Yes but Patrick's model was to recruit young hungry players from the lower divisions that had played ex number of games or who were captains/leaders and had some sort of success. Not to have a scattergun approach and sign 15 untried players at any sort of decent level
It’s not only us that have to sell players, Brentford are apparently selling Berahino. So no difference......... apart from the £30 million price tag of course.
Selling Moore to a direct rival at the bottom (as it was easy to predict Wigan would be!) was stupid. Anyone surprised at what's happened? Stupid stupid stupid. But they don't understand football, so they don't know these simple things that we all know just from watching. An absolute embarassment. I don't think the board/ owners have bad intentions, but they should've got a proper CEO in who understands the game at this level. Anyone fancy comiling a list of the really stupid things Conway and Dane have done?
And surely the contracts being offered to players now show that this regime are learning from those mistakes to ensure it doesn't happen again? We're backing the recruitment system in a big way. The benefit is that you only need one or two to leave for big money three years later and it will offset any failures, but it's a signal of intent if you ask me.
I think as supporters we struggle with putting ourselves in the mindset of a professional footballer sometimes. What you've put here makes perfect sense, but it isn't a perfect world, especially not with certain agents who are only out for moving players continuously on so they can continuously take a cut of the transfer fees. I think we could have been much firmer with our stance on Pinnock from an earlier stage, as in January 2019. From what I've heard, there was a demand from Moore to be allowed to move on and the feeling was that blocking that would upset squad harmony. I've no issue with selling him, but we missed out on one, maybe even two, replacements. It's an error whatever way you look at it, but these players have no allegiance to Barnsley and if they want out sometimes you've got to make big decisions. We made a big one, and it's potentially backfired.
Well, apart from the 12 point deduction, Wigan aren't really relegation rivals. Hindsight is a wonderful thing the same could be asked - why did we sell Davies and Lindsay to a relegation rival?
I think they have a business model to cash in whenever they have the opportunity to make what they class as a significant profit. I don’t particularly mind that as long as they’re honest about it but I think it was the comments about ‘only in the last year of their contracts when they won’t sign a new one they’ll be sold’ that annoyed people as they did the opposite with Moore & Potts. Also we shouldn’t sell unless we’ve got replacements lined up & we shouldn’t be losing all 3 centre backs in one summer for example. In general I’ve always agreed with the strategy of signing young players & breaking even but we carry too big of a squad & we waste money by only signing ‘sellable assets’ & paying a fee for almost every player. For me we should look to have to 2 players for every position & have about 5 or 6 experienced players in the squad. The common defence is we can’t afford to sign experienced players but I disagree. Players like Foster & Hassell weren’t big earners & they’re the types I mean. Leaders, standard setters, experienced etc. We all saw how many mistakes Diaby & Anderson made together. It was a ridiculous scenario to have 3 21 year old foreign lads who’d no championship experience between them as our centre backs. The board should have known that last summer. Even someone like Mark Beevers. Good pro, local lad, experienced, someone who knows the English game. Surely in our price range. It just annoys me seeing people say the clubs way is the only way to run the club when we’re just throwing money away on players like Thiam & McGeehan. We had about 30 players on the books this season & obviously most of them can’t play regularly yet we’ve paid a fee for about two thirds of them. Even with the departures of Wilks, Dougall, Radlinger, Thiam & Pinillos we’re still likely to be relegated with about 25 players on the books which will leave us in a really tough position when it comes to signing anyone new. I realise I’m probably just repeating what I said last summer but I still think it all applies. I’m just hoping the club have learned their lessons
There’s a lot of toing and froing in this thread about whether we should have allowed Moore and Pinnock to go, whether we should have kept them, how much better we’d have been. If both had been retained, we’d have been in a better position. I have no doubt whatsoever. Moore wouldn’t have scored many at this level in my eyes, but his physical presence, the work he’d have done as a foil for Woodrow, would have made us a much better threat in forward areas. Pinnock being here with any one or two of the three centre backs signed would have been clearly a much better proposition. I can’t imagine anyone arguing against that. So we would have been better, yes. A lot. I reckon 10 to 12 points at least more in that run from August to Christmas. But with about £6million less in transfer fees in. We wouldn’t have signed Schmidt, possibly not Chaplin (I think we’d still have got Chaplin to be honest) and maybe one or two of the centre backs. But we still bought. So we aren’t exactly £6m up, some of it was spent. Not all of it though, but we did make losses in league one so maybe we needed the cash. I doubt it was a desperate need, but ok. So my issue isn’t really selling them. If you have to, or if the money is seen as being right, ok. I don’t like it, but I accept it. The issue is what you then bring in as a replacement. Sollbauer for example (and let’s face it, he’s not bobby moore, just has played a lot at a relatively good level and is a leader; there would have been dozens of similar players we might have considered), could have come in August. Selling Pinnock after already selling lindsay was a risk, and in itself disappointing - but doing it and bringing in only inexperienced kids was complete lunacy and it isn’t hindsight talking. Enough of us said it at the time. A big, more physical presence up front could have been sought if they really had to sell Moore. Just one example - Tom Eaves signed for hull on a free, on wages of about £6k a week. We pay that to some - and more than that to some - including Radlinger... But Eaves was 27 not 20, so would never have been considered for a second, despite making a great impression against us in what was an otherwise pretty poor Gilligham side. There are other physical forwards out there. Remember it wasn’t an out and out goal-getter we needed, we had woodrow. We’d signed Chaplin. We needed a foil for them, something different, someone to win the headers, pull the centre backs out of position, work them. Let them know they’re in a game. We got Patrick Schmidt... and end up putting the kid right winger with one season in league one behind him up front, as he’s the only one with half a chance of winning an aerial duel, leading to a lot of criticism and a loss of confidence for him. So sorry whitey, I’m not having the defence of the operation. I’ll accept we have to sell to operate. I’ll accept that we can’t spend all of the income directly on fees to replace. I won’t accept that we can only buy under 22’s from league 2 or Europe with less than 50 first team games played. That is doomed to fail as eventually you end up with a team devoid of nous and experience, even if with some talent, which inevitably loses a lot of games due to naivety and the mistakes youth brings. It can’t be sustained. You can’t sell players for profit from an awful team. We’re not completely awful yet and we still have saleable assets (I think we’ll find that out in a month or two) - but one or two more windows of doing the same and we are dead as a club. They need to be a bit more flexible. I hope the signing of Sollbauer was a sign of a slight relaxing of the strict criteria, to allow a bit of calm and experience to get the best out of the kids around them - and not a one off panic buy. I really do.
I accept nobody thought Stoke would be down there. But look at the points Wigan get with Moore in the side and without - would they have been on 53 points had we not sold him to them? I doubt it. They were never going to be a great side in this division; we strengthened them.
Agree with most of that....funny enough we were talking about tom eves the other day. No idea how much he is on a week but he would have been ideal, said so at tthe time too. Unless hull paid him loads more of course! but hes just one example of someone, who could have benefited the squad without bankrupting us.
Yes the contracts being offered does suggest that and equally people should remember that perhaps some of the issues at the club were inherited. Is it possible that there are other factors too though? I don’t know I’m not close enough to the club to know. Either way irrelevant of what the issues are if we are learning and adapting, that is all we can ask for.
Have I missed something? Where in this thread have I defended or supported anything? I was asked to ‘defend the indefensible’ at random. I’d not contributed. Further up the thread. As I’ve since said, I don’t tend to engage in such threads as it’s not fair to. For me or you. But - and it isn’t top secret info, the accounts are available to download etc - the club 100% has to sometimes sell players to function. That’s where my ‘defence’ ended. I’ve made no reference to much of what you or others have claimed or theorised about. And in fairness to what you’ve just posted, I actually agree with a lot of it. I returned to the bbs at the start of lockdown because I wanted to chat about topics that interested me, with lots of folk I’ve conversed with for nearly 20 years. But I knew now and again I’d get pulled into club stuff, and I might need to float back into the ether.
its time for rule number 2!! BBS Rule Number 2. you are a better player when you play for someone else.
imho yes....its his other attributes im interested in...ie his ability to hold the ball up and bring others into the game. We are bang short of this kind of player.