Disagree with the last sentence. It was a team effort that got us promoted, and speakman played a huge part in that. He brought in quality players plus he brought in Neil. We were all annoyed with how long it took but the main thing the club had to do was get the appointment right which they did. Id rather the club took their time and get it right than to rush it and get it wrong. I also love that speakman seems to have a pathway for our promising youngsters, chrissy rigg is 15 and playing u23 already and has trained with the 1st team - stuff like that will go a long way in keeping our best youngsters. I know its not transfer related but felt that speakman does get a bit of unnecessary stick so wanted to share my views on it
Agree with this, he’s taken over a mess too so is naturally going to make mistakes aslong as they don’t become the norm I think he’s doing a canny job
100% Speakman deserves to share the credit for promotion. We are in an infinitely better position from a football infrastructure perspective than we were before him. He’s done a brilliant job despite some high profile mistakes that could have cost us. I think it’s reasonable to say he’s done a good job and made some errors that he’s lucky didn’t undo all the good he’s done. Less said about Davison the better. I said at the time, he’s an operations person and was nowhere near as senior in his last role as was made out. And he’s only every worked in B2B roles with zero focus on the customer. And I think that’s clear as day. KLD and the club would do well to introduce a third senior executive who focused purely on the customer / supporter. So you have Speakman in charge of product (football), Davidson in charge of operations (admin and relations with other business), and somebody else entirely in charge of customer. Which includes match day experience, liaison with away fans, the concerts, the club shop, the ticket office etc. In reality there isn’t really a need for somebody as senior as Davison if you bring in that role. I’d want to restructure it into two more junior roles. But what the heck do I know
Agreed with the goals but going back for a 37year old is not the way forward in the Premier League, it also seemed strange to me that so many quality players lost the ability to play football, Rashford and Sancho .
his role needs to remain, whether it’s him or somebody else and he gets promoted I wouldn’t know. but they need somebody other than Steve davison owning the “customer facing” side of the club, and a far bigger remit than Waters’ current one I mean it’s just a no brainer for me but it’s not my money. Let’s call it £100k a year including national insurance payments and benefits etc to employ somebody who knows what they’re doing with e-commerce and digital retail. I reckon they’d pay for themselves within 6 months
No one predicted he'd be as poor as he was. People had concerns but he exceeded the worst predictions.
Can’t see everton loaning 2 strikers to same team. Would be in competition with each other for game time
That's all fair mate, I just expected better. He's always prided himself on being fit, focused and ready to play. I thought he'd be good for the bench, as a 20 minute sub and as an inadvertent finishing coach for Stewart who certainly needs it. I didn't expect him to be challenging for a starting place but he was an absolute disaster.
And had he not and we hadn't gone up we would have lost half the squad we have now, I'll give him credit for the players he brought in but that isn't enough without the right manager, he held on to the wrong one for too long, if Neil was his choice then I'll give him credit for that. Like you said he got lucky in the end which I will happily give him time to prove he's up to the job, at the end of it all promotion was the aim and it was achieved. I know you will have a lot more of an incite in to what goes on behind closed doors so I can understand your reservations
I would love to know what really went on, I can't understand why he would come back and just throw the towel in with so little of the season left, I'm convinced there were other factors that we don't know about
Yeh agree with a lot of this, just want to say where speakman is concerned show me a person in any walk of life who’s not made mistakes and I’ll show a person whose done nowt
They could do worse than to promote Chris Waters (not suggesting to Davison's role) and give him a couple of people to ensure that he's not run ragged and bring in someone to run merchandise/club shop side of things either above Chris or separately.
That’s contrary to what I heard. I heard that Neil was first choice but the fan sway meant the club had to take a look at Keane and discuss the possibility. If there was no fan clamour for Keane, I reckon we’d have been promoted automatically as Neil would been in charge from the first week.Just what I’ve heard from a couple of lads I know who work at the academy (not exactly high level positions either!!) mind so no way of knowing if it’s true
Quite right. The fact Neil used the players we'd signed correctly proves they weren't bad signings ... ... and, as you say, there's a lot more goes on than we'll ever know.
The squad wasn't lacking last season, we had 1 of the best squads in the league. Just LJ couldn't get the balance right between attack and defence, AN came in and got it right. The only place we were short was upfront, thankfully Stewart stayed fit
