Apart from the L1 campaign. The recruitment has been pretty poor. I don't think it's been an easy job, and certainly not helped by the budget. I think the worst thing is that we've not had a clear style for a lot of it. Under Grant we did, regardless of whether people liked it, but it does make recruitment a lot easier. For example, if LR was gaffer in the summer, we'd never have signed Fig as he clearly doesn't fit. Hopefully it'll stop the scattergun approach
Its a pity your students are on holiday ST, you could have set this as homework and saved yourself the work... but well done all the same... I think some of the retirees were retired while they were here.. I see some are still stealing a living too...
Did he though? As others have mentioned, even on a small budget you’d expect us to unearth a gem every so often to sell on for even a modest profit. The fact we’ve only done it once or twice since he came in suggests he’s not fulfilled his purpose at all.
Those ITK, Ehab hasn’t put something in his contract saying we must keep Darnborough as he? He should have gone immediately. Like mentioned Ternants record compared to his is day and night. I’d say we are at the stage where Ternant was employed once again. Brighton and Brentford are the models we should be following.
No, I think he was kept on as a sort of transitional thing, his track record in L1 is pretty good, but it's safe to say he's nowhere near ambitious enough. But, that bit is over now, so give him a picture of a spitfire and send him on his way.
If I recall Ternant wasted our last million some years ago when he was manager , wouldn’t have him back at all .
He’s 76, he’s retired and rightly so. He wasn’t the best manger we ever had, but in recent times he’s certainly the best chief scout we ever had.
We certainly need to be looking at how Brighton/Brentford did it. Particularly Brighton as they’re setting the standard for finding cheap trainable quality on the continent they can sell on for big fees to the big boys
If we want to think bigger we need a mix of continental / international scouting and Uk scouting to get the best value and mix .
Brentford did it well because their owner Matt Bentham also owns FC Midtjylland in Denmark and they swapped players, youngsters and, on occasion, staff. Watford do it with Udinese and Brighton are linked with Union St Gilloise. In fact, many English owned clubs have owners that own other clubs too. Marinakis owns Forest and Olympiacos, Vincent Tan owns Cardiff and FK Sarajevo and KV Kortrijk in Belgium, the fella who owns Sheffield United also owns Beerschot Antwerp, Al-Hilal, Chateauroux and Kerala United. Chien Lee, who was very interested in buying us and almost did, owns Barnsley and is the co owner of FC Thun, KV Oostende, AS Nancy, Esbjerg FC, FC Den Bosch, FC 1. Kaiserslauten and until it was taken over by Ineos, OGC Nice. If done properly, it can be very lucrative and an easy way to secure players without having to compete with other clubs. We've already had discussions with Juventus and I believe Fenerbahce too, which is why I think there's a potential for an exciting centre forward to come in on loan during the window.
It looks like there's a keenness on both sides to sort something out. An agreement to loan players would be amazing given the talent in that youth set up, but even an annual friendly would be amazing and generate a decent amount of income for us.
