Transfer Rumour thread

He got an extra £600 for playing/beating against Livingston but almost £6k for the Champions League qualifier.

Madness

 

That's @Silverbantam job .

 

I was agreeing with you more than disagreeing -- there does seem to be enough experience in the side. But we seemed thin after the first eleven, so I wanted to see just what sort of League experience we had. Note League, not any of the cups, not Scotland or Ireland or abroad, not non-League, but the traditional four English divisions. I drew up my list at the end of August, when we had played 5 matches but before we signed Ball and LOB.

From that comes the following first eleven: O'Donnell (218 apps); Mellor (231), NKP (194), A. O'Connor (143), Chicksen (155); Scannell (311), Reeves (183), Wright (313), Akpan (198); Payne (151), Doyle (171).

That, as I said, is not bad as a side, but Scannell's 311 includes a whopping 129 substitute appearances, O'Donnell's 218 have come over 12 seasons, Wright's 313 have been spread out over 10 different clubs, and so on.

But what about the rest of the squad at that time?

Bruenker (9), Colville (3), Devine (14), Gibson (8), Hanson (3), Hawkes (2), Hudson (1), Isherwood (0), Jones (45), Maltby (0), McGowan (6), Miller (53), Patrick (18), Riley (7), Robinson (23), Seedorf (3), Staunton (1), Sykes-Kenworthy (0), Wilson (24), Wood (0), plus some other youngsters also on zero.

All might have been well IF the experienced players had stayed healthy, and played well. But several have been out more than in, or in the case of Reeves never in at all, due to injuries, and others have been poor, in the case of Wright so poor that he can't even make the subs bench anymore.

Experience? Yes, but what quality of experience? Back-ups? Mostly very raw and inexperienced.

And so both posts that I replied to made valid points.

The numbers come mainly from Hugman's site, which is reliable, Soccerbase, which is mostly so, and my own records.

RCB

 

But River City also cherry picks by choosing to exclude Ireland and Scotland inc Scot Premier to reduce experience.

 

Further on that level do you really trear experience at lower league the same as higher. Some of our players have less game time but at Championship level how does that equate to a lot of game time in League 2?

 

True enough; one has to set the bounds somewhere, and I realise that others would set them elsewhere. As long as the bounds one chooses are made clear though, we should be alright. Just another thing to discuss...

...as you do here. I don't think there is an easy answer. What if the Championship player has mostly been a sub, sometimes coming on for only a minute or two, and the League 2 player has been an ever-present for the past 3-4 seasons? Do the advantages of being higher up the ladder outweigh the advantages of playing actual competitive matches in a tough league?

On the appearances, leaving out Scotland and Ireland doesn't, I suggest, affect my argument. Of my first eleven, which were the experienced players, Doyle would add 49 Scottish apps and an unknown (as I can't find a record!) number of Irish apps, and A. O'Connor would add 70 Scottish apps. If we look at non-League apps. NKP would add a massive 205, mostly as a starter, and thus become our "most-experienced" player. O'Donnell would add another 30. So yes, there is even more experience there...but that gets us back to your second point about levels of play and how they are to be treated.

Of the others, only McGowan would add a significant amount of apps, 91 in Scotland. As far as I can tell, Hanson, Hudson, Miller, and Patrick also would add non-League apps, but apart from Patrick's 18 at Kidderminster these do not amount to much.

RCB

 

I haven’t cherry picked any such thing. I listed the players that have made the majority of the games this season as they are the ones likely to be included.

The players you have included are rarely in the team, hence why I left them out. I haven’t said the whole squad are experienced; I said that the majority of the match-day squad are experienced. If not, I’d have also included the likes of Jones, Wright and Reeves in my ‘cherry picking’...!

 

Hang on, why do we exclude appearances in other leagues? Non-league and under 23 games I understand, but ignoring appearances in the Scottish Premiership or the top division in Ireland?

And what difference does it make how many clubs Wright has had to accumulate his appearance?

A player is experienced regardless of what league he has played in. I’m not sure what this has to do with Scotland, Ireland, abroad etc. I’m also not sure why we can’t gain experience as a footballer by playing cup games.

I get that some of the lesser-used squad are inexperienced and that’s why I didn’t say the squad is fully experienced but I don’t get it when Hopkin claims it is a youthful squad.

 

Simple and impish answer: my post...my game...my rules! But I did say what my rules were: *I* decided that *I* wanted to see what sort of experience our players had in the *four traditional English divisions*. As we are playing in one of those traditional divisions this seemed reasonable to me. As I mentioned to another poster above, I do realise that other people will have other rules. Just remember though how many times disparaging comments are made, even here, about the level of play in Scotland -- include Scottish apps to make one set of readers happy, and another set will complain that these should be discounted. Same with the cups: FA and League cups only? Checkatrade? All of it, or only before the recent changes? As for non-League, given the amount now of former League clubs in there, should we just dismiss it out of hand?

So we have to be selective. All we can do is lay out our terms and make our posts.

RCB

 

I’d really like to understand what are the key challenges we consistently face in the transfer windows? Is it funds (wage or transfer budgets)? bad luck with indecisive players/agents/clubs? Attraction of the club/location? Poorly managed internally?

Or are we all victims of media hype?

Or is it all the above?!!

I fully respect all the challenges we consistently hear in every window and I’m sure this isn’t exclusive to ourselves. Furthermore I also definitely do not want to see signings for signings sake and trust DH in this window to only bring in players he’s confident in. That said, why every window do we seem to take it right to the wire and often come up disappointed?

So far Scunthorpe have brought in 6 and 2 gone out. They’re sitting in 14th, 9 points ahead of us. It’s just one example and perhaps not just down to new faces, but are we being dangerously hindered by poor transfer activity and if so, why?

 

Hopkin said: “You never know, you could get a surprise on Wednesday or Thursday and someone phones offering you a player you might not have got two or three weeks ago.

“Patience is going to be key but we hope to have two or three players in definitely by Saturday.

"I don’t want too many similar-type players in. We have to change things and make sure we are covered in all areas for a very difficult four months to May.”

I would hope if someone rings the club offering a player we tried to bring in earlier in the transfer window we have aready signed a replacement player for that particular position, I would hope we had 'A" player as our priority then "B" players as our next option and so on.

 

Its not a difficult cunundrum reallly.

They all want a decent contract , wage decent, playing potential and our very bad crippling wage bill and contracts outstanding all leave us a little below moist team compeeing for the good uns.

 

I also groaned when I saw this in the the morning.

So now Hopkin is hoping that someone rings him up to offer a player? Is that our plan B now? It's also gone from getting someone in for tonights match, to "definitely by Saturday". Where have we heard that before?

"Patience is going to be key". I agree with that - sorry, I agreed with that when we hadn't got anyone in (as intimated) during the first week of the window, but we've now got three days left to define our season. I hark back to me and others saying that January is going to be make or break, but I didn't think it would be left as close to the wire as this. I applaud Hopkin for his "we don't need players we don't need" approach, but surely he can see, like we all do, that despite having a large squad, the majority of them are simply not good enough, clearly highlighted by the fact we put an academy striker on the bench last weekend.

A few injuries in key positions - and we've been very lucky we haven't had any of our strikers injured for a space of time - and we're in a very dire situation without back up if we don't get at least a few players into the club by Thursday.

 

Not seen this mentioned on here so apologies if I've missed it but Ellis Harrison was a name mentioned on Twitter. He'd fit with that striker / occasional winger and has recently lost his spot at Ipswich, who we were apparently in talks with about another forward.

No idea if there is anything in that though, Twitter being Twitter etc.

 

This January window as been particulary tiresome......................

 

Most of the time I feel it's a case of you have to give the media 'something'. Yet I do (personally) think; sometimes it's better to say nothing at all. Let's stop the Decemberesque statements of 'We are prepared' / 'We have our targets' / 'We are speaking to Agents and players'. Keep it simple and low key ......... Do your homework, negotiate and finally sign - THEN issue a press release. This would keep expectation, enthusiasm and overall support in line with the 'typical' January circus.
We all have dreams ........... But dreams are just what they are.

 

My thread scanning skills are clearly getting worse

 

Agents know City don't pay well, they contact us before the window with a player, get us on the hook, we release a statement like " we have deals in the pipeline" , the agent then uses us as leverage to get better money elsewhere.
The deals we have done this window so far are as bad as last January except we are 23rd now and desperate for some momentum going into a relegation scrap