Steve Davis and the Myth of the Smallest Budget

[thnhouse]

Steve in the Sentinel "we have 14 players out of contract, we finished in the end where the budget put us", what he blatantly seems to be missing is that although you get a small budget at Crewe you're also gifted some incredibly talented youngsters and it's his job to develop them and use them effectively.

Too many loans, too little youth development, terrible signings, personal fallouts with players, undisciplined off the pitch, poor quality on it. I'm not suprised he won't walk , another job won't be easy to find with that CV.

[itwasin]

SD has given the so called incredible youngsters plenty of chances,thats one reason the club is going down to lge 2 so not so Incredible as you make out,its DG job to make sure there ready for the 1st team not throwing them in just because its the Academy. How many outside ****s has the club brought in through the season! Why! Not ready.

[ALEXKNOWALL]

Don't usually comment when "itwasin" is posting but the point re Academy lads and other signings is interesting

....truth is we have one or two relatively solid academy products - Turton, Davis, ray, Jones etc and some with ability such as Ainley, Cooper, Kirk, Wintle,

....but the key to our squad at whatever level is the 4 or 5 more senior pros the club invests in - Fox, Haber, Atkinson, LDV, Nugent, Bakayogo, Bingham

we needed a bit of fight and goals but SD has made poor signings and has borrowed some poor players this season (Hitchcock, Kingsley and the lad from Liverpool who simply sat on the bench)

Next season key signings are even more important as emergency loans will not be an option

[Timmy58]

Kingsley wasn't a poor signing! And that is a fact. Hitchcock is a terrible signing. One that the manager was to some extent forced into due to the unfortunate injury to Seagers who did not look a poor signing. The lad from Liverpool was not one we sought. We took him as a favour to Liverpool and their unders manager. If it hadn't been for King's goals, he would have looked a poor signing but without his goals we would have been in even more trouble. If memory serves, Wintle was one we brought in from lower league football, but the rest are as you say decent performers and need a bit of experience around them although I would suggest that Harry Davis counts as an experienced player now.

[chinaalex]

Now that we are down, can we not send Hitchcock back as there is no 'need' for him ?. Surely it will save the club some money ?

[David_De_ Garratt]

At the risk of trying to sound a little optimistic looking into next season, there are certainly prospects on the fringes of the first team who I fully expect to flourish... Callum Ainley in particular has caught my attention and I believe he along with the likes of Ryan Wintle, George Cooper and Perry NG will all benefit from more regular game time.

The problem as AlexKnowAll rightly pointed out, is the recruitment of the pro's who have lacked any real passion or character to help drive and motivate the younger players who will be inconsistent throughout the season. In Ryan Lowe's brief return, he helped rejuvenate and restore passion and was instrumental in picking up points in November and it wasn't any coincidence that Marcus Haber discovered from watching Lowe he could close down defenders by running. Bakayogo is another who's showed desire and in all honesty has been Davis's best signing this season which speaks volumes since he's only been playing the last 2 months.

[PAULCAFC]

Rochdale, Walsall ,Burton etc all built teams to compete at this level, all small clubs but a determination to succeed, Rochdale have never been in trouble since coming up, gates of sub 3000? laughable!

[Gobstopper]

Its easy to mention clubs like Rochdale, Burton and Walsall all clubs who despite there support base have a bigger budget than ourselves and that is a fact, we can all debate why we have the smallest budget but to call it a myth is a lie. I know people want to put all the blame on the manager and it is easiest to make public comments that are blatantly untrue, such as the smallest budget is a myth. Easy to say but the figures bare this out and the budget will not be improved next season so difficult times ahead for any manager, I'm not sure why Davis or anyone else would want the job.

The Crewe way since the EPPP is no longer the way and the Board of Directors need to realise this, there is not a huge base of talent coming through the academy, there are players coming through but are they good enough. We don't attract the best of the bunch anymore and the days of finding an Ashton, Westwood, Murphy or Powell are long gone. We could pick up youngsters released by premier academies w

[thnhouse]

I've heard that "the days of finding another .... are long gone" every time there's not one in the team for the past 15 years, yet there's always been another.
The reason the budget thing is a myth, and that it's a poor excuse to use, is because a large amount of his first team squad are on youth team wages, and it's his job to develop them into quality first team players. The fact of it is at least 2 of the youth players he failed with are now flourishing elsewhere. he wastes so much of the budget on loans it makes the team inconsistent and stifles our own players growth. The budget might be small but the myth is that it's an acceptable excuse.

[Furberstreet]

It is a fact that the Club is always producing players capable of playing first team football in Leagues One or Two. Finding a gem like Powell, Murphy or Westwood is not quite so easy. It may be that some youth team graduates could play higher, but are held back by loan signings and do not realise their potential at Crewe. I am not saying that all loan signings are detrimental to the home-grown players, but Davis has not always been very selective about who he brings in from other clubs. We jettisoned all of the loan players except for a forward. Lowe was an excellent signing and could be valuable for us in League Two, but Hitchcock has been a waste of space and should have been sent back to his club well before now.