If your reading this Mel.........

[Mick Brolly]

Rooooooooooooooooney 

[europia]

23 hours ago, RamNut said:

I don’t see a team with a losing mentality. They all worked their chocolate coated Brazil’s off v Reading.ok they lost but it wasn’t due to their mentality.

 

 

A bit of effort shown against Reading, but in general, results reflect a team that does not have a winning mentality. Just an observation rather than a criticism. 

[BaaLocks]

On 24/12/2019 at 18:10, Brummie Steve said:

Once the Dynamic Duo took over at the City Ground many of our finest players went up the A51 to form the nucleus of a team destined to lift the European Cup twice.

Chester won the European Cup twice?

[Brammie Steve]

3 hours ago, BaaLocks said:

Chester won the European Cup twice?

?

[ilkleyram]

On 25/12/2019 at 11:20, Tyler Durden said:

I think if you were to hold your hands up you would see that our recruitment team haven't covered themselves in glory over the past few years, whether they are deserved of criticism is a point for discussion but given the high profile nature of their job it quite rightly warrants close scrutiny. 

Butterfield, Johnson, Anya - paying massively inflated transfers fees and handing out huge extended contracts I rest my case. Now that might have been driven by Mel Morris so again maybe unfair but come on we haven't half made a mess of things over the past few seasons. 

Anyway Happy Christmas, recriminations aren't going to solve anything we just need to reflect on our mistakes and learn from them 

Hope you had a good Christmas Tyler and happy new year when it comes.

I wouldn't argue that the recruitment team shouldn't be scrutinised but I would argue that we fans (and Ramage) are the last people who can properly do so because we have no knowledge about who they might identify as possible players or the practical restrictions under which they might operate. All we see are those that actually join us. That's why the constant criticism about what they do is unfair. The scrutiny they receive can only be done from within the club by those who know what they actually do and the restrictions on them. And I do hope that scrutiny is happening because those who run the club should know if mistakes are made, that people learn from them and that they are not repeated. 

You mention three players. I suspect that the wages and length of contract of each of them were nothing to do with the recruitment team whose job it is to identify possible signings only. Negotiations would be done by someone else - probably Sam Rush in each of those cases. As a fan you can argue with hindsight that none of the players were worth signing. Fine. I disagree. All of them played well at different times and for different periods. I would like Bradley back in the current team, but that's a personal view. I agree that you can make a good case that none of them were good value for money with the benefit of hindsight. But that's not necessarily the recruitment team's fault.

The point I was making is that we fans judge the recruitment team's success on pretty limited knowledge - is the first team doing well; do we enjoy watching the players we are paying to see. We have no idea about the practical limitations under which the recruitment team are working, no idea what their aims and objectives are other than to help the manager(s) create a successful team, no idea about the goals they are being set and no idea about who they may have identified (who might have been successful) but who turned us down and went somewhere else or got vetoed by more senior people in the club. That's why I think the criticism they are getting is unfair.

[RamNut]

@ilkleyram you are well meaning, but.....

£18m for butterfield, Johnson and anya? 

12 hours ago, ilkleyram said:

As a fan you can argue with hindsight that none of the players were worth signing. Fine. I disagree. All of them played well at different times and for different periods.

you are flogging a dead horse, here my old son.

[BaaLocks]

1 hour ago, RamNut said:

@ilkleyram you are well meaning, but.....

£18m for butterfield, Johnson and anya? 

you are flogging a dead horse, here my old son.

I'm surprised we're not also discussing the Raziak fee or whether allowing Steve Bloomer to represent England at baseball affected his summer recuperation.

[ilkleyram]

9 hours ago, RamNut said:

@ilkleyram you are well meaning, but.....

£18m for butterfield, Johnson and anya? 

you are flogging a dead horse, here my old son.

Bit patronising those words @RamNut. Most unlike you.

If you read on you will see that I say: ' I agree that you can make a good case that none of them were good value for money with the benefit of hindsight'

As I suggested to Tyler, my guess is that the £18m that you are guessing we might, or might not, have paid for them was more to do with Sam Rush's negotiating skills than the skills of the recruitment team. From a strict football point of view all three, at different times and for different lengths of time, played well for us.

There's no equine flogging involved in suggesting that the role of the recruiting team and restrictions upon it are misunderstood and too easy a target.

[RamNut]

3 minutes ago, ilkleyram said:

Bit patronising those words @RamNut. Most unlike you.

If you read on you will see that I say: ' I agree that you can make a good case that none of them were good value for money with the benefit of hindsight'

As I suggested to Tyler, my guess is that the £18m that you are guessing we might, or might not, have paid for them was more to do with Sam Rush's negotiating skills than the skills of the recruitment team. From a strict football point of view all three, at different times and for different lengths of time, played well for us.

There's no equine flogging involved in suggesting that the role of the recruiting team and restrictions upon it are misunderstood and too easy a target.

Not intending to be patronising. We’ll just have to differ on this.

 

 

[RamNut]

@ilkleyram

actually.....you gave a lengthy reasoned argument to support your opinion so....whilst not wanting to argue.....I’ll give a more complete reply.

my fundamental belief is that the recruitment strategy is flawed because we have paid top whack for players with the consequence that more often than not , we can’t recoup the fee. We also pay more than we pay afford to pay. I agree that the responsibility for the spend is primarily with others, but the recruitment team should be smarter. the choice of the signings isn’t very imaginative. The gaps in the squad don’t seem to be addressed. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the three signings you have referenced are necessarily the direct recommendation of the recruitment team and I have posted that opinion before. When we signed butterfield and Johnson, Barry bannan was available for one quarter of the fee of either of them, and he seemed an ideal replacement for Hughes. From memory, I seem to recall that both butterfield and Johnson were with the wasserman agency. We went for wasserman players at top whack. Good work for the agents. Not necessarily the best recruitment option available to us. 

i also suspect that Anya  was a Pearson choice. He is a similar player to Lloyd Dyer who Pearson had at Leicester. But surely there was better value and better players to be had. And an £8m fee ? Absolutely crazy. Whoever prompted it, and whoever sanctioned it, it wasn’t very clever. 

You are right that we don’t know for a fact who the recruitment team have identified etc etc but we haven’t seen much in the way of clever signings of players with potential. You are correct to identify that recruitment at academy level has been more noticeably successful. And as I have noted previously Chris Perkins deserves the freedom of the city for finding Jason Knight. It’s the senior recruitment that is flawed. 

In the context of ffp smart recruitment is very important. good recruitment is fundamental to the success of the good managers, and poor recruitment is central to the failure of the unsuccessful managers. Why was Brian Clough a success? Green, robson, McFarland, O’hare, Hinton, Carlin, McGovern, Gemmill etc etc Brilliant signings for sensible money. Arthur Cox had Ron Jukes finding Phil Gee, Michael Forsyth, Dave Penney, Jeff chandler, Ross mcLaren etc etc. 

I hope that we now deliver at least one or two clever signings that address the holes in the squad. Irrespective of what has happened in the past, let that be the test because Cocu desperately needs some good recruitment right now. 

[ilkleyram]

@RamNut. Thank you. I agree with much of what you write, particularly with your comment that we need to recruit a couple of signings to address holes in the squad. And to give the squad a boost. We need a bit of luck with injuries too. 

Good governance means that there should be, unlike in Brian's day, an organisational separation in every club between the process of identifying possible signings  ( the responsibility of the recruitment team) and actually negotiating contracts. I suspect that with Sam Rush that separation might have closed somewhat, but that's a guess only.

Either way, my point is that 'the recruitment team' have become too easy and too distracting a target for Ramage and others. Especially when there are so many other aspects to a player actually arriving at any club, most of which we, as fans, will have no idea about. For all we know 'the recruitment team' said sign Barry Bannan, only to be overruled by Sam Rush. It's too easy to say that it's all the recruitment team's fault, when it may not be.

Say that 'our player recruitment' or 'our contract negotiation' should be better on the basis of what we have seen and I wouldn't disagree, though I would argue that not everyone has been a failure and that every player we have signed has shown, at the very least, some glimpses of good reasons to have brought them to Derby. That's very different from arguing that they have subsequently proved to be good value for money.

Identifying where the 'gaps in the squad' are is, I think, the manager's job. Hopefully the manager has a significant role in who fills those gaps. We have suffered from a series of managerial changes (some self inflicted) that have impacted our overall strategy. Our current manager has suffered from bad luck with injuries (and events) to compound the effects of the managerial changes and, unlike Brian, can only operate within transfer windows. All of that, and much else, is outside the control of the recruitment team. Let us hope for a period of stability.

You will know that Brian's first full season ended with us flirting with relegation. Only in his second full season did we run away with the league, and even that season took some time to take off. Similar comments were being made then as now about the competence of the manager. How well he and Sam Longson would have dealt with social media I don't know. I hope that Mel has the same confidence in Phillip as Sam had then in Brian. At which point all the external noises about the recruitment team will be silenced.

 

 

[Ramslad1992]

On 24/12/2019 at 15:24, ilkleyram said:

This is not aimed (only) at you Millennium but at those from Ramage upwards who make similar comments about our recruitment team. Clueless is one of the politer descriptions being thrown about.

Let me say at the outset that I have no inside connection with our club. A fan simple if not pure. But this constant barrage of criticism aimed at a recruitment team, most of whom we don't know and mostly by people outside the game, seems to me to be unfair. They are a bunch of people unable to reply, and who will never be able to do so in any detail, for all kinds of reasons but prime amongst them confidentiality owed to clubs, players and others. We fans have no idea what they do, who they identify and the restrictions under which they operate. We have no idea whether we, or indeed anyone else, could actually do any better.

We know about players in the vast majority of cases after the event. When they've come, or not and we get to hear gossip about it; when they've played well, or not.  The recruitment team have to operate ahead of time, ahead of transfer windows and, in Derby's case, sometimes ahead of the appointment of the manager that they're going to be playing for. And they have to work with external forces way beyond their control - including, out of a long, long list, FFP, agents, player wages, player desire to play for a particular club/manager, kids schools, wags views about living in the East Midlands or apart from their partner, Mel or Steven Pearce's or the manager's ability and willingness to spend, age, the willingness of their current club to sell.  For all we know they have identified 20 of the country's top young prospects and been turned down because of one or all of the above reasons.  What if a striker playing for Exeter City was identified and approached by the recruitment team but turned us down because his girlfriend didn't want to move to Derby.  Does that count as a failure? What if said striker wanted £20k a week but Steven Pearce said no and he went elsewhere. Is that a failure by our recruitment team?

Our recruitment team have identified Shinnie - not bad for a free - Bielik, brought in Bogle and Marriott and others and in time gone by Keogh and others. They've also had players who haven't played so well for us but perhaps the limiting factors have been outside their control.

I have no idea whether our recruitment is or isn't the problem and I would suggest nor does anyone outside the club. All of our current players - every single one of them - have had periods in their Rams career when they've played well (some periods shorter than others), when most of us have thought 'they're doing OK'.  Collectively they haven't been able to put a consistent spell of playing well over 90 minutes over several weeks for several managers and several years now.  Maybe that's not only the recruitment team's fault.

Happy Christmas, and peace to all men (and women)

Post of the year for me. We are too quick to point the finger at the easiest target when things aren't going well... if its more the managers fault it the owners and if it's not his it's the recruitment team. Quite difficult to attract players used to sunning it up in Europe or used to proper city lifestyles to little old Derby. Well said! ?

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

1 hour ago, RamNut said:

@ilkleyram

actually.....you gave a lengthy reasoned argument to support your opinion so....whilst not wanting to argue.....I’ll give a more complete reply.

my fundamental belief is that the recruitment strategy is flawed because we have paid top whack for players with the consequence that more often than not , we can’t recoup the fee. We also pay more than we pay afford to pay. I agree that the responsibility for the spend is primarily with others, but the recruitment team should be smarter. the choice of the signings isn’t very imaginative. The gaps in the squad don’t seem to be addressed. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the three signings you have referenced are necessarily the direct recommendation of the recruitment team and I have posted that opinion before. When we signed butterfield and Johnson, Barry bannan was available for one quarter of the fee of either of them, and he seemed an ideal replacement for Hughes. From memory, I seem to recall that both butterfield and Johnson were with the wasserman agency. We went for wasserman players at top whack. Good work for the agents. Not necessarily the best recruitment option available to us. 

i also suspect that Anya  was a Pearson choice. He is a similar player to Lloyd Dyer who Pearson had at Leicester. But surely there was better value and better players to be had. And an £8m fee ? Absolutely crazy. Whoever prompted it, and whoever sanctioned it, it wasn’t very clever. 

You are right that we don’t know for a fact who the recruitment team have identified etc etc but we haven’t seen much in the way of clever signings of players with potential. You are correct to identify that recruitment at academy level has been more noticeably successful. And as I have noted previously Chris Perkins deserves the freedom of the city for finding Jason Knight. It’s the senior recruitment that is flawed. 

In the context of ffp smart recruitment is very important. good recruitment is fundamental to the success of the good managers, and poor recruitment is central to the failure of the unsuccessful managers. Why was Brian Clough a success? Green, robson, McFarland, O’hare, Hinton, Carlin, McGovern, Gemmill etc etc Brilliant signings for sensible money. Arthur Cox had Ron Jukes finding Phil Gee, Michael Forsyth, Dave Penney, Jeff chandler, Ross mcLaren etc etc. 

I hope that we now deliver at least one or two clever signings that address the holes in the squad. Irrespective of what has happened in the past, let that be the test because Cocu desperately needs some good recruitment right now. 

8 MILLION!!!. Have I read that right. Thought he was 4 and that was with add ons . That seemed a horrendous amount . 8 MILLION. !!!!!!. 

[sunnyhill60]

34 minutes ago, ilkleyram said:

 

You will know that Brian's first full season ended with us flirting with relegation. Only in his second full season did we run away with the league, and even that season took some time to take off. Similar comments were being made then as now about the competence of the manager. How well he and Sam Longson would have dealt with social media I don't know. I hope that Mel has the same confidence in Phillip as Sam had then in Brian. At which point all the external noises about the recruitment team will be silenced.

 

 

At this point in Clough's first season we were nowhere near the drop zone. There had been a blistering start and we were looking forward to a first League Cup semi-final in January. After losing to Leeds in both cups by early February, wins were rare from that point and we escaped relegation by a small margin.

Sam Longson only had a decision to make at the end of the season. Mel is in a very different situation and if our current form continues I suspect his hand will be forced.

[maydrakin]

4 hours ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

8 MILLION!!!. Have I read that right. Thought he was 4 and that was with add ons . That seemed a horrendous amount . 8 MILLION. !!!!!!. 

I think there has been some creative figures pulled out of the air to suit arguments.

My recollection was also around £4m for Anya.

According to transfermarkt the three cost £16.47m (which is astronomical enough), but Anya was no way near £8m.

Johnson £7.29m

Butterfield £4.95m

Anya £4.23m

I do agree that none have come anywhere close to being value for money, and spending £12m as cover for 2 injured players was folly.

[RamNut]

3 hours ago, maydrakin said:

I think there has been some creative figures pulled out of the air to suit arguments.

Really.

if it was nearer to £4m then great. Still a total write off.