I think saying Wilson is a fair bit better than Ebosele is questionable. Wilson hasn’t proven anything at this level yet. He’s had one good season in league 2. If he matches his 16 G/A contribution this season in the championship, then I think we can all admit we should have signed him. Right now though from the financial side of it, Wilson is a higher risk than Ebosele or Soppy. I would rather us sign Ebosele/Soppy on loan, and focus on signing 2 CB’s, 1 DM, 1 CM and a target man.
I could, or I could choose to believe our new head coach who has publicly said he will be involved. I can’t stand the board, but at the end of the day we will only know if Edwards has truly had a say come the end of the window. Until then I’m going to take the man at his word that he will be involved in incomings and outgoings.
Fair enough. The likelihood is he believes what he is saying but he simply hasn’t worked long enough with Duxbury and Pozzo to realise this isn’t how it works. Silva once thought the same and ended up with Zeegelaar and Wague. They simply won’t change. Until they are gone the cycle will repeat with a succession of shiny new managers believing they will be permitted to “build something”.
Involvement can mean many things. I would have thought that it means that he sits in on recruitment meetings, discusses positions of need and his thoughts on particular targets. That would constitute having a say or role in recruitment. But that doesn’t mean he gets listened to. For what it’s worth, I don’t think managers should have much more say than that. Too many clubs have gone down the financial rabbit hole of staffing millions on mediocre players because the manager worked with him in the past. And then clubs get stuck with those players after the manager leaves. The lack of managerial involvement in recruitment is an issue, but the bigger issue is that we have a recruitment team of smart, stats-based people who know their stuff, and we disregard them in favour of whoever Bayat wants to flog. I agree with the premise that managers should not be overly involved in recruitment decisions, because of short-termism, but the club’s executives have repeatedly made horrible, horrible recruitment decisions in recent years.
Quite- might have made a suggestion but you can bet most of our signings if we make many will be via the usual sources. And Edwards can hardly say come here we have a long term plan which maybe other clubs can sell.
I’m a bit surprised there’s so much certainty about “Edwards’ system”. One year at Forest Green in League 2 a career doesn’t make. I really hope he’s not coming here to just try and do a copy and paste job with better players, but actually has a plan to make the best of what we have.
Putting aside how much say Edwards will get...genuinely, did he have a chance of working to try to get Wilson in considering he's just got back from holiday?
They're doing a good job under difficult circumstances. Would you have preferred Corbyn? Sorry, I mean Bassini?
So I just listened to his FTRE interview and I think from what he himself says it’s quite clear: He isn’t wedded to a specific system and will try to make whatever he goes with the best fit for the players available. Giaretta runs recruitment but he gets a say at some (impliedly much later) point. He’s not expecting lots of ins and outs. Welcome to our new approach, the same as the old one.
I've read/listened to all the interviews and Edwards seems to contradict himself a little. I'm sure all interviews were taken on the same day as he's wearing the same top in all of them. “I’ll be involved in the processes, whether that’s recruitment or people that that may move on. “That’s so important because if I’m in this position, where I’m actually responsible for the results and performance, then I need to be. There’s a team of people that I’ll be working with and Cristiano (Giaretta, sporting director) is obviously one of them in terms of the recruitment. We’re building up a good relationship.” In that quote it seems to suggest he has a bigger say than he declared in the FTRE interview, but on a second reading of the quote it could easily align with what he said to FTRE. I think the truth is, the recruitment team will speak to him and ask him over the profile of player he would like, then they go out to try to find the best they can to match that profile. Pretty much the way they've always done things, so nothing will change on that score, although they may be a little more receptive to the head coach's needs, certainly on the surface, just to try and sell the "we've learned our lessons" message. So with that in mind, I genuinely think we didn't want Wilson and/or Edwards didn't push to get him. This tells me we've got a better player lined up. Let's face it, Wilson had a good season in League Two, but Championship is quite a big jump up. Would he have been first choice at Watford? How likely is it we move on both Kiko and Ngakia? I think only one would go, not both. I think in this particular situation, it is actually a case of if we wanted him, we would have got him. If we end up with Ngakia and this season's version of Navarro, then I wont be too happy, but I think we have to wait to see how this brave new era pans out and I do expect a more accomplished player to be signed for the RWB position than Wilson.
Hopefully this means we are getting Ebosele which I would prefer anyway as he has proven himself at this level. I didn't quite get some of the hype about Wilson, Yes sure he looked good in league two but I honestly think Ngakia would also. I think if we wanted Wilson we would have got him as Gino is usually all over a free transfer.
As I have no idea whether we were ever interested in signing Wilson, no idea about how much (if any) input Edwards will have in transfers and unfortunate no ability to look into the future to see the final composition of our squad when the window shuts (and therefore no idea who will be our right wing-back in place of the aforementioned Wilson), I don’t feel I have any meaningful comments to add on this thread. Sorry to my regular readers.
Have you considered the vacant senior board position of Kit Man, at least that way you would have a chance of posting something with some substance, instead of informing your readers what you don’t know!
Lol again - in that Ireland manager's interview you sent me the link to, the Ireland manager does not add any caveats to his statement "he can play right wing back" along the lines of however he's not comfortable there at all. In fact, the Ireland manager in that interview you posted states "he can come from deep and be effective as a wing-back". Being "effective" is very far from your nonsense claim that he's "not comfortable there at all"... Plus, these comments are taken from one page of the Derby forum in February, soon before it was announced he was signing for Udinese: "Ebosele - not just a great player but has comfortably played right back, left back, right wing & left wing." "I said at the beginning of the game today "I'm not sure I rate Ebosele as highly as others, he has pace but no end product" What a wally." "Thing is, 4-5 games ago, you were right. What’s really impressing me is his rate of improvement. When he first came in, he’d get to the byline and then overhit a cross a looping cross. Tonight he was going inside and outside, hitting a variety of crosses and looking a genuine threat every time. " https://dcfcfans.uk/topic/37767-festy-ebosele/page/7/#comments
Who cares if the Ireland manager doesn’t add any caveats, Ebosele has played right back 6 times in his career — with only 4 of them as starts. Saying he *can* be effective and him actually being effective are two very very different things. He’s got no defensive awareness, he often loses players who ghost past him from ball watching, and he’s got quite poor technical skills from a passing standpoint. He’s a ball carrier that can get you up the pitch and not much else — he doesn’t have good delivery, doesn’t cross the ball much, shown by his 0.03 xA per 90 (Ngakia had 0.05 in the PL for a comparison) he is not a comfortable wing back which is why Rooney barely used him in these situations, and more of an impact sub as a winger
Well people must see something in him! He's played international football virtually at every age group, Derby were desperate to keep him and Udinese snapped him up with other clubs also on the case. You two just want to argue a case that frankly is pointless because we may get neither of these players.
I’m more than happy to give you a reference, your knowledge and love of WFC is a lot more than any of the current applicants!
You literally posted his opinion as if it's important; I'm just pointing out that his opinion actually differs quite a lot from yours in that he thinks he's effective as a wing-back. Did you not read the views of the Derby fans then? They seem to think it's improved to the point where he does. It's more like because Rooney pretty much never plays with a wing-back system. And again, Derby fans seem to think he's literally, and I quote, "comfortable" in these roles.
Well it does seem that the only reason why you keep trying to argue on this point is because you wish to argue for argument's sake - because it's an argument which you've already very much lost, and even defeated yourself on with posting the Ireland manager's interview.
I think we should know by now that fan opinion and reality are two very different things. Our fanbase is a testament to that
