With talk about some squads not being as technically gifted as others therefore the need to buy in more talented players, at what point is extra training to improve technique pointless for a club? Surely teams can be trained to improve technique etc rather than buy players in, but why is done less and less? I assume most of it is down to the need for short term success and maybe clubs don't have the patients. Clearly there are biological reasons, younger people do learn new skills faster, however for example top cricketers can learn a new bowling technique when they're older. I know this is not very well worded but hope you get the idea. Do we or any club have to rely on transfers to improve technical skills of a squad or are we as well buying in players. In an ideal world these skills will be embedded into players at youth levels and hopefully with the new investment in that side of things we will see the results soon.
I think in part answer the solution depends upon the budget available and the time the manager has to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Take Manchester City and Chelski, they are all about instant success and big cheques. Our budget will always be small in comparison and so we have to bridge the gap as best we can through other means. the one thing that money cannot buy is team spirit and the skill of the better managers is moulding a team or squad that compliments each other to maximise the overall result - the total is greater than the sum of the parts etc. Di Matteo to his credit has brought that to Chelski whereas Mancini has not with Man City and so the nonsense with Tevez and Balotelli has disrupted a team that by budget alone should have had the title won by March. It sadly proves that the game is more and more about money and the game is the worse for it.
Intersting question. I think that top clubs do bring in players who are the finished article but they also have fantastic facilities to deveop their younger players - just look at the quality from the Man Utd production line in recent years. Clubs such as ours are not in a position to bring in a top quality international 26 year old at the peak years of his career so we can either get them on the way down (Mick Channon/Martin Peters etc) or do what PL is doing and bring them in on the way up and hope that the youngsters brought to the club will develop into the top stars of tomorrrow. Realistically if some of our current players continue to develop then they will be sold to bigger clubs and the funds used to develop the acadamy/stadium and buy in more replacements with a view to repeating the cycle - look at our transfer business in the 80's with Fashanu, Reeves etc developing with the club and being sold on for big money. Same story with Fox/Sutton from our side of the early 90's and I am sure that if the likes of Pilks/Howson/either Bennett continue to develop they will leave us for big money. Sadly it is the business we are in but just as Posh and Leeds feed us we would feed the Manchester clubs and the likes of Chelsea/Spurs and Arsenal. I would love to think that one day we will be big enough to allow us to keep our top players (and manager!) but as long as we continue to progress I will be a happy camper.
This was the life blood of football. Money filtered down from the bigger clubs to the smaller ones and they stayed buoyant that way. Now, half the players in the Prem come from abroad and the money goes to agents and foreign clubs. And these guys bugger off after the Prem doesn't want them anymore rather than the Peters type of scenario. Money is ruining the game at the highest level but the lack of it is bankrupting the lower level.
