Completely agree that I wish we could ban loaning players completely as it just encourages stock piling of players. Chelsea currently have 41 players out on loan which is just ridiculous. Think how many players would be available to the likes of us if this were stopped. I realise we wouldn’t get any of these 41 but eventually some of these type of players would cascade down to us at a lower level of wages
It’s amazing how normal football fans like ourselves see an easily fixed problem for the benefit of the game in general but the money men/women at the top of our clubs don’t. Our own club loves a loan and even promote the philosophy behind it but don’t see the damage it creates to the sport in general. Teams are winning trophies with other teams players....sounds dodgy to me.
However we also use the loan system to benefit us.
Scott McKenna went out on loan and was subject to what would have been a record breaking sale for us.
McLennan was out on loan at Brechin.
Wright is on loan at Dundee and we’re all hoping he come back better for the experience.
Anderson is out to Dunfermline, benefitting from game time and again we hope he comes back a better player
I know all about who was loaned where. The point being that loaning players to other teams is not creating a sporting chance for clubs. The whole loan system is completely wrong. If Chelsea for example loan out 40 odd players that is just absolutely ridiculous. 3 loan players whether in or out your club should be more than ample for each club to cope with.
We ourselves loan far too many players in and out our club. Football as a sport is ruined as the business side of it has killed it as a fair sport. Nothing will convince me otherwise.
Agree with all this - I don't understand what the point in someone like Chelsea loaning 40 players out every season is - about 38 of them are never ever going to play for Chelsea first team anyway. Why don't they save themselves a load of money and just not buy those 38 players in the first place.
For us, we tend to get about 1 loan deal right every season - this year it's been Lowe (and I guess Ball has done fine too, but he was here last year as well). The rest have been useless. As have most of our signings.
By the end of this season we'll have signed Forrester for £200k who made about 5 sub appearances before being released; Halford who quite possibly won't have played a single game; Gleeson who'll have made a handful of substitute appearances. Wilson on loan will have made a few sub appearances, Hoban on loan played about 3 times and was injured the rest of the time, Stewart played a few times and then disappeared.
If we have another transfer window as rubbish as last summer we're going to be absolutely honking next season given that quite a few are likely to leave and need replaced.
Large turnovers of players is the norm in Scotland.
Look at the Dhims & SEVCO.
Their turnover will be at least as high as ours.
My problem is that I don’t think the recruiters (McInnes & Richardson) are very good at it.
As has been witnessed in the last few windows.
No manager ever has a perfect transfer record, but the last 18-24 months have been pretty poor in the main.
Yeah, that's it - football has become quite a short term thing now - often get players coming in who only last a season and then move on. We have small resources in relation to the expectations so we're probably always going to bring in some guys who don't meet the standard - like you say it just seems that in the last 2 or 3 windows our strike rate has been poorer than normal.