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Thread: How much longer ?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
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    709

    How much longer ?

    How much longer are the fans expected to put up with this crap, an academy producing players that are nowhere near good enough for league 2 football, the board starving the manager of the required funds to put a side that is even close enough to challenge in this league but quite happy to pour money down the drain on an outdated academy model. What an earth are we doing allowing Porter to trigger a 1 year extension his legs have gone now !! he will be on a Zimmer frame in another 12 months not including the wages we will waste on him for the privilege. Mr Artell please can you stop playing just 2 central midfield players we are getting overrun get a third man in the middle of the park ffs drop Kirk or Ainley I am not bothered which they are both 1 game wonders. Please in January get a striker in that knows where the onion bag is or give the young lad Reilly a chance the best finisher at the club apparently !!the rest of the forwards currently on our books could not finish their dinner. Now for the defence Nolan and Hunt are the best center halves at the club closely followed by NG why the f..k are we playing RAY crap has always been crap get rid. Pickering and Whelan as full backs. Richards in goal for me all day long far better than Garratt.

    Rant over I would welcome any replies be gentle with me I am a very frustrated Crewe fan that cant understand why we are persisting with the current business model and playing utter crap on the pitch, time the board moved on.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Posts
    677
    Re Porter, agree, but better than Bowery!
    Re Ray and Garret, strongly disagree. Garret excellent v Bury and Grimsby. No chance with first 2 v Mansfield
    Re dropping either of the one game wonders, agree
    Re getting over run in midfield, agree
    Re Reilly, agree, give him a chance.
    Re Whelan, on the fence on that one.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Posts
    677
    Just seen the first goal. For me definitely no foul, and ball probably over the line.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Posts
    709
    Comical football, Finney proving how far below the standard required he is, Ray Sunday league defending as usual !! Garratt charging out of his goal like a headless chicken woeful football. Not quite sure what Artell has this bunch of below average footballers doing on the training pitch in the week but what ever it is it is not working. Can’t score can’t defend we all now what that is a recipe for. I think fortunately for Crewe there are 2 teams who are worse than Crewe I feel sorry for their fans because we are abject at best.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
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    1,772
    Quote Originally Posted by Wartman View Post
    How much longer are the fans expected to put up with this crap, an academy producing players that are nowhere near good enough for league 2 football, the board starving the manager of the required funds to put a side that is even close enough to challenge in this league but quite happy to pour money down the drain on an outdated academy model. What an earth are we doing allowing Porter to trigger a 1 year extension his legs have gone now !! he will be on a Zimmer frame in another 12 months not including the wages we will waste on him for the privilege. Mr Artell please can you stop playing just 2 central midfield players we are getting overrun get a third man in the middle of the park ffs drop Kirk or Ainley I am not bothered which they are both 1 game wonders. Please in January get a striker in that knows where the onion bag is or give the young lad Reilly a chance the best finisher at the club apparently !!the rest of the forwards currently on our books could not finish their dinner. Now for the defence Nolan and Hunt are the best center halves at the club closely followed by NG why the f..k are we playing RAY crap has always been crap get rid. Pickering and Whelan as full backs. Richards in goal for me all day long far better than Garratt.

    Rant over I would welcome any replies be gentle with me I am a very frustrated Crewe fan that cant understand why we are persisting with the current business model and playing utter crap on the pitch, time the board moved on.
    Those comments could have been made many times over the last few years but decisions will have to be made soon by the Board as when was the last time we received a significant transfer fee to keep the academy going in its present form? 5 years? That is around 4 million pounds cost with almost nothing to show for it on the pitch. So the model is broken. Surely they will see many many clubs our size and less playing in a higher league and in higher positions in this league and none have Cat 2 academies or even no academy.

    I would guess Aainly and others wish they had left the club in the summer and our league position won't help their situation unless we get a turn around soon. Whether changing the manager will make a difference I'm not sure?

    I can't see the current board continuing when they will be having to stump up millions to keep it all going? So I expect a decision soon but it will cost the club plenty when they have to sack people at RH...

    So my question to you all is who now is in our team that will generate the next big fee? And what will that likely to be..

    I didn't think Crewe teams over the years would get beaten very easily by the likes of Mansfield and Northampton!

    What have all these teams got that we haven't? DA is sounding more like Steve Davies every day with his after match comments..IF only!

    Just my opinion but if a million pound academy can't produce a squad of players to compete in the lowest league then it's surely a waste of money that is sorely needed on the first team.

    Mr Bowler and the Board, are you there??????? Surely they have noticed the gates going down and down?
    Last edited by MikeSB; 04-11-2018 at 04:04 PM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
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    677
    In the last five years from memory, and happy to be corrected.
    Fees received for Cooper, Colclough and Clayton
    Sell on fees for Westwood and Hanley.
    Not quite "nothing"

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Posts
    709
    Hi Mike

    If they sold Kirk, jones, Ainley and Pickering all together they would not get a million pound !! The academy model is no longer fit for purpose

    If you were running a business that was consistently losing half a million a year you would make changes, but our aging out of touch board carry on regardless. The first team budget is knowhere near enough to build a competitive team and the players promoted from the academy to the first team are average at best, so it does not take a genius to work out that the first team is going to struggle and if you doubt this just look back over the last 4 seasons and tell me I am wrong. Currently and I suggest forever there is not going to be a 1 million plus deal for a player from this club, the clubs that we once touted our talent to have their own far better funded academies to get their young talent from and if you doubt me again was it not Man City u21 side that rolled into town a few weeks ago to prove the case in point. We currently have a squad of average over hyped ex academy players:

    Garratt
    Ray
    Lowery
    Jones
    Ainley
    Kirk
    Finney

    All of these players are consistently in our first team and are never going to get a big money move, and why because they are average over hyped players with average ability. Add to them the over the hill Porter and Miller and sadly Green who had to work far to hard in a poor midfield for a man of his age and got injured in the process.

    Ryan Colclough a lad of undoubted talent who a few years ago probably would have commanded 500,000 was sold for I believe 150,000 so desperate are the board to get some funds in, I would probably think it cost the club more than that to get him to that stage. George Cooper another player of undoubted talent I believe sold for 250,000 and again I would suggest cost us more to get him to that stage of his career. So with those 2 examples alone it clearly shows a failed business model that is going to take this club out of the professional leagues and probably never to return if not disappear forever.

    Unless the club downgrades the academy to a level it can afford without reducing the first team budget we are a season or two away from oblivion however if the board are so convinced that the academy is still the best way forward for this club I am happy for them to fully fund this folly out of their own pockets.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    May 2009
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    1,611
    You quote fees for certain players, are these guesstimates?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Posts
    709
    150,000 was the fee declared by the buying club Wigan so must assume that to be accurate; likewise Peterborough suggested in their annual accounts a fee of somewhere near to that figure for a transfer so must assume that to be for Cooper.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
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    1,772
    Quote Originally Posted by jimmyboldon View Post
    In the last five years from memory, and happy to be corrected.
    Fees received for Cooper, Colclough and Clayton
    Sell on fees for Westwood and Hanley.
    Not quite "nothing"
    Yes, I know that but as someone just posted, no where near a million pounds all together if you disregard the sell on for Westwood when he went to Burnley and our business model was surely designed around the time when we expected players to get to a standard that PL clubs would pay the millions we got for Ashton and Powell. Surely the Board know this though don't they?

    It was always my gripe that at least 50% of all incoming transfer fees should have gone ie ringfenced for the first team and not all to the academy and that would have given us a fair few million to help stay in L1 at least.

    We get sick of hearing how low our first team budget is and how come Bury can afford the wages of Maynard etc? How did Accrington get all those players without an academy?

    I think it's pretty obvious that most players coming from our academy over the last few years are not good enough for the PL or championship, never mind L2 and there are hundreds of players looking for clubs when we can see them here and now and not what we hope they may be in ten years time which is so pathetic imo. I also get tired of McGarry etc bragging the team has all these academy graduates then to get beat badly by teams we were far better when we were in the old fourth division...

    We are back to square one almost but with a main stand a quarter full... Nice one John!
    Last edited by MikeSB; 04-11-2018 at 08:28 PM.

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