Notts looking for a striker

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Originally Posted by Elite_Pie

That's as much of a myth as 'Charlie McParland played an attractive passing style of football'. Fake Munto money was responsible for getting it going again. Any manager we've ever had would have wanted a youth programme, and do you think Sven would have signed up if it wasn't part of the plan?

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Ahhh Munto. What a ride that season was. If only it wasn’t a scam things could be so different

"The Munto Season", if ever you needed an example of when 3 managers in a season works that's the one! :D

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Originally Posted by Notts78

Ahhh Munto. What a ride that season was. If only it wasn’t a scam things could be so different

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True, but it was bloody good while it lasted!

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Originally Posted by laddo

"The Munto Season", if ever you needed an example of when 3 managers in a season works that's the one! :D

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It worked because we had a bigger (fake) budget than the rest, a better squad than the rest, and a manager who got the squad playing to their full potential despite not being able to spend any of the fake money.

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Originally Posted by Elite_Pie

True, but it was bloody good while it lasted!

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I loved it. That season was amazing. We travelled in big numbers (comparatively speaking) and had nights like the Rochdale game at the Lane.

The fundamental question is what is the academy’s purpose? If it’s to provide players for the first team, it’s been a miserable failure for over 20 years.

If it’s to help balance the books by producing the occasional player that Premier League clubs swoop up, then it’s had three success stories in the past decade. Have the sales of Bearne, Dongda He and Etete made the academy self-sufficient? Only the club know that. And, of course, the last sales were in 2018 and none were for huge fees a la Jermaine Pennant (think we ended up getting £750k for the latter due to a Finnity deal when we were in administration).

The worry about the first year pros we’ve released in recent seasons is that most had to drop down quite a few leagues to find loan clubs (below National League North/South), suggesting they were a long way short of what we needed. And of course, COVID has decimated youth team football this season, so we’re unlikely to see any young players breaking through.

One interesting point about the three players we sold in recent years is that they were all born in 2001 - so we must have been doing something right with our scouting the year/years we signed them.

It was a great season , one of the very best if viewed in isolation.

All participating factors without a doubt , but the main reason it worked was the players the pretend money allowed us to sign in 2009.

Without that fake money and players we may have had 3 different managers that season for very different reasons like in 2018/19.

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Originally Posted by Elite_Pie

It worked because we had a bigger (fake) budget than the rest, a better squad than the rest, and a manager who got the squad playing to their full potential despite not being able to spend any of the fake money.

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Exactly that - so how close do we think NA is to achieving the full potential from this current squad, and if there is more potential, can he extract it and create a consistent, winning side in this season?

50/50 for me!