Signings graded under Webber- an extension from MB's article

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

I saw Michael Bailey's recent Athletic article about player signings during the Webber era and whether they are 'hits' or 'misses', which made for an interesting read. I did think however that he had only scratched the surface really in terms of grading (i.e. Bali Mumba and Buendia both as 'hits' but I know which one I'd rather we replicate this summer). I also found some of the gradings just plain bizarre (i.e. Dowell and Giannoulis as 'misses' but Placheta and Gibson as 'the jury is out'??). So with this in mind I wanted to dive a bit deeper with an 'out of 10' rating, correct some of the scores which I felt were incorrect from the main article, and also try to have a bit more of a 'macro' look at the time since Webber joined the club.

I have taken the info from MB's article and note that it appears to use initial fee details only - ignoring add-ons (i.e Buendia as £1,500,000 although I understand there were additional performance related fees which were clearly met), there is also no consideration for any loan fees suffered. It appears some additional players, i.e. Nyland, were ignored from MB's list, I have also ignored from here. 

Player ratings (time ascending order)

I've tried to grade out of 10 based on transfer fee, player performance relative to expectation, club expectation at the time, etc, some players I feel got unfortunate without doing much particularly wrong (i.e. Fahrmann and Passlack both came in on loan and barely played but did seem to get the most out of Krul and Aarons respectively), and others struggled with injuries (some I am less sympathetic for Webber for as they came with a terrible injury record already). For current players I've also tried to look a little at potential and where their trajectory may go for NCFC - there is definitely some uncertainty here - such as Mumba, McCallum and Gibbs. 

Here is the list sorted by transfers windows under Webber, I think these are pretty fair but would be interesting to see if any posters disagree wildly with any of my gradings (as I found myself with MB):

Sorted by player rating

And here is that same list, only sorted by rating instead. This makes for quite stark reading..

Of the 9 total players I have rated as 8/10 or more (i.e. signings I would call 'very good' or 'great'), only 2 players (Skipp and Sara) have been signed in the last four seasons, with the remaining 7 all signed in the first two seasons from Webber's arrival. So 78% of our 'very good' signings were made during the first one third of Webber's employment, with the remaining 22% spread across the remaining two thirds. We were basically 8x more successful with our signings in this first period.

Extending this to players rated 7 or above and it is still only 4 players out of 17% (Skipp, Sara Gibbs and Gunn) - or 24% - and the inclusion of Gibbs as a '7' is potentially a bit ambitious considering this is based somewhat on a continued trajectory. So this extrapolation doesn't improve the picture at all for these last 4 seasons versus the first 2.

Then we have the players rated 4 to 6 ('poor' to 'decent'), and this is dominated by the signings we made in these last four seasons. Of the 30 players within this bracket, 27 were signed during this time. Which is not too surprising noting our trajectory since then, particularly as expectations for the club also increased. The most recent premier league campaign comprised many signings, none of whom got going for the team and nearly all of them underwhelmed massively from their pre-signing expectations and careers. I wonder how much being a part of such a dysfunctional and emotionally-fragile squad of players affected these new signings, some of these players may have came good in a different surrounding but unfortunately for NCFC it proved too difficult to swim against the tide...

Then the players rated 3 and below ('very poor' and '****e'), interestingly these signings are mostly populated (6 of 10) by those who were signed in the first couple of seasons - so there were still some big misses during this period but clearly these were outweighed by the good. 

Summary averages per season

When initially completing this table the expectation was that we would see a downtrend in average rating over time, but this isn't particularly true, especially as noted above where the first two seasons were not just characterised with massive success stories but also some pretty shocking business as well. 

Bringing in the additional metric RE average spend per player does appear to illustrate our failings a little better though, especially the two premier league campaigns. Which firstly saw us spend very little - with just as little in return for our signings, and then saw us spend a vast amount and trade away our best player - for a mediocre-to-poor bunch of misfits.

 

Conclusions

• The first two seasons under Webber were characterised with mostly fantastic transfer business, small gambles on overseas players succeeded far beyond expectations, and all whilst undergoing a massive overhaul of the squad and selling off players like Oliveira, Murphy, Pritchard, Maddison etc. We spread our resources as efficiently as possible and this did cause for some big 'misses' as well as the successes - with signings like Marshall, Heise and Husband all proving rather rubbish. But these losses were more than worth it for the positives. 
• The following four seasons coincided with increased expectations of the club, as we went from mid-table champs to winners and suffered through 2 premier league attempts, yet despite relaxing financials we failed to recreate the level of success seen in those two campaigns. The signings massively failed to get anywhere close to these expectations, and were characterised with mostly poor to average transfer business, as transfer fees ramped up no obvious improvement in player quality was realised in the team.
• I don't have much faith in us turning this around under Webber now, we have been living off those first 2 transfer windows and academy acquisitions from pre-Webber, and each season appear to have less in the way of sellable assets to fund further business. We went from Aarons, Godfrey, Cantwell, Buendia and Lewis all being rated at £15-£40million players to 'maybe we can get £10-15mil for Aarons' or turn a bit of a profit on Sara, or get £10mil for Omobamidele but nowhere near where we were and this means selling players nowhere near their highest value / full potential - and to achieve all of this we spent record amounts of money in between!
• Depending on how the next few seasons pan out, this last premier league season may be seen as a defining moment for NCFC - and not in a good way...

If anyone wants to play around with this sheet then feel free to DM me and I can share - I'm sure there's much more than could be done with the data given the time!

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Hank shoots Skyler

[BurwellCanary 216]

Very interesting data in here - thanks for putting it together

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

Should probably share the original article as well (this is obviously behind the Athletic paywall before anyone gets grumpy): Every Norwich signing under Stuart Webber judged: Hit or miss? - The Athletic

[Google Bot 3,298]

Wow you've been busy! There's a lot of subjectiveness in there, but across so many players the average would be similar for most I think.

Interesting to cost each season for average point earnt:

Or even process that on each individual player as an average?

Trouble is, what this doesn't pick up is how we failed to support many of those players with suitable players around them, and in what league they were playing - which can greatly affect the individual scores.

It does make you wonder what the baseline/target cost would be though.  And how it compares with similar clubs.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Google Bot

[Robert N. LiM 4,473]

Great post - thanks for taking the time. There are a lot of facts here, which will certainly irritate some posters. Obviously, and as you clearly say, the ratings are opinion rather than fact, but you seem to have been pretty fair to me. I think I'd give Gibson an extra point and take one off Dimi, but I can't see anything there that seems miles out. It's obviously difficult to make comparisons, especially with players at different stages of their City careers. For instance, Nunez has done very little for us this season, but I think most of us still think he was a decent signing. But at the end of one season for us in the Champs, you'd have given Gibson an 8 or 9, wouldn't you?

Similarly, you could make a case for the Hayden signing being a 0. But how much you put his almost-constant absence down to luck, and how much you blame Webber for signing a player with a year's serious injury behind him, is another subjective judgment.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Robert N. LiM
typos

[sonyc 5,541]

The thing that shouts out for me in that terrific post by Hank is that those earlier signings seemed to fit together in the playing style the manager wanted. It was a philosophy first (I believe) that was important and then getting the players to play in that system. Of course we needed good characters. What was staggering after Daniel Farke left was how we seemed not to have a recognisable system. Players struggled. 

I'm of the view that one gets an occasional superstar (the finishing ability of Pukki, the sheer creative brilliance of Emi Buendia) but overall it's the sum of the parts that is important - a proper team dynamic. We have had a load of players - all decent / very good in their own way (technically for example) - but the managerial change and the recruitment of the wrong one set us back. Wagner hasn't done much to change that impression either. My belief is that he knows he is here for another season and he has been using matches (when the situation has been appropriate, I don't mean recklessly) as a way of a selection process. In other words, finding out who he wants to be here next year and who he doesn't. There can be no other rational reason for some of his strange substitutions and taking off a large part of his midfield in a match to give one example.

I believe this kind of systemic look at those players might say a lot. You can see how a more direct style can fit a team well and get players onboard. Sheff It's did it under Wilder, Luton this year. You don't need a team of massive stars but you need a coherent plan 

But.... This is just my take and is naturally subjective. I want to know how Wagner will set us up and therefore what players might fit that. 

Many thanks for that interesting analysis Hank Shoots. It shows I believe how we haven't recruited well (we know by the results) ...I was just offering another angle on the system employed too as I think it's a significant factor. Just shows too that being a successful player does often mean playing under a very good manager. I damn well hope Wagner is not a 'dud'. If he sets us up well then the rest out to follow.

Edited May 4, 2023 by sonyc
The importance of a good manager - apologies for making such an obvious statement

[shefcanary 2,444]

Lovely stuff Hank, thanks for the diligence on this.

A couple of points of information. On Bailey's last On The Ball podcast he was challenged on the ratings you criticise in your OP, he was very much on the defensive, even he looking back I think would probably amend his ratings! On Buendia, I understood with add-ons his final cost hit €5m as all the performance conditions were met (or c.£4m). 

My conclusion from your analysis is that Webber initially was helped by a good team behind him which lead to a very good start. Once he lost some of the key figures in that team you would expect a little wobble, which your figures bear out. There has also, once his team had to pivot away from the EU, been a slight recovery in overall recruitment performance, but a couple of very dodgy transactions have slowed that recovery. 

Adding my own veneer to this, if there had been someone on the Board there to challenge and mentor him through the loss of Kieran Scott and the re-build of his team, I am sure Webber's overall performance would have been much better. That is one thing Attanasio (or whoever) needs to ensure they build in as we move forward.

As we know, this summer's window is now extremely important for all concerned. Once again the latest rumours emerging seem to imply a lot of work has already been undertaken, there will be some big surprises to come, so a plea to you to repeat this exercise in the lead up to the January window would be welcome!

[shefcanary 2,444]

3 minutes ago, sonyc said:

The thing that shouts out for me in that terrific post by Hank is that those earlier signings seemed to fit together in the playing style the manager wanted. It was a philosophy first (I believe) that was important and then getting the players to play in that system. Of course we needed good characters. What was staggering after Daniel Farke left was how we seemed not to have a recognisable system. Players struggled. 

And this is where I think someone on the Board who could objectively challenge Webber over some of those signings would have been extremely useful - why are we buying him type questions!

[Google Bot 3,298]

12 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

My conclusion from your analysis is that Webber initially was helped by a good team behind him which lead to a very good start. Once he lost some of the key figures in that team you would expect a little wobble, which your figures bear out.

I think his attention got spread more thinly across the club, also.  When he first came into the club I remember Delia laughing saying how they never see him as he's forever jumping on a plane around Europe speaking to clubs and seeking out players.

Edit, think it was this:

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Google Bot

[Ulfotto 641]

I think the issue with the analysis is the difference between the players bought for the Premier League and those procured for the championship and their performances in the different leagues. Expectations play a massive role. I would call out Lees-Melou is ranked below Leitner. PLM looked decent by the end of the premier league season and never played in the championship we also as I understand it got our money back for him. Leitner had a half a season in the championship where he looked good, never made an impact on the premier league and we ended up releasing him for nothing. 
 

I would maintain that Webber biggest error was the transfer window when we got promoted initially under Farke. That is when we should have splashed the cash, when we had the momentum etc…

[cambridgeshire canary 6,787]

Poor old Melvi Sitti. Had the perfect name..

[Google Bot 3,298]

1 minute ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Poor old Melvi Sitti. Had the perfect name..

Just needed to get "on the ball" more. 

[hogesar 9,724]

Good post @Hank shoots Skyler!

Agree with a lot of what's been said and with a lot of the ratings.

I do think Ben Gibson get's a hard ride though. He was huge in our second promotion season and looking at the market really wasn't bad value at £8 million. He's been part of a poor Premier League defence but they all have.

[norfolkngood 1,087]

Great post Hank shoots Skyler 

i think it proves that with Webber Farke and Scott the recruitment were fantastic in the early days 

like another poster said maybe not Footballers we had heard of but they were brought in to do a Job for the team and it worked well 

I Think that list confirms what we all thought Webber at the start was the perfect storm

now he is like a dark rain cloud over Carrow road 

[Ulfotto 641]

1 minute ago, norfolkngood said:

I Think that list confirms what we all thought Webber at the start was the perfect storm

now he is like a dark rain cloud over Carrow road 

I think it’s simpler than that basically everything he said came true in his first four a half seasons then it the last two it hasn’t.

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

19 minutes ago, hogesar said:

I do think Ben Gibson get's a hard ride though. He was huge in our second promotion season and looking at the market really wasn't bad value at £8 million. He's been part of a poor Premier League defence but they all have.

1 hour ago, Robert N. LiM said:

I think I'd give Gibson an extra point and take one off Dimi, but I can't see anything there that seems miles out. I

Thanks for the feedback, perhaps a tad harsh on Gibson - but don't agree that £8 million is good value for him (Hanley was £3.5mil, Zimmerman was free), and he was purchased not just for the promotion campaign but to be a successful premier league player - which he clearly is not. That's a 5/10 for me - he's also struggled this season even at the lower level and never really recreated the form of those first few months. I could maybe get me to squeeze to 5.5 but I can't get him to 6...

I did however put Giannoulis as a 6/10 and it would be fair to say there were similar expectations and failings as he was purchased at the same time for a similar amount, under a loan-to-buy option based on promotion and competing in the PL. But for a little less money I would argue he has had a slightly stronger place in the team since signing (although he does put in the odd absolute howler of a performance which doesn't help). He's another whose struggled to recreate the initial good form - but with him I do also feel like he could've been given more of a chance last season, and there were certainly games where he looked really capable at the higher level. Never really thought that about Gibson. Hence putting him slightly higher at 6 out of 10. 

1 hour ago, sonyc said:

The thing that shouts out for me in that terrific post by Hank is that those earlier signings seemed to fit together in the playing style the manager wanted. It was a philosophy first (I believe) that was important and then getting the players to play in that system. Of course we needed good characters. What was staggering after Daniel Farke left was how we seemed not to have a recognisable system. Players struggled. 

Good post Sony. I would add to that though - perhaps the margins on the signings were a bit finer that it would seem based on team performances and my ratings - with momentum playing such a big factor.

I.e. it must've been far easier for players like Vrancic, Trybull, Stiepermann, etc to function in a team where the relative quality around them was good, the form was good, the expectations were low, where they bought in to the project and fans were on board, etc etc.

Compare that to where we were for the latest prem season - having just sold our best player, still fresh from the previous terrible relegation, without any top quality signings made, yet expectations higher than ever. If say Normann, Rashica, Sargent had all came good and proven to be excellent players - perhaps we'd have seen an improved side to PLM, Gilmore, Kabak, Williams etc etc? 

Ignoring the difference in expectations for a second, then I'm sure we could've signed one of those 2021 players in 2018 and they'd have thrived in our promotion campaign. And similarly if we'd have made a 2018 signing in 2021 they'd probably have struggled just as much as the signings we did make.

It always appears a much more cohesive plan in hindsight when you know its been a massive success - at the time did we know Pukki and Buendia would be the perfect match (probably not their relationship developed over time), did we know Stiepermann was going to come through as an attacking midfielder (probably not because he started as a left back), did we know all of these academy players were going to come through and be as good as they were (again probably not because our newly hyped youngsters have been struggling the past couple of years)?

And if that level of 'bigger picture' thinking was actually evident for all of these new relationship on the pitch, then at what point and why did it seem to stop completely? 

IMO there must be an element of good fortune, and it was easy for these signings to keep up with the good momentum forming within the club and fanbase. That's not to say there weren't deficiencies in our recent recruitment and overall approach in the past few seasons, clearly there have been massive, massive failings - but they always made to look worse in an environment which clearly did not encourage those players to thrive. 

 

 

 

[Google Bot 3,298]

1 minute ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

Ignoring the difference in expectations for a second, then I'm sure we could've signed one of those 2021 players in 2018 and they'd have thrived in our promotion campaign. And similarly if we'd have made a 2018 signing in 2021 they'd probably have struggled just as much as the signings we did make.

That is a very interesting take, and when you go through the permutations hard to argue against.

More than anything else our biggest battle that we failed to get on top of was the inner demons of previous seasons and the break up of a structure which brought us such a great cohesive unit.  Since then it's been a story of seperation.

[repman 635]

3 hours ago, shefcanary said:

Lovely stuff Hank, thanks for the diligence on this.

A couple of points of information. On Bailey's last On The Ball podcast he was challenged on the ratings you criticise in your OP, he was very much on the defensive, even he looking back I think would probably amend his ratings! On Buendia, I understood with add-ons his final cost hit €5m as all the performance conditions were met (or c.£4m). 

My conclusion from your analysis is that Webber initially was helped by a good team behind him which lead to a very good start. Once he lost some of the key figures in that team you would expect a little wobble, which your figures bear out. There has also, once his team had to pivot away from the EU, been a slight recovery in overall recruitment performance, but a couple of very dodgy transactions have slowed that recovery. 

Adding my own veneer to this, if there had been someone on the Board there to challenge and mentor him through the loss of Kieran Scott and the re-build of his team, I am sure Webber's overall performance would have been much better. That is one thing Attanasio (or whoever) needs to ensure they build in as we move forward.

As we know, this summer's window is now extremely important for all concerned. Once again the latest rumours emerging seem to imply a lot of work has already been undertaken, there will be some big surprises to come, so a plea to you to repeat this exercise in the lead up to the January window would be welcome!

It might be that personnel was a factor in our transfer business taking a slump but I think you can see pretty clearly the effect of Brexit too.

The 20/21 business was mainly players from this country, maybe an effort by us to ensure we wouldn't fall foul of any possible homegrown quotas. Most of our sellable assets were homegrown and we've always run it pretty close since Webber has been here. The other transfers, Sorensen and Placheta for example, I see as punts that were players who we no doubt liked but were still pretty raw. However, with the new work permit rules coming into place during the season we either went for it then or potentially missed out on them completely.

21/22 was similar in that we shopped in new markets and I have a hard time believing we had done the necessary work in those areas. We hadn't made any signings from Russia, Greece or France pre-Brexit. I know it's been said that Farke was very eager for Sargent and it wouldn't shock me if it was similar with Rashica.

I wonder if Webber had that window again if he would go straight to South America, it felt like we tried to play it safer in the PL and it didn't work out at all. 

[Terminally Yellow 2,477]

Giving Gibson a 5 undermines the whole of what is otherwise a really interesting analysis.

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

8 minutes ago, Terminally Yellow said:

Giving Gibson a 5 undermines the whole of what is otherwise a really interesting analysis.

Well that's a shame. You're not the first to comment on it - and this is what I said earlier:

Thanks for the feedback, perhaps I was a tad harsh on Gibson - but don't agree that £8 million is good value for him (Hanley was £3.5mil, Zimmerman was free), and he was purchased not just for the promotion campaign but to be a successful premier league player - which he clearly is not. That's a 5/10 for me - he's also struggled this season even at the lower level and never really recreated the form of those first few months. I could maybe get me to squeeze to 5.5 but I can't get him to 6...

I did however put Giannoulis as a 6/10 and it would be fair to say there were similar expectations and failings as he was purchased at the same time for a similar amount, under a loan-to-buy option based on promotion and competing in the PL. But for a little less money I would argue he has had a slightly stronger place in the team since signing (although he does put in the odd absolute howler of a performance which doesn't help). He's another whose struggled to recreate the initial good form - but with him I do also feel like he could've been given more of a chance last season, and there were certainly games where he looked really capable at the higher level. Never really thought that about Gibson. Hence putting him slightly higher at 6 out of 10. 

[Barham Blitz 658]

4 hours ago, shefcanary said:

My conclusion from your analysis is that Webber initially was helped by a good team behind him which lead to a very good start. Once he lost some of the key figures in that team you would expect a little wobble, which your figures bear out. 

I realise I should probably know this, but who is the team behind Webber these days - ie. who has replaced Kieran Scott ?

Given the seeming focus on overseas scouting, we could probably do worse than adding to this approach by poaching whoever is in the role for Peterborough or Plymouth to specialise in targeting young and / or lower division UK based players that - with the exception of Gibbs - we haven't had much joy with since the days of Maddison, Godfrey and Aarons.

Only need to find one player to break through and they'll pay for themselves.

[Petriix 2,852]

I think you've been quite generous giving both Rashica and Gilmour a 4. Tzolis at 3 is (hopefully) a massive underestimation given his age. But it's a great piece of analysis, even if we could all nitpick over the individual scores.

One thing that strikes me is that there was a reasonably high failure rate in Farke's first season with the majority of the better signings coming in at the end of that year. Here's hoping that we have a similarly great transfer window this summer...

[Google Bot 3,298]

1 hour ago, Petriix said:

I think you've been quite generous giving both Rashica and Gilmour a 4. Tzolis at 3 is (hopefully) a massive underestimation given his age. But it's a great piece of analysis, even if we could all nitpick over the individual scores.

Indeed, it's like Mumba getting a 6 playing in a confident League 1 team top of the table,  while Rashica gets a 4 in a prem league team who were broken and rock bottom.   

While most would agree with the ratings individually, It's not wholly relatable due to not only the league and opposition faced, but the general success of the team around them.

That said, Rashica was brought in to be a prem league player so it's only fair he's rated as such.  Likewise with Mumba.

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

1 hour ago, Petriix said:

I think you've been quite generous giving both Rashica and Gilmour a 4. Tzolis at 3 is (hopefully) a massive underestimation given his age. But it's a great piece of analysis, even if we could all nitpick over the individual scores.

That's the thing though - I'm not sure that Gilmore or Rashica were individually THAT bad - they were at least decent enough to get picked regularly for the first team. The main problem was that they were brought into a dysfunctional set up that didn't play to their strengths. We basically had a group of mediocre to poor tools, that also added up to less than the sum of their parts.

Clearly a rating of 4/10 is still very much in the 'poor' category as well - they certainly were far from good acquisitions.

We also only loaned Gilmore so wasn't a massive loss - and at least for Rashica we appear to be able to recoup a decent portion of the money. 

Tzolis on the other hand, really poor last season, barely played, and has continued to look pretty shocking even in the champs. I know he was one for the future, so expectations should be lower in the PL, but if Webber even remotely envisaged that he could fall out of favour for players like Rowe and Placheta last season I'm fairly sure he wouldn't have signed him... Because why would you? And even this season, he looks miles off the pace even at the lower level. 

Unsurprisingly there appears to be little interest in his services from other clubs, I'm sure if we could sell him for decent money we would've done that already, but clubs must know we'd rather hold on to him in the hope he comes good rather than take a couple of million for him now. 

Of course you may be right and he comes good - and hopefully he does - at which point I'd more than happily revise the 3. But I just don't see it ever happening... In all honesty he looks more likely to go down to 2 or a 1 out of 10 at the current rate... 

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

Just now, Google Bot said:

That said, Rashica was brought in to be a prem league player so it's only fair he's rated as such.  Likewise with Mumba.

You answered your own point there! The below was my approach to the gradings mentioned in the OP - even mentioning Mumba. It was not simply about how good the player was individually but all factors I would consider relevant to a successful piece of transfer business for Webber - as full a context I felt I could get to:

I've tried to grade out of 10 based on transfer fee, player performance relative to expectation, club expectation at the time, etc, some players I feel got unfortunate without doing much particularly wrong (i.e. Fahrmann and Passlack both came in on loan and barely played but did seem to get the most out of Krul and Aarons respectively), and others struggled with injuries (some I am less sympathetic for Webber for as they came with a terrible injury record already). For current players I've also tried to look a little at potential and where their trajectory may go for NCFC - there is definitely some uncertainty here - such as Mumba, McCallum and Gibbs. 

[Capt. Pants 4,275]

Well that's a really good and well presented analysis.

I think if you sorted it by Price £ it probably wouldn't show Webber in a very good light?

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,236]

Really worthwhile and interesting piece of work @Hank shoots Skyler… 🙏🏽

Thinking out loud on your observation of the ‘front-loaded’ nature of the successful transfers….

…In sales it is very common for a salesperson - when moving companies - to ‘hold onto’ a few really nice deals to bring as ‘sweeteners’ to their new post. 

In some industry sectors - personnel recruitment would be an obvious one - such salespeople change jobs very frequently. 

Parma 
 

[By Hook or Ian crook 917]

8 hours ago, Hank shoots Skyler said:

I saw Michael Bailey's recent Athletic article about player signings during the Webber era and whether they are 'hits' or 'misses', which made for an interesting read. I did think however that he had only scratched the surface really in terms of grading (i.e. Bali Mumba and Buendia both as 'hits' but I know which one I'd rather we replicate this summer). I also found some of the gradings just plain bizarre (i.e. Dowell and Giannoulis as 'misses' but Placheta and Gibson as 'the jury is out'??). So with this in mind I wanted to dive a bit deeper with an 'out of 10' rating, correct some of the scores which I felt were incorrect from the main article, and also try to have a bit more of a 'macro' look at the time since Webber joined the club.

I have taken the info from MB's article and note that it appears to use initial fee details only - ignoring add-ons (i.e Buendia as £1,500,000 although I understand there were additional performance related fees which were clearly met), there is also no consideration for any loan fees suffered. It appears some additional players, i.e. Nyland, were ignored from MB's list, I have also ignored from here. 

Player ratings (time ascending order)

I've tried to grade out of 10 based on transfer fee, player performance relative to expectation, club expectation at the time, etc, some players I feel got unfortunate without doing much particularly wrong (i.e. Fahrmann and Passlack both came in on loan and barely played but did seem to get the most out of Krul and Aarons respectively), and others struggled with injuries (some I am less sympathetic for Webber for as they came with a terrible injury record already). For current players I've also tried to look a little at potential and where their trajectory may go for NCFC - there is definitely some uncertainty here - such as Mumba, McCallum and Gibbs. 

Here is the list sorted by transfers windows under Webber, I think these are pretty fair but would be interesting to see if any posters disagree wildly with any of my gradings (as I found myself with MB):

Sorted by player rating

And here is that same list, only sorted by rating instead. This makes for quite stark reading..

Of the 9 total players I have rated as 8/10 or more (i.e. signings I would call 'very good' or 'great'), only 2 players (Skipp and Sara) have been signed in the last four seasons, with the remaining 7 all signed in the first two seasons from Webber's arrival. So 78% of our 'very good' signings were made during the first one third of Webber's employment, with the remaining 22% spread across the remaining two thirds. We were basically 8x more successful with our signings in this first period.

Extending this to players rated 7 or above and it is still only 4 players out of 17% (Skipp, Sara Gibbs and Gunn) - or 24% - and the inclusion of Gibbs as a '7' is potentially a bit ambitious considering this is based somewhat on a continued trajectory. So this extrapolation doesn't improve the picture at all for these last 4 seasons versus the first 2.

Then we have the players rated 4 to 6 ('poor' to 'decent'), and this is dominated by the signings we made in these last four seasons. Of the 30 players within this bracket, 27 were signed during this time. Which is not too surprising noting our trajectory since then, particularly as expectations for the club also increased. The most recent premier league campaign comprised many signings, none of whom got going for the team and nearly all of them underwhelmed massively from their pre-signing expectations and careers. I wonder how much being a part of such a dysfunctional and emotionally-fragile squad of players affected these new signings, some of these players may have came good in a different surrounding but unfortunately for NCFC it proved too difficult to swim against the tide...

Then the players rated 3 and below ('very poor' and '****e'), interestingly these signings are mostly populated (6 of 10) by those who were signed in the first couple of seasons - so there were still some big misses during this period but clearly these were outweighed by the good. 

Summary averages per season

When initially completing this table the expectation was that we would see a downtrend in average rating over time, but this isn't particularly true, especially as noted above where the first two seasons were not just characterised with massive success stories but also some pretty shocking business as well. 

Bringing in the additional metric RE average spend per player does appear to illustrate our failings a little better though, especially the two premier league campaigns. Which firstly saw us spend very little - with just as little in return for our signings, and then saw us spend a vast amount and trade away our best player - for a mediocre-to-poor bunch of misfits.

 

Conclusions

• The first two seasons under Webber were characterised with mostly fantastic transfer business, small gambles on overseas players succeeded far beyond expectations, and all whilst undergoing a massive overhaul of the squad and selling off players like Oliveira, Murphy, Pritchard, Maddison etc. We spread our resources as efficiently as possible and this did cause for some big 'misses' as well as the successes - with signings like Marshall, Heise and Husband all proving rather rubbish. But these losses were more than worth it for the positives. 
• The following four seasons coincided with increased expectations of the club, as we went from mid-table champs to winners and suffered through 2 premier league attempts, yet despite relaxing financials we failed to recreate the level of success seen in those two campaigns. The signings massively failed to get anywhere close to these expectations, and were characterised with mostly poor to average transfer business, as transfer fees ramped up no obvious improvement in player quality was realised in the team.
• I don't have much faith in us turning this around under Webber now, we have been living off those first 2 transfer windows and academy acquisitions from pre-Webber, and each season appear to have less in the way of sellable assets to fund further business. We went from Aarons, Godfrey, Cantwell, Buendia and Lewis all being rated at £15-£40million players to 'maybe we can get £10-15mil for Aarons' or turn a bit of a profit on Sara, or get £10mil for Omobamidele but nowhere near where we were and this means selling players nowhere near their highest value / full potential - and to achieve all of this we spent record amounts of money in between!
• Depending on how the next few seasons pan out, this last premier league season may be seen as a defining moment for NCFC - and not in a good way...

If anyone wants to play around with this sheet then feel free to DM me and I can share - I'm sure there's much more than could be done with the data given the time!

 

Very interesting indeed. As a follow on question what rating is deemed as a success so we can work out what the % of success to failure is. I’d say anything over a 7 is success? 

[shefcanary 2,444]

4 hours ago, Barham Blitz said:

I realise I should probably know this, but who is the team behind Webber these days - ie. who has replaced Kieran Scott ?

He was not replaced like for like IIRC from news reports at the time, Neil Adams was given the Deputy SD role, Scott's role was not directly replaced but Webber took on some of his duties and Adams took on others - there was also a reshuffling of the middle and lower management roles in the recruitment and Academy teams with more responsibilty given to the South American recruitment specialist.

[Barham Blitz 658]

26 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

He was not replaced like for like IIRC from news reports at the time, Neil Adams was given the Deputy SD role, Scott's role was not directly replaced but Webber took on some of his duties and Adams took on others - there was also a reshuffling of the middle and lower management roles in the recruitment and Academy teams with more responsibilty given to the South American recruitment specialist.

Would seem to be a vacancy we could do with filling then !