By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions. We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
Plus that was the summer of Paul Cook: Demolition Man (planned even before Evans' departure). There was a lot of squad upheaval, boosted by the advent of Gamechanger money arrived and babies may have gone along with the bathwater.
Indeed. See my post of 10:49 - until yesterday's batch of mostly free transfers, not that much has been happening in the Champ, apart from Norwich's shopping spree.
I was referring specifically to the line you had quoted from the previous post. In the context of the whole summer and the coming season. I've answered the OP elsewhere in the thread.
McKenna does have a large part in identifying the targets for the club to go after, the quality and type of player to recruit. He is also involved in the negotiations, selling his vision for the team. How many times have players said they decided to come after speaking to the manager?
McKenna has had much success getting Town from mid-table L1 to the Prem. It took a major struggle to achieve it. However, this relegation is his first big setback. The next stage of proving himself a potentially great manager is how he and his team overcomes that, whether he can get us back to the highest level and secure that position.
Up to 30th June, only 22 transfers to Championship teams had taken place, four of those being to Norwich and another couple to newly promoted teams. Plus a couple of loans. Over a quarter of the division hadn't signed anybody to that date, half had hired just one player.
Yesterday 25 more deals went through, all bar two of which were free transfers (obviously dated for after the end of previous contracts).
It's not like there's been massive movement so far.
It wasn't a real reason for transfers not to be happening, except with free agents having their contracts run out. It's not assessed on a yearly basis, but a rolling three seasons. I doubt too many clubs are doing financial planning for 2027-28 in that much detail yet.
But the overseas market is also quite well plundered, plus it's a lot harder to gauge level and suitability for the English game. On top of which are various administrative issues and possibly language barriers.
It's being talked of as if there is a vast, untapped reservoir of affordable talent out there, just waiting to be snapped up. Rather than a much trickier search over a hugely wider area, lacking an established, trustworthy network of contacts, with players perhaps not wanting to move countries and clubs no less desirous of extracting big fees.
A lot of that comes down to the "lions led by donkeys" mythmaking which grew up in the disillusioned and economically battered 1920s and '30s. Which in turn found its way into the history writing* and teaching of the 1950s to '70s.
In his memoirs Bernard Montgomery (who had served on the front-line in WWI and subsequently rose to high command) says he thinks Haig's personal demeanour, that of a dour, reserved lowland Scot, a product of the late Victorian military, hindered his interactions with lower-ranking officers and men. Thus he came across as detatched, cold and uncaring. He was concerned for soldiers' welfare, but not good at expressing it Combined with the huge casualties of battles he oversaw, it left a bad impression. An area in which Monty himself consciously strove to do better.
Haig was also less politically adept than some of his rivals/opponents, the likes of Henry Wilson and Lloyd George. They being happy to have him painted poorly in the press and Parliament. Not to mention subsequent autobiography.
In reality, Haig spent quite a lot of his time resisting French pressure to conduct offensives which he thought were ill-timed, in the wrong place or likely to be too costly. He was certainly a more competent commander than Sir John French, his predecessor. But, as with almost all the senior generals, he was struggling to learn the lessons of mass industrialised warfare on a heavily fortified front. He was also at times too stubborn in continuing battles after they had stopped being worthwhile, partly through a misplaced optimism of a breakthrough to maneuver and the collapse of a worn-down enemy (which did eventually happen in 1918). He promoted competent generals, such as Plumer, Rawlinson and Allenby, tho was too fond of Gough. A somewhat mixed, but by no means bad, record. Especially when compared with some of his contemporaries (Nivelle, Falkenhayn**).
Then, after the war, he devoted himself to the Haig Fund, the best known descendant of which is the Poppy Appeal, set up to care for ex-servicemen and their dependents.
* Quite a bit of which was ideologically socialist/communist and viewing the war through a prism of class conflict.
** Edit: That's a little unfair on Falkenhayn to bracket him with Nivelle, who was a maniac.
Some of the problems were down to long-service professional senior officers underestimating what the volunteer armies were capable of in terms of maneuver. Thus the assault plan was kept basic to prevent disorganisation. And it was actually quite successful on the right (in conjunction with the French).
The British were not the only ones to overestimate the effectiveness of raw artillery volume. The Germans had done it at Verdun and the French were to repeat the error on the Aisne in 1917 (leading to mutiny and near-collapse). Again, that wasn't helped by views of inexperienced New Army gunners. It was not until 1918 that barrage systems reached their sophisitcated peak enabling the breakthroughs of the German spring offensives and the Allied counter-push which ended the war in late summer and autumn.
The most obvious welfare bill to cut (in terms of quantity) is the one nobody even dares to name. Indeed, it is triple-locked.
Not as if that would be any better, or cause less hardship. But if politicians insist on not maximising income and maintaining spending restrictions, while at the same time increasing defence and other expenses, then what is to be done?
That was partially my point. It is probably better to have had a brilliant player or coach for a short time and to lose them than never to do so, accepting a lower level of success to maintain a steady position*.
There is at least the chance of finding a replacement, the fee will help the finances and great performances lift the club's morale and profile.
* This was to an extent the issue we had in the latter Evans era. A limited risk and finance approach was, in reality, a slow decline which led eventually to stagnation in a lower division.
That was largely stuffed up for them. Railroaded into presenting one of the more cumbersome alternatives, then to have their own governmental partners deride and campaign against it.
Plus events since then have considerably moved the needle of public opinion on electoral reform.
The issue with that being that if a perhaps smaller club acquires a generational talent - especially cheaply or through good fortune such as an academy product or clever scouting of lower divisions/abroad - then that player or coach may be of fundamental value to their success and, at the same time, in practical terms un-replaceable. Them leaving has the potential to cause real damage, yet not having them in the first place may deny success.
The alternative is to accept a level of mediocrity in order to avoid risk. Is that better?
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
