You are all taking your eye off the ball ! Nothing will change until the club is no longer in the clutches of our major shareholder.
The club can’t look outside for a manager because rightly so they would ask what money is available to rebuild the squad, however just having a procession of academy hugging yes men is going to do nothing but send the club out of business. Until Mr Bowler and the board acknowledge that the current business model no longer is working nothing will change other than a different manager with the same instruction play the academy players, we have wasted over the last 4 years millions of pounds producing absolutely nothing young boys who are neither physically, mentally and ability wise equipped to cope with men’s football, tippy tappy passing day in day out is no good, with very few exceptions most of the players coming out of the academy look like little boys insipid skinny looking frightened little boys. The first team squad has to be in the main physically equipped to cope with the demands of lower league football and we have too many players who are not. We have allowed players to stay and stagnate at the club in the vain hope that somebody might pay a transfer fee for them, well that is not going to happen because they are no good. George Ray and Ben Garratt currently and Oliver Turton and Harry Davis previously are good examples of this. Speaking to a former Crewe Alexandra academy coach the academy hierarchy refuse to move on from the past and acknowledge that systems and methods of training evolve and embrace these changes into the academy training regimes, many coaches are frustrated by the out of date ways the academy still operate in and I would suggest this statement is backed up by the recent procession of very average players coming from Reaseheath. Time for the entire board to move on and for the academy to be downgraded to a model that is within the clubs finances and still would allow for a increased competitive first team budget which clearly is not the case , however if this not true then this just means that our coaches and management team are just rubbish either way the club is doomed.
You are all taking your eye off the ball ! Nothing will change until the club is no longer in the clutches of our major shareholder.
Absolutely Norman Hassall is a huge issue here too. Where the club is now is not just because of Artell.
However, do I think someone could get more out of these players? Yes.
Artell has shown that he is an excellent negotiator and has done brilliantly to tie down so many youngsters to new contracts but that is not enough, and arguably a role for the DoF. Most top managers now are essentially glorified coaches. I'd argue that Dario was always a coach first and manager second.
On the coaching front, we've seen Artell still doesn't know his best team or system, and constant tinkering is one of the reasons why we struggle to get a good run of form going. Can anyone say he is genuinely improved one player since he took over? I can only really think of Pickering who has made his debut under Artell and become a fixture in the first team. Ray and Garrett will leave for free in the summer, two players who we thought would make us millions.