General New Head of Recruitment: Ed Waldron

[greatunclekip]

At least you’re consistent with being a miserable fucker.
You are usually completely wrong on your predictions which gives me hope so thank you for that

Let’s hope the players don’t have the same defeatist attitude as you always seem to have.

Hope so eh Steve. Sometimes you can have all the belief in the world that you won't go down, but if you keep losing games because you're crap, then you might as well believe in fairies for all the good it will do.

 

[greatunclekip]

It’s a bit different when you’re presenting something as a foregone conclusion, almost like it’s being disingenuous

Or. It could be my genuinely held opinion?

 

[SirAndyOfCrosby]

Just declared as 5th in L1 for New Era agent fees (behind Derby, Ipswich, Fleetwood and Wednesday) for the period 1st Feb '22 to 31 Jan '23 (and we did almost f**k all activity in January).

Spent almost 4x Plymouth on leech intermediary fees in that period.

The same as the rest of the bottom 6  combined.

Absolutely scandalous the way this club has been mugged off.

F**k Karl Robinson and f**k New Era.

 

[werthersoriginal]

Or. It could be my genuinely held opinion?

We just don’t know yet but we’ll have an idea in ten days or so. When I used to recruit the best people I hired were inexperienced wild cards who just really impressed me at interview. Hopefully our new people fall into that category rather than the ‘cheap, unchallenging’ bucket you’re throwing them in.

 

[uptheus]

Probably because half the 'poor window' signings are still at the club. Don't think he could realistically come out and say Baldock and Murphy have been a fecking disaster.

It was more the lessons learnt but rather than the actual e.g. ensuring that we don’t keep going for high risk/injury prone players or hanging on for too many high profile players to ultimately miss out and then left to have the scrapes off the shelf and month into the season, thus playing catch up.

 

[uptheus]

But hold on, all the defence of his abysmal performance this season was that the poor guy had loads of rubbish foisted on him!

That always showed a key misunderstanding of how a DOF works. The manager always has some input.

I think Ryan is spot on, I think we have hired people who will go along with Grant and Tim.

I also think (not surprisingly given the figures yesterday) that we have cut back substantially until we know the stadium outcome.

It's all going to cost us our League 1 status without doubt.

I said this over a year ago, but got shot down because of all the investments e.g. training grounds, signings (yeah right).

I also said last year (October time I think), that Tim looked like a rabbit in the headlights when I shouted over to him to sort it out, and again got shot down as he’d been at Man Utd & Inter Milan etc.

And I even think yesterday’s FMFF was poor to not address the past failings, but hey ho.

To say I’m pissed off with the incompetent management of our club is an understatement, and I still think Tim & Grant need to be held to task no matter what happens at the end of season.

And lastly, the communications/marketing/commercial side of the club is damn right awful. I mean, where is the rallying cry for the Sheffield Wednesday game. Again, I’ll be fucked off if seats in the VIP/Manor Lounge areas are sold to Wednesday fans who end up cheering in our faces in the highly cost SSU seats as we did for the Derby game. I mean, if you’re sat amongst the home fans the least you can do is respect them and not cheer in their faces!

 

[bazzer9461]

I said this over a year ago, but got shot down because of all the investments e.g. training grounds, signings (yeah right).

I also said last year (October time I think), that Tim looked like a rabbit in the headlights when I shouted over to him to sort it out, and again got shot down as he’d been at Man Utd & Inter Milan etc.

And I even think yesterday’s FMFF was poor to not address the past failings, but hey ho.

To say I’m pissed off with the incompetent management of our club is an understatement, and I still think Tim & Grant need to be held to task no matter what happens at the end of season.

And lastly, the communications/marketing/commercial side of the club is damn right awful. I mean, where is the rallying cry for the Sheffield Wednesday game. Again, I’ll be fucked off if seats in the VIP/Manor Lounge areas are sold to Wednesday fans who end up cheering in our faces in the highly cost SSU seats as we did for the Derby game. I mean, if you’re sat amongst the home fans the least you can do is respect them and not cheer in their faces!

Hear hear

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Just declared as 5th in L1 for New Era agent fees (behind Derby, Ipswich, Fleetwood and Wednesday) for the period 1st Feb '22 to 31 Jan '23 (and we did almost f**k all activity in January).

Spent almost 4x Plymouth on leech intermediary fees in that period.

The same as the rest of the bottom 6  combined.

Absolutely scandalous the way this club has been mugged off.

F**k Karl Robinson and f**k New Era.

Hey. Plenty of people said it was ridiculous and entitled for anyone to expect a crack at the playoffs, because we’re only Oxford United and we will never be a big club. Now you know just how right they were.

You’re a problem. You’re a real problem.

 

[uptheus]

I’m not sure that it’s necessarily Stadium related. They ploughed so much cash in this season (on and off the pitch) that I don’t think it would make a huge amount of sense to suddenly get spooked. They didn’t care six months ago, so I doubt they care too much now.

My guess as to what has happened is that they turned off the taps on Robinson thinking that the season would fizzle out into lower mid-table obscurity and they could reassess in the summer, we then entered an enormous death spiral which meant he had to be sacked sooner rather than later, and we are now in a situation where because we don’t know which division we will be in, it’s difficult to nail down the best people. A L1 club is vastly superior to a L2 one when it comes to this sort of role.

Combine all that with TW not wanting any conflict and suddenly bumping someone up the chain who is already here works on all levels. Cheap, non-confrontational, owes his paymasters a debt of gratitude for giving him the chance to step up, and eliminates all uncertainty or need to wait. Also, if you were EW and you applied for a job in January only to be told that your employer was going to wait and see if the team can stay up before they decide whether you’re good enough to move up, you would probably tell them that you’re going to leave unless you get it. So there is every chance that we simply ran out of time.

As I say, pure guesswork on my part, but I do get the sense that we are stuck in a whirlpool of our own making right now, because we’ve put ourselves in a situation where nobody knows what division we’ll be in and potentially won’t know for sure until the final day of the season. It all stems back to failing to act before Christmas. This is the domino effect, IMO.

No matter what Ryan, they should have ploughed money into the January window working under a/the new recruitment model to at least given us a better fighting chance of survival this season, but they didn’t.

I also felt that last January (2022) we had our best opportunity to push on for the autos/play offs minimum, but again it was poor which made me comment at the time about their true ambition without knowing the status of the stadium outcome.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

No matter what Ryan, they should have ploughed money into the January window working under a/the new recruitment model to at least given us a better fighting chance of survival this season, but they didn’t.

I also felt that last January (2022) we had our best opportunity to push on for the autos/play offs minimum, but again it was poor which made me comment at the time about their true ambition without knowing the status of the stadium outcome.

I don’t disagree with you about what the right thing to do would’ve been, but I think too many people are mistaking incompetence for some sort of sinister plan.

 

[uptheus]

I don’t disagree with you about what the right thing to do would’ve been, but I think too many people are mistaking incompetence for some sort of sinister plan.

Possibly

 

[Thomas/Brock/Jones]

We did spend money though in Jan 22, just on a player for the next season which was strange at the time and proved costly.
Another more controversial thought is that KR was on a % of transfers involving new era ?

 

[Berliner]

We had posts like this a couple of months ago quoting odds of 80/1 and telling people to lump on if they thought we would go down...

FTFY

 

[uptheus]

We did spend money though in Jan 22, just on a player for the next season which was strange at the time and proved costly.
Another more controversial thought is that KR was on a % of transfers involving new era ?

But did we really push the boat out, especially with the position we were in e.g. another striker to partner/cover for Matty, the fullbacks, CDM etc.

Yes, we hung on for Browne which as you say was for this season or could have may be played at the latter end of last season if he’d been managed correctly, but again it was a signing I didn’t want, and yet again got shot down.

 

[Thomas/Brock/Jones]

But did we really push the boat out, especially with the position we were in e.g. another striker to partner/cover for Matty, the fullbacks, CDM etc.

Yes, we hung on for Browne which as you say was for this season or could have may be played at the latter end of last season if he’d been managed correctly, but again it was a signing I didn’t want, and yet again got shot down.

Just think was it the money wasn't there or was it just KR knew best and didn't spend it ?

 

[Chippy]

We had posts like this a couple of months ago quoting odds of 50/1 and telling people to lump on if they thought we would go down...

Wonder if Tim cashed out when he sacked KR

 

[tatabanya]

Or. It could be my genuinely held opinion?

In which case, as I said you must be in a hell of a position. A once in a lifetime opportunity that most punters can only dream of

 

[greatunclekip]

But did we really push the boat out, especially with the position we were in e.g. another striker to partner/cover for Matty, the fullbacks, CDM etc.

Yes, we hung on for Browne which as you say was for this season or could have may be played at the latter end of last season if he’d been managed correctly, but again it was a signing I didn’t want, and yet again got shot down.

We kind of did. Not many clubs in our league spent 500k in last January.

I called it out as s**t then and I still say now, Marcus Browne was not the signing we needed in January. Ellis Harrison was. Nicky Cadden was.

This January however, we just completely gave up the ghost. We didn't back or sack the manager. It was an utterly pathetic effort.

 

[SirAndyOfCrosby]

Hey. Plenty of people said it was ridiculous and entitled for anyone to expect a crack at the playoffs, because we’re only Oxford United and we will never be a big club. Now you know just how right they were.

You’re a problem. You’re a real problem.

I'm not bitter but I've just sent an email to the Tranmere Chairman with the full agent fee costs by L1 club, ranked - and juxtaposed against the current League table (with a big arrow going from 5th to 20th to show the horrific discrepancy).

I'm prepared to use it again for any other managerial vacancy. It's saved on my desktop.

spunkedbudget.pdf

 

[holdsteady]

Or. It could be my genuinely held opinion?

Which doesn’t make it a fact which is how you have stated it.

We are s**t, I don’t think anyone would dispute that, but so are the teams below us. It’s a battle of shitness, we only have to be as s**t as the s**t that is below us to stay up, if their is one thing this team can be it’s s**t so that should give us all some hope.

Obviously we can’t be to s**t, just need to be the right amount s**t.