2 year plan

[evenstevens 914]

5 hours ago, TheKingObv said:

We will need to have one or two incredible transfer windows to even have a chance of winning the title in the next year or too tbh.

Feeling negative as fuck at the moment but feel like we only got close to them this season as they got complacent when they had their significant point advantage.

They have the arrogance and nous to win titles. That includes their players, manager and club as a whole. They were always going to do enough to win this year.

Until we have a squad that exceeds theirs, I can't see us getting to 56. And I can't see that happening any time soon.

 

Hmmm.  Yeah.  I like this post as you've nailed in your 3rd para what I'm feeling - they have a smug superiority over us.  You can see it in the games - they treat us with utter contempt and, at times, amusement.  Whereas we help them to their feet and treat their cramp.  Not only do we need a squad with mentality of winners, we need to find a way to give them a bloody nose and as they stagger back to their feet, treat them the way they've treated us over the years.  Absolute contempt.

[Prso's headband 35,913]

1 minute ago, Laudrupsleftfoot said:

Ok mate their scouting and recruitment was amazing last summer. Holm’s another £20 million player.

They can make mistakes in recruitment due to finances, the difference is it’s still minimal in comparison to us. Out of every 10 signings 7 of them are probably a success for them and even if they aren’t they still find that 1 player to sell for £20m plus. Every 10 we sign we’re lucky if 2 are a success and out of about 25 we have a success rate of 1, 1 single player who sold for £20m. 
 

 

[J-Maestro 11,778]

47 minutes ago, Laudrupsleftfoot said:

Take your general point but their recruitment last summer was far worse than ours, particularly given (I think) they spent more money.

Hopefully more of the same in the summer from them.

Did Rodgers have a decent signing outside of Edouard who had a crazy sell on percentage after his first Summer?

Honestly think he was protected last time just by how far we were starting behind.

[ForeverAndEver 72,125]

2 minutes ago, J-Maestro said:

Did Rodgers have a decent signing outside of Edouard who had a crazy sell on percentage after his first Summer?

Honestly think he was protected last time just by how far we were starting behind.

Sinclair

[J-Maestro 11,778]

1 minute ago, ForeverAndEver said:

Sinclair

That was his first Summer.

[CoplandRoad83 3,372]

For a start, we need to stop acting as if we have an endless supply of money or as if its the 90s again. We need to be smart with our finances. A few things spring to mind:

• Refusing to sell our best players even if we get offered considerable profit on them
• Spending high wages on known injury risk players
• Letting players of value run down contract and leave for free
• Ignore cheap high value options in our own country
• Rewarding players on the decline with huge contracts (paying the most in the country).

We do ourselves no favours at times. I think its because historically we've never had the culture of a 'selling club'. but the world is very different now.

[Roy Hobbs 2,276]

Just now, Prso's headband said:

They can make mistakes in recruitment due to finances, the difference is it’s still minimal in comparison to us. Out of every 10 signings 7 of them are probably a success for them and even if they aren’t they still find that 1 player to sell for £20m plus. Every 10 we sign we’re lucky if 2 are a success and out of about 25 we have a success rate of 1, 1 single player who sold for £20m. 
 

 

Their starting lineup at the weekend didn't have a single signing from any of the last 4 transfer windows. Their recent record is dreadful.

[Laudrupsleftfoot 11,338]

5 minutes ago, Prso's headband said:

They can make mistakes in recruitment due to finances, the difference is it’s still minimal in comparison to us. Out of every 10 signings 7 of them are probably a success for them and even if they aren’t they still find that 1 player to sell for £20m plus. Every 10 we sign we’re lucky if 2 are a success and out of about 25 we have a success rate of 1, 1 single player who sold for £20m. 
 

 

Generally agree with the main point you’re making - they haven’t had a really good one in a while though.

Don’t think anyone signed last summer from the >£20 mil spent is a key player for them.

[The Specky Forum Organiser 66,074]

2 minutes ago, CoplandRoad83 said:

For a start, we need to stop acting as if we have an endless supply of money or as if its the 90s again. We need to be smart with our finances. A few things spring to mind:

• Refusing to sell our best players even if we get offered considerable profit on them
• Spending high wages on known injury risk players
• Letting players of value run down contract and leave for free
• Ignore cheap high value options in our own country
• Rewarding players on the decline with huge contracts (paying the most in the country).

We do ourselves no favours at times. I think its because historically we've never had the culture of a 'selling club'. but the world is very different now.

It seems so obvious when you see it put down like that. Mental that we fail in every aspect of this.

[McEwan's Lager 30,874]

3 minutes ago, CoplandRoad83 said:

For a start, we need to stop acting as if we have an endless supply of money or as if its the 90s again. We need to be smart with our finances. A few things spring to mind:

• Refusing to sell our best players even if we get offered considerable profit on them
• Spending high wages on known injury risk players
• Letting players of value run down contract and leave for free
• Ignore cheap high value options in our own country
• Rewarding players on the decline with huge contracts (paying the most in the country).

We do ourselves no favours at times. I think its because historically we've never had the culture of a 'selling club'. but the world is very different now.

You could have put posted this before I wasted my time writing an essay  

[J-Maestro 11,778]

1 minute ago, The Specky Forum Organiser said:

It seems so obvious when you see it put down like that. Mental that we fail in every aspect of this.

Our own fans are guilty of it, for years been turning our noses up at potential players within the league. Even if they're not nailed on starters having domestic players who know what the club is about will always be required, it's the same anywhere.

[DT78 24]

6 hours ago, STEPPS BOY said:

We’ve been so badly ran on and off the field that there has been no plan.

There has and continue to be guys in roles at club way beyond their skillsets.

Someone at the club needs to bring an identity to the playing side.

This summer Koppen needs to be bringing in players for Rangers so that if a manager leaves we don’t always have to have a rebuild. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we are going to be looking at bringing in a dozen players for the second year in a row.

Agree we have to be far better off the pitch starting with better and more extensive Scouting and an upgrade of the training and Medical facilities, our injuries this season have really hurt us. This all costs money and is a longer term plan but I read somewhere that Benfica made a hell of a lot of money selling on their players. Dynamo Zagreb do the same. What are these Clubs doing to find these rough Diamonds that we are not. Better Scouting and Better youth coaches will help. 

[ForeverAndEver 72,125]

5 minutes ago, J-Maestro said:

That was his first Summer.

Missed that bit  

[STEPPS BOY 75,035]

42 minutes ago, McEwan's Lager said:

TL;DR: We need to build a proper, sustainable, modern football department bottom up. Koppen and Robertson need time to build it. Short term: Don't sign injury prone or old players. Sacrificing 'most successful football club in the world' short term is worth it if we can build an organisation that eventually gets into the habit of winning two or three titles on the spin, have a rebuilding year, win another few titles on the spin. Otherwise we'll continue having to overspend just to win one title every 8 or 9 years and continue sacking managers and having continual upheaval.

... 

We could go out and throw the kitchen sink at winning the league next season. Sign a whole bunch of players, load ourselves up with more debt to the directors and investors etc. Buy a new striker for millions and still retain Dessers and Danilo, things like that. That's the sort of thing we did to an extent in the 55 season and it's not given us any real long term success and consistency. We need to have a club wide football approach rather than just a next season approach. Players, staff and fans treated 55 like the be all and end all and that, imo, has cost us.

Since 2015 we have focused maybe a bit too much on first team player issues without properly looking at everything as a whole. That's not a criticism per se, most fans only care about success on the park at first team level. There's obviously been changes and a focus at times in the academy, medical, sports science, recruitment but we seem to go through different approaches and ripping things up regularly in every aspect, and it doesn't always change at the same time as the manager.

At DOF level we had McParland come in and implement an old school model of using a small pool of agents and an agency he knew, he was basically head of player recruitment rather than DOF. We've then given £10m or so to Caixinha to go out and buy his own personal preferences. Then we've moved to Mark Allen and Ross Wilson via a DOF model, before scrapping that for one summer when we gave the keys of the kingdom to the court jester. Now we seem to have a bit of a hybrid approach where from the outside looking in it seems Creag Robertson is more of the Technical Director and Koppen is a Head of Scouting / Recruitment. Lets give them a bit of time and a remit to go through the club root and branch.

At youth level we have had a big churn in the Senior part of the academy. Over the past few years we've had people like Murty, Lovenkrands, and Johansson all leave, although I think Johansson is now back in. At the top, Mulholland goes, he's filled by promotion by Jacobs, who is out the door less than a season after getting the top role. I'm not sure what happens at Intermediate phase and below, @STEPPS BOY may know.

On the scouting front Mark Allen built up the scouting network, again from scratch. But then I think we had quite a few leave under Wilson and it's been ripped up in the summer to move to this new data driven model. 

Medical we've had Waller leave and come back, Sports Science seems a bit more stable with Polychronopolous and Flannigan still there, but different football fitness demands from successive management churn will have taken their toll. I'm not sure what's happened with that injury management approach we signed up to using last season. If it's still in place it doesn't seem to be working well?

All of this chopping and changing has occurred over 9 years. The majority of it accelerated over the last two / three seasons. Hyper accelerated this past summer. We got away with having no discernible and coherent structure under Gerrard through his sheer force of personality, his drive basically held the football side together. But this is the 21st Century. Force of personality managers like him (and Walter, and SAF) don't exist anymore at the top level and any sane top level club is no longer run where they rely on sheer determination to cut through. If we want to appoint decent managers, especially from Europe, then they are going to expect to have a fully functioning and coherent structure in place. Modern coaches expect that.

It's a hard thing to stomach but getting scouting, recruitment and the academy right, and making sure that Koppen and Robertson are in it for the long term is just as important as putting a team on the park next season. Otherwise we may have some short term success, we then eventually sack Clement, get another manager in, who will then inevitably fail as well because we haven't got a structure to support a modern day manager. 

... 

In terms of recruitment for next season the first thing that really needs to stop is our saviour complex approach to signing players. At times our recruitment over the last few years resembles that one friend we all have who lurches from troubled partner to troubled partner because they have they think they can fix them, eventually realise they can’t, and then move on to the next person they think they can fix. Rinse and repeat.

Seeing potential upside value in a player has often fit into one of two categories for us. The first is players that have had significant injury/health issues or recurring issues to overcome (Goldson, Balogun, Helander, Roofe, Dowell, Davies, Souttar, Ramsay) and the other is players that had high potential as a youngster but haven’t quite lived up to their promise yet (Barker, Flanagan, Hagi, Lawrence, Bacuna, Matondo, Cantwell).

Whenever we sign one of the two types of players above, here, FF and X are inundated with comments that start along the lines of “if we can get them fit again”, or “if we can get them back to their best” and invariably finishes with “we will make a fortune/we’ll be laughing”. It hardly ever works.

Out the list of the above, only Goldson has given us significant return on investment over multiple campaigns. And I don't think it's a coincidence that was because he had a fixable health issue rather than an injury issue. Morelos, Aribo, Bassey and Kamara are the best upside value signings we have made and none of them fit into the above. We need more of them, and we need to cash in at the right time (Aribo and Bassey) vs the wrong time (Kamara) or never (Morelos).

It's imperative we don't sign a load of players that are 28/29 years old as well. We need to look at players on the up in the 21-24 year old bracket. That's where we will maximise any potential returns against on field results.

The two exceptions I would make is an experienced 6 and an experienced CB. We need a proper footballer in the middle of the park and a leader at the back, as well as having personalities that can drag the squad with them. The biggest thing we have squandered imo from the 55 season is losing McGregor, Davis (and Arfield, sort of), with no cross over of players to carry their torch, so to speak. They were signed to bridge the continuity gap with successful sides we lost when we got demoted. Take a hit on contractual value with those two positions in order to actually get some experienced winners in the side that can take the squad with them. And ensure that players we sign can grow and pick up the mantle. If we can find a 24 year old that can fill that roll, even better. Celtic have managed it with Carter-Vickers. Why can't we?

The other thing we need to stop is filling the squad with filler options that are expensive. Devine, McKinnon, Fraser, McCausland etc can all do jobs as options. Celtic do this with Scales, Walsh, Ralston. Why can't we? We can't be paying £4m for our 4th choice CB any longer.

Lastly I'd want to know wider issue around culture at the club and the environment we create for players. I do want to know why players like Cedric Itten and Sam Lammers can't produce at Rangers. Celtic can sign a player from the Eredivise with a good scoring record like Giakoumakis and he comes in and while not exactly on fire, he more than contributes to two title wins and then off he goes for a profit. We seem to chew up players who do well in leagues better than ours and spit them out. It will kill us long term as an attractive option for talented players.

...

The above is the only way we get back to being a successful club long term, with sustained success in bursts of seasons upon seasons. If we continue as we are we will win the league once every 8 or 9 years while spending a horrendous amount of money, and only winning it when Celtic are in a transition period. I'd sacrifice not being the most successful club next season and the next across leagues / trophy count, if it meant we gain it back in 5 or 10 years and then never relinquish it again.

 

On the academy part, it’s probably in it’s worst state for years.

 

No Accountability.

Absolutely no setting of standards.

Years of being told that winning or losing doesn’t matter.

Morale at an all time low.

I’ll say no more about it but don’t be surprised to be reading about it in next weeks/months. 

[J-Maestro 11,778]

2 hours ago, RFC55 said:

Some of the people interested where of a high standard and had won things. We got a guy who had guided qpr to a decent start in a league that is notoriously wild form wise 

A decent start followed by 5 losses was it not?

[STEPPS BOY 75,035]

Just now, DT78 said:

Agree we have to be far better off the pitch starting with better and more extensive Scouting and an upgrade of the training and Medical facilities, our injuries this season have really hurt us. This all costs money and is a longer term plan but I read somewhere that Benfica made a hell of a lot of money selling on their players. Dynamo Zagreb do the same. What are these Clubs doing to find these rough Diamonds that we are not. Better Scouting and Better youth coaches will help. 

The exact opposite us happening regarding scouting at Academy level and the training pitches for first team are getting made the exact same as Ibrox.

[ForeverAndEver 72,125]

2 hours ago, RFC55 said:

Some of the people interested where of a high standard and had won things. We got a guy who had guided qpr to a decent start in a league that is notoriously wild form wise 

And people were bigging it up as if QPR should be nowhere where they were even though Warburton spent most of the previous season in and around the play off positions

[J-Maestro 11,778]

@McEwan's Lager rather than quote the whole post, I wouldn't say there's anything entirely wrong about signing guys who hadn't reached their potential yet. Butland, Sterling and Bassey would come under the category too, but when our whole recruitment is like that then it shows badly.

[evenstevens 914]

6 minutes ago, STEPPS BOY said:

On the academy part, it’s probably in it’s worst state for years.

 

No Accountability.

Absolutely no setting of standards.

Years of being told that winning or losing doesn’t matter.

Morale at an all time low.

I’ll say no more about it but don’t be surprised to be reading about it in next weeks/months. 

That doesn't sound good at all

[J-Maestro 11,778]

6 minutes ago, STEPPS BOY said:

On the academy part, it’s probably in it’s worst state for years.

 

No Accountability.

Absolutely no setting of standards.

Years of being told that winning or losing doesn’t matter.

Morale at an all time low.

I’ll say no more about it but don’t be surprised to be reading about it in next weeks/months. 

Didn't that start under Warburton?

[Prso's headband 35,913]

9 minutes ago, Roy Hobbs said:

Their starting lineup at the weekend didn't have a single signing from any of the last 4 transfer windows. Their recent record is dreadful.

Which makes ours considerably worse because yet again they’ve moulded a player worth tens of millions to follow Frimpong, Tierney, Jota, Juranovic, Edouard, and Ajer. 
 

We’ve sold 2 players since 2019 for more than £10m and 1 of them was an academy product. We’ve at a guess probably signed about 30 players in that time, fuck all return. 

[BridgeIsBlue 66,654]

23 minutes ago, Laudrupsleftfoot said:

Ok mate their scouting and recruitment was amazing last summer. Holm’s another £20 million player.

Point being it's worked, someone mentioned above that Idah has came in scored goals and we're left with a donkey like Silva. 

[JackAlex93 11,598]

There were Rangers fans touting Beale as a great appointment because he was the "brains behind Gerrard". Can't believe looking back we gave the reigns to that absolute amateur. He has hamstrung us with his awful transfer business and Clement will still be paying for it well in to next season. Huge job on for our manager

[McEwan's Lager 30,874]

Just now, STEPPS BOY said:

On the academy part, it’s probably in it’s worst state for years.

 

No Accountability.

Absolutely no setting of standards.

Years of being told that winning or losing doesn’t matter.

Morale at an all time low.

I’ll say no more about it but don’t be surprised to be reading about it in next weeks/months. 

At the junior and intermediate level I think this make senses, up to a point. For me where that point stops is continually getting smashed 6-0, 8-2, 4-0 etc which seems to be happening a lot at that level from the reports we get on here. That's not good for anyone's development or confidence.

 

[J-Maestro 11,778]

2 minutes ago, BridgeIsBlue said:

Point being it's worked, someone mentioned above that Idah has came in scored goals and we're left with a donkey like Silva. 

He's only scored 6 goals, penalties don't count on RM.