There are 18 players whose contracts expire at the end of the season. Our loanees will mostly be gone by January if their deals can't be extended how is this moving forward? Lates face facts guys, Clegg can't run a bath let alone a football club and as for Jewell vowing that last years contract situation will never happen again! The Players out of contract in the summer. Jason Scotland, Grant Leadbitter, Carlos Edwards, Josh Carson, Richard Wright, Mark Kennedy, Tommy Smith, Shane OâConnor, Ibrahima Sonko, Ãvar Ingimarsson, Lee Bowyer, Josh Carson, Luke Hyam, Tamás Priskin, Ronan Murray, Cody Cropper and Cormac Burke (all end June 30, some with the option of a further year). Jack Ainsley and Jamie Griffiths (end of this month).
Out of all those players, a) Who is worth keeping, and b) are they worth anything? The only players, in my mind, that are worth holding onto, would be Carson, Hyam and Murray. We could probably get a million for leadboots (although only really worth tuppance). The rest, from what i've seen are not good enough to take this club forward.
Going by a lot of peoples comment (possibly Including yourself JWM?..) a complete reshuffle of players and overhaul of the squad is whats people would like... Although I agree with you this amount of players with things up in the air really isn't wise. A couple of those are clearly on their way.. Tamas, O'Connor and the such like. The likes of Bowyer, Sonko, Ingi and Wright though I'm glad they're on short contracts as realistically no one is likely to 'poach' them off us and they have to play for their contracts and in turn we should get the best out of them. I do believe that PJ is a little more tuned in to these matters than Mr Keane, although some of the younger/better names on there should be sorted ASAP. The idea of losing Carson and Murray on the cheap/free would really make your stomach turn and I imagine come January if/when PJ has done his adding and removing to his squad most of these issues will be cleared up, as I can only imagine he is still looking at what is available and what his options are. But for Me Carson, Hyam, Cropper and Murray need to be frogmarched into an office with PJ and Clegg and made to sign some paperwork tomorrow morning.
The main thrust of what I am saying is that how on earth can Clegg claim that the club is going forwards under Jewell when we are in for more team upheaval at the end of the season. If Jewell had gone out in the summer and actually BOUGHT a few younger players instead of going for OAP Has beens and a shed load of loanees, we wouldn't be in this mess! This is just a complete and utter shambles on every level. You can tell that the club has finally lost the plot! The latest ruse out of PR is to allow supporters to buy a brick and have a message engraved on it! I mean talk about losing the plot!
JWM, I think you are letting your emotions and general feelings about the club take over your judgement on this and can see a situation whereby whatever the club does will not be good enough. If we had gone out in the summer and got 7 or 8 youngsters, spent 8 or 9 million pounds and they hadnt gelled the club would have been shouted at for wasting money (JET, Martin, Priskin etc) and dont forget nobody was moaning about dads army during our winning streak. Secondly many clubs will have 7 or 8 first team players out of contract at the end of any one season and we are no different. It is probably higher at Town due to the fact the new manager had little time to work with the players before last summer in order to tie them down to new contracts. I guess he will assess how they have performed over a 6-9 month period before new contracts are issued to this list of players. If a player has earnt a new contract then he will be given one, as is the case with Cresswell, but can you honestly say any one else deserves a new contract. In addition PJ has total control over contracts so it has didly squat to do with Clegg. Personally I would love to see Peters, O Connor, Murray Hyam given new contracts but if they havent proved themselves in training and are not going to feature what is the point. Carson is slightly different as he is nearer the first team picture but again is hardly 'cant drop' material. I think he is great and PJ likes him but he isnt started this season as he finished last Seriously how many of them players MUST NOT leave?
Indeed we will continue to require quite a few new signings for next season but the difference is(If Jewell is still here) I think he will be a bit more settled in the job, have a better idea of players out there than he did last summer. We will have to certainly wait and see but the mess we've got ourselves into was never going to be a quick fix. There's noone in that list who I would really be concerned about leaving apart from Carson. I think Scotland deserves to be offered a new deal and the club will do all it can to offer Carson a deal. As for the rest I think it depends who we manage to get in on whether we offer them a deal. As King of portman road says, none of those players are really going to be poached off us by the end of the season or would be disastrous if we lost them, so will hopefully work as an incentive to earn themselves a new deal. It would not be overly hard to replace them with similar quality. Last season it annoyed me because, clearly McAuley was our best player(apart from Bullard) and would've played a big part this season and it would cost us quite a substantial amount of money or very good scouting to replace him with someone of similar quality, when we could have offered him a decent deal the summer before last and he would have stayed meaning we wouldn't have to look for a replacement as urgently. It just didn't make sense in anyway. But the club will be very foolish if they're don't manage to sign Carson to a long deal. In an ideal world Jewell would have gone out an bought alot of signings more for the long term over the summer for the club but it would have taken IMO an outstanding manager to get together around 13 players tied down to long term contracts who were going to be here for sometime after only being at a club which was in turmoil with regard to the squad. Yes he should have got some younger players in but I think he will do if given the chance, it takes time to get the right players at the club for the long term.
Tractorbhoy the harsh reality is that the 3 best players we have are not even our players! How can this be seen as a sign of progress! If Evans had real genuine ambition for this club he would have given Jewell the money to spend on quality players in the summer instead of raiding the bargain basement for plauyers that other clubs wanted to get shot of! My emotions about our club are mainly negative because it seems to me that no one at the club is capable of turning things around. Judging by the past 3 years you cant say that progress has been made, we are further away than ever to the Premier League. My son was born in 2002 and I vowed to him that one day he will know what its like to support Town in the Premier League. The way we are going he will soon know what its like to support us in League 1.
warky, do you think that you are in a position whereby you can let all the deadwood (ie nearly all of them) leave for nothing and replace them all in the summer or is it a case where you may have to offer 5 or 6 of them ANOTHER contract, despite them not really being rated, just so you have some form of structure to your squad come the end of the season? you've ended up in the same position as last summer but when you think about it, all those old players were always going to be short term fixes anyway. replacing five or six players is hard work but to replace a whole squad isn't possible in my opinion
one thing which has struck me as confusing is that ever since Paul Jewell has been here the noises made by the club are that this is a long term plan, and we are thinking of the future. for me however I dont really see many signs of this. I can see why PJ has bought in loan players and a few experienced players but that is clearly a short term plan is it not? there is little sign, other than creswell of signing young players with an eye for the future. if we fast forward to january it is possible that there will be no collins, no andrews and stockdale could leave at any point. so we could be without arguably our 3 best players... and then come the summer a whole host of other players might leave/ retire which means there will inevitably be another big turn around. i dont see many signs of this long term plan which is being sold to us from the club
JWM, I agree no progress has been made in 3 years. 2 years of that was down to having the worst manager ever. RK can not manage. Time will tell if PJ cando a job here but we all agreed he had a massive job on his hands. I would say he has done some stuff wrong but has also been let down by some individual stupidity. I dont think we are a great team but I also dont feel that we are as bad as our 7 match run suggested. We played very badly during that run but could of picked up 4 or 5 points if individuals hadnt let us down. On paper I think the club thought they did buy real quality in the summer. JET and Chopra were signings that suggest that we did have the ambition. Bullard and Bowyer, although towards the end of their careers both had good seasons last time out and Cresswell showed good vision. We missed out badly when it comes to the defensive side of the game (RB & CB) and the signings we did make have not all lived up to expectations but the signings and start of the season show that the club did do something right, it just seems a long time ago. Superman, Its a difficult question. We have issues in the terms of both qaulity and age and the fact that nobody has shone so far. Personally I would only offer new contracts to those that deserve 1 but currently thats nobody. Dont get me wrong we havent been abysmal 100% of the season but I cant name 1 player that has done enough to currently stand out as deserving a new contract. It has been very inconsistant Scotland has come on massively since last season and has had 3 or 4 great games. Carson shows talent in stages and is an exciting player but was criticized for workrate and professionalism at the start of the season. PortmanPaul, I would say it is very hard to judge a long term plan outside of a transfer window. We started the season in above average form and have sinced plunged to low depths but at present we can only do something with the old gits that we have at our disposal. Regardless of our form then with the age of the squad we would need to act soon as this group of players are clearing not a long term option. January is never an easy time to sign players and so Im not sure how much clearer our situation will become. The next real sign of how we are shaping up for the future is probably the summer transfer window which seems miles of. Outside of transfers then the thing that we really must do to give our club some forward thinking is sorting out the academy. It is vital for the club if we want to become less dependent on the ME bank account and I also think that home players are seen by many fans, myself included, as being integral to any club.
I'm sure that if all these players had long term deals some people would be slagging Cleggy off for dishing out contracts and leaving the club tied to players that we don't need. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY.
Agree with everything you said tractorbhoy, I'm not sure how much clearer the situation will become in January because its not the time to build a squad, we'll have to wait until the summer for that.
You'll be fine. Just build your team around the best midfielder in the division (Jimmy Bullard), and you'll be promoted next season (or even this one).
there is something very wrong with your squad and not just the talent it may or may not have ? on paper you should be doing better and maybe you have far to many journeymen ? the likes of Bullard(we told you so), Bowyer, Chopra are way past there sell by dates. If you lose keith Andrews back to Blackburn which could well happen, that would be bad for you. I expected you to be mid-table at least ? Hull fan in peace. ++++++++++++
Not sure Chopra's actually past his "sell by date", though why we bought a feeble addict I don't know. If we are to believe the East Anglian Daily Times the club has loaned the cretin a 1/4 of a million. Oh well. Never mind what else that could have been done with that. Oh...I must make the pc comment of "I wish him well", but only because he's our player and we're relying on him for goals.
