01-11-2020, 14:12
The importance of our employing Paul Lemon and hopefully setting up some sort of scouting operation is being proved by the only man above Tom Denton in the goal scoring lists, Sam Barratt.
It must be three years ago, whilst we were still in the EFL that during one of my many bleats about our need for players and our lack of cash meant that we should be scouting Non-League, where there was plenty of talent available for free(-ish), I mentioned Sam. Of course Caldwell gave two-year contracts to declining EFL players going nowhere and set sail for a second relegation. Anyway Sam Barratt of Maidenhead was one of the names I kept boring you with. So his talent must have been pretty damned obvious, or I wouldn't have been able to pick him out.
He's an interesting and unusual player. He really is an artist. Off the field, if not quite on it. But he is also a good player as well as a painter. At the time he was scoring a few and making plenty of goals and was young enough still to go places. AND HE DID - Southend! Almost immediately, though never injury prone in the past, he was seriously injured and his contract was spent in hospital and with the physio' and, of course, a club permanently on the verge of liquidation eventually released him.
Fit again he's back at Maidenhead and banging in the goals, helped by being the club's penalty king. Now obviously I was right that he would have been worth signing, but had he been injured for us, he'd have been a flop. That's the chance we have to take. Of course signings come with a risk factor, injury, or simply poor form at a new club. Premiership clubs sometimes invest millions on a kid who looks as though he'll be the business, but every time he trots onto the field for him something seems to go wrong for him. Within a season or two the kid'll be sliding into obscurity. Sometimes injury intervenes and an Italian age-group international ends up at Buxton Town.
But this new chapter in Sam Barratt's story sees him top of our goal charts and now Southend who released him can't buy a win. It looks as though all they had to do was extend his contract for a season and see what happened once he was fit ....... Isn't football strange? You scout the talent, get it right and just as you are about to blow your own trumpet fate pours superglue into it.
It must be three years ago, whilst we were still in the EFL that during one of my many bleats about our need for players and our lack of cash meant that we should be scouting Non-League, where there was plenty of talent available for free(-ish), I mentioned Sam. Of course Caldwell gave two-year contracts to declining EFL players going nowhere and set sail for a second relegation. Anyway Sam Barratt of Maidenhead was one of the names I kept boring you with. So his talent must have been pretty damned obvious, or I wouldn't have been able to pick him out.
He's an interesting and unusual player. He really is an artist. Off the field, if not quite on it. But he is also a good player as well as a painter. At the time he was scoring a few and making plenty of goals and was young enough still to go places. AND HE DID - Southend! Almost immediately, though never injury prone in the past, he was seriously injured and his contract was spent in hospital and with the physio' and, of course, a club permanently on the verge of liquidation eventually released him.
Fit again he's back at Maidenhead and banging in the goals, helped by being the club's penalty king. Now obviously I was right that he would have been worth signing, but had he been injured for us, he'd have been a flop. That's the chance we have to take. Of course signings come with a risk factor, injury, or simply poor form at a new club. Premiership clubs sometimes invest millions on a kid who looks as though he'll be the business, but every time he trots onto the field for him something seems to go wrong for him. Within a season or two the kid'll be sliding into obscurity. Sometimes injury intervenes and an Italian age-group international ends up at Buxton Town.
But this new chapter in Sam Barratt's story sees him top of our goal charts and now Southend who released him can't buy a win. It looks as though all they had to do was extend his contract for a season and see what happened once he was fit ....... Isn't football strange? You scout the talent, get it right and just as you are about to blow your own trumpet fate pours superglue into it.