At work I sit next to a relative of a midfield player who left us last summer for a Championship side. Yes, it’s one of them - there are only two who fit this criteria. He claims he was offered a new deal on £4,500 per week to stay and wasn’t interested. So I have a few questions - has the budget really been cut THAT strictly that we can’t offer similar money to anybody anymore? Because that is SERIOUS League One money. Do players not want to sign here as much as they used to, when we regularly cherry picked outstanding PL talent and convinced them to join us permanently on very reasonable wages? Or are we unable to actually get the job done properly anymore because we have nobody with any ability what so ever to ink the contracts? Even when Eales was looking to sell we still had people like Dave Jones heavily involved in negotiating deals. I believe Dave was still involved right up until the takeover and helped bring in Brannagan and the like.
Who have we brought in since the takeover (when Dave Jones and the remaining board members turned the lights off) who weren’t loans? Goalies? No. Centre backs? No. Left back? Nope, just one bad loan. Right back? Tony McManon and Cameron Norman. Nuff said on those. Centre mid? Sykes, from part time football and who in my mind is still nowhere near ready to play regularly, and Gorrin who just played one season in Scotland after years of drifting around the world. Also Hanson, for A LOT of money on a four year deal, who Robinson tried to say wasn’t his signing and was actually a right back, but now he isn’t and is a midfielder again. Wingers? Fosu just now, and Whyte from part time in NI who has turned into a proper gem - one roaring success there. Strikers? Just Jamie Mackie, who is on his last legs and never played as a centre forward (he was always a winger / wide attacker when he could still run), and who also signed on a deal that favours him actually being fit to play and which he signed because we suited him down to the ground geographically.
From what I’ve both seen and heard it’s now the sole responsibility of our own first team coach, our former teacher MD (where’s he gone lately, anyway?) and the bow tie wearing maniac to actually close deals. So how exactly are we supposed to attract decent, established players? Who is going to do the deal, negotiate hard and convince them this is the place to be? The person sitting on the other side of the negotiating table from the player is the most important part of any deal. That person makes or breaks it - they are more important than any stadium or training ground. Ashton was superb at it, Jones was largely very good at it also - who is doing that now? Peel back the loans and look at who and what we have signed in the last three windows in terms of our own players. Gavin Whyte was a lottery win, and thank god for him, but that’s basically it until we see how good Gorrin and Fosu actually are. We wanted to bring back several of the loans from last season and none of them wanted to come back. We have lost Nelson on a free, we lost Rothwell for modest compensation and had to sell Ledson who just didn’t want to stay the summer before. We got Eastwood to sign a new deal who then had his worst season for us and has sounded hacked off in interviews ever since, Hall got a new deal because he’s been injured for two years, Shearer got a new deal last summer and then it turned out he wasn’t even up to playing ten games anymore... incoming permanent transfers and players agreeing new deals in the last 12 months has been very underwhelming. And I think that’s primarily because the structure at the club is poor, and we have nobody who can actually negotiate to a really good level. We’re dependant on loans, punts and people the manager knows. We may be identifying others, but we sure don’t seem able to bring them in very easily on a proper deal.
We will know by the end of August where the problems are. In terms of transfers, I don’t think even I can blame it all on old Karl.
