OneSizeFitz

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?

He's got 17 in 37 so far, but apparently hasn't performed and isn't living up to expectations. If it's so unthinkable for a 34yo to score 30 goals, what are these expectations that he apparently isn't living up to?

Gardner pressing really well and winning the ball back on several occasions.

I think he's playing alright...

Actually not playing too badly. Dallas and Sutton struggling, but otherwise doing okay...

Feels entirely plausible to me that someone like Salford could throw £50k at us for him...

Second half has been even worse than the first...

May I direct you to the title and first post of this thread...

Let's say we'd brought someone in that immediately tried to transform this lot into a progressive, passing team midway through the season. How long do we reckon it would have been before the main stand were yelling at them to "stop that tippy tappy rubbish" and "gerrit forward"... and for posters on here to call for us to play 4-4-2 and "hit the big man". Mellon's improved our form considerably, to the extent that we're near the top of the form table, and should be on course to make the playoffs. To slag him off for not having us play like Barcelona whilst doing it feels a little bit unfair to me.

Let's be honest, he was pretty rubbish whenever he played for us... Good luck to the lad - hope he does well. But not many of us were shedding a tear when he left.

Isn't it obvious? He's saying that if we exclude the 4 wins in 17 period last season after Unsworth took charge, and we exclude the period this season where he only won 1 game in 9, and we only include the period where he got results, and we include all of Mellon's games, then he basically did as well as Mellon.

Needs to switch to three at the back at half-time...

Except him scoring more than three times as many goals as anyone else in the squad...