Thetownend.com

I see Whelans latest article also says we are currently operating above our budget as well

Above our EFL sanctioned whatever the L2 FPP budget is called, or our internal budget? If the former then it makes sense why everything is taking so long, why we sold players. etc.

It also makes no sense how we've managed to do it given the state of the squad.

I'll try and track the article down.

edit:
https://therealefl.co.uk/2023/03/27/exclusive-side-set-to-reignite-interest-in-swindon-town-midfielder-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exclusive-side-set-to-reignite-interest-in-swindon-town-midfielder-2 (https://therealefl.co.uk/2023/03/27/exclusive-side-set-to-reignite-interest-in-swindon-town-midfielder-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exclusive-side-set-to-reignite-interest-in-swindon-town-midfielder-2)



Presumably internal one rather than external as I'm sure the EFL would have us in embargo.

Oh yeah he's definitely alluding to the internal budget. Wonder if it's mainly down to the Austin deal.

We've also signed two free agents as injury cover (Brewitt and McEachran) since the close of the window who presumably wouldn't have been budgeted for.

One might have been, had the paperwork not been "forgotten".

I guess there's nothing new in the news really, Angus already says we lose 500K a year.

We shipped out Reed and Gladders, you'd think that would cover it (OK we also brought in Cain). AS above,  I can see the free agents may have been the tipping point.

If we are at budget we've definitely done it through quantity haven't we.

Our squad is a vast mess. Well over 30 players. Not surprised we are over budget.
If we could trim it to under 25 people we could focus on quality not quantity.

Think of the £ per minute the following have cost this year:

Baudry
Adeloye
Devine
Aguiar
Harries
Roberts

Shudders

£500,000?

I expect Morris & Brand didn’t come cheap.

Certainly more expensive than Lindsey and that awful gobby assistant of his.

"Fun" fact - Baudry played 856 league mins before his injury, more than RHM has to date, and five times most of the others on that list there.

Non-youth teamers with low minutes played are Devine (54), Roberts (86), Harries (140), Aguiar (155), Adeloye (172) and Tomlinson (190). Everyone else has passed 200 (Minturn narrowly).

The max played is 3330 (Brynn) for context. Hutton the highest outfielder at 2992, Wakeling second 2513.

That is a fun fact, but my choices were pretty fair for the others! Nice use of 'data'.

I'd expect RHM to get some decent mins in the next 9 games.

Has anyone with squad #9 ever played less minutes than Adeloye?

http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/PlayingRecord.asp?PersonID=CLARKELE&Season=2011-2012

Leon Clarke managed 158 league minutes before Di Canio kicked him up the arse live on Sky!

We got Benson in and gave him the shirt after though, so "the occupant of the #9 shirt" definitely played more minutes that year.

does insurance pay for some of the injured players ages?

We were on track to have used 40+ players this season in all senior competitions, with no real cup runs.  That is an absurd number which probably speaks to where the budget has gone.

If only there was one person who was responsible for recruitment at whose door this s***show could be laid....

That's what I would have assumed. Unless its like car insurance and you don't want to claim from it or your premium is astronomical for the next 5 years.

Does make you wonder if the ‘admin error’ was a cover for a deliberate act of sabotage because of the budget.

31 days to business and they leave it until the eleventh hour which wasn't long enough!

A loan from spurs?  That would be free surely.

Deffo cock up.

Along with appointing the manager on the last day of the transfer window so he couldnt bring anyone of his choice in. Me just being a cynic as per

It was a permanent deal

Jephcott won't be cheap.   Suspect we are paying all his wages.

So it was, in that case probably not a cock up

Morris might have said he didn’t want him.

When Morris was interviewed and done his presentation at the Surrey hotel you would imagine they discussed individual players in the squad plus potential targets.

My understanding is that it was definitely a cock up.

He was very close to signing for Hibs in Jan

I'm not having a dig here but you do know if you're writing a swear on here, you are allowed to...it's not the national press and non-PG words don't have to be censored. If you're gonna write it, just f***ing write it ;)

To be honest Aud, an average of £1.6k ea per week would put that lot at c£500k. It's not really beyond the stretches of imagination.

Thank fuck for that! Sorry, I'm hardwired from another forum I use where posts with swearing are banned.

Yeah mumsnet frowns on that kind of thing.

 :clap:

Jesus wept.

And some think its a hilarious joke that he should be blamed.

Some people won't accept any criticism of the club or its hierarchy.

Amusingly/terrifyingly most of them wouldn't accept any criticism of Power until the denouement because "hE SavEd OuR cLUb" once too.

I've not aware of anyone on here who hasn't questioned the recruitment, apart from the odd wind up merchant.
It's clearly been a shitshow, even if all of them as individuals go on to play in the prem, the balance has been wrong and a total of 5 wins in 5 months for 2 different mangers in the basement league proves that.
 

Yeah people are inventing straw men here. Show me someone who is delighted with the season and I'll show you a troll.

The "camps" such that they are are people who think this is 100% on Sandro who deserves to be placed in a wickerman on the Magic Roundabout, and people who think there might be a bit more to it than that.

Jayo or JJ, ban this cunt for swearing will you!

I don't think it's even as far stretched as that tbh, other than the odd one or two. Most people think that there is more than one cause and most would agree with that, I think the differential here is more to do with that we all are aware that the buck must stop with someone when in a senior role. Now yes, often a manager will take the hit for not getting the most out of a squad or poor tactics, the owner isn't likely to bin himself off and one manager has been sacked - well not quite but thankfully a club was crazy enough to pay to take him off Town's hands or he might still be here. I imagine if so and the circumstance was as such, most of the lean would be on Lindsey. That' isn't the case so I think a lot of people in the-leaning-towards-Sandro-getting-the-chop camp are quite confident to actually state that he should be the one to go.

Since SdM has been responsible for at the very least, sourcing the talent and bringing it to the attention of the manager then as we know that the squad just isn't good enough/too imbalanced/too young/not experienced enough etc and Morris effectively came in after the transfer window - let alone his assistant wasn't officially here some time after, I can see why SdM shouldn't be heading up player recruitment any time soon. Does that mean he should be sacked? I don't know, because his data analysis might be quite good and whilst some will say, yes he's one of the sums of the parts, surely that could apply in terms of assembling a proper recruitment team. SdM probably shouldn't be laden with the responsibility of heading up all/most player recruitment. Much like Minturn shouldn't start every week, nor should any of the young talents we signed - not to start with anyway.

The whole season had been a clusterfuck of trying to do things with very little infrastructure or experience in place, in all departments. Which in turn has actually made the club look incredibly tinpot. I can get shot down for stating this, yet I said it months back that the club felt as if it were a little tinpot. I got pelters then - but truly I was concerned at how skeletally ran the club appeared/s to be. It feels non-league/professional ran in a professional league. The only thing distinguishing Town from other clubs is the skin that sits over the image of the club, a facade if we must; and a healthy gap between the club and the football league trapdoor...for now.

In essence, I think Sandro should not do the current role he is responsible for but could learn alongside an experienced head in the mold of someone like Paul Jewell or even David Byrne. Someone who has actually got contacts or has worked in a Youth Development area and can spot a player. I'm a big fan of Michael Skubala at Leeds, and whilst I joked about him coming to Town as Morris' assistant, someone like that would also be a cracking appointment if Town are serious about having an infrastructure that, identifies, develops and brings through good young talent; a dusty field in Karachi won't cut it.

The recruitment isn't the only thing that's wrong with the club

Please tell....???

Nothing that people don't know about?

Still a broken tannoy system in DRS (H&S issue), debt has been re-allocated to Clem rather than reduced as they say, little money but random trips to Karachi OK, really strange social media on-goings during Lindsey saga (should have released a short statement saying discussions were ongoing) and with Austin (Sky publishing it days before), as well as many advisory board questions not being answered despite "full transparency" being promised. There's plenty to question atm.

Just out of interest as i do miss them. What questions have been unanswered? Also they have made everyone aware already in the past that Karachi is paid by Zav personally not the club

The rest needs sorting asap

As well as the loudspeaker problem in the Town End (been inaudable for years), and whilst we’re at it could also do with some wifi, almost impossible to get any signal in the Town End !!.

There are many, many better judges and more informed posters than me here but I do have the feeling that the seemingly most popular lines that Scott Lindsey's and Sandro's individual uselessness are to blame for this season's disappointment are rather simplistic.

1.  On 1st January, when SL was reported as having quit, after a defeat at Colchester, STFC stood in 6th place, 5 points off Northampton in 3rd.

2.  For the 10 games since Gav's goal fiesta at the end of Jan, STFC sits 4th from bottom. 3 points off bottom.

Of course SL and Sandro's roles were rightly being questioned earlier but January is when the wheels came off.  Conroy and MacDonald off with no replacement.  We've then lost Khan for a ridiculous 5 games.  And FBT with injury.  Following Baudry's early season injury.  

We seem to have been asleep at the wheel when January came along.  Probably for months.  As has been hinted, there is a look of amateurishness about the footballing side of a club enjoying near 10k gates.  

And talk of seeing how Morris goes once he has recruited his own players for next season - whilst fair to Morris - presumes a degree of ambition and cogency in recruitment that appears not to be there.  If we judge how difficult getting Ed Brand over the line turned out to be.  

Sandro may have a contribution to make and we can hope Morris and Brand have some interesting contacts.  Can our recruitment rely on them?   Not in my opinion.  Where is the commitment to getting the fuck out of L2 that having a Paul Jewel and an experienced player spine with the necessary physical presence and nous?  

I pray the club starts to up its game and intensifies promotion-orientated recruitment - right up there next to or even ahead of speculative sell-on strategies.

I don't "blame" the Director of Football Operations in so far as any of us would likely have taken such a role, even if we were wholly unqualified for it.  I blame whoever recruited him and how that was allowed to transpire - it simply makes zero sense on paper.  I blame why on earth we'd think doing this would replace a person with contacts in the game without providing all the necessary infrastructure around them - a one man band this type of dept is not (it can be if you rely on someone who knows a few people and call in favours).

However, if January is when the wheels came off - we can blame the Board (which seems to be an owner and CEO, but maybe a few others in dark corners) and the person heading up recruitment.  We fucked an already creaking squad and a Manager replacement.  We essentially went on holiday and left the kids behind in the house, and wondered why some of them had fucked off only to replaced by a few homeless people.

My biggest concern for the summer is that we haven't really enhanced the Operational/Recruitment side of the club since January.  Who on earth knows anything about running a football club in there?

My one hope is that Morris does have contacts, and we start to lean on him.

My next biggest worry is that Morris is a dud.

I'd say, an owner looking at this, would assess the season and determine something needs changing to ensure improvement.  Unfortunately SDM is the likeliest candidate for replacement.  You need not abandon the project, but get a proper project Manager in and suck up the cost of doing so.  Support them with the right people to make it work, start working on the training facilities.

Think you are right Rob.

One thing that cannot be overlooked is the lack of decent training facilities. People keep harping on about Brentford and Brighton but Brighton early doors built a state of the art training center at Lancing just off the A27. Its arguably the best in the country and helps attract players to the club. Now I'm not saying we can do this just yet but something more than a ploughed field in Wiltshire would be nice.

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/club/stadiums/training-centre

The director of football approach is fine if you get in the right players. The emphasis this season was to get in a lot of young inexperienced players in the hope that they would hit the ground running and help us get promotion as well as increasing their values for any sale purposes. In my opinion Sandro got the balance all wrong and needs to change his formula and add more experience if he wants to compete and get promoted out of league 2 asap.

Defining "right" is step 1 for the DoF.
This season we've moved on competent* players on presumably because they had no resale value, contract expiry and/or contract amount.
In the vein of being open and transparent I'd like to know if "right" will continue to be an intentional shop window for younger players or if we're going to make a concerted bash at getting out of this shitty league.

*I'd argue better than their replacements but that's a separate point

I've no problem getting 2/3 academy players but you have to balance it with some older heads with league 1/2 experience just like Orient, Northampton & Stevenage have in their side and like we had last season & the promotion season when Wellens was in charge.

100%. Grant signing was a masterstroke that season.

Agreed.

Does Zav get paid by the club? Does he post for the STFC coaches wages time?

(ok ok, the main point is the club isn't funding it)

It's still just weird as fuck to be honest.
----
Personally think the most pressing issues are things like the 'maybe' situation over season ticket financing, and people not being able to get in contact with the club at times.

The training ground situation is embarrassing.

Sadly I don’t think Clem has anywhere near the money to take that on too.

We’d need a freak transfer sale or a new owner before anything can happen in that dept.

They have anwered those questions previously though . It is weird as fuck don't disagagree, i still think personally he is hoping for some kind of Austin/Fitton situation

I still reckon he is looking at the Visa route - financial rewards for obtaining Visa's in a perfectly legal way (if morally a bit dodgy), leveraging the club connection to do so.

You make it sound so simple…

It is if the director of football is good at his job😀

I'm looking forward to us expanding this model like City Football Group. Only in Zav's case it'll be in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Mexico and Colombia. Because that is where the untapped footballing talent is.

🤣🤣🤣

It's pretty much this.

I'd like to come onto a thread titled 'Transfer Rumours' and see discussions about rumoured transfers. Is it too much to ask?

There's plenty of space on the forum o talk bollocks, conspiracy theories and generally moan.

Can we just try to apply a little bit of thread discipline please?

This. It is now well established what posters think and feel about ‘management’ personnel at the club.

Tbh, it's March/April. There will be fuck all rumours of sorts anyway and if it was at Town, we'd all know about it and yet the club wouldn't probably announce the signing until after they'd already left and signed for about their 5th club  :D

Thread split from Transfer Rumours thread.

Not to be confused with the "not STFC" Transfer Rumours thread...

Fixed :)