At the moment the clubs recruitment strategy appears a little muddled

We seem to be targeting British based players with prem experience or players the likes of Newcastle, Villa, West Brom and Palace are interested in but do not appear willing to pay the fees or wages that those clubs will pay/demand. Whether you agree with the clubs stance on wages (and I suspect most do) is irrelevant really it's whether the strategy is likely to be effective and the delay in bringing in players so far raises some question marks in that regard. We either need to compete and pay the going rate in terms of fees and wages (and on Brady I think that is around the sort of figures being mentioned now and not what we were offering before) because if we don't, one of these others will or we should be looking at a different strategy picking up talent from the lower leagues and abroad. It feels at the moment we are doing a bit of an Alwierdeweld or Quagwhatsisface and are going to end up scrambling around late in the window after missing out on others. For example, Villa have been linked with Lambert and Brady. They will probably sell Benteke for ?32m next week then buy both and pay them ?80k a week rather than the ?40k we are no doubt offering.

I'm not saying we are doomed, I think we have enough already to have a good go but I would really like us get in a couple more ASAP . That either means stumping up the cash for the likes of Brady or Lambert or spreading our net a bit wider and trying to unearth a gem or look at a loan or two. Nor am I saying we should necessarily be paying silly money wages but we do need to face facts, the bar has been raised and other clubs who are no bigger than us (perhaps gambling a little ahead of the new tv deal) are paying ?60-?80k a week now. If we can't do that yet then we need to get smarter and spread the net wider. As it is we seem to have a strategy based around recruiting a type of player who has never been more expensive at a time where we can't/won't pay the going rate.

Posted By: Jim on July 22nd 2015 at 08:10:28


Message Thread


Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in