How is one in the last 5 years any example of decent recruitment? Straight loans for youngsters on the whole does not work.
Unfortunately with FFP and parachute payments the way they are a lot of clubs in the championship dont have a lot of other options in order to compete.
Longman, Wilson, Bernard, Tomori/Aina, going back further Brady, Meyler, Chester, Elmo. If you're feeling deja vous it's because we had this same discussion four months ago and you were just as wrong then.
We’ve got some great youngsters coming through, had we not been taken over we’d have probably sold KLP and gone down giving most of them a breakout season in league one but now they’re subject to more difficult circumstances to breakthrough
Once again you're talking bollocks and you've had to go back a decade for some of those. We never had Chester on loan, Meyler wasn't a youngster either and neither was Elmo, they'd both played in the PL I was talking about straight loans for younsters, let's look at the last 3.5 years. Incoming we've had: Pennington - fail Kane - indifferent Bowler - fail Smith - fail Bernard - indifferent Longman - success Forss - fail Slater - indifferent Vale - fail Simons - fail
Yes, the current trend to knock him is absolutely absurd. Man United captain? Maybe not. But easily still one of the country’s best two centre backs.
You've missed quite a few players off that list, most notably Baxter, Sayyadmanesh and Wilks. I'd also say Bernard and Slater were good for us and Simons looks excellent and may well go on to be a handy player for us in the second half of the season.
Baxter isn't a youngster, and Allahyar & Wilks both came with options. Same reason I missed off Salah Most on here slated Slater when he was on loan with us, it wasn't until the last 5/6 games of the season when Smallwood & Alfie were out and he played the deeper role that he looked a player. I couldn't count it as a success as he only made 11 starts and half came in the few weeks. Bernard started pretty error prone, started to look the business but was then dropped and never seen again.
Are the reports accurate that we payed €4m for him? If so I really hope we recoup the bulk of that, wild to spend that type of money and give up on him after 6 months (most of which in a poorly functioning team).
Meyler was 22 when we got him on loan, not sure on your definition of youngster.. Simons is a fail, you sure about that? Slater indifferent? Now who's talking bollocks.. You've chosen the last 3.5 years, probably the worst spell in the club's recruitment in the last 20 years, it's a very convenient window. And even so, you've ignored some who were pretty bloody good - what about Whyte and Adelakun? If you're literally just looking at youngsters under a certain age on a pure loan basis, of course there'll be some hits and some misses. It's a cheap gamble for the club loaning the player in for that very reason. If you're expecting it to result in superstar after superstar you're deluded.
So indifferent we tried to sign him on a permanent two windows in a row. We had several years where we barely signed anyone on loan without an option to buy under a certain age, so the parameters put on judging loans as successful or not by SS is hugely limiting which leads to the "you have to go back x years to find a success" as a result. It's a silly argument.
On Ebiowei - City were preparing to announce the 19-year-old's arrival early in the week, but he has picked up a slight injury in training with the Premier League club, and though not serious, will keep him out of action for a short while - it's understood the move is not in jeopardy at this stage.
Out of a possible 1800 minutes in the Championship (20 games), Simons has played 8. He looks a promising player, but you cannot talk about a loan being a success when he's only played 0.4% of available minutes despite being fit for them all. Slater's loan spell was indifferent, he was a squad player. I don't see how there can be any debate about that. Since he's signed permanently he's really kicked on. The success rate of pure loans for kids is dire, you're looking at 10-20% and it's not a one off either. Look at the young ones we've loaned out, the success rate is extremely poor. Our recruitment during this period wasn't that bad either. It was worse in the 3 years before that. You keep having this idea in your head that loans are cheap, they aren't. How is Vale on £20k+ a week cheap, or Baxter on £10k a week cheap
You also can't talk about it being a failure, which was more my point. He signed permanently because he was so impressive in the closing months of the season when he finally got a run in the side, again my point. You can't judge the quality of the player until you actually see them on the pitch. Simons against Fulham was very impressive, to call him a failure is incredibly premature. Our recruitment in the last three years hasn't been bad? Are you joking? Our longest serving senior player is Callum Elder. Let that sink in. Is Vale on 20k or are you just believing whatever you read online? If we've had a low success, it means we aren't picking the right players, not that the system is a failure. Take Burnley just this season as an example, Maatsen, Harwood-Bellis and Tella have been fantastic for them. For Sunderland, Simms and Diallo. For Sheff United McAtee. For QPR, Laird from United; the list goes on just this season alone.
You've got a point, we signed a lot of players in the summer who have a history of missing a lot of games
