Quote Originally Posted by ragingpup View Post
Ok, but I remember in the first year, Barlaser for one went through a very poor patch and I don't think that there was a clamour for anyone of these players to be resigned on a much larger contract at that stage. I would completely agree that it would be wonderful if you could assuredly and definitely guarantee that such talent could be spotted and nailed down to much improved terms within 9 months of not perfoming well enough for other clubs to sign, and it to pay off consistently with such players realising their potential so they could serve out their contracts for years to come for us and us defying that trend that you correlates final league position with size of the wage budget. And that we wouldn't be hit with a player that resigns on great terms, and then loses form completely so we are left with a big money reserve.

I do agree with your general point that we need to be better at identifying great talent earlier and offering them better terms so they accept but I'm not sure you fully recognise the trickiness in identifying such talent in the up and down flux of players form as well as the costiness when you get it wrong. I agree we could be better at it but I'm not sure you fully realise the difficulty and risk involved to any club operating with a tight budget.
You are correct players have a lot of power, well actually it is the agents that do. However 10s if not 100s of footballers drop out of the game every year at various stages of their careers and a number of them still have a lot to give. Now we shop in that market and it is not unreasonable for the fans to expect the professional buyers that are paid well by the club should be able to identify and resource three or four of them a season, remember the head of that department was recently promoted to DoF. Secondly we have suffered losing players for nothing or next to nothing as their contracts have come to an end, so what approach to contracts have been taken that meant we lost out, do other clubs similar to us use a different approach, do they get better results in regards to moving players on. These questions are valid and this is what the DoF And the CEO (ha!) should be resolving and improving. Now it could be that TS stops such creative and different ways of working, you would hope not because it is the clubs pockets that are being hit. So what is it that stops us doing better in this area? If it is short-sighted TS then little we can do until he moves on, if it is the skills of the employees then change them, we change the coaches when they hit a bad run of results, why not the ones that hide in the background. We are a small club but this year has highlighted a number of areas that simply are not acceptable even within the constraints we operate within. Just an opinion