There was some academic research a while back...

Which concluded that most clubs had about a fifty/fifty success rate with signings.

The margins around that are then surprisingly tight. So, successful clubs were not much higher (~60%).

Which, in practical senses, means that if we sign 10 players in a year, then if we have 6 good ones instead of 5 we're doing well. In truth, if the churn is lower than that the ability to judge it on a year by year basis is very hard to tell.

After reading it all, I've tended to view our dealings a bit differently.

Looking at the transfermarket site at our year to year dealings, we signed a catastrophic load of dross the year we got van wolfwinkel, other than that I'd have said we've done okay.

Even that year, the difficulty was down to needing a completely new forward line all at the same time, and so the blame could be laid (in part) on the lack of succession planning in the preceding seasons.

Posted By: Cardiff Canary, Jun 28, 10:26:07