Club announces new manager!

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Club announces new manager!

by JR » 06 Feb 2018 00:25

Manager decision hot off the press from the board this evening.....

https://www.readingfc.co.uk/news/2018/f ... y-manager/

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by From Despair To Where? » 06 Feb 2018 09:43

Thats what I don't get. The first team is an utter shambles and them we make an appointment that, on the face of it, suggests someone running club does actually have a semblance of a clue about what they're doing.
Last edited by From Despair To Where? on 06 Feb 2018 09:45, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Hound » 06 Feb 2018 09:45

Mentioned this on the academy thread

Gourlay and BT say all the right things and everything looks good for the U23s, the academy, the women’s team

It’s just the one team that most people care about is the one big shambles at the moment

Good luck the chap anyway

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Vision » 06 Feb 2018 09:54

From Despair To Where? Thats what I don't get. The first team is an utter shambles and them we make an appointment that, on the face of it, suggests someone running club does actually have a semblance of a clue about what they're doing.


Because despite what a lot of people on here seem to think it's quite clear the owners do have a long term plan for the the playing side.

It may be that last season's near miss and Stam's own reputation/ambitions means we've been a little sidetracked in giving promotion a real go (in terms of last January and the summer transfer window) but the signs are clear that there is a long term focus from the very top even if they don't directly communicate with the fans themselves.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Hound » 06 Feb 2018 10:06

Vision
From Despair To Where? Thats what I don't get. The first team is an utter shambles and them we make an appointment that, on the face of it, suggests someone running club does actually have a semblance of a clue about what they're doing.


Because despite what a lot of people on here seem to think it's quite clear the owners do have a long term plan for the the playing side.

It may be that last season's near miss and Stam's own reputation/ambitions means we've been a little sidetracked in giving promotion a real go (in terms of last January and the summer transfer window) but the signs are clear that there is a long term focus from the very top even if they don't directly communicate with the fans themselves.


^^^ agree fully

all the we are doomed talk is nonsense imo. I also thought it was interesting in BT's quotes. It comes over to me that he and the owners want to play good attacking football. There was no mention of Stam in there


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Re: Club announces new manager!

by From Despair To Where? » 06 Feb 2018 10:37

Oh I agree and I don't buy in the slightest the suggestion that Tevreden/Gourlay/the owners don't know what they are doing.

I meant it more in the sense that the first team is the one that seems to be deviating from the strategy and it's the one area where we are struggling.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by bagman » 06 Feb 2018 12:19

This is a brilliant appointment. Ged Roddy was a very good friend of Eamonn, and very supportive of our EPPP application. Superbly connected and very capable. Will be a great addition to our excellent coaches ( Doddsie etc)

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Victor Meldrew » 06 Feb 2018 12:31

From Despair To Where? Oh I agree and I don't buy in the slightest the suggestion that Tevreden/Gourlay/the owners don't know what they are doing.

I meant it more in the sense that the first team is the one that seems to be deviating from the strategy and it's the one area where we are struggling.


If the success of an Academy is judged on the number of graduates to a successful first team I would suggest that our Academy has failed.
Apparently it has taken a small fortune to set up and to run each year and yet ultimately what has been achieved?
I hope that the new bloke brings real success -it strikes me that the club is forever patting itself on the back (if an institution can in fact pat a back) but I don't see evidence of a successful academy when I look at our first team week-in week-out.

I desperately want us to produce home-grown talent but for all the plaudits I wonder if the Academy works and maybe the model should be just snapping up youngsters from other clubs much in the way that I believe Brentford operates every year.

Our first eleven on Saturday had no graduates from the Academy and lost miserably.
Perhaps the fault lies with successive managers who are just not brave enough to put faith in youth, a classic example being Richards not playing when fit (and very able) with Stam preferring to play a right-footed player ahead of a natural left-footer or, even more foolishly, sticking with a player he signed from poxy Man Utd (he must be good because he comes from there and Stam knows a natural defender when he sees one. :roll: ).
Good luck to the Academy manager (or is it the hyped title of director).

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by TiagoIlori » 06 Feb 2018 13:37

Victor Meldrew
From Despair To Where? Oh I agree and I don't buy in the slightest the suggestion that Tevreden/Gourlay/the owners don't know what they are doing.

I meant it more in the sense that the first team is the one that seems to be deviating from the strategy and it's the one area where we are struggling.


If the success of an Academy is judged on the number of graduates to a successful first team I would suggest that our Academy has failed.
Apparently it has taken a small fortune to set up and to run each year and yet ultimately what has been achieved?
I hope that the new bloke brings real success -it strikes me that the club is forever patting itself on the back (if an institution can in fact pat a back) but I don't see evidence of a successful academy when I look at our first team week-in week-out.

I desperately want us to produce home-grown talent but for all the plaudits I wonder if the Academy works and maybe the model should be just snapping up youngsters from other clubs much in the way that I believe Brentford operates every year.

Our first eleven on Saturday had no graduates from the Academy and lost miserably.
Perhaps the fault lies with successive managers who are just not brave enough to put faith in youth, a classic example being Richards not playing when fit (and very able) with Stam preferring to play a right-footed player ahead of a natural left-footer or, even more foolishly, sticking with a player he signed from poxy Man Utd (he must be good because he comes from there and Stam knows a natural defender when he sees one. :roll: ).
Good luck to the Academy manager (or is it the hyped title of director).

We’ve raised like £28m in 7 years on youth players so that comment is utterly absurd. You need to be realistic here, you can’t expect a load of youth players to suddenly form the best championship team in history. How many times have we raised a youth prospect and he’s too good to be able to keep hold of? Sigurdsson, McCarthy, Long, Tshibola and Hector spring to mind, it doesn’t matter where they are now, they were all key players when they left us. For most of our recent history we’ve relied on clubs buying our players to keep afloat and we’ve managed to raise £28m in 7 years, that alone in my books means it’s been a massive success, had we not had the academy we would have gone into administration 4 years ago and there are some rumours that we avoided it at the early stages of last season, so don’t forget that


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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Hound » 06 Feb 2018 13:38

I think (hope) I’d fit the side would have had a couple of graduates in at least (Obita and/or Richards)

Kelly has played a fair bit, Smith as well

We’ve just signed up 7 (I think) graduates on long term contracts. Obvs these boys haven’t done anything yet but it is encouraging

I suppose a lot depends on where this group go from here to ascertain whether it’s been a success or failure over the last few years

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Victor Meldrew » 06 Feb 2018 14:00

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From Despair To Where? Oh I agree and I don't buy in the slightest the suggestion that Tevreden/Gourlay/the owners don't know what they are doing.

I meant it more in the sense that the first team is the one that seems to be deviating from the strategy and it's the one area where we are struggling.


If the success of an Academy is judged on the number of graduates to a successful first team I would suggest that our Academy has failed.
Apparently it has taken a small fortune to set up and to run each year and yet ultimately what has been achieved?
I hope that the new bloke brings real success -it strikes me that the club is forever patting itself on the back (if an institution can in fact pat a back) but I don't see evidence of a successful academy when I look at our first team week-in week-out.

I desperately want us to produce home-grown talent but for all the plaudits I wonder if the Academy works and maybe the model should be just snapping up youngsters from other clubs much in the way that I believe Brentford operates every year.

Our first eleven on Saturday had no graduates from the Academy and lost miserably.
Perhaps the fault lies with successive managers who are just not brave enough to put faith in youth, a classic example being Richards not playing when fit (and very able) with Stam preferring to play a right-footed player ahead of a natural left-footer or, even more foolishly, sticking with a player he signed from poxy Man Utd (he must be good because he comes from there and Stam knows a natural defender when he sees one. :roll: ).
Good luck to the Academy manager (or is it the hyped title of director).

We’ve raised like £28m in 7 years on youth players so that comment is utterly absurd. You need to be realistic here, you can’t expect a load of youth players to suddenly form the best championship team in history. How many times have we raised a youth prospect and he’s too good to be able to keep hold of? Sigurdsson, McCarthy, Long, Tshibola and Hector spring to mind, it doesn’t matter where they are now, they were all key players when they left us. For most of our recent history we’ve relied on clubs buying our players to keep afloat and we’ve managed to raise £28m in 7 years, that alone in my books means it’s been a massive success, had we not had the academy we would have gone into administration 4 years ago and there are some rumours that we avoided it at the early stages of last season, so don’t forget that


Er..we may have raised that money but how much has it cost to create and run?.
Your assertion is the "utterly absurd" one in that you quote money going one way only.
Also your assumption is that without an Academy none of those players would have come here.
Wasn't Gylfi here more than 7 years ago as a 15 year-old youth player and of course Long came as a 17 year old as part of the Doyle transfer so would have come here whether or not we had an Academy?

As I said earlier, I would love to see more graduates make it to the first team but, compared to a lot of other clubs, it feels as though we are lagging behind in such a large catchment area, one in which I would hope we would attract the new Theo Walcotts etc. rather than seeing them end up elsewhere.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Hound » 06 Feb 2018 14:04

costs about £4m a year doesn't it? So about breaking even

Which is probably on balance a success, albeit a small one.

It has other positives though - the structure which allows a lot of kids to play in the teams associated to the academy would be one.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by TiagoIlori » 06 Feb 2018 14:16

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If the success of an Academy is judged on the number of graduates to a successful first team I would suggest that our Academy has failed.
Apparently it has taken a small fortune to set up and to run each year and yet ultimately what has been achieved?
I hope that the new bloke brings real success -it strikes me that the club is forever patting itself on the back (if an institution can in fact pat a back) but I don't see evidence of a successful academy when I look at our first team week-in week-out.

I desperately want us to produce home-grown talent but for all the plaudits I wonder if the Academy works and maybe the model should be just snapping up youngsters from other clubs much in the way that I believe Brentford operates every year.

Our first eleven on Saturday had no graduates from the Academy and lost miserably.
Perhaps the fault lies with successive managers who are just not brave enough to put faith in youth, a classic example being Richards not playing when fit (and very able) with Stam preferring to play a right-footed player ahead of a natural left-footer or, even more foolishly, sticking with a player he signed from poxy Man Utd (he must be good because he comes from there and Stam knows a natural defender when he sees one. :roll: ).
Good luck to the Academy manager (or is it the hyped title of director).

We’ve raised like £28m in 7 years on youth players so that comment is utterly absurd. You need to be realistic here, you can’t expect a load of youth players to suddenly form the best championship team in history. How many times have we raised a youth prospect and he’s too good to be able to keep hold of? Sigurdsson, McCarthy, Long, Tshibola and Hector spring to mind, it doesn’t matter where they are now, they were all key players when they left us. For most of our recent history we’ve relied on clubs buying our players to keep afloat and we’ve managed to raise £28m in 7 years, that alone in my books means it’s been a massive success, had we not had the academy we would have gone into administration 4 years ago and there are some rumours that we avoided it at the early stages of last season, so don’t forget that


Er..we may have raised that money but how much has it cost to create and run?.
Your assertion is the "utterly absurd" one in that you quote money going one way only.
Also your assumption is that without an Academy none of those players would have come here.
Wasn't Gylfi here more than 7 years ago as a 15 year-old youth player and of course Long came as a 17 year old as part of the Doyle transfer so would have come here whether or not we had an Academy?

As I said earlier, I would love to see more graduates make it to the first team but, compared to a lot of other clubs, it feels as though we are lagging behind in such a large catchment area, one in which I would hope we would attract the new Theo Walcotts etc. rather than seeing them end up elsewhere.

I’m very sure we’ve made a profit, you could also count Obita as saving a few million to bring it up to £30m so I highly doubt we’ve spent more than that, but of course unless the documents of how much it costed the club then we can’t say for sure. I was saying in terms of when they were sold, our youth facilities still played an important part in developing Sigurdsson and Long, there’s hardly any guarantee they’d be the same had they not had that luxury of youth facilities. You seemed to suggest that our youth facilities hasn’t benefited us at all, which isn’t true, especially considering our 11/12 squad had a load of former youth players that we still developed, and that alone surely means we’ve made a massive profit.

Re giving youth players more playtime whilst it’s frustrating it’s not being utilised to it’s full potential the club has tended to get it right with youth players, get a lot more right than wrong. Stam has given plenty of chances too, in the cup to impress, perhaps he thinks they’re not ready yet. We’ll have to trust him on that judgment


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Re: Club announces new manager!

by TiagoIlori » 06 Feb 2018 14:21

Hound costs about £4m a year doesn't it? So about breaking even

Which is probably on balance a success, albeit a small one.

It has other positives though - the structure which allows a lot of kids to play in the teams associated to the academy would be one.

We have to spend 2.3 million minimum to keep category one according to this http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/9 ... p-changes/

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Victor Meldrew » 06 Feb 2018 14:33

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TiagoIlori We’ve raised like £28m in 7 years on youth players so that comment is utterly absurd. You need to be realistic here, you can’t expect a load of youth players to suddenly form the best championship team in history. How many times have we raised a youth prospect and he’s too good to be able to keep hold of? Sigurdsson, McCarthy, Long, Tshibola and Hector spring to mind, it doesn’t matter where they are now, they were all key players when they left us. For most of our recent history we’ve relied on clubs buying our players to keep afloat and we’ve managed to raise £28m in 7 years, that alone in my books means it’s been a massive success, had we not had the academy we would have gone into administration 4 years ago and there are some rumours that we avoided it at the early stages of last season, so don’t forget that


Er..we may have raised that money but how much has it cost to create and run?.
Your assertion is the "utterly absurd" one in that you quote money going one way only.
Also your assumption is that without an Academy none of those players would have come here.
Wasn't Gylfi here more than 7 years ago as a 15 year-old youth player and of course Long came as a 17 year old as part of the Doyle transfer so would have come here whether or not we had an Academy?

As I said earlier, I would love to see more graduates make it to the first team but, compared to a lot of other clubs, it feels as though we are lagging behind in such a large catchment area, one in which I would hope we would attract the new Theo Walcotts etc. rather than seeing them end up elsewhere.

I’m very sure we’ve made a profit, you could also count Obita as saving a few million to bring it up to £30m so I highly doubt we’ve spent more than that, but of course unless the documents of how much it costed the club then we can’t say for sure. I was saying in terms of when they were sold, our youth facilities still played an important part in developing Sigurdsson and Long, there’s hardly any guarantee they’d be the same had they not had that luxury of youth facilities. You seemed to suggest that our youth facilities hasn’t benefited us at all, which isn’t true, especially considering our 11/12 squad had a load of former youth players that we still developed, and that alone surely means we’ve made a massive profit.

Re giving youth players more playtime whilst it’s frustrating it’s not being utilised to it’s full potential the club has tended to get it right with youth players, get a lot more right than wrong. Stam has given plenty of chances too, in the cup to impress, perhaps he thinks they’re not ready yet. We’ll have to trust him on that judgment


Maybe we won't have to trust him much longer.
As I said, your £27 or £30 million is a pointless figure as it isn't balanced against cost (which the club always told us was an enormous amount each year) and the 2011 squad will have had players that came through the normal youth system rather than that of a top Academy.

We have always produced young players - my main point is that in recent times there haven't been many and the club keeps on buying outsiders at great expense and of late not very successfully.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Vision » 06 Feb 2018 14:55

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Er..we may have raised that money but how much has it cost to create and run?.
Your assertion is the "utterly absurd" one in that you quote money going one way only.
Also your assumption is that without an Academy none of those players would have come here.
Wasn't Gylfi here more than 7 years ago as a 15 year-old youth player and of course Long came as a 17 year old as part of the Doyle transfer so would have come here whether or not we had an Academy?

As I said earlier, I would love to see more graduates make it to the first team but, compared to a lot of other clubs, it feels as though we are lagging behind in such a large catchment area, one in which I would hope we would attract the new Theo Walcotts etc. rather than seeing them end up elsewhere.

I’m very sure we’ve made a profit, you could also count Obita as saving a few million to bring it up to £30m so I highly doubt we’ve spent more than that, but of course unless the documents of how much it costed the club then we can’t say for sure. I was saying in terms of when they were sold, our youth facilities still played an important part in developing Sigurdsson and Long, there’s hardly any guarantee they’d be the same had they not had that luxury of youth facilities. You seemed to suggest that our youth facilities hasn’t benefited us at all, which isn’t true, especially considering our 11/12 squad had a load of former youth players that we still developed, and that alone surely means we’ve made a massive profit.

Re giving youth players more playtime whilst it’s frustrating it’s not being utilised to it’s full potential the club has tended to get it right with youth players, get a lot more right than wrong. Stam has given plenty of chances too, in the cup to impress, perhaps he thinks they’re not ready yet. We’ll have to trust him on that judgment


Maybe we won't have to trust him much longer.
As I said, your £27 or £30 million is a pointless figure as it isn't balanced against cost (which the club always told us was an enormous amount each year) and the 2011 squad will have had players that came through the normal youth system rather than that of a top Academy.

We have always produced young players - my main point is that in recent times there haven't been many and the club keeps on buying outsiders at great expense and of late not very successfully.


Define "recent times" . I'd say that Liam Kelly and Jordan Obita playing regularly in a side that reaches a play-off final (with the added financial advantages of that) would count as a success and recent.

Go back 5-6 years and the fact that a promotion winning side containing HRK, Jem, Pearce, McCarthy as significant contributors provided us with plenty of financial payback. Not the fault of the Academy that the money was wasted and disappeared down an Anton alley.

The point you make about the Brentford model is a good one and it will be interesting to follow. I think Huddersfield have followed the same path. The thing is though they have done this primarily because they feel they are losing out on the best young talent anyway so have basically bailed on that and will pick up any that fall through the cracks elsewhere at a later age. Despite what you may feel is the case, having an academy means we actually don't lose out as much as we used to with regard to young talent from our catchment area going elsewhere.

I'm not sure we have always developed young players particularly. Certainly not those 21 or under. Between Neil Webb (or a few years before him even) and Adie Williams I can't think of many (Archie maybe but I think that would be stretching it) who would have played as many games as those I've mentioned above or generated as much money for us as the likes of Gylffi, Tishbola and Hector.

By and large though the Academy really has been a boon for the club and I believe you're being a little harsh in your assessment. I take your point about the last month or so but as I've said before I think the fact we got so close to promotion side tracked us a bit from the long term plan to (unsuccessfully obviously) give promotion a real go.

Oh and a home grown English World Cup winner to boot ;-)

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by TiagoIlori » 06 Feb 2018 14:58

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Er..we may have raised that money but how much has it cost to create and run?.
Your assertion is the "utterly absurd" one in that you quote money going one way only.
Also your assumption is that without an Academy none of those players would have come here.
Wasn't Gylfi here more than 7 years ago as a 15 year-old youth player and of course Long came as a 17 year old as part of the Doyle transfer so would have come here whether or not we had an Academy?

As I said earlier, I would love to see more graduates make it to the first team but, compared to a lot of other clubs, it feels as though we are lagging behind in such a large catchment area, one in which I would hope we would attract the new Theo Walcotts etc. rather than seeing them end up elsewhere.

I’m very sure we’ve made a profit, you could also count Obita as saving a few million to bring it up to £30m so I highly doubt we’ve spent more than that, but of course unless the documents of how much it costed the club then we can’t say for sure. I was saying in terms of when they were sold, our youth facilities still played an important part in developing Sigurdsson and Long, there’s hardly any guarantee they’d be the same had they not had that luxury of youth facilities. You seemed to suggest that our youth facilities hasn’t benefited us at all, which isn’t true, especially considering our 11/12 squad had a load of former youth players that we still developed, and that alone surely means we’ve made a massive profit.

Re giving youth players more playtime whilst it’s frustrating it’s not being utilised to it’s full potential the club has tended to get it right with youth players, get a lot more right than wrong. Stam has given plenty of chances too, in the cup to impress, perhaps he thinks they’re not ready yet. We’ll have to trust him on that judgment


Maybe we won't have to trust him much longer.
As I said, your £27 or £30 million is a pointless figure as it isn't balanced against cost (which the club always told us was an enormous amount each year) and the 2011 squad will have had players that came through the normal youth system rather than that of a top Academy.

We have always produced young players - my main point is that in recent times there haven't been many and the club keeps on buying outsiders at great expense and of late not very successfully.

We’ll be in league one very quickly if we rely on purely our academy, hence using our academy heavily should be last resort for us. Tevreden has always said he wants to leave room for academy players to break through, hence we have been letting fringe players such as Cooper, Samuel, Wieser, Gravenberch and Popa go over the last year. I share exactly the same frustration as you as do a lot of people, let’s just hope Stam is making the right call, Cooper for example really struggled after being thrown in the deep end

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by Hound » 06 Feb 2018 15:06

I'm not sure Cooper really struggled. He generally looked good until he made a Blackett like cock up. I wouldn't say there was a lot between them tbh

I don't think academy players should be seen as last resort either. The likes of Smith, Andresson, Rinomhota, Richards, Barrett and Watson could all be as good an option from the bench as we currently have.

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by TiagoIlori » 06 Feb 2018 15:46

Hound I'm not sure Cooper really struggled. He generally looked good until he made a Blackett like cock up. I wouldn't say there was a lot between them tbh

I don't think academy players should be seen as last resort either. The likes of Smith, Andresson, Rinomhota, Richards, Barrett and Watson could all be as good an option from the bench as we currently have.

I really didn’t rate Cooper when I saw him play, seemed too slow and it quickly became obvious his lack of experience cost him dear, it came to the point he was getting targeted. And aye these players add a lot in their own right but you still want to sign first team players for the obvious reasons, I’d much rather see a youth player break through because they’re good enough rather than because there’s no one else from the senior side to play there, but obviously in disastrous situations like the left back situation you have to look at the academy

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Re: Club announces new manager!

by muirinho » 06 Feb 2018 15:50

Hound I'm not sure Cooper really struggled. He generally looked good until he made a Blackett like cock up. I wouldn't say there was a lot between them tbh

I don't think academy players should be seen as last resort either. The likes of Smith, Andresson, Rinomhota, Richards, Barrett and Watson could all be as good an option from the bench as we currently have.


I'm assuming for Cooper, when you say "generally looked good until he made a Blackett like cock up" - you do mean - on a regular basis. As opposed to just the once.

Blackett is potentially much better than Cooper, IMO. The problem is "potentially". If he doesn't sort out his concentration and application issues, then he'll be another on the "Whatever happened to" pile. But you can see in him why he was bought. It's just at the moment he's not producing what he should be capable of.

For the academy boys - maybe they are good enough, maybe they aren't. A lot of those you mentioned were in the team that got relegated from PL1 last year, remember. So I think it's fair to say that they're a work in progress. For all the "they can't do worse than the first team" nonsense you hear from some - if they can't beat fellow U23 teams, why would they be able to beat senior teams?

Also worth noting Rinomhota is only just coming back from injury, Andresson is currently injured, Richards is coming back from injury and Watson has been out for a year and is only slowly coming back. They certainly aren't an immediate go-to option right now.

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