06-12-2015, 13:42
Important as our new manager will be, the direction the club wants to take should be the real issue shouldn't it?
Do we wish to continue the process of struggling into Division One, reaching the edge of the promotion race before eventually falling back to Division Two to re-build forever? I'm 63, we've done that throughout my life, accumulating debt, clearing it a bit, struggling on. Very British. In that time we produced perhaps two or three real star players, watched a few of genuine class whose character marooned them at our level, and others who forged long successful careers without ever making it to the top. And there are the successful managers who clearly picked up the odd do and plenty of dont's whilst playing for us. But we've never got anywhere and only looked like doing so when Harrow School intervened to stop us getting to Wemberleigh.
Yesterday's Telegraph published an odd and interesting pictorial feature on the the next Vardy, featuring eight potential stars "seeking to impress in FA Cup second round ties". It was odd, because three of the players aren't even in the second round:-
Lewis Walker - Ilkeston - only 17, who is just the kind of prospect I'd love to see us grab
Tom Meechan - St Neots - aged 24 but did absolutely fill his boots in the Southern Prem' and Fleetwood are sniffing.
Matty Taylor - Bristol Rovers - 12 minute hat-trick against Wycombe, 25 but lots of clubs are januarying.
The others listed were:-
Danny Mills (Whitehawk) - 24, who I would love us to give a chance. Inexplicably slipped from league football after a £100,000 transfer, but is big, strong and gets 20 non-league goals a season.
Patrick Amond (Grimsby) - 27 but scoring goals, even tipped for the Republic squad for the Euros.
Jordan Burrow (Halifax) - 23 apparently spoken of now as the new Vardy. Released by us, then Morecambe and Stevenage before washing up at Lincoln for England C caps and a move to Halifax. We made a mistake releasing him but should we pay money for him? Not in my book.
Kurtis Guthrie (Forest Green) - 22 with a growing reputation, but his club has a very rich backer who wants to get into Division 2.
Matt Dodd (Stourbridge) - 28 flying winger who is interesting several league clubs. Too old for me!
The issue for me is are we prepared to become a club which recruits and develops players to strengthen both its team and its finances? We have had some success with former non-leaguers. It's a fertile area, so should we concentrate upon it? I'd say yes, would you?
Similarly youth development in this country seems organised to cut talent rather than nurture it. So young players are confined to youth football, radical culling takes place at seventeen and then the introduction to playing against men is haphazard to say the least. No wonder particularly big clubs with large intakes of youngsters persist in getting it wrong, discarding some talent and protecting other precocious youngsters so effectively they then lack the resolve to function in the Premier Leagues. Isn't this the other fertile ground we should be investing in and concentrating upon?
We aren't likely to recruit a bunch of ready-made Championship players who will win us promotion are we? We couldn't finance them and we couldn't grow our fan-base quick enough either could we? We have to add to our finances by selling good players and we have to have a production line so that the team remains at the very worst competitive, don't we?
In a way our new manager's identity is an irrelevance. We might do a Yeovil, reach the Championship and in doing so eventually risk our league status. There is behind this new obsession with Jamie Vardy emerging from Stocksbridge with his tag intact a serious point for clubs like ours. We can either take random and occasionally promising steps by building sides from the chaff searching for better deals, new starts, one last chance, a way to pay off debts together with the occasional hopeful kid OR we can set in place proper organisational aims that will see us not reacting to situations, mere victims of injury and chance, but following our policy, being what we are about. And if the club,or any organisation, is about the right things and knows where it is going and why, then we might succeed - even at a level impossible in the last 63 years.
Or would I rather be a fish?
Do we wish to continue the process of struggling into Division One, reaching the edge of the promotion race before eventually falling back to Division Two to re-build forever? I'm 63, we've done that throughout my life, accumulating debt, clearing it a bit, struggling on. Very British. In that time we produced perhaps two or three real star players, watched a few of genuine class whose character marooned them at our level, and others who forged long successful careers without ever making it to the top. And there are the successful managers who clearly picked up the odd do and plenty of dont's whilst playing for us. But we've never got anywhere and only looked like doing so when Harrow School intervened to stop us getting to Wemberleigh.
Yesterday's Telegraph published an odd and interesting pictorial feature on the the next Vardy, featuring eight potential stars "seeking to impress in FA Cup second round ties". It was odd, because three of the players aren't even in the second round:-
Lewis Walker - Ilkeston - only 17, who is just the kind of prospect I'd love to see us grab
Tom Meechan - St Neots - aged 24 but did absolutely fill his boots in the Southern Prem' and Fleetwood are sniffing.
Matty Taylor - Bristol Rovers - 12 minute hat-trick against Wycombe, 25 but lots of clubs are januarying.
The others listed were:-
Danny Mills (Whitehawk) - 24, who I would love us to give a chance. Inexplicably slipped from league football after a £100,000 transfer, but is big, strong and gets 20 non-league goals a season.
Patrick Amond (Grimsby) - 27 but scoring goals, even tipped for the Republic squad for the Euros.
Jordan Burrow (Halifax) - 23 apparently spoken of now as the new Vardy. Released by us, then Morecambe and Stevenage before washing up at Lincoln for England C caps and a move to Halifax. We made a mistake releasing him but should we pay money for him? Not in my book.
Kurtis Guthrie (Forest Green) - 22 with a growing reputation, but his club has a very rich backer who wants to get into Division 2.
Matt Dodd (Stourbridge) - 28 flying winger who is interesting several league clubs. Too old for me!
The issue for me is are we prepared to become a club which recruits and develops players to strengthen both its team and its finances? We have had some success with former non-leaguers. It's a fertile area, so should we concentrate upon it? I'd say yes, would you?
Similarly youth development in this country seems organised to cut talent rather than nurture it. So young players are confined to youth football, radical culling takes place at seventeen and then the introduction to playing against men is haphazard to say the least. No wonder particularly big clubs with large intakes of youngsters persist in getting it wrong, discarding some talent and protecting other precocious youngsters so effectively they then lack the resolve to function in the Premier Leagues. Isn't this the other fertile ground we should be investing in and concentrating upon?
We aren't likely to recruit a bunch of ready-made Championship players who will win us promotion are we? We couldn't finance them and we couldn't grow our fan-base quick enough either could we? We have to add to our finances by selling good players and we have to have a production line so that the team remains at the very worst competitive, don't we?
In a way our new manager's identity is an irrelevance. We might do a Yeovil, reach the Championship and in doing so eventually risk our league status. There is behind this new obsession with Jamie Vardy emerging from Stocksbridge with his tag intact a serious point for clubs like ours. We can either take random and occasionally promising steps by building sides from the chaff searching for better deals, new starts, one last chance, a way to pay off debts together with the occasional hopeful kid OR we can set in place proper organisational aims that will see us not reacting to situations, mere victims of injury and chance, but following our policy, being what we are about. And if the club,or any organisation, is about the right things and knows where it is going and why, then we might succeed - even at a level impossible in the last 63 years.
Or would I rather be a fish?