t be able to compete financially.
I blame them almost completely. We haven't had much to spend, but how often do we get told that no one spends much in this league (and that we spend more than anyone even if we aren't exactly spending millions)? They can't have it both ways, if others not spending is an excuse for us not spending, then equally if others can get decent looking squads together without funds then we also shouldn't need funds to get a decent looking side together that is capable of looking good against the mediocre sides in this league. We needed pace and power, have done for ages, it's not that hard to find in this league (creativity a bit harder, but no excuse for not getting powerful or quick/ mobile players). We're still one paced and weak. We've been, imo, an ideal place to send loan players. Likely to be on the front foot, get lads used to playing in front of big crowds with high expectations. Instead whilst others have had team of the year players (Charlton and Coventry), we didn't get a single player who was a guaranteed starter. Sinclair and Sterling were pointless, hardly used and crap when they were. Dunne was no better than the rest, Morgan was okay in flashes but not exactly a revelation. That's absolutely shocking, in this league the loan system should be used to get the genuine quality you can't bring in permanently, instead we used it to bring in even more average players, no better than what we had. McNulty looks okay this season, but still not likely to be competing for team of the season! If Ross is judged (rightly) for results not being good enough and is sacked as a result, I wonder how much scrutiny Coton and Hill are under? Hill seems, on the face of it, to be woefully under qualified for the job of head of football operations at Sunderland, blokes been sacked twice by Eastleigh ffs. He was lucky to get the job and I hope there are clear targets in place for him because currently if I was a billionaire there's **** all chance I'd be giving Donald and his mates a penny of my money to spend since there's no evidence it'll be spent well. Hell, another thing we should be doing, with the aim of being sustainable etc, is bringing in good young players we can make a profit on, something we know we did very badly on with the last regime. How many that the new lot have brought in would give us any profit? Probably O'Nien (but no one would pay much for him), maybe a couple of free transfers would go for a nominal fee, how are we meant to progress if we're just getting average "at their peak" league one players? We'll never generate our own transfer funds operating like that. Maybe Dobson will be decent, but currently he can't even get in our side regularly. Bit of a rant, but I've got no time for anyone involved in recruitment at our club presently
I thought we only paid 500 grand for Grigg? The rest were all add-ons. I can't imagine he's hit any of the clauses so that should still be just the 500k we have paid out. We are totally skint and always have been. Stewie is a chancer and this could have gone horribly wrong but it looks like he's pulled it out the bag with the American investment. Coton is going on names and reputations only. There's a world of talent across the European lower leagues and we don't even seem to be sticking our noses in and sniffing about. I can think of quite a few players in the Spanish Segunda, Eredivise and Belgian A league, who would be within our price range and would definitely improve on what we've got. Why do we never seem to be looking past 'experienced players who know the league'? What a load of ****e.
Our recruitment and scouting staff were stripped back to the absolute bare minimum. Donald has said rebuilding that is now a priority. The manager had the ultimate say in any final targets. Including Grigg. As such, I don't think the blame can be put on Cotton and Hill. (at this moment in time). Let's see what happens in the January window.
Would've been interesting if that John Park had come in in the summer and worked with Ross, might still be in the job.
That, in itself, is terrifying isn't it!! Any one of us could do that... "Here, this lad has done it before and a few of the lads down the pub say he's canny - let's sign him!!"
