| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution 11:02 - Mar 1 with 1015 views | Darth_Koont |
TLDR version: We need to go back to a long-term approach however painful that sounds. But a manager who is solid and effective at getting adequate results is key. Lambert's not looking like he's that manager.
Looking at how badly things have unraveled the past couple of seasons I went back to Evans's Five-point plan from December 2016.
Here it is:
- To provide a significant ongoing financial commitment to the club’s academy, enabling a steady flow of players into the first-team
- To provide a sustainable and competitive squad salary budget
- To make annual investment funds available to purchase players in the early stages of their career and to assist in their development
- Maintaining a stable management and coaching team
- To develop a team to play attractive and exciting football
I said so at the time and I still think now that this is a solid strategy. The problem has been execution.
Arguably Evans and McCarthy got the basics right. Although a "competitive squad salary budget" is pushing it. And when you add in limited transfer spending on players that are to be developed and are presumably undervalued then Mick was always up against it in the Championship with at least 10 clubs always going to dwarf our spending.
And the last point re: attractive football wasn't forthcoming. Admittedly, it's more of an aspiration once you know you can compete in the division and it also relies on the development of our own academy players and bargains so wasn't ever going to be a flick of a switch. But given how frustrating the previous 15 years had been overall, clearly it needed more thought and attention even if it was explaining the context to fans and the need for patience. After all, Mick had done this before in 2014/15 building a team of scrappers into a side that could play a bit too but this time the patience and the credit in the bank just weren't there.
But moving onto Hurst,we then seemed to abandon the plan totally. Our own youngsters were sidelined with players like Nydam who had finished the previous season very well now overlooked for new signings like Nolan and indeed Edun. Players like Dozzell found their path blocked and even Downes had to fight his way in. More fringe players like Morris, Folami and Woolfenden had their likely place on the bench taken and slipped out of the picture. And at the same time we were splurging precious cash and paying over the odds for mid-20s players who may or may not succeed but who weren't in the early stages of their career. Basically, we became what Hurst was most comfortable with and with players he knew more about but the result was that we lost any progress on almost every single point.
Lambert inherited a bad situation and a wonky squad. Everything also has become incredibly short-term from trying to stay up last season to trying to bounce back without really building a team. We're paying for that now but also almost the entire long-term strategy has been on hold and suffered as a result. Now our young players are being blocked by a bloated squad and rotation that never gave them much of a chance to settle. And if we don't go up we'll end up cashing in on our better youngsters just to fill the hole in the finances the last two years have caused. So no team building or player development that supports our aspirations but just keeps us with our heads above the water in a lower league.
I'm loath to criticise Lambert for not having a long-term view given the situation he inherited. His failure is all about not being able to get a functional solid team over the past year or more, and developing us from there. In that respect it's been very much like Jewell who always wanted to stumble on a good team rather than get the basics right first.
Where do we go from here? Well, whatever happens and wherever we are in May I think we need to get back on track with a more long-term approach. The key to being able to keep working towards those goals seems to be a manager who can cope with the need to accumulate points in the short term. A manager and coaching team that can take care of the pragmatic side of the game and be hard to beat. I'm not asking for Mick MkII but if we're going to learn from the past and build towards any kind of future then we need someone who can consistently get respectable results irrespective of who is fit and available or how much the opposition is spending. And they definitely need to get results when we're spending more.
At the moment, there's little evidence to suggest Lambert is the manager that can be trusted to take on and execute that long-term approach given his inability to handle the short-term challenges. |  |
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| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:04 - Mar 1 with 1001 views | Marshalls_Mullet |
I don't think that 5 point plan is a strategy. It's a list of targets, it needs a strategy behind it. |  |
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| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:12 - Mar 1 with 971 views | Darth_Koont |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:04 - Mar 1 by Marshalls_Mullet |
I don't think that 5 point plan is a strategy. It's a list of targets, it needs a strategy behind it. |
Well, yes. Each point needs working out in detail and presumably some KPIs as a result but the overall framework is a strategy.
It's calling for a sustainable slow build with player and team development at the core. I think too many fans just jumped to the last point and assumed all that would happen even within a season or two. | |
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| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:19 - Mar 1 with 936 views | RegencyBlue |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:04 - Mar 1 by Marshalls_Mullet |
I don't think that 5 point plan is a strategy. It's a list of targets, it needs a strategy behind it. |
I thought at the time it was the minimum any football club should be aiming for and I haven’t changed my view.
It was meaningless PR designed to pacify critics of Evans. |  | | |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:28 - Mar 1 with 914 views | Darth_Koont |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:19 - Mar 1 by RegencyBlue |
I thought at the time it was the minimum any football club should be aiming for and I haven’t changed my view.
It was meaningless PR designed to pacify critics of Evans. |
In the Championship very few teams were following that approach. Many were spending massively on wages and transfer fees for players at their prime or they were doing it on the cheap and looking for bargains. We were going to do the latter too but in our case, increased focus on and investment in the academy and development players would be the cornerstone to getting a competitive edge and moving forward. Was anyone else making that their approach?
It's also implicit that this would take several seasons as the academy and development squad hadn't produced enough of these players when almost all funds were going to the first team squad. | |
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| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 12:24 - Mar 1 with 796 views | thebooks |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:28 - Mar 1 by Darth_Koont |
In the Championship very few teams were following that approach. Many were spending massively on wages and transfer fees for players at their prime or they were doing it on the cheap and looking for bargains. We were going to do the latter too but in our case, increased focus on and investment in the academy and development players would be the cornerstone to getting a competitive edge and moving forward. Was anyone else making that their approach?
It's also implicit that this would take several seasons as the academy and development squad hadn't produced enough of these players when almost all funds were going to the first team squad. |
[shrugs]
The strategy — as far as I can see — is to cut running costs as much as possible and hope the manager he employs (and does spend money on) can do something under those conditions. The only time he got that right was with Mick McCarthy.
The academy fills the team more cheaply, thereby saving money, but I don’t see anything to suggest it’s going to produce better players than any Championship club.
Last season we had the 18th highest wage bill so we could expect to stay up, but he appointed Paul Hurst. Then Paul Lambert (who may have seemed a safer pair of hands, but that hasn’t worked out either).
The strategy is to mothball until he can find a buyer. |  | | |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 18:32 - Mar 1 with 720 views | tractorboy1978 |
A key omission from that plan is the requirement for any kind of structure above the manager. And that has been an issue for the entirety of ME's tenure here. The manager is expected to run the whole show and in the process is also given too much freedom. Letting Hurst rip it up to the extent he did (after Keane did the same) was unforgivable.
As far as I can see our scouting network is virtually non-existent with the exception of Bowman - who doesn't appear to be utilised anyway. Between Evans and the manager we've gone from Clegg (who seemed to be here for reasons other than football) to the out of his depth Milne (who wasn't even involved in the football side) to the overworked Lee O'Neill. He seems to have several roles he is trying to fulfil all at once.
So many clubs that once were nowhere near us have overtaken us by simply being more progressive, innovative and clever with their approaches. The likes of Brentford, Burnley, Huddersfield, Swansea, I could go on. And that's before even considering the approaches that other clubs like Southampton, Norwich, Sheff Utd have taken to turn their fortunes around.
We are the slow kid in class, the business that has not kept up with technological advances and now finds itself on its arse. |  | | |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 20:28 - Mar 1 with 640 views | Swansea_Blue |
| It's not a failure of strategy, it's a failure of execution on 11:04 - Mar 1 by Marshalls_Mullet |
I don't think that 5 point plan is a strategy. It's a list of targets, it needs a strategy behind it. |
It’s pathetic. How this guy made millions is beyond me.
And when you consider where we were when that ‘plan’ was announced, he’s failed on every point bar arguably the youth development. And that’s been nothing to write home about either. |  |
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