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MPH

Can we stick to our recruitment principles if we want to stay in the top 5?

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It’s long been said that we have always chosen players with the right attitude so that they can blend well with the squad.

 

 

And i’m playing devils advocate here but..

 

Is this a small club mentality? Is it hampering our chances to stay in the top 5 and possibly go further?

 

Would we have turned our noses up at Luis Suarez? Zlatan Imbrahimovic? or have always seemed to have the Prima Donna personalities? ( arguably justified ?).

 

 

And to some extent Gabriel Barbosa? Could he give us something no one else could? 

 

Our transfer recruitment has always been about blending well into the squad.. and it’s served us well and given us a league title maybe! But is it hampering our long term recruitment and stopping us from challenging for honors again?

 

 

 

Just interested in people’s thoughts..

Edited by MPH
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We would never have had the chance to sign Suarez or zlatan so the question is moot. 

 

As for barbosa, he's had 2 chances in europe now and both times he's flopped massively. I personally wouldn't risk it. 

 

As for a general rule of thumb, I'd stay away from "larger than life" players in general. 

 

The thing that will stop us being top 5 or further (at least for the next couple of decades) is money. There's a reason the teams with the most funds generally float to the top of the PL. Lesser teams will break in on regular occasions with a few decent transfers, but generally it'll stay how it is for a long while yet. 

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One of the main reasons we won the title and got into the top 5 this year was that we recruited players with sell-on value, and did our homework as regards buying the right characters. The alternative is to go the way of the Evertons and West Hams of the world. So I think our competence is dependent on us not bringing in old, troublesome and expensive players, rather than in spite of this policy.

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3 minutes ago, MPH said:

And if the players are objecting to someone being a bit of a melt.. are THEY showing a small time player mentality?

I hate to break it to some of you on here but we are not a top six club we have crashed the party a couple of times but their daddy will always buy them bigger cars than ours. We need to get real and hope that the people in charge of our recruitment make sound decisions both for now and selling on later.

The traditional so called big teams also can afford to pay for the best DOF,  coaches , managers etc whereas with us everything is going to be a gamble. 
My opinion for what it’s worth makes it all the better supporting this smaller provincial club.

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Just now, inckley fox said:

One of the main reasons we won the title and got into the top 5 this year was that we recruited players with sell-on value, and did our homework as regards buying the right characters. The alternative is to go the way of the Evertons and West Hams of the world. So I think our competence is dependent on us not bringing in old, troublesome and expensive players, rather than in spite of this policy.

 

 

I get what you are saying....  And i will be very interested to see how Everton get on this season...

 

 

But if our owners were members of the Saudi Royal family and actually NEEDED to burn dirty money ( allegedly)  we could buy anyone, flout the rules and get any player we liked.

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2 minutes ago, mazarron fox said:

I hate to break it to some of you on here but we are not a top six club we have crashed the party a couple of times but their daddy will always buy them bigger cars than ours. We need to get real and hope that the people in charge of our recruitment make sound decisions both for now and selling on later.

The traditional so called big teams also can afford to pay for the best DOF,  coaches , managers etc whereas with us everything is going to be a gamble. 
My opinion for what it’s worth makes it all the better supporting this smaller provincial club.

 

i’m just playing devils advocate here... i like the way the club is ran..

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22 minutes ago, MPH said:

It’s long been said that we have always chosen players with the right attitude so that they can blend well with the squad.

 

 

And i’m playing devils advocate here but..

 

Is this a small club mentality? Is it hampering our chances to stay in the top 5 and possibly go further?

 

Would we have turned our noses up at Luis Suarez? Zlatan Imbrahimovic? or have always seemed to have the Prima Donna personalities? ( arguably justified ?).

 

 

And to some extent Gabriel Barbosa? Could he give us something no one else could? 

 

Our transfer recruitment has always been about blending well into the squad.. and it’s served us well and given us a league title maybe! But is it hampering our long term recruitment and stopping us from challenging for honors again?

 

 

 

Just interested in people’s thoughts..

If someone is unreal but also a bit of a pleb, we'd probably sign him. The players would respect their ability if not the person. 

 

Problem is signing a pleb who is also crap. 

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I know it's been said a lot already, but we've clearly been hit by our collapse in form. The board are perhaps reluctant to get behind Rodgers fully if there's a good chance they'll have to splash out to get rid of him (and if form continue in the same vein as the past eight months for just another 8-10 games, he will be gone). Plus they'll want to financially back a successor, while in the meantime considering that 90m worth of BR's signings have so far struggled to light up the EPL. 

 

From the management's point of view, I suspect targets were drawn up for CL football - names who expected that, or whom we'd only be able to afford with that extra boost to the coffers - and less time was put into the Plan B of 'what happens if we don't make the top four?'

 

The club's model for building has been to target up-and-comers, and the only time we've really deviated from that was when we last qualified for the CL. So the more established names that would have enabled us to build on a top four finish, or compete in the CL, are both less likely to be interested, and less appropriate for a club that (without CL football) needs to sell to buy. 

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9 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

I know it's been said a lot already, but we've clearly been hit by our collapse in form. The board are perhaps reluctant to get behind Rodgers fully if there's a good chance they'll have to splash out to get rid of him (and if form continue in the same vein as the past eight months for just another 8-10 games, he will be gone). Plus they'll want to financially back a successor, while in the meantime considering that 90m worth of BR's signings have so far struggled to light up the EPL. 

 

From the management's point of view, I suspect targets were drawn up for CL football - names who expected that, or whom we'd only be able to afford with that extra boost to the coffers - and less time was put into the Plan B of 'what happens if we don't make the top four?'

 

The club's model for building has been to target up-and-comers, and the only time we've really deviated from that was when we last qualified for the CL. So the more established names that would have enabled us to build on a top four finish, or compete in the CL, are both less likely to be interested, and less appropriate for a club that (without CL football) needs to sell to buy. 

I also suspect that our geographical location doesn't help. 

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2 minutes ago, Line-X said:

I also suspect that our geographical location doesn't help. 

There must be loads of factors which could potentially influence someone's decision. People often disagree with this viewpoint on the grounds that footballers can afford two properties, or commute, to a greater extent than most of us could. So, whereas I always put a lot of thought into where I'm going (and if it's overseas then the difference between, say, Valencia and Albacete, or Naples and Rome, would be really important to me) that's a little less likely to worry a footballer. Especially if there's 30 or 40 grand a week difference in it for them! In fact, whether they live in London or Leicester they'll be out in the countryside somewhere in most cases, and the ground / facilities will be their day-to-day experience of the city. That said, I'm sure it's still one of those things which have influenced plenty of players' decisions in the past.

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2 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

There must be loads of factors which could potentially influence someone's decision. People often disagree with this viewpoint on the grounds that footballers can afford two properties, or commute, to a greater extent than most of us could. So, whereas I always put a lot of thought into where I'm going (and if it's overseas then the difference between, say, Valencia and Albacete, or Naples and Rome, would be really important to me) that's a little less likely to worry a footballer. Especially if there's 30 or 40 grand a week difference in it for them! In fact, whether they live in London or Leicester they'll be out in the countryside somewhere in most cases, and the ground / facilities will be their day-to-day experience of the city. That said, I'm sure it's still one of those things which have influenced plenty of players' decisions in the past.

I strongly suspect that it has - and much of it to do with significant others. 

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1 hour ago, Aus Fox said:

To be fair we signed Slimani, I don’t think that turned out so well.

 

 

and i can’t believe we got a bunch of reports saying he’s a nice little choir boy beforehand so that one in particular baffles me.  i can only think it was a signing that came outside of our regular scouting network/ protocols 

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53 minutes ago, AKCJ said:

In fairness I think there is a clear difference between the likes of Vardy, Suarez, Ibrahimovic etc to the likes of Slimani, Beckford and Balotelli.

 

It's okay to be a bastard so long as you have a great willingness to win games of football. Team mates will put up with you if you're scoring goals/keeping clean sheets and winning games.

 

They won't put up with you if you're not willing to put the effort in.

 

Remains to be seen what type of character Barbosa is (I imagine the latter) but we shouldn't just ignore these types of personalities because they keep standards high. 

 

I bet Vardy is a right twat to be around if we don't win in the dressing room. If players don't pull their weight around like he does then I can imagine he goes off at people. We need those characters. We're in danger of having too many nice lads.

This. 
 

Guys like Zlatan come across as arrogant but they train ****ing hard and ensure that they are the leaders in a dressing room. Esteban apparently took over the dressing room and while it pissed some people off (I think Vardy mentioned he got annoyed) the players shut up and followed because he led by example. 
 

If you sign a maverick, who is also a star, he will be the one who shows up every week and leads by example. We shouldn’t think twice about signing players in this mould.
 

The problem is signing a twat who believes his own hype but doesn’t really cash the cheques.

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Most clubs have a blue print on how they recruit. Look at the ethos that Barcelona had 5 - 10 years ago, compared to where they are now. Signing “knob heads” hasn’t helped them. They got rid of the likes of Zlatan and Ronaldinho etc to build a togetherness and team ethos. They try to make everyone feel equal. No one got elite status. That’s has obviously changed. Compare that to the Real Madrid Galactico approach of buy the best players possible. 

 

Neither way is right or wrong.

 

Leaders, will always lead. Some people may not like that approach but it’s something we’ve lacked at times. Look at the Bournemouth game! 
 

We’ve got to continue on our path; of buying younger players with potential larger resale value. The reality of it is, that we aren’t a big enough draw to pull the likes of Oblack, Messi, Ramos, Felix etc. I personally think we only have one of the top 100 players in the world; that’s Ricardo. 
 

My concern over the past 12

months, is that we’ve changed our ethos, whereby we buy players that are more mid range average, that will keep us mid table Premiership. Perez, Praet etc 

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The interesting thing to me is how we always seem to have our shit together compared to Everton, West Ham etc even with our weird but effective transfer policy (I.e don’t spend big money on areas we clearly need to improve).

 

The problem is we’re trying to break into Man U, Chelsea etc territory who drop absolute fortunes on big names consistently.

 

We’re stuck in a bit of a middle ground here tbh.

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The Sven era's impact on our squad mentality and Pearson giving Mills a Glasgow Kiss is all you need to know about signing the "wrong people", really.

Every drop of success we've had in the past 12 years has been based on building a squad of players pulling in the right direction.

Do I think any of the current crop are "problem" players? Not at all. I think we have a good bunch of lads. They just need to grow a backbone, because the mentality and failure to address our slump in 2020 concerns me. Hopefully (and yes, it is largely blind faith at the moment) the disappointment of blowing the top 4 puts a few hairs on the chest of those who seem to let their own heads drop when we go a goal down, in a similar way to how "Deeney Day" was the making of a great number of members of our squad. As great an experience as it will still be, every time they kick a ball in the Europa League this year, they should be thinking "we SHOULD have been playing Real Madrid and Bayern Munich right now - let's make it happen," if they have anything about them. What we don't want is disinterest to creep in. Prove you're "too good" for the second-string European league lads, don't just half-arse it and feel sorry for yourselves. Ultimately, you're the ones who let yourselves and the fans down with the slump and eventual outcome.

 

This season will go a LONG way, for me, to identifying who actually cares about how we let last season get away from us. I have faith that the outcome will mature a lot of our younger players, but let's wait and see.


What we're missing, IMO, is a general somewhere in outfield who commands respect and can instill that "chin up" mentality in those who we all know let their heads drop when disappointment occurs. I don't know for the life of me where we'd find such a player right now - Morgan is the only one at the club with that aura and he's a bit-part player at best nowadays.

Edited by OntarioFox
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