Sounds like we've been trying to follow the Brentford model but haven't worked out quite how to apply it yet.
We obviously have all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order!
EXMIL CHALLENGE 2020 Playoff Final Result
Selwynoz (4-4) (4-5) = 17
Redcar Red (5+4) (4+4) = 17
Tiebreak winner Redcar Red
A very close fought match which did not need the second tiebreaker as Redcar Red was closest to the time of the first goal by 3 minutes.
Congratulations to Redcar Red on his victory in the Wembley showdown and commiserations to Selwynoz but well played both of you.
Come on BORO.
I'd like to thank Exmil, the Academy, the Backroom staff and of course my Parents without whose dedication and support over the years none of this would have been possible. More importantly however I would like to thank the Diasboro fans who unfortunately couldn't be with us tonight due to social distancing but who I know will have been both thrilled and enthralled as Selwyn and myself battled out a nervy nail biting final (much better than the play acting, diving theatrics Arsenal and Chelsea subjected us to).
Hope that was just cheesy enough but not too cheesy, I will however refrain from claiming that I will try and smash it again next season 🙂
Mrs Red in her line of work came across this the other day and was highly impressed by the Club and more importantly the difference it is making in the local community. She insisted that I raise it in between all the moaning that old gits on here constantly harp on about (her words not mine although I have no idea why she would form that opinion).
https://www.mfc.co.uk/news/applebridge-and-mfc-foundation-give-food-for-thought
I can't reveal specific details for obvious reasons but her description of not only the joy but the very real importance of it cannot be overlooked and she was really very genuinely humbled by it all seeing the difference it was making. Its only a meal but it meant so much more than that to those much less fortunate than ourselves. Its a shame that in 2020 this is the world that we live in but congratulations to all involved and hopefully karma comes back to you tenfold.
@redcarred wow, after 6 years of 100m per year, they didn't seem to spend much, this is a surprise, a welcome surprise of course.
@billy According to Soccerbase, Bournemouth spent approximately £90m last summer:
https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=359&comp_id=1&teamTabs=transfers
Perhaps another one to add to the list around over-recruitment.
When you add in the £15m on Jordan Ibe a couple of seasons before, you can see that they have recruited pretty poorly for a few seasons now.
@billy Yes agreed and they will raise plenty of funds from player sales such as Wilson and King and no doubt several others, then they have the full parachute payments so you'd expect them to be a major force in the transfer market.
I guess the main challenge for them is transitioning to a new management team.
I'm going off memory on something I read recently that the Cherries still owe around £80M in transfer fees and the Club are in debt to the owner of around £115M or thereabouts. Obviously sales of Ake and Co.will put a dent in that and Parachute payments will help but if they sell their best players they aren't going to simply bounce straight back up. A new Squad and a new Manager are not a good mix with continuity and understanding smashed beyond recognition. Then there will be the cloud of FFP considerations if they don't make it back up quickly.
They are another example of clubs like, Bolton, Boro, Charlton, Stoke, Swansea etc. that over extended themselves in trying to push on and in trying to break beyond the Premiership glass ceiling ended up in a tailspin. Truth is that for clubs like the above 10th to 16th is as good as it gets in the Prem as Newcastle are finding out. Sure they may have a one season purple patch and over-perform but the pressure to maintain or push on from that is what does for these clubs once their Managers expire. See Curbishley, Allardyce, Hughes etc. etc.
@redcarred So they have cherry picked the money beforehand and need to pay back from their parachute payments.
One more team to finish below Boro next season. Wednesday are the other. One more and we are safe from relagation...
Up the Boro!
And perhaps Derby next.
Soon we will be in mid-table before the season even starts as the CONVID-19 will attack the football in all force.
Up the Boro!
Another thought provoking press conference today from the assembled media......
We learned that Grant Hall thinks...
MFC “ are a massive club” and he will be giving “ 110%” and despite being “ a southern boy” he’ll handle the cold Ooop North!
We are all grateful to Neil Warnock. Without him we would now be languishing in Division One. He came in, effected an immediate improvement, and did precisely what was asked of him. He did what it said on the tin, and his stock is deservedly high.
And what a change it has been to have a manager who is able to communicate effectively, has a sense of humour, some sense of perspective and seems to have reasonable man- management skills. And how grateful we all are to have the benefit of these qualities given the abysmal lack of them in so many of Warnock's predecessors
These are not exceptional skills. But they have been made to seem so by their complete absence in at least five of our previous managers.
Some of the longer term implications of Warnock's appointment have been very well analysed on here by Andy, KP, Pedro, Redcar Red and others. They concern the general direction of travel of the club once it has stabilised. Issues of identity, philosophy and above all continuity. So abrupt has been the grinding change of gears over the past few seasons that even the most seasoned of followers must be wondering what kind of what kind of club, and what kind of team it is that we are supposed to be supporting.
The 'golden thread' of a mere twelve months ago with its emphasis on attacking football, direct pacy wingers, and young local talent, seasoned with hidden gems from the lower divisions with a handsome sell-on value seems to have been completely discarded.
Warnock's 'golden thread' is its complete antithesis: experienced and hardened pros with whom he has worked in the past and who can be relied upon to produce hard-working and consistent performances. A big and solid spine, a hard tackling midfield and no nonsense wingers who will sling in the crosses for the big strikers.
Warnock's Cardiff was the team Pulis most admired when he was here, and it's clear why. It was a side which played Pulis's game more effectively than we did. Better at both attacking and defending set-pieces, better at putting the ball into the mix. Better at feeding off the scraps. Better at the no-nonsense defending which was the foundation of the team.
This blog was quick off the mark in its criticism of the Bevington-led golden thread presser of last summer. But it wasn't the vision that provoked the critique. The whole of Teesside had by this time had its fill of the dour, defensive, uncreative, boring pragmatism of most of the previous six years.
No, what drew the criticism was the club's Boris-like cluelessness in failing to provide the means and do the work necessary to summon that PR vision of the sunlit uplands of expansive football into existence.
Anyone serious about the vision would have appointed a manager with some experience and hope of achieving it. Instead we went for a rookie with zilch experience in any form of management.
And we are in the process of compounding that mistake by ditching the vision rather than understanding that the problem lay in our not willing the means to achieve it.
Make no mistake that hope that we might produce a team that plays the kind of creative football that has been so conspicuously successful in the Championship this season for Leeds, West Brom, Fulham Brentford and Swansea is well and truly dead. Cardiff did make it to the play-offs but they were an outlier, playing the kind of antiquarian football that no one wants to see. The whole country outside of Cardiff breathed a sigh of relief when they were summarily eliminated.
But Cardiff now represents our highest aspirations. And understandably so given our dire performances last season. If Warnock can somehow make us play-off contenders in the coming season most of us will be delighted and few will complain, whatever methods he employs.
What has provoked these musings is Warnock's current analysis of what he believes is wrong with the team. It's a predicable criticism. We are being outmuscled and out-tackled. We are being too easily bossed. We lack leaders. These are the principle weaknesses his current recruitment is intended to rectify.
The analysis is predicated on precisely those qualities that Warnock thinks he is best able to provide.
Whilst there is some truth in his analysis, there is a far greater cause for concern that these recruitment priorities will not rectify. There is a massive skills deficit within the club. This is the most telling legacy of Pulis's time here. Fabio, Bamford, Harrison, Foreshaw and Braithwaite were all summarily disposed of, whilst Tav and Wing were given short shrift. Skilful players didn't fit the Pulis template.
And what has struck me most about our displays since Warnock arrived was not so much that we were outfought and out-tackled. In fact we did rather well against our most muscular opponents, Millwall, Reading and Wednesday. But we were embarrassed on our own turf by Swansea, Bristol City and QPR. Teams of comparatively modest skills who tried to play football had us chasing shadows. Significantly our best player, Tav, was also our most under-used and under- appreciated.
Warnock's most recent statement that any member of the current squad is available for transfer at the right price sends an unfortunate message even if it happens to be literally true. How can he or the club expect any kind of player loyalty or dressing room cohesion when the manager declares them to be so expendable. A more constructive approach would surely to get our most promising young players together- Tav, Fry, Wing, Spence and Coulsen- and to assure them that they represent the club's future, that the team will be built around their talent, and that future recruitment will be designed to enhance and complement the qualities of skill, pace energy and commitment that they already bring to the club.
@billy it’s quite a scientific process recruitment these days and Boro’s system was overhauled and brought into the 21st century by Mogga.
He couldn’t believe how old fashioned our recruitment was and he installed the high tech software based system which logs every player on the planet with stats and performance.
it was further enhanced by Karanka and extensively used by Monk and Pulis. There is however no substitute for eyes on viewing and our recruitment team spend many hours not only in this country but all over the world checking on players.
Gary Gill does a lot of international travel and follows up with written reports which are circulated to all management and coaches and loaded onto the system.
If a player is of real interest then more than one visit is made by additional members of the recruitment team.
Another important part of the recruitment team is watching the progress of MFC players who are on loan at other clubs. For the last two years Neil Maddison has been responsible for visiting the clubs talking to their managers and coaches about how the MFC player is doing and watching the player in actual match play.
A great effort over the past four years has been invested in the academy and MFC have a premiership classification which costs a lot of money to maintain and run. It is no coincidence that we currently have between 4 and 6 academy lads either in or around the first team and MFC are to be congratulated on their success in this department.
So for those who say MFC recruitment team are rubbish I would say think again as the whole team is coveted by many larger clubs.
OFB
Warnock has discovered what we have been criticising on here for years under successive managers.
We have signed players without anyone at the club ever having seen them play live. Kenneth Omeruo was one such. Pointing out the folly of such a policy was to guarantee being labelled out-of-touch with modern recruiting techniques.
We have paid huge fees for players on the basis of their stats. De Roon was top of the lists in Europe for tackling and distances covered. So naturally we paid £9 million for him. In his first interview for the Gazette he was honest enough to say that he wasn't much of a player but was effective in stopping other people from playing. I wrote on here that for £9 million it would have been rather nice to have picked up someone who could actually play.
On seeing de Roon it was obvious after 5 minutes that he was a ball chaser who spent a lot of time running around without any sense of the team's shape or responsibility for staying with his man.
I am not being especially critical of either Kenneth or de Roon. Both tuned out to be better than many others who were signed using these methods. But the methods themselves always seemed to me to be deeply flawed.
It remains my view that you cannot reliably assess players from video evidence or from statistics. You have to do the hard yards and go to see players in action as many times as possible and operating in a variety of situations.
Stats are especially useless, particularly those concerning the number of kilometres covered. Stats can only ever be quantitative whereas the important things you need to know about any player are qualitative. Stats cannot stand in for mature and experienced judgment.
I think back to a great midfield player like Jan Molby. He would never have been on anyone's statistical radar, since he scarcely ever moved more that a few metres in any direction beyond the centre circle. And think of Bobby Murdoch who choreographed Charlton's promotion winning team without ever running or moving more than a few metres from his touchline. You had to see such players to recognise their quality And once you did they were unforgettable.
In football, as in life, the things that count cannot necessarily be counted. And what can be counted may not necessarily count.
I suspect that Warnock is old-fashioned enough to know this and to have been privately appalled by what he will have seen about how we have gone about our recruitment for far too long.
Absolutely spot on Len.
Congratulations, he offers painfully through gritted teeth.... but 8f only I hadn't got distracted with my house move and round 2... well. Well never:know" will we, but no hard feelings 😄
Bravo RR
@lenmasterman An absolute brilliant post and analysis of MFC and its continued failings. The sad part is the reality of just where we are now as a Football Club.
Yes, better off than many, possibly, but oh those wasted years and millions of pounds. And the future, who knows, but it is not looking too rosy, especially when Mr Gibson believes Mr Woodgate can still play a part in the clubs future.
further to your excellent point, I believe by the time the great Italian defender Paulo Maldini retired he was averaging barely one tackle a game.
Not because he’d become a poorer player than in his prime, but because his experience allowed him to read the game so effectively tackling was rarely required.
@original-fat-bob I think you replied to the wrong post Bob. I didn't say the recruitment team we're rubbish
EXMIL CHALLENGE 2020 Playoff Final Result
Selwynoz (4-4) (4-5) = 17
Redcar Red (5+4) (4+4) = 17
Tiebreak winner Redcar Red
A very close fought match which did not need the second tiebreaker as Redcar Red was closest to the time of the first goal by 3 minutes.
Congratulations to Redcar Red on his victory in the Wembley showdown and commiserations to Selwynoz but well played both of you.
Come on BORO.
I'd like to thank Exmil, the Academy, the Backroom staff and of course my Parents without whose dedication and support over the years none of this would have been possible. More importantly however I would like to thank the Diasboro fans who unfortunately couldn't be with us tonight due to social distancing but who I know will have been both thrilled and enthralled as Selwyn and myself battled out a nervy nail biting final (much better than the play acting, diving theatrics Arsenal and Chelsea subjected us to).
Hope that was just cheesy enough but not too cheesy, I will however refrain from claiming that I will try and smash it again next season 🙂
It was an honour to be part of such a titanic encounter. I thought the boys done good but we just couldn't match them on the day.
I think that everyone is being a bit pessimistic about the kind of football that NW wants to play. He seems to me to want to avoid giving away goals (that's reasonable) and then play quick attacking football but, as part of that, he wants most of the game to take place in the opposition half rather than our half. The big question becomes the ability to transition out of defence and still keep the ball. I'm not sure that we have players who are skilled at doing that and that will have to be addressed.
@billy it’s quite a scientific process recruitment these days and Boro’s system was overhauled and brought into the 21st century by Mogga.
....
So for those who say MFC recruitment team are rubbish I would say think again as the whole team is coveted by many larger clubs.
OFB
An excellent post, OFB. I was planning to post something similar, too.
Mogga built the basics in there and as you say Gary Gill travels a lot to see players in Europe. I have seen him in Finland, for example.
So the system gives the basics but the players Boro are really interested in are seen live, too. And several times, naturally. I remember Mogga travelling to Sweden to see a player who ended up in Bournemouth, I think.
But the final desision is often based on an opinion and what a manager or head coach wants to. But they all need a system to find the candidates.
Up the Boro!
@original-fat-bob Whilst I appreciate your post OFB, respect your knowledge and inner contacts within MFC, I have to ask.
If the club have made such remarkable progress since Mogga on the recruitment side, why have we made such an array of poor signings at substantial costs and still continue to do so?
Maybe saying the “recruitment team” is rubbish, is not quite fair. However if it is judged by its signings over the past number of years, it is difficult, IMO, to say they have been reasonably successful
We have had and still have a number of “not value for money” players. Compared to many other clubs and particularly Brentford, one has to say we have not performed well. I also include Mr Gibson in the “team” as he signs the cheques.
I think all teams make mistakes in recruitment. We just tend to see the successful purchases from other teams as we do not see the failed ones in the opposition teams. But we see our failures.
We bought far too many players when we got promoted but I think we were able to sell most of them to get our money back. So they were not bad players in such but we were unable to utilise their potential.
I think bringing in Víctor Valdés was not because of recruitment team was performing badly, I think Aitor wanted him badly.
Also Clayton, Leadbitter, Friend etc. were quite good buys.
But we have lacked a manager that makes the individual players better that their sum is. And here I hope NW will be a different.
Up teh Boro!
Once again we have a reporter asking a new player how he’ll cope with the climate up north. Well Teesside isn’t in the Arctic circle and sometimes in the summer we do have to cope with the sea fret from the North Sea when the rest of the country is enjoying a heatwave. But Redcar is usually free of snow in the winter although the promenade can be a couple of degrees colder in the summer than a mile or too inland, and Middlesbrough might not be as attractive a town as in years gone by, the Riverside Stadium however is a fine modern ground albeit in an unattractive area, but the training facilities at Rockliffe are second to none and in a pleasant rural setting.
Ok nightlife isn’t what it used to be in days of yore especially in Redcar when the Coatham Hotel was the venue for trad jazz, or in Billingham with the star turns performing at the Forum and in Darlington where anything from plays to ballet could been seen at the Civic Theatre. I blame footballers’ wives for players not wanting to sign for the Boro as they are so obsessed with shopping; well Harrogate and York are not too far away and where else could one enjoy such wonderful countryside in easy access without the hassle of traffic congestion, well probably Whitby but we do have the North York Moors Railway on our doorstep.
I occasionally watch old episodes of All Creatures Great and Small and Heartbeat just to enjoy the scenery. Sadly Le Tour de Yorkshire was cancelled this year due to Covid 19, but what a great advertisement for our region it has been in the past especially when it was part of Le Tour de France a few years ago. Sadly I’ve become fairly housebound this year but still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but in Cleveland. I remember talking to some people from Keswick many years ago who were on holiday in North Yorkshire and I queried why they would want to visit our region with such wonderful scenery on their doorstep in the Lake District. Their response was that it was a nightmare trying to drive there because of the traffic and narrow roads. They may have the lakes but I wouldn’t swap them for our countryside and coastline.
Just think of Juninho to whom Bryan Robson answered the question of how the little fellow would cope with the Teesside winters, and his response was that instead of a club car he would be offered a snow plough, and yet Boro would always be his favourite English club. I’ve lived in Redcar all my life and quite frankly wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else. I think that footballers when visiting Boro’s facilities are gobsmacked and that should be a good enough reason to sign for the Boro. We may have weather instead of climate up here, but we’re lucky to live in this part of England and to have a football club with a long period of history.
Agree Ken. But isn't the tacit agreement on Teesside to keep all of these things secret to protect us from the Southerners.
Sorry Bob we are going to have to disagree. Mogga made some very astute purchases when he was Manager on a shoestring budget. He also had a few that flattered to deceive but nevertheless Karanka's promotion side was built on solid Mowbray bedrock. Since Mogga departed the recruitment team have hardly covered themselves in glory. I'm struggling to think of a series of budget buys like Ayala, Friend, Dimi, Leadbitter or even a pricey Adomah let alone the multi million pound buys since that haven't fitted in or flattered to deceive.
Our recruitment department may have the finest ingredients, state of the art ovens, finest Sheffield steel cutlery, French pots and pans and outstanding recipes but why is it that the cakes are always burnt or more likely to have soggy bottoms? Clearly somebody internally talks a very good talk as SG sticks by them but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and from what I have witnessed over recent seasons its more like pigs swill than cordon bleu.
Usually a bad workman blames the tools he has been given but if they can't in this case then I'm at a loss as to what it is thats causing them to underwhelm repeatedly. It would appear that common sense and intuition have been thrown out the window to make room for graphs, charts, stats and spreadsheets. It didn't take a genius to spot that de Pena was way out of his depth in under 45 minutes or even that Bola wasn't ready last August let alone now. At the other extreme who on earth would have bought Gestede let alone pay what we did and as for the salary offered to him, that was just incredible beyond belief. Who sanctioned signing all those midfielders let alone scouted McNair and Saville and then paid what we paid for them, no disrespect to the lads themselves as its not their fault.
It would appear that absolutely nothing in the Club is joined up apart from the Academy which seems to be running in a competent manner in spite of rather than because of as evidence elsewhere in the club would indicate.
It surely can't be that Recruitment were buying all the right Players but we were hiring all the wrong Managers? If that were the case then after the revolving Manager door policy of the last few seasons surely some of them would have struck lucky and clicked at some point with at least one of the Managers?
Worse still is that if that was case then why are we hiring Managers who did not compliment the Recruitment philosophy or is it just a case of it didn't matter who was actually Managing because collectively Recruitment couldn't pick their own nose unless they had a Laptop, step by step instructions and a graph to plot it on?
I won't start on the "Golden Thread" because that is just too easy or should I say too ridiculous as was pointed out on here umpteen times at the time. If this was a Commercially run business that department would have either been closed down or everyone replaced because it has cost the business money and seriously holding it back. People are judged by their performance not by the resources made available to them. If they were indeed highly coveted I doubt that MFC could hang onto them as we are hardly awash with cash and a Brentford, Norwich or even a Burnley would snap them up let alone the big clubs.
@ken Ken, please do not. I am already unhappy that I cannot visit my favourite holiday destination.
Yes, I watch the old episodes of Hartbeat for the same reason. When the COVID-19 is finally over, I must visit the North Yorkshire Moors again (not York for me).
Up the Boro!
Agree Ken. But isn't the tacit agreement on Teesside to keep all of these things secret to protect us from the Southerners.
Maybe the Southerners, but when I was actively mobile it was very rare not to see a car with a Dutch registration. They certainly have good taste as has Jarkko.