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1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

That journalist can piss off to be honest.

1] Vardy & Mahrez are not even slightly 'typical' even of Leicester's signings

2] I don't recall journalists blowing their loads over them 12 months ago

3] Does he have any actual evidence that we never watch players, or that Leicester never use statistics but simply rely on grumpy men in flat caps?

4] Some of the summer signings are amongst the 'best' players at the club (I realise that's little accolade) and represent most of the small resale value this squad has

5] They're 'not fit to share the same room', but they were fit to share the same football pitch when we drew 1-1 with Leicester three weeks ago

6] Just piss off Dave Armitage

I got out of bed the wrong side maybe. 

I think the journo has more than a point. Leicester have signed Vardy & Mahrez and Cambiasso (last season) and so on. Players for little or no money who were top quality. That suggests good scouting etc.

Our summer signings are mostly in our team, the team that is woefully bottom.

Our problem as often said is not that we didn't spend any money, but that we spent it appallingly. That, to me, is down to a deliberate policy to go for "moneyball" players, which in itself was a reaction to previously letting managers kind of adopt a kid in a sweet shop type approach. One extreme to the other.

 

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1 hour ago, sexbelowsound said:

That's what I said. Generate a list of players, watch them using one of those online systems and then go and watch the ones you are really interested in live.

Sorry, misread your post 1st time round

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An article from the start of the season about Leicesters recruitment strategy - Link

So, a recruitment team/committee, use of stats/video analysis etc to identify players, all the apparently bad things only we do

Yes Leicester go and watch players initially identified via stats, but then we do as well.

Our recruitment strategy is no different to other clubs. Obviously it falls down if you don't have good people employed within your recruitment team (and we obviously didn't in the summer), but that doesn't mean the principle is wrong. Tom Fox and the club have many things to be criticized for, but trying to get the recruitment process at the club up to date is not one of them.

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it's not the process that (I think) is the problem. it's the policy. if you have a policy that says "we will buy players with the intention of developing them and selling them on for more money" then that's fine if you don't mind what division you end up in. Crewe kind of did a version of that for a long time - they developed their own talent, sold enough on for good money to run at least that side of the club for a profit, and went up and down like the Assyrian empire.

Us doing the same when the starting point was a team that nearly went down was almost guaranteed to see us relegated. I think the policy of doing what we did over-rode the urgent need to replace a goalscorer whop kept us up and 2 or 3 other key players who left, with at least as good, if not better equivalents.

The process of scouting, analysis etc. fine.

We've got a lovely stadium and a crap team to play in it.

We've got a Premier league training facility and first division players to train in it

We've got a (we're told) fine player scouting process and we recruited the wrong type of players.

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47 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think the journo has more than a point. Leicester have signed Vardy & Mahrez and Cambiasso (last season) and so on. Players for little or no money who were top quality. That suggests good scouting etc.

Our summer signings are mostly in our team, the team that is woefully bottom.

Our problem as often said is not that we didn't spend any money, but that we spent it appallingly. That, to me, is down to a deliberate policy to go for "moneyball" players, which in itself was a reaction to previously letting managers kind of adopt a kid in a sweet shop type approach. One extreme to the other.

 

Cambiasso was hardly unknown or required extensive scouting. They had the gumption to sign him, yes, but that doesn't seem like a scouting issue per se. 

I'm not in any way arguing that our summer signings were brilliant; clearly they weren't. However, several of them are basically good players who are either injured (Amavi) or took too long to settle, only now coming good (Veretout, Gana). It's also worth noting that we stole Veretout from under Almighty Leicester's noses - clearly our wildly different approaches to scouting led us both to that same conclusion. 

I don't believe we spent the money 'appallingly'. I think we spent it moderately poorly, with some acceptable purchases. Look, the summer previously we brought in Cole, Richardson and Senderos for a combined total of less than £1m. This cheque has been in the mail for a long time; last summer was a decent-but-flawed attempt to address it. 

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1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

 only now coming good (Veretout, Gana).

 

Still waiting for this to happen, they have improved but they are still way below what's required at this level.

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2 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Blandy - What's our policy then? Do you think it was to build a sub standard squad?

i think like Pete says we were building a young team hope develops and their value goes a hell of a lot then sell them for  a profit in next few years which for  a team that finished 17th was a completely stupid gamble. Losing key players as well, we should have signed a few more experienced premier league players in there as well. Instead of getting Rudy we should have gone for someone with premier league experience. I would have gone for just one of Veretout or Gana and signed another CM who has played here before.

I dont know who was responsible for the recruitment process was it fox, reilly who??because they should never be trusted to buy another player again. as much as I didnt like sherwood, I wont believe these were all HIS signings. Remi should choose the players he wants no questions asked. I trust Garde more than bloody Fox and the hopeless Reilly

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23 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

For every Vardy, there's 10 Bowery's/Jerome's/Ebanks-Blake's/Nugent's and the list goes on.

only one of them players is actually complete shit. Jerome, Ebanks Blake and Nugent were all good Championship strikers

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4 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Blandy - What's our policy then? Do you think it was to build a sub standard squad?

Pretty much as Dem said, Dave.

I think as a  reaction to the wastage of getting no money back for a very high outlay, over the years, the "club" decided to specifically adopt a policy whereby only small fees would be permitted to be paid for older players, and for younger players the aim would be to find one that we could develop and sell on for more money than we paid. And even then fees would be restricted to relatively low levels

Neither of these two things in themselves are "bad", indeed they are aims which in many circumstances are wise. The difficulty is that when you are a club that's spent 4 years battling the drop, then lost your best players, you need to have more than just a policy that addresses long term development and minimises exposure to potential financial losses.

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4 minutes ago, blandy said:

Pretty much as Dem said, Dave.

I think as a  reaction to the wastage of getting no money back for a very high outlay, over the years, the "club" decided to specifically adopt a policy whereby only small fees would be permitted to be paid for older players, and for younger players the aim would be to find one that we could develop and sell on for more money than we paid. And even then fees would be restricted to relatively low levels

Neither of these two things in themselves are "bad", indeed they are aims which in many circumstances are wise. The difficulty is that when you are a club that's spent 4 years battling the drop, then lost your best players, you need to have more than just a policy that addresses long term development and minimises exposure to potential financial losses.

All very fair and well put Mr B. 

On the flip side as you say, in and of itself it is not an inherently bad policy to adopt and they are, in all fairness, working within the financial restraints placed upon them. They will also have sought guidance from the manager at the time, who has unequivocally stated this was the case. I think they should have signed more experience in the centre of the park and just a "better" striker all round. But at the back, for example, they bought in Richards and Lescott. Two very experienced footballers. It's also impossible to know what others they had their eye on that went elsewhere. 

I wish they had done a better job, hindsight is a wonderful thing from the outside. But I personally could not envisage Guzan being as damaging as he was. Nor could I see Grealish falling off the map as he has. Nor, frankly, did I dream in a million years that Sherwood would be so utterly useless. Neither did they, clearly. Their biggest crime, as it were, was not signing a goalscorer suited to our style of play. Who's fault that is is up for debate, but I don't think it's fair to blame Tom Fox.  

I think Fox should probably fall on his sword. But I think the hatred for him is unsavoury and misguided. The bigger problem was not the players we signed, it was the players we didn't sign and I find it hard to place that blame on anyone except Randolph Lerner. I think to do so is letting him off lightly. 

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6 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I think Fox should probably fall on his sword. But I think the hatred for him is unsavoury and misguided. The bigger problem was not the players we signed, it was the players we didn't sign and I find it hard to place that blame on anyone except Randolph Lerner. I think to do so is letting him off lightly. 

Fair and reasonable comment in all of your post. As we're all to an extent guessing and second guessing, it's hard to be sure of much

In terms of the bit quoted, yeah, there's a case for Fox to go, as the bloke in charge of the day to day stuff. There's also a counter argument to say that people learn by their mistakes, if they're not dumb (and he's not), and yet more changes and turmoil are not what the club needs.

I think you could look at the fees for Delph and benteke (40 mill) and the other 9 mill or so spent, and say go for 3 or 4 players with that money. get some proper, ready to go, top half premier league quality in the spine of the side (striker centre mid, forward) to replace Vlaar, Delph, Benteke, and maybe a left back and stuff the rest of the rebuilding. First make sure you're not worse than you were. That's kind of why i am critical of the transfers they did. I think they took the wrong course. I don't think that with 50 million or thereabouts available to spend we can necessarily criticise RL for the way they went, unless he specifically told them to go the way they went. More would have been nice and maybe wise, but even so 50 odd million is a big wedge of cash.

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49 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

All very fair and well put Mr B. 

On the flip side as you say, in and of itself it is not an inherently bad policy to adopt and they are, in all fairness, working within the financial restraints placed upon them. They will also have sought guidance from the manager at the time, who has unequivocally stated this was the case. I think they should have signed more experience in the centre of the park and just a "better" striker all round. But at the back, for example, they bought in Richards and Lescott. Two very experienced footballers. It's also impossible to know what others they had their eye on that went elsewhere. 

I wish they had done a better job, hindsight is a wonderful thing from the outside. But I personally could not envisage Guzan being as damaging as he was. Nor could I see Grealish falling off the map as he has. Nor, frankly, did I dream in a million years that Sherwood would be so utterly useless. Neither did they, clearly. Their biggest crime, as it were, was not signing a goalscorer suited to our style of play. Who's fault that is is up for debate, but I don't think it's fair to blame Tom Fox.  

I think Fox should probably fall on his sword. But I think the hatred for him is unsavoury and misguided. The bigger problem was not the players we signed, it was the players we didn't sign and I find it hard to place that blame on anyone except Randolph Lerner. I think to do so is letting him off lightly. 

Very much agree with the whole Post, but didn't 'like' as I don't see the reason Fox should go.  I genuinely think he 'nearly' got it right, but that we were so close to the edge after the previous years, the errors you rightly point out (which we all saw, so are perplexing) and the things he didn't forsee (which many of us also didn't, so less perplexing) have been very costly. 

I  don't understand why he then didn't rectify some of that in January (or at least explain why), but other than that would risk that he has learned and will be better next season.

(And still don't see how that makes what Leicester did so much better as a process.....)

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42 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Really.

He was excellent last year. The wheels falling off I put down to burn out after such a relentless ride. 

I think excellent is being generous, especially his tactics (eg. the persistence in playing a suicidally high line all the time) and general Lahndon bipolar disposition. But this is a Tom Fox thread and my TS thoughts have already been made clear elsewhere.

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