Championship Next Season

[baggieal]

I can see it being stronger next season than this one. Wolves, Burnley and the other team will be very strong. Teams like Wrexham and Birmingham will strengthen and Lincoln coming up will do well with a fantastic manager.

Patel needs to get his money out and we certainly need to get rid of some of our highly paid and injury prone players. We need more quality and still are much weaker without Heggem, Fellows and Palmer who had to be sold. A decent striker is a must along with a quality and creative midfielder! More pace needed!

[baggiematt]

We need to be careful with what progress looks like next season. A few anomalies aside, you dont tend to go from relegation battle to promotion in one season.

A 12th place mid table finish is 6 places of improvement and 10th should be the internal target in my opinion.

That said we might be Imray, a striker and a midfielder from a decent side.

[baggieal]

We need to be careful with what progress looks like next season. A few anomalies aside, you dont tend to go from relegation battle to promotion in one season.

A 12th place mid table finish is 6 places of improvement and 10th should be the internal target in my opinion.

That said we might be Imray, a striker and a midfielder from a decent side.

I agree but with these additions we need to aim for top eight. I still am not convinced with the right manager and a few additions the likes of Hull, Millwall and Wrexham are no better!

I agree Morrison is doing a great job now but there needs to be a thorough process and not just a reaction on 10 games. The manager needs to have a vision, thoughts on quality players and to take us back to the Premier league. Will Morrison be another Frank Lampard for example?

If I was the owner I would want to be convinced with thoughts on new quality players that whoever is in the driving seat will aim for the Premier league and stay there like Sunderland and Leeds.

[baggiematt]

I agree but with these additions we need to aim for top eight. I still am not convinced with the right manager and a few additions the likes of Hull, Millwall and Wrexham are no better!

I agree Morrison is doing a great job now but there needs to be a thorough process and not just a reaction on 10 games. The manager needs to have a vision, thoughts on quality players and to take us back to the Premier league. Will Morrison be another Frank Lampard for example?

If I was the owner I would want to be convinced with thoughts on new quality players that whoever is in the driving seat will aim for the Premier league and stay there like Sunderland and Leeds.

The head coaches job isnt to buy players though Al. It is to coach performance out of the players he has - which Morrison has proven he can do.

He would have to inform the recruitment team about what he needs to succeed.

[baggieal]

The head coaches job isnt to buy players though Al. It is to coach performance out of the players he has - which Morrison has proven he can do.

He would have to inform the recruitment team about what he needs to succeed.

Obviously a head coach does not buy players but he needs a vision of what players are needed ie a creative midfielder. Morrison has done a great job in nine games but then so did Big Dave when he took over. There?s a huge difference between nine games than a vision of taking us back to the Premier and implementing it. Look at Frank Lampard when he took over as Coventry were no better than us and in fact worse!

We need to take stock at the end of the season and do a complete and professional review of a manager who is capable of leading us to the Premier League like Lampard has done. It?s all very well players playing for Morrison now but many will not be here next year hopefully otherwise if they are - we will not go forwards.

Back to the most important position in the club which in my view and always been is another Ashworth ie Player Recruitment Director. The two loans from Villa have been ****e, Mustapha is a fiction of imagination, Gilchrist is very average at best and so is Mepham on very high wages. To pay almost five million for Heggebo with two left feet was a joke.

Yes there?s been a couple of very good signings ie Campbell but still no Heggem and we still have not replaced Fellows or Palmer like for like quality. As 68 said - Wallace was on the decline 2 years ago when Fellows was a different class and his legs have gone. To suggest keeping him even on 50% of his huge 25K plus wage would be a joke for a handful of games as he?s always injured. Dike is better than Heggebo when he?s firing like now but on a huge wage too so do we risk another contract with his injury record? For me not - I would rather take a chance on Maja who has better feet!

[Omegstrat6]

I too think that the Championship will be much tougher next season and whilst our finances will be better than they have been this year, we will still be considerably constrained by them.

I see next season as a transformative one and a chance for a rebuild rather than any realistic push for promotion but that rebuild will be limited by the money available. One thing the club definitely have to improve on is on the sharpness of any recruitment so that we avoid spending money on big salaries for players who don't justify them.

I don't think that aiming for a play-off position next season is unrealistic, especially as the number of places has been extended from 4 to 6, but I do think we need to manage expectations. If we end up just outside of the play offs we might consider that a reasonable result after the debacle of this season.

Any reset will, of course, be about changes in attitude and tactics (something I believe Morrison has already successfully begun) but it is also clearly about changes in personnel and our finances alone won't allow too much of that. For one thing, players that are under contract but on high wages who are not performing as they should be will be hard to attract buyers for and that will limit any funds we have to bring in better/ cheaper replacements.

We are fortunate in some ways that we have several players out of contract at the end of this season which will at least get them off the wage bill but trying to find accurate details of their individual wages is extremely difficult and estimates vary wildly depending on which site you look at. The one common factor is that players like Phillips, Mepham, Taylor, Dike and Grant are paid a lot more than players like Mikey, Diakite and Campbell which can't be right.

With Wallace (whose salary is put at £12,500/wk on the SalaryLeaks site btw so much lower than stated elsewhere), Grant, O'Leary, Maja and Dike all out of contract, the moot question is whether we should retain any of them.

Personally, I believe that O'Leary has done enough to offer him an extension and we need a GK besides Griffiths. Wallace may be a great professional to have around and despite slowing down he has shown he still has ability but he is never going to manage 90 mins at this level so he will surely go unless he accepts a massively reduced wage to remain as a back up player. Grant too has shown commitment and I do appreciate the great work rate he puts in but the reality is that he has very little end product. Again, unless he accepts a considerable drop in wages to be mostly a back up player I can't see him staying.

The bigger questions for me are around Dike and Maja. Morrison's belief in them is beginning to pay off and we are certainly better with two up front but both would be something of a gamble if we were to retain either. As I said in another thread, however, unless we have a proven goal scorer in our sights to recruit, I would still consider them. Controversial it may be, but in an ideal world, I would like to retain both because we need options within the squad if we are to continue to play with two strikers but if we were to do so it would obviously have to entail short term contracts with lower salaries but with bonuses built in. I just have this feeling that if we let either go they will prove their worth elsewhere!

The one thing I think we can all agree on in terms of recruitment, is to do our very best to sign Imray but if we fail to do so then we need a decent replacement at RB. We also ideally need a back up LB as Charlie Taylor can be very hit or miss despite his experience and salary.

Diakite continues to improve and impress and Tamer Bany showed some nice touches in his brief appearance on Tuesday so will hopefully begin to show why he was recruited after his lengthy spell out injured but I still think that one of our top priorities in terms of recruitment has to be a creative midfielder.

The other area we need to look at is on our flanks. With both Mikey and Wallace out, Morrison has utilized Molumby and Price to play wide but it can only be a stop gap. Next season poses us a problem if both Grant and Wallace go as this leaves us with just Mikey (who may not have recovered sufficiently from his ankle surgery to start the season) and Ollie Bostock (who has great potential but has much to learn still) as our more natural wingers.

Whatever happens -and I'm not detracting in any way from the incredible turn around by the players under Morrison and his coaching staff-I'm hoping for a much better season next year!