Are Roeder's Plans Back Firing?

[Clint 221]

Over the last 9 months or so Roeder has sold or released enough players to field an entire team, many of which I agree with, some of which I strongly don''t.  However, 4 weeks to the day before the start of the season, he has been able to bring in only 3 replacements.

On the release of Huckerby, Roeder insisted that we be provided with some presents and would have new heroes to worship, to date he has only signed 3.  This is no disrespect to Clingan or Bertrand who are both tidy players but they are not in the hero mould and are unlikely to put bums on seats, Hoolahan may, but I know very little about him at this stage.  During the latter months of the season, Roeder claimed that we won''t reconise the team that starts the new season (which I beleive had a negative knock on effect in our performances) but at the moment I would think the team that starts at Coventry would look something like this.......

Marshall, Semmy, Drury, Shax, Doc, Croft/Chadders, Fozzy, Russell/Clingan, Hoolihan, Cureton, Martin.

I recognise 90% of the above team and would suggest it may not even as good as on paper the one we ended with last season, which was only good enough to narrowly avoiding the drop to league 1.

Now the major point, on the release of the 9 or so players at the end of the season, Roeder said he hopes to have most of his new players (aside from the loans) in by the start of pre-season training, which was almost 2 weeks ago.  But yet we still only have 2 new players and a half season loan.  So am I to assume that Roeder has been working his socks off behind the scenes but has been unable to bring in the players he targeted at the end of last season?  Of his A-list of targets which he hoped to sign by July 1st, has he only managed to secure the services of Hoolihan and Plastic (possibly Clingan) and has now moved onto his B-list (Gow) and will shortly be moving onto his C-list?

Is this what happened in January when Roeder had sold/released a number of players but still failed to bring in the striker we so badly needed, resulting in our Champs survival relying on a 38 year old, a teen loanee and an out-of-form Cureton?  As an act of despraton, we signed several loan players to plug the gaps in the squad, none of which had much of an impact as they were no better than we already had.

I''m starting to get very concerned that Roeder believes its a lot easier to attract players here than it actually is.  In the heady heights of the Premiership, we still struggled to attract top talent, why does Roeder think he''ll be able to when we are in the worst postion we''re been in for donkeys years.  Roeder comes across as being very sure of himself but is his confidence slightly misguided? 

You may say that very few clubs in the Champs have actually signed many players but on the flipside, not many teams has as poor team as we did last season and none have a squad as depleted as ours.  To my mind, Roeder needs to pull a very big rabbit out of a very big hat very quicky or I think we may be relying on another batch of unknown youngsters to keep us up again next season.  This is all the more infuriating as I was looking towards this pre-season as the start of a new dawn but as per usual with our great club I fear it will be a massive anti-climax.........the club and Roeder were making all the right noises when trying to sell season tickets and now they''ve reached that magical 20,000 mark, the noises appear to have stopped and to date, have yet to be backed-up.......deja-vu???

 

 

[Carlos Valderrama 0]

From what I have seen of Clingan the boy has the potential to be a class act.  Hoolahan we know about but definately a worthy replacement for Huckerby.  My biggest concern is the fact we have only one RB, only 2 CB''s and 1 recognised forward.

We need at least 1 RB, 1 CB and 2 FW.  We need them soon.  And at least 3 of them need to belong to us.

[rudenotto69 0]

I agree with you but the window does not close until Aug 31st and the events of the last couiple of weeks ago have surely not helped Roeder in his rebuilding plans.The first eleven as it stands looks ok and no worse than the team we had at the end of last season with the exception of a striker which is desperately needed.Roeder does it seems have a decent enough reputation within the ''manager world'' to hopefully do some decent deals on the Loan front as most of his loans did improve the team last season imho.Some teams only went back for pre season this week...give it a couple of weeks or so and there i hope be more movement on the loan front not ideal i know but..Realistically how many players do we need who would play first team football? One Central Defender and a striker i reckon looking at our current first eleven then fill the squad by all means with loans etc etc.MarshallSemmy Donkey ? BertrandChadders Clingan Rusty HoolieCureo ?SubsFoth FattyMartinRuddShacks

[Crafty Canary 495]

The fact is that other than Hucks and Dion none of the others (permanent players) made any contribution to the first team so are not going to be missed. As GR says signing players is easy, signing players who''ll move you forward isn''t. Given our board''s reluctance to invest in football he is right to hold onto his frugal resources until such players can be persuaded to move here.

[TheCardinal 0]

I think you have a point, Clint - if this was the end of August. The problem with clubs such as ours is that we are dependent on a ripe and active transfer market. If the players we want are available for a fair price, I suspect we''ll be in for them. But until then, we either pay premiums we can''t afford or wait for players to be available.It''s exceptionally frustrating, and I for one am feeling that frustration. But unfortunately we are not market leaders - we have to play the market as a minnow.

[Time to go Delia 0]

Players like Fotheringham ,Russell ,Pattison just dont cut it at this level and we dont have any stand out players whatsoever ,worst Norwich squad for many a year and as it stands we are going down .

[rudenotto69 0]

[quote user="Loan City Fc "]Players like Fotheringham ,Russell ,Pattison just dont cut it at this level and we dont have any stand out players whatsoever ,worst Norwich squad for many a year and as it stands we are going down .[/quote]I thought Russell and Foth were ok last year?Stand out players i agree but i we CAN get a decent striker and CH maybe that would change

[rudenotto69 0]

http://new.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/Sport/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=Sport&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=Sport&itemid=NOED12%20Jul%202008%2011%3A09%3A36%3A383Dejan Stefanovic anyone??

[Shaun Tilly Lace 0]

To be fair to Glenn, a massive clear out was inevitable and necessary. The only 3 players I disagree with his decision to let go were Hucks (1st and foremost), Lewis and Gilks. The rest were probably not good enough for Championship football anyway and so therefore were expendable, although some might argue that Cave Brown might have been a good squad player as back up to Otsemobor.

I''m sure Glenn would be the first to admit that he didn''t anticipate the problems he has appeared to have had, bringing in quality replacements for the players he has released. Unfortunately, we could be starting the new campaign very much understrength, with probably the smallest squad in the division. Not good.

[tribes 0]

How many more players do we need? 8 or 9? Roeder has already said that he will use the loan market to the full, he also said last week that he would like 2 permanent srikers and a loan striker.

He intimated bringing in 5 to 6 loans. We already have 1( Bertrand). So he brings in say 5 more (one being a striker).

I reckon he is looking at 4 permanents ( to include a keeper) plus 5 more loans. Most of loans will probably not arrive till end of July, when Prrem clubs decide who they can release.

Any loan players he brings in will have to play games pretty regularly, so will play most of the time. It is impossible to know what side will look like until these loans arrive.

As I say 2 permanent strikers and another outfield player (permanent) may be the most we will get in terms of permanents.