One of the pointers towards a bad season has been when our principal close season signings have been made very late in the day. ‘Picking over the scraps’ is always undesirable. I’d rather spend wages getting 9 decentish players in than paying just as much to get a dozen losers.
The trouble is that all this has happened in rather too many close seasons under the current owner! Acting early – sorta like NOW – would show the kind of determination we shall be needing.
(This has tended to be echoed each January too, of course.)
We may well be able to assess the kind of campaign we are going to be facing by seeing how close the squad is to completion by the first day of training. If we arrive there four or five players short – then we can all be permitted a giant sigh and we’ll also know pretty early that season ticket sales will have been shocking.
It could get even worse if we hear those magic words ‘it is far too soon for the bigger clubs to know if they are going to be prepared to release our targeted players for loans.’
Unless we are talking about loanees who can be true game-changers – I don’t want to see any!
I have said the same Les over the last 4 seasons and all I get is there is plenty of time and we have enough players, and that is from posters on Bru and Twitter.
I think there’s a lot of truth in this. Factor in the psychology of the player who wasn’t sought and pursued early in pre-season but is perhaps one of ‘the scraps’ your new club has had to resort to because you’re all that’s left within a meagre budget, and the road to nowhere has begun. I’d be mightily surprised if this pre-season is any different.
Couldn’t be agents could it?
1st July – Agent “Scunthorpe have made you an acceptable offer but don’t do anything yet because I think I can keep you in the league on more money”
31st August – Agent “I’ve been let down by 8 league clubs that were interested in signing you so it looks like Scunthorpe is your best option”
One of the pointers towards a bad season has been when our principal close season signings have been made very late in the day. ‘Picking over the scraps’ is always undesirable. I’d rather spend wages getting 9 decentish players in than paying just as much to get a dozen losers.
The trouble is that all this has happened in rather too many close seasons under the current owner! Acting early – sorta like NOW – would show the kind of determination we shall be needing.
(This has tended to be echoed each January too, of course.)
We may well be able to assess the kind of campaign we are going to be facing by seeing how close the squad is to completion by the first day of training. If we arrive there four or five players short – then we can all be permitted a giant sigh and we’ll also know pretty early that season ticket sales will have been shocking.
It could get even worse if we hear those magic words ‘it is far too soon for the bigger clubs to know if they are going to be prepared to release our targeted players for loans.’
Unless we are talking about loanees who can be true game-changers – I don’t want to see any!
We won’t sign anyone for ages lesgeo, we are starting our annual summer hibernation period of absolute nothing barring the usual “buy a season ticket” “the restaurant will be open this Sunday” “come and join our summer holiday trading camps for under 13’s” and when they do start to talk about transfers it will be the usual “we don’t want to rush in, we want to make sure we bring the right players to the club” I expect the team to be formed fully in the last week running up to the new season when like you say the dregs are left!
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