General Replanning 2020

The thing is, if you’re a talented young player who’s ambition is to play in the Championship or above, but you’re not quite at that level yet for whatever reason, maybe you’re kicking around in a Premiership or Championship reserve team, or you’re one of the best players in L2, National League, Ireland or Scotland, surely Oxford is an easy sell. Just point out Nelson, Lundstrum, Dunkley, Ledson, Whyte, Roofe, Fosu, Baptiste, Johnson... Oxford have shown they will develop players and then agree to sell them on. There should be players lining up to come here and kickstart their careers, surely?
 
Can’t believe people are still harping on about Eales selling the club whilst keeping a charge on the four players. For the first time in several years there were players the club had sold with transfer instalments still due. Why would you give that away for free? , or rather let the buyer pay that much less and Eales keeps the instalments.
 
Can’t believe people are still harping on about Eales selling the club whilst keeping a charge on the four players. For the first time in several years there were players the club had sold with transfer instalments still due. Why would you give that away for free? , or rather let the buyer pay that much less and Eales keeps the instalments.
Is it a common practice though? Never heard of anyone doing that before.
 
If I was fast forwarding to the summer (not something I particularly want to do with 15 games of a fun season still to come....9 of which are at home.....but that seems to be the crux of this thread), I think the order of business would be this:

1) Find out early what offers are on the table for Dickie and Brannagan. With just 12 months to go on their contracts, we will surely sell if we receive offers for either above 2m - and possibly will take any seven figure offer. In the unlikely situation that noone's in for either of them, offer them new three year deals on good (for League One) terms. But anticipate that we will lose them both.

2) Found out what's going on in Eastwood's head. If he really wants out, allow him to go. As a 30 year old keeper who's had minimal experience above League One - he has negligible resale value.

3) Offer Sam Long a new one-year deal. No he's not a world-beater, but he's a valuable, versatile squad member and he's worth the wage. Pick up the option on Ruffels

4) In a worse case scenario, that leaves us with a squad of Long, Ruffels, Moore, Atkinson, Jones, Gorrin, Henry, Hanson, Sykes, Hall, Forde, Napa, Agyei, plus some other youngsters. That's the beginnings of a strong defense, a decent midfield already ready to go and not a whole lot going forwards

5) [the most difficult bit] Find and sign half a dozen talented footballers aged 20-24. These could come from lower leagues, non-league, Ireland, Scotland but given the contacts of our management team, are most likely to be academy graduates of clubs higher up the pyramid who haven't quite made it. We've developed an amazing pipeline over the past five years or so, from a variety of places (Lundstram, O'Dowda, Roofe, Ledson, Rothwell, Baptiste, Brannagan, Dickie, Johnson, Whyte.......) but we need to continue to fill it. Some of these may cost small fees......so be it. We should be reinvesting a proportion of the proceeds from our successful sales.

6) Add 3-4 high calibre loans from Premier League clubs to fill out positions of need, and round out the squad.



Until we sort out the infrastructure of the club, including securing ownership of our stadium, so that we can capture all revenue streams and sustainably grow the club - the above is the model that's working for OUFC. And KR, and his backroom team, have shown themselves to be great at it. No reason to believe that they can't deliver another fun season in 2020/21 that way.


Very good post.

In addition I would also add that one or two older but experienced players could also be beneficial. This could include Matty Taylor or Will Grigg or an older centre back if Mous moves into coaching. Having a spine that has included Mous, Henry and Taylor/Mackie has made a huge difference. Although Mackie and Taylor have featured in all league games between them, we have picked up 39 points at 1.85 points per game when both Mous and Henry have played as opposed to 6 points at 0.75 in the games where one or both were missing.
 
Really good post this, very good and interesting points, really the bottom line is sorting out the ground because until this happens we will always tread water - One point I’d like to make is if a team is seriously going for promotion then you don’t sell two of your best players with no replacements lined up, poor decision making which has possibly cost us promotion, hope I’m wrong on the latter..
 
Very good post.

In addition I would also add that one or two older but experienced players could also be beneficial. This could include Matty Taylor or Will Grigg or an older centre back if Mous moves into coaching. Having a spine that has included Mous, Henry and Taylor/Mackie has made a huge difference. Although Mackie and Taylor have featured in all league games between them, we have picked up 39 points at 1.85 points per game when both Mous and Henry have played as opposed to 6 points at 0.75 in the games where one or both were missing.

I agree - I just didn't want to complicate my post any more than it already was!
There will still be an experienced core there, but in particular an experienced CB to partner with Moore/Atkinson/Jones when they need it would be ideal (of course, this may still be Mous, if he wants to stay and play. His performances this year would warrant another one year playing deal, if he wants one).

I'm less convinced about the need to bring in an old hand up front. They're very expensive, and pretty hit and miss.
If you ignore the Peterborough duo (who are young, but from a talent perspective playing in the wrong division, and everybody knows it), then the top scorers in League One this year are a pretty even mix of young guns (Walker, Curtis, Forss) and experienced hands (Madden, Gnanduillet, Norwood). Clarke-Harris is in-between, and Henderson is a law unto himself as he's really, really, really old.

I mean I think the two most expensive strikers in League One, by far, are Will Grigg and John Marquis. And they've not mustered 10 league goals between them this year!
 
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He could have easily picked up another injury and been worth nothing. It's always a gamble, but when the club is losing £3m a year these gambles are sometimes needed.

And, I still think we'll be in the playoffs!
Selling him because he MIGHT get any injury would just be ridiculous, not as if he is regarded as injury prone is it, plus, Brentford showed their hand already by trying to purchase him before, 6 months wasn't going to change that in my opinion and the most likely scenario was his value remained the same, or should we have gone up, or he had a storming end to the season, his value would have gone up.

I think we will finish around about where we are now unfortunately, hope I'm wrong
 
Selling him because he MIGHT get any injury would just be ridiculous, not as if he is regarded as injury prone is it, plus, Brentford showed their hand already by trying to purchase him before, 6 months wasn't going to change that in my opinion and the most likely scenario was his value remained the same, or should we have gone up, or he had a storming end to the season, his value would have gone up.

I think we will finish around about where we are now unfortunately, hope I'm wrong


Baptiste not injury prone? I think the guy is a fantastic footballer and will go on to the very highest level, but 3 shoulder dislocations and an ACL injury before the age of 20 is not a great record. Of course, he may have gone on from strength to strength, got us promoted and seen his value double. No one will know what might have happened which is why every transfer is a gamble.

As for final predictions, I think the top 7 clubs this season will be between Rotherham, Peterborough, Coventry, Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich and Oxford. We have games against 4 of them and games in hand of all bar Cov and Pompey. So a top 6 finish is very much in our own hands and definitely achievable.
 
Well it would be if we could put our best team out and they were all properly fit but we cant and they are not!
Having said that if we could beat sunderland and with players returning to fitness we might be able to do it....
 
Still a massive shame to have lost Baptiste for the run-in and Fosu as well
 
Find out early what offers are on the table for Dickie and Brannagan. With just 12 months to go on their contracts, we will surely sell if we receive offers for either above 2m - and possibly will take any seven figure offer.
We will be lucky to get £2m for the pair, let alone each at this point. The final year countdown beginning after this season will make sure of that. Ledson and Lundstram both went to Championship clubs for well under £1m each playing the same position as Brannagan, and centre halves are worth less purely because that’s how it is. The further you work back towards your goal, the cheaper the player tends to be. Barring truly exceptional cases on the global stage.

We will most likely get circa £1m for Brannagan and not much more than £500,000 for Dickie. Add that to the £5m odd that we got for Whyte, Baptiste and Fosu over the last 7/8 months and you get about two seasons’ losses covered - ie this season and next. If there is a plan for a sustainable football club then we’ll see a good few young players join permanently this summer. If there is a plan to go for a land development first and foremost then we won’t, in which case after next season when the losses can no longer be covered as we don’t have anything left to sell, we’re in an interesting spot. I think we are 12 months away at most from discovering what the name of the game is.

I also think Robinson is already putting a force field around himself. He knows how to work most fans and the media - he’s making it clear he’s hacked off at the moment so that if he goes people won’t blame him, and if he stays people will blame the board long before him and think he’s a hero for sticking about.
 
He could have easily picked up another injury and been worth nothing. It's always a gamble, but when the club is losing £3m a year these gambles are sometimes needed.

And, I still think we'll be in the playoffs!

To be fair though we take a gamble when we sign players aswell, and teams like us do need to make these gambles. I feel that hanging onto Shandon for the rest of the season would have been a gamble worth taking. We have shown that we are willing to take risks when signing injured players and being very good at managing theirr injuries when signed - Hall, Thorne are two re good examples, we also showed with Shandon that we would do what ever was necessary or required to lower his risk of getting injured by subing him when it looked like he was getting targeted too much.
 
We will be lucky to get £2m for the pair, let alone each at this point. The final year countdown beginning after this season will make sure of that. Ledson and Lundstram both went to Championship clubs for well under £1m each playing the same position as Brannagan, and centre halves are worth less purely because that’s how it is. The further you work back towards your goal, the cheaper the player tends to be. Barring truly exceptional cases on the global stage.

We will most likely get circa £1m for Brannagan and not much more than £500,000 for Dickie.
I disagree and think you're some way off with those figures. Because these 2 are much more the finished article than the other 2 you mention at their respective sale dates. I think both Dickie and (a fully fit) Brannagan could start in the Championship tomorrow for most teams in the bottom half. Brannagan has scored more than 3 times as many goals as Lunny did in a yellow shirt, and a midfielder with a guarantee of goals is invaluable at any level. I also think times have changed as far as defenders being worth less - Luton sold their 2 full backs from last season for a combined £10m in the summer, so it isn't just the world class defenders going for higher fees. I accept with both having 12 months to run we'll lose both for less than we might have otherwise got, but I'd expect a decent price nonetheless.
 
I also think times have changed as far as defenders being worth less - Luton sold their 2 full backs from last season for a combined £10m in the summer, so it isn't just the world class defenders going for higher fees.

Swashbuckling, attack-minded full backs are very much in vogue currently. Not sure their transfer value can be directly compared to CBs (Unless we're talking about the overlapping variety, a concept pioneered by the reknowned cutting edge footballing innovator CJ Wilder)
 
How accurate is this @Shosho ?...


Yeah I have us finishing just outside the playoffs.

Last I looked we were running at just over 2 points per game at home... 9 games at home in the run in (I think) is something to be optimistic about
 
It sounds like Woodburn could be back next season as we've made a good impression with him and Liverpool
 
How accurate is this @Shosho ?...


I would say that 72 points would be enough, which is 1.8 points a game from here on in.

I mentioned on another thread the important of an experienced spine, and in the 21 games, where both Mous and Henry have played, we have picked up 1.85 points per game (from 21 played).

So 72 points is certainly doable, especially as 60% of our games are at home. I know anything can happen, but you would fancy wins against Wimbledon, Accrington, Southend, MK Dons, Tranmere and Bolton which would leave 9 games where we would need to average a point to get to 72. That should be enough, especially if we don't lose any of the games against the teams around us (Sunderland, Ipswich, Cov, Pompey and Wycombe).

That's why I'm not getting some of the "mid table mediocrity" rubbish. This season is still very much there for the taking, especially if we finish strong when others start slipping back.
 
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