Very interesting article based on interview with Webber

[Sussexyellow 55]

16 hours ago, nutty nigel said:

To be fair I don't think there was anything wrong with his attitude. He was always a team player and the youngsters respected him. 

To me there was a watershed around the Sunderland at home game last season. He had missed the game at Fulham, suspended and was immediately brought back into the team for Sunderland presumably as one of our stronger/more talented players. He was lauded in the days leading up to the game by Farke as a model professional. To my recollection, which may be wrong, we never saw him again. Which is intriguing to me as why. Was he openly critical of the way Farke wanted to play? Which would be an attitude issue. Did he not have the skill set to deliver it? Unlikely!

Of course "model professional" is the term that management use to describe players they want to move on, but I never got that sense in the lead up to the Sunderland game, more Farke was genuinely pleased to have one of his best players available.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

On 14/12/2018 at 01:59, king canary said:

I wonder if he's talking about the lengths of some of the contracts handed out.

Naismith, Klose, Pinto and Jarvis all had deals that ran past the end of any parachute payments we have had.

I’m sure this is what he means and it certainly was a mistake. Contrast the previous time we were relegated when it seems we didn’t have the same length of contracts .

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

I think if we look at those January signings there were posts on here about Naismith questioning how he would fit in with the team  and style of play and questioning what he would add. Whuich were subsequently shown to be spot on. 

[king canary 7,606]

I don't think it is fair to say the criticism is pure hindsight- lots of people were asking questions at the time.

We completely botched the summer transfer window, leading to some huge panic buys in January that came too late. Combine that with then giving a failing manager far too much rope and we'd got ourselves into a pretty crappy situation. 

The summer splurge under Hughton may contain some more notable flops but there is a reason it did far less damage than the one under Neil- it was planned and executed far better.

[PurpleCanary 5,560]

23 minutes ago, king canary said:

I don't think it is fair to say the criticism is pure hindsight- lots of people were asking questions at the time.

We completely botched the summer transfer window, leading to some huge panic buys in January that came too late. Combine that with then giving a failing manager far too much rope and we'd got ourselves into a pretty crappy situation. 

The summer splurge under Hughton may contain some more notable flops but there is a reason it did far less damage than the one under Neil- it was planned and executed far better.

That is true, particularly as far as central defence went and ultimately, unless anyone can tell me otherwise, the blame for that has to lie with McNally, as the football director in charge of transfer strategy.

The problem I have with Webber's blanket criticisms of how the club was run before he arrived is that he never puts them in the context of the time, admitting that he might not know all the circumstances. He always talks as if those mistakes would never have been made if he had been in charge. And I don't believe he is incapable of error.

The reality, especially for a club in our position, some way down the transfer pecking order and at the same time having to think in the short-term,  almost always trying desperately to stay in the PL or get straight back there, is that some deals are likely to go wrong, or be mistakes.

What has helped Webber is that the board in effect wrote off last season, enabling him and Farke to look longer-term, and so potentially avoid the mistakes that short-termism brings.

[king canary 7,606]

1 hour ago, PurpleCanary said:

That is true, particularly as far as central defence went and ultimately, unless anyone can tell me otherwise, the blame for that has to lie with McNally, as the football director in charge of transfer strategy.

The problem I have with Webber's blanket criticisms of how the club was run before he arrived is that he never puts them in the context of the time, admitting that he might not know all the circumstances. He always talks as if those mistakes would never have been made if he had been in charge. And I don't believe he is incapable of error.

The reality, especially for a club in our position, some way down the transfer pecking order and at the same time having to think in the short-term,  almost always trying desperately to stay in the PL or get straight back there, is that some deals are likely to go wrong, or be mistakes.

What has helped Webber is that the board in effect wrote off last season, enabling him and Farke to look longer-term, and so potentially avoid the mistakes that short-termism brings.

I think that situation wouldn't have arisen under our current structure.

The interesting thing with Webber will be to see how he works with bigger budgets. However I don't think he'll forget one of the fundamental truths for a club of our size like McNally and Neil seemed to- resale value is huge. 

[nutty nigel 7,534]

6 hours ago, It's Character Forming said:

I’m sure this is what he means and it certainly was a mistake. Contrast the previous time we were relegated when it seems we didn’t have the same length of contracts .

While this is true when making judgements of past decisions we should take into account the conditions at the time. If we had only offered contracts to the end of the parachute payments we would have been offering deals a third shorter than other clubs. So we'd have signed absolutely nobody. That would have made interesting revisiting now.

Of course the previous time we were relegated we had 3 years parachute which made all the difference.

So it was rock and a hard place back in that Jan. Having chosen hard place we really needed to stay up.

For me our club took the brave decision that January and with the restructuring when we didn't return the following season.

[PurpleCanary 5,560]

2 hours ago, king canary said:

I think that situation wouldn't have arisen under our current structure.

The interesting thing with Webber will be to see how he works with bigger budgets. However I don't think he'll forget one of the fundamental truths for a club of our size like McNally and Neil seemed to- resale value is huge. 

Probably not, except that in the end the board still has to rely on the footballing knowledge of which ever director or executive it is who is in effect the football expert, so it that sense it is no different in principle from when McNally was CEO.

I agree it will be interesting to see how Webber does if we get promoted, but also what the strategy will be. Will be, as we always did before, try to stay up, and spend accordingly, or will we budget to get relegated.

If the former then Webber may well find himself in danger of spending money on just the kind of short-term mistakes he has criticised.