Trying to be too clever

[Yellow and Green 334]

16 hours ago, CanaryLegend said:

Seems like our scouting based on stats has been the making of our undoing. Probably so obsessed with the likes of Buendia being a success we have lost sight of traditional scouting methods.

Signings like Placheta who is amazingly quick but has no end product and Josh Sargeant who covers lots of ground yet delivers very little else.

I am not sure what the thinking was behind these signings and where the assessment about ability to score goals would from. In Hugill, Idah, and Sargeant we have three strikers with very underwhelming goal statistics.

The soccerbot as well? I mean come on, players will not improve this way. It’s a waste of money.

Accept we are going down as without any signings let’s face it that’s the reality, blood players like Rowe and get us prepared for the Championship with squad hungry to take us forward.

I agree. 

The recruitment seems to be quite blinkered at times. They seem to have a certain profile that they are looking for in a player - and place such value on those attributes that the player's deficiencies get overlooked.

Webber will probably say that 'we can't afford the finished product' and 'the idea is to develop them' but this has led to us having a squad of players who aren't ready for the Premier League. We need to wise up a bit. 

If we buy a striker, they need to score goals. If we buy a winger, they need to contribute with either goals or assists. There is a lot of people using hindsight at the moment but pretty much everyone flagged up Josh Sargent's goal scoring record when he signed.

The examples you have given have been spot on. When we went down in 2020, Webber highlighted that we lacked pace and physicality. We therefore went out and bought a really quick player in Placheta and a really strong player in Jordan Hugill. They seem to have one attribute in mind and it doesn't work when you're trying to put together a squad that's able to survive in the PL.

Replacing Buendia (and Skipp) is where the club got it completely wrong, for me. 

Webber has said previously (I think when selling Maddison) that the plan was to invest in the team as a whole, instead of trying to spend it all on that player's replacement. 

What we tried to do in the summer was to change the system from a 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3, with the recruitment focusing on players who could cover more ground and press higher up the pitch. 

Josh Sargent was identified as someone who had impressive pressing stats, and essentially worked his socks off for 90 minutes. PLM's stats showed that he consistently covered a lot of ground during games and was available at a reasonable price. I seem to remember MB's analysis showing that Normann's interception from a deeper position stats were also good. 

It hasn't worked and  we didn't replace either Buendia or Skipp. We have four left wingers (Rashica, Tzolis, Cantwell and Placheta + Hernandez) and no actual right winger. We have no defensive midfielder but an ineffective mix of deep lying and box-to-box midfielders. 

It's like selling the engine of your car and spending the money on slightly nicer seats, lights and a steering wheel.

It's been said before but my preference would be to sign fewer players who are a bit more expensive, who have established themselves and are PL ready. Normann and Rashica being the obvious examples. Biling and Ajer would have fitted that criteria too. 

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Yellow and Green

[hertfordyellow 460]

9 hours ago, Jimmy Raggatip said:

Brighton model is the model we should be following. They manage to find young cheap talent from the continent, and further abroad as well as hoovering up the best EFL talent.

They also have a feeder club in Belgium which they've managed to farm a lot of this talent out to to develop - that feeder club is top of the Belgian Prem at the first time of asking following promotion - and Brighton themselves are on course for their best ever PL finish. They aren't owned by some oligarch or any nation state. Just a self made man in Tony Bloom

 

Yeah I admire Brighton too but I think there are a lot of similarities between our two clubs. While Bloom isn’t a billionaire he has way more to offer and there have been 16-20 million purchases for Brighton, something beyond us right now. Nearly all of their transfers have paid off, with a good smattering of excellent coaching too.