nzlatic

Crowds went up in league 2 didn’t they? He didn’t do a single positive, proactive thing for the football club. His ownership was an unmitigated disaster. He assumed he knew it all and surrounded himself with people who blew smoke up his arse while they were busy feathering their own nests. He didn’t reverse the decline, he accelerated it. Yet you seem to be more critical of the way the club is being run now.

Wow.

I think out of all our signings, Conlon is the biggest mystery to me. He should be really key for us but either hasn’t shown it himself yet or hasn’t been used right. Will be interesting to see what happens to him over the summer. Just editing to say that the signing wasn’t a mystery, what has happened since he joined is the mystery!

I like Hammond, for the reasons you’ve listed. But he’s come in for a fair bit of stick seemingly for not being the finished product.

He knew who the manager was when he signed though? Mellon had already been here a couple of months.

I agree to an extent but the problem with that is if they don’t hit the ground running they get written off as shit… Hammond.

I think you’re slightly overstating Fondop’s abilities there! But he should 100% be getting a new deal. My question is over his record in delivering in big games, so personally I wouldn’t have him down as a constant starting striker. But as a sub or an occasional starter he is a really important player to have.

Cool.

They’ve got til a week on Sunday then! For all those waiting for it before they decide whether to buy or not.

I do think the club need to come out with something… a vision or an update on plans for the next period or something like that. But I’d prefer they take the time and produce something thorough rather than rush out something short.

I may just be a humble happy clapping, blind faith, Mellon loving, ultra positive fantasist, but I thought that interview was largely expectation management from Mellon. If he promised to sort it and say we’re going to have a great summer and we then drew the first 3 games next season everyone would lose their shit. Behind the scenes I reckon they’ll have had their plans in place for existing squad and target replacements for a while.

Could they refuse though if someone else is sniffing? Not really sure how options work. Maybe statsbomb has a suggested contract length feature and we should just go with whatever that says?!

We could have someone taken off us after 1 season if they’ve been really good though and we’d get nothing. Plus only offering those sort of deals could mean we lose out on targets. It’s a difficult thing to get right - long contracts for the great signings, short contracts for the shit ones.

The way I see it is that it’s an OASF led thing where they’re putting questions to him received from the membership. As opposed to a means of the club communicating with fans. There was a good explainer thread about it on Twitter from one of the oasf directors I think. I can’t find it but someone else may be able to.

When the frame rate can’t keep up with the speed of the game you shouldn’t be making absolute decisions on whether it was millimetres off or on. If you’re going to have it, it needs a tolerance that allows for frame rates etc.

Up in Manchester for a booze up tomorrow so taking the opportunity to get back to BP for the first time in ages. Quite looking forward to it. Miss the place.

Oh of course. Totally agree. They’re doing what they always do - looking after themselves and promising some trickle down for everyone else which either won’t come or won’t touch the sides.

Premier league teams want to reduce the number of fixtures that don’t make them money so they can increase the number that do. It’s not about anything other than that.

The issue with a long term plan is that it may require patience as it takes time to implement and hone. Which could mean more time at this level. I agree with a lot of what you’ve said about plan and structure. My guess is that the board have decided all that may have to wait until we’re a league club again. That short term strategy is the way to go to achieve that initial objective of getting back in the league.

It could be the stats. But it could also be down to either Unsworth or Thompson or how they worked together. How skilled were they at identifying the right characters? It could also be loads of other things or a combination! I have lots more faith in Mellon and Brabin to identify those traits we need than I would in Unsworth.

Correlation just based on the evidence we have. If we had a new data driven system for rehabilitating injured players that all the top clubs were using with varying success, but our rehabilitation rates were not improving. Then it’s more likely an issue as to how that system is being implemented than a fault with the system itself.

Aren’t there members of our board that have had experience in football? I don’t mean played or coached, but had previous involvement in football clubs or administration?

So... We need a young progressive coach. But also... we don't need any new fangled stats tech. Or any new fangled job titles. Or any new fangled departments. We need the chaddy to be the home end. We need to recruit like Joe Royle did. What we actually need is a time machine to take us back to the early 90s when we were last good. Or, if we can't do that, we need to get the recruitment right. We have great owners. We have an experienced board with football people on it. We have much improved infrastructure with much more improvement planned. We have a manager with a track record of success. Get the recruitment right this summer and I'm confident we'll kick on next season.

I feel like I'm screaming into the void here but they already do this!!!!! Stats are used to increase the pool of players that the scouting team go and actually scout! They've told us this. So either you think they're lying or you are just ignoring what they say. I don't for one second believe that we sign players purely off stats without any other checks at all.

But I've not said we don't use them too heavily. I don't know how much we've relied on them. My opinion is that I think they should be an asset but they need to be used more effectively. Every aspect of our recruitment department needs to operate more effectively this summer.