Recruitment

[StefanAVFC]

A debate usually requires a back and forth. 

Characterizing people challenging your views as 'attacking yours' shows you were never interested in a debate tbh.

[lapal_fan]

2 minutes ago, TRO said:

1. I think you are missing the point.

2. My Op was opening a debate on recruitment.

All i read above is "insinuate that some of our signings are failures....not state," insinuate"......I am dubious, yes, that they will come good, there, I stated it, not insinuated.

"writing off players who MIGHT come good, you have no more idea than me"

3. I am saying yes, they might come good, personally, i am dubious.

4. The idea of the thread was to get other peoples views, not to just attack mine, as an answer....and question why i have had the temerity to start such a thread

We still have c10 days to see what they come up with.

1.  There is no point

2.  You weren't opening a "debate" on recruitment - you said what you think and when people who don't think that way you've shot down, but liked and approved of the few people who agree with you.  That's not a debate, that you standing on a soap box yelling anything but not listening in return.  Ergo, it's pointless and you could have used another thread to say what you said. 

3.  What?  You're saying yes, but no?  Who are you?  Vicky Pollard? 

4.  That may have been your intention, but if you have a weak point and get questioned about it, even if you don't agree, you should just take those opinions into account.  But you haven't/don't.  Look at my "debate" with @Dr_Pangloss earlier in the thread - we don't necessarily agree, but you can tell we respect each others opinions and have listened to one another.  @Dr_Pangloss - Fancy a bum?

[Dr_Pangloss]

@lapal_fan if and only if you're receiving!

[lapal_fan]

4 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

@lapal_fan if and only if you're receiving!

[Rob182]

12 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think you are missing the point.

My Op was opening a debate on recruitment.....my opinions were just that, no more, its was your opinions, it was looking for.

All i read above is "insinuate that some of our signings are failures....not state," insinuate"......I am dubious, yes, that they will come good, there, I stated it, not insinuated.

"writing off players who MIGHT come good, you have no more idea than me that they will come good, but its your opinion, which i respect.

I am saying yes, they might come good, personally, i am dubious.thats my opinion

The idea of the thread was to get other peoples views, not to just attack mine, as an answer....and question why i have had the temerity to start such a thread.

you cite player examples to question, so what, it doesn't change my overall view.....you should just promote your opinions.

your last paragraph highlights what the thread was looking for not the other rhetoric.

We still have c10 days to see what they come up with.

Apologies if I misinterpreted the intention of your original post. It honestly came across as the random mumblings of a madman  So I imagine a fair few didn’t get the full gist.

So that I understand it fully, you want to start a debate about recruitment. You are dubious that we are going about our recruitment the right way, but you also concede that we do spot good players (ie: Guilbert/Mings) and presumably you also agree that we have improved some players (eg: Jack/ McGinn/ Steer), but you want us to do it more?

Maybe we should look more at what we do, and less of what we don’t.

Operationally, we’re a club on the up. Well run, with clever owners with proven track records. They have a plan of how they want to do things, and I’m sure they’ll all admit that their plan may not show instant results. Even Man Utd, with their vast resources capable of spending £80m on individual players, struggle to achieve what they ideally want. That’s not football.

Leicester have done great with Tielemans and Maddison.... but equally, how did their signing of Islam Slimani go? 

[TRO]

35 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

I keep seeing the word "debate" used in this thread, but the quality of it in here, is absolutely woeful.

You cannot turn around and say "Aston Villa's recruitment policy is shit.  Suso is shit & Dean Smith does/doesn't have enough say in transfers - discuss".  Then, when someone suggests other teams recruitment isn't particularly good either, you cannot just say "That's not important, we needed to sign better players."

If someone ask you "well, what do you suggest, who would you sign?" - You cannot answer that by saying "I'm not a scout, i don't have any suggestions". 

It makes you look incredibly thick.  Honestly, it's upsetting that some of you have gotten to this point in your lives where you cannot see or understand how stupid it's making you look. 

Either be prepared to DISCUSS (that means answer questions if you are asked them) the topic which has been create, or don't bother with the idiotic posts which are filling this topic.  It's utterly pointless.  It's wasting everyone's time and effort and annoying people.  

It's like "ahh but" - but without anything coming after it.  It's like you've thought of a question, asked it, but then aren't prepared to listen to an answer, or just dismiss it out right because it doesn't fall in line with what you think.  It's the sign of an idiot   

You want to look in the mirror...

People who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones.

The Op was clear Imo....it opened a debate for folk to give their opinions.....my opinions are mine.....i was looking for other peoples....based on some of touchy responses, it may have been an error.

You don't have to know the solution, to suspect something may not be right....an idiot would know that too to coin your phrase.....thats what debate is/ does brainstorms opinions.

you have completely missed the point of all this mate, just skip it.

ps where and who has said Villa's etc recruitment is shit, its a figment of your imagination.....to question something is entirely different, i thought even you would understand that.

[StefanAVFC]

It opened a debate for sure.

But instead of engaging in the debate, you accused others of attacking your views.

That's literally what a 'debate' is. You state a set of views. Others agree or disagree with your views, and give reasons why.

Based on this:

7 minutes ago, TRO said:

The Op was clear Imo....it opened a debate for folk to give their opinions.....my opinions are mine.....i was looking for other peoples....based on some of touchy responses, it may have been an error.

It seems you didn't want to engage in any debate. Touchy responses? To coin a phrase, glass houses and stones.

You can't ask for other people's views then accuse them of being touchy for responding. Whilst then also being touchy yourself.

[TRO]

6 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

Apologies if I misinterpreted the intention of your original post. It honestly came across as the random mumblings of a madman  So I imagine a fair few didn’t get the full gist.

So that I understand it fully, you want to start a debate about recruitment. You are dubious that we are going about our recruitment the right way, but you also concede that we do spot good players (ie: Guilbert/Mings) and presumably you also agree that we have improved some players (eg: Jack/ McGinn/ Steer), but you want us to do it more?

Maybe we should look more at what we do, and less of what we don’t.

Operationally, we’re a club on the up. Well run, with clever owners with proven track records. They have a plan of how they want to do things, and I’m sure they’ll all admit that their plan may not show instant results. Even Man Utd, with their vast resources capable of spending £80m on individual players, struggle to achieve what they ideally want. That’s not football.

Leicester have done great with Tielemans and Maddison.... but equally, how did their signing of Islam Slimani go? 

I guess even a fool would apply a percentage of good signings v not so good...not select the ones that suit their agenda.

I guess the final league placings will be a fair reflection on the subject.

why are you drifting in to other things, thats rambling, we are talking about recruitment, not the overall running of the club.

Leicester are not a good example for your rant....unless you are a kamikaze pilot....they have one of the best recruitment set ups in the country....so who's the idiot here?

er ...why can't we talk about what we don't do, are you so touchy, that we can't be transparent to talk.....do you not want to try and improve and just wallow in the status quo, that everything we do is utopia.

you don't like the thread, fine, skip it...and don't waste the time of folk that see it for what is really is, not your twisted agenda.

[StefanAVFC]

I don't even know where to start with the further ramblings above.

I guess the main thing I get from it is, you didn't want a debate then?

You wanted people to back up your views and weren't interested at all in opposing views? Labelling those opposing views firstly as 'attacking' yours, then that people are being touchy. Now, for questioning your views, you are telling people to leave the thread.

What a bizarre situation this is.

[TRO]

7 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

It opened a debate for sure.

But instead of engaging in the debate, you accused others of attacking your views.

That's literally what a 'debate' is. You state a set of views. Others agree or disagree with your views, and give reasons why.

Based on this:

It seems you didn't want to engage in any debate. Touchy responses? To coin a phrase, glass houses and stones.

You can't ask for other people's views then accuse them of being touchy for responding. Whilst then also being touchy yourself.

But some like you, were not giving their opinions, they were just questioning and attacking mine.....that was not in the spirit of the post.

It wasn't necessary, all they had to do was present their own opinion even though it was contrary to mine....that is what i was expecting, not post on poster, which is what it has turned out to be.

But if you gleaned my opinions, no where did i slag off the recruitment team, i just questioned it and most of my opinion centered around "dubious"

don't manipulate stuff to fit your own agenda.

[GodsBarkeep]

3 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

The club didn’t write them off. These players didn’t want to stay.

The fans did.

Quite quickly I seem to remember.

The new guys took the fall. 

Seems we've not learned from that.

But what do you expect, we're Aston villa don't you know and we won the European cup, still fresh in the memory;  hasn't even been 40 years yet. 

It would be too embarrassing to admit that other clubs have stronger more settled squads than us this season

[bobzy]

1 minute ago, TRO said:

Leicester are not a good example for your rant....unless you are a kamikaze pilot....they have one of the best recruitment set ups in the country....so who's the idiot here?

Would you say this list of £100m~ spent over the last 2 seasons is indicative of one of the best recruitment set ups in the country?

Kelechi Iheanacho - £25m
Adrien Silva - £22m
Vicente Iborra - £15m
Filip Benkovic - £13m
Danny Ward - £12.5m
Rachid Ghezzal - £10m

[markavfc40]

@TRO I am not really sure what you and some other fans expected mate. I know you have said on numerous occasions you thought we would struggle this season and that avoiding relegation would be success. Therefore I'd imagine the basis of you thinking that we would struggle is that our performances wouldn't be good enough to get results to stay clear of the relegation zone. Now 23 games in recruitment is being questioned because a squad that we expected to struggle is shock horror struggling. A squad containing a lot of players with ability, promise and potential but lacking experience at this level is struggling to adapt and is inconsistent. For me though it was expected and was the reason why many of us felt we would struggle.

I don't really see what option the club had though in the summer. We got promoted at the end of May and had 2 months to bring in a dozen players. Quantity and proven quality was never on our menu. We had to go for players who had shown they have got ability and potential to improve due to the amount of players we needed. I am sure Smith would have loved the club to have been in a position to bring in the dozen players we needed and for them all to have been of proven quality and shown they can perform consistently at this level. That would have cost us 2 or 3 times what we spent though or would have needed some of the greatest scouting ever at one club in one window.

As I have said before in other threads I do have some sympathy for the argument that we haven't improved as the season has gone on. I think there are two contributing factors to that though. Firstly us not getting the results our performances arguably deserved earlier in the season has meant the pressure has mounted and when that happens even doing the basics can become an issue. Secondly over the last two months we have had injuries to key players with Mings, Grealish, McGinn, Heaton, Wesley all missing games.

I think before questioning the recruitment I would give it a little longer than 5 months and factor that we knew we would struggle this season and that we have to accept that having signed so many new players it was going to take time for those individuals to adapt to new players, coaching staff, league and in many cases country and that as a team it was going to take time to gel and become consistent.

If we stay up this season that will have been a successful season and whilst that is still a very real possibility lets not write off those players signed in the summer who could well lead us to that success.

Edited January 21, 2020 by markavfc40

[StefanAVFC]

3 minutes ago, TRO said:

But some like you, were not giving their opinions, they were just questioning and attacking mine.....that was not in the spirit of the post.

How? Where? Examples please. I was challenging your views. I was debating. In the spirit of the thread. That you started.

4 minutes ago, TRO said:

It wasn't necessary, all they had to do was present their own opinion even though it was contrary to mine....that is what i was expecting, not post on poster, which is what it has turned out to be.

Nope, try again. I wasn't warned for anything I wrote towards you. I simply challenged your (incorrect IMO) views and gave my thoughts on the matter. That is a debate. A debate is not 'these are my views, people who agree with me with me are welcome but those who disagree with me are attacking me'. If you don't want people to challenge your views, don't start the thread.

5 minutes ago, TRO said:

But if you gleaned my opinions, no where did i slag off the recruitment team, i just questioned it and most of my opinion centered around "dubious"

Who said you slagged off the recruitment team?

6 minutes ago, TRO said:

don't manipulate stuff to fit your own agenda.

Where did this happen? Examples please?

You're just making things up at this point.

[lapal_fan]

4 minutes ago, TRO said:

You want to look in the mirror...

People who live in glass houses, shouldn't throw stones.

The Op was clear Imo....it opened a debate for folk to give their opinions.....my opinions are mine.....i was looking for other peoples....based on some of touchy responses, it may have been an error.

You don't have to know the solution, to suspect something may not be right....an idiot would know that too to coin your phrase.....thats what debate is/ does brainstorms opinions.

you have completely missed the point of all this mate, just skip it.

ps where and who has said Villa's etc recruitment is shit, its a figment of your imagination.....to question something is entirely different, i thought even you would understand that.

I do look in the mirror, and quite often, the person looking back is beautiful - I'm lucky in the regard.

Glass is surprisingly strong now-a-days.  Triple glazing is very resolute.  I wouldn't throw stones if I had cheapo, single panes though. 

The OP was clear, as in, it was an easy read - but it was mostly self contradicting waffle, like this;

For such a long time now we have had a very hit & miss success rate and with an academy that has only produced the odd star

 

So in one sentence you've said our academy is very hit and miss, but we still produce the odd star.  So are you saying we should be creating more stars, on a more regular basis?  If so, and I really am daring to ask you a question - which club is producing top talent every year?  As far as I can see, the top clubs spend BIG money on top players, so the clubs winning the few trophies available mustn't be producing stars every year - do they?  So is your benchmark the middle clubs, like Everton?  I don't even see them producing stars tbh either.  Especially not a team full, like you imply.

Then you said;

Its even more important to have people with Nous who can spot talent and sophisticated systems and networks to aid.

We do have a scouting system.  We do use databases and analytics.  We've got the following named people who report into Suso;

 

Head Sports Scientist	Jack Sharkey[105]
Head Performance Analyst	David Stewart
Head of Performance Psychology	Tom Bates
Under-23 Manager	Mark Delaney
Under-18 Manager	Richard Beale
Under-18 Assistant Manager	George Boateng
Academy Manager	Mark Harrison[10

On top of this, there are interviews and articles about our scouting system - go Google it. 

From successive managers I have struggled to see the improvement in players, whilst witnessing the player improvement at other clubs....Traore as one example...Enda Stevens another

The problem with replacing the manager every 18-24 months.  The new manager wants his own players.  We buy his players and get rid of players.  The problem with Villa (and it's fanbase) is that we never afford time to anyone or anything.  We want success and we want it yesterday.  If players keep playing in their early 20s, and they have decent attitudes, they will get better - it's called practice and if you practice something, you'll become better at it.  

I do like the way that in this instance, you don't mind looking at what is going on at other clubs though  , but as soon as other clubs are referenced with a negative recruitment strategy, you discount it outright. 

Its not one manager, I have felt it with loads of managers.....In contrast, I can think of managers of yesteryear, where just about every player, who came in, improved, some even switched positions and learnt the new job and still made great effect.

You're what?  60?  Isn't it funny how our most successful 2 years in the clubs history co-incides with you in your 20s?  If we were winning huge trophies like we did - OF COURSE EVERYTHING LOOKS EASY..  Yes, the manager at the time probably helped, yes, the players we had were very good, but that golden era lasted for 2 years.. Things happened at the club and 40 years pass and we are where we are now.  Football has changed I'm afraid.

I don't profess to know the answer

 

No shit!  

We need outfield players who can make an impact like the 2 Goalkeepers have, and not just have to wait for next season.

Mings has made an impact, we only signed him in the summer.  Luiz has had moments of quality and scored good goals, he signed in the summer.  Guilbert has looked good in most games, he signed in the summer.  Trez has scored a few goals and has a few assists, overall his game needs improvement yes, but remember that practice thing?

I look at players like Trossard, Tielmans, Maupay, Knockaert, all come from the french leagues,hasn't taken them long to pick up the pieces.....The Wolves lads have equally took to the Premier league very quickly.

 

you're looking at some pretty expensive players there, aren't ya?!  Wolves in the Championship were "sugar daddy'd" but their super agent owner who got them Champions League players for a pittance from Portuguese leagues.  Had they not gone up when they did, Wolves would probably not exist.  They took a huge gamble on getting to the PL.  They won, and they've retained the services of super agent and their CL standard players.. Do not compare them to us. 

In summary;

- No team has great recruitment, consistently

- Other teams have different situations, ours was to replace a whole **** squad in 2 months

- If you're moaning about exactly who we recruited, and there were better alternatives - you're probably right - who were they?  (I know you're not a scout)

- If you would have signed other players, would they have fit into our buying profile? "young, decently priced, willing to come" - we had £140m to spend and we spent it.  Don't come back and say why not buy Messi for £60m on top of who we bought - we didn't have the money. 

- For a club our size, we've produced some really good players, the reason they have left is probably because we couldn't give them game time, our fans thought they were shit, our managers thought they weren't good enough or we were offered enough to let them go. 

[TRO]

3 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

I don't even know where to start with the further ramblings above.

I guess the main thing I get from it is, you didn't want a debate then?

You wanted people to back up your views and weren't interested at all in opposing views? Labelling those opposing views firstly as 'attacking' yours, then that people are being touchy. Now, for questioning your views, you are telling people to leave the thread.

What a bizarre situation this is.

Sorry, we are miles apart.

rightly or wrongly, i was looking for your personal opinion.....its not the house of commons, its a forum where folk give theirs.

I think attacking or questioning other peoples opinions is a weak approach.

Istiil think the Op just opened the subject up, sorry if i have not met your expectations.

but i think its time to drop it now.

you don't like the thread......skip it is my advice.

[sne]

[StefanAVFC]

Where did anyone attack your opinions???? Give me some examples.

You posted a thread. A few people disagreed with your thoughts. THAT. IS. LITERALLY. WHAT. A. DEBATE. IS.

If you don't want to have a debate, put a disclaimer on your posts stating:

'These are my views, they are not open to be challenged. I will not change my mind'

You cannot, in good faith, state in the same post that you want a debate, then accuse people of attacking you for challenging your views. It's madness.

And to sum it all up 'don't agree with me jog on'

 

[lapal_fan]

Everything is going to be ok

Everything is going to be ok

Everything is going to be ok

Everything is going to be ok

Everything is going to be ok

[KentVillan]

How you measure recruitment is important.

Let’s say one club signs 2 players for £40m and £30m. First player does well, second player fails and has to be sold on at £15m.

Another club signs 3 players for £20m, £10m and £8m. First player does well, other two don’t do so well but they’re young and sold on at break even.

Which club has recruited better? Club one has one good player for a total outlay (ignoring wages) of 40 + 30 - 15 = £55m.

Club two has one good player for a total outlay of 20 + 10 + 8 - 10 - 8 = £20m.

But the way some people talk on here, you’d think club two were the morons.

If we go shopping around for value signings, we are guaranteed to buy the odd dud player, maybe quite a few. You only need a few gems to come good and you can cover the whole outlay.

Now there’s a separate debate to be had (and we’ve had it in the Suso thread) about whether we’re getting the balance right between investments and short-term results, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with our scouting.