OneSizeFitz

I've defended MM so far, but that interview did feel a bit like the ramblings of a defeated man...

After harping on about us needing a young progressive manager with fresh ideas for the last six months, those are interesting suggestions... 1,500 games managed between them, and one of them's been working in the same job (with his dad as chairman) for 15 years.

He'll go to Gateshead and turn into Lothar Matthäus...

The number of players not on that list is depressing...

Dan Langley joins Scunthorpe on loan for their playoff campaign...

But if using data as part of your approach to scouting were such "nonsense", because football is such a "simple game", then surely a competitive advantage would come from not using it at all? Which brings us back to my original question... Statistics and data are helpful evidence in informing decisions when it comes to recruitment. They shouldn't be relied upon as the sole source of information, but they help to make the decision-making process more efficient and objective. That's not me falling for "marketing hype"; it's evidenced by the fact that every professional club in the country will use them to some degree.

He's not wrong though, is he...?

Which of the best teams in the world don't use data as part of their scouting process, do you suppose?

It's a bloody shambles. Almost as if scheduling a 46-game season to finish in mid-April wasn't a terribly sensible idea...

Works out at ~£30,000 a week - with a squad our size, that feels very plausible...

Physios and scouts "run[ning] the North Stand 7 days a week", are they...?

It's quite simple really. A striker of Norwood's age will never score 30 goals a season at this level. But it's a reasonable expectation for Norwood to have scored 30 goals this season at this level. And he hasn't lived up to that reasonable expectation to score 30 goals this season, so he's underperformed and it's largely his fault we're 9th. And we know that this is what the club expected of him when they signed him because they never came out and said it. Case closed.

I give up...

So 30+ goals over a 46-game season? Not sure how that "reasonable expectation" tallies with your earlier contention that a 34yo scoring 30 goals is never going to happen, Rob...

Okay, so what would a reasonable expectation have been?