Summer 2021 Transfer Thread.

[nicholaldo]

One interesting detail from Sarcevic's career history is that he once signed for Shrewsbury Town and then left "by mutual consent" the December after signing. Perhaps it really was amicable, but he had featured fairly regularly for them so why would his departure come a month before the transfer window opened?

[Worthy4England]

I suspect whatever gone on will have happened before, and sure you don't want a bad smell in the room longer than necessary. But instant transfer with the window shut? Don't get it. Especially as shit blows over, generally, and if it hasn't by the time the next window opens, it gets sorted, then.

[LeverEnd]

I wonder if Sarcevic has got the impression there was no new contract for him at the end of the season and that soured things. And knew what Stockport would offer him.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

I can’t imagine any official explanation that would satisfy the “yeah but” response. We live in an era of whataboutery and yeahbutism. And one with a strong undertow of fake news and disinformation. Basically whatever the club says, some folk will believe what they want anyway.

I don’t expect a full set of details. But a falling out or whatever could be discussed without the blow by blows.

‘Sarcevic and I had a disagreement and decided it was best he went on his own way’.

I hear you. It’s not unreasonable. But I absolutely assure you that such a dry statement would not end the speculation. Not even close. All you’re doing is confirming a framework for amateur theorising.

What it needs is for the news cycle to move on. Doyler scoring and us winning would help a lot.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

One interesting detail from Sarcevic's career history is that he once signed for Shrewsbury Town and then left "by mutual consent" the December after signing. Perhaps it really was amicable, but he had featured fairly regularly for them so why would his departure come a month before the transfer window opened?

Paul Hurst replaced Micky Mellon, who’d signed Sarce, and wanted to change the squad. I think by then Sarce wanted out of Shrewsbury anyway, possibly homesick, which is why his next move (Plymouth) sounds a bit weird but I think his family moved down with him? Or maybe he just needed a job…

anyway that’s three successive times he’s left clubs in slightly odd circumstances. They all sort of make sense individually - cut losses at Shrewsbury, move back north from Plymouth, whateverthehellthisis - but it’s a bit of a pattern.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

In tonight’s presser Evatt was asked if he’d consider a free agent:

“No, that’s a really dodgy market. On the back of a pandemic now, these players that have been out of contract for a while, they would take a long, long time to get up to speed and we want real impact right now.

“We’re not going to make rushed decisions. We’ve showed that we’re strategic in our recruitment, myself and Chris Markham do a lot of hard work, along with rest of the recruitment team and recruitment analysts and we’ll look at things for January.

“Of course we want to strengthen and go again. We’re always looking at improving this team, so obviously there will be money available in January to go and recruit who we need to.”

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/19 ... departure/

[GhostoftheBok]

Money will need to be available.

Our transfer business in the summer was okay on paper, but that assumed that the new players would bed in over a period where the momentum of last season carried us forward. At the start it looked like that would work out - with the recent results and the Sarce implosion you now have to say that last season's momentum is well and truly spent. We need the summer signings to start showing the quality they are supposed to be bringing to a League Two promotion side.

The lack of impact of the new signings has been papered over by Dapo being ridiculously good in some games. He's not going to carry us through the season, though.

We knew we didn't get enough attacking quality in and we lost what looked like our best signing to injury. That lack of quality going forward is really, really evident at the moment. Fixing that in a January market is a huge ask, but has to happen. That's unless Amaechi comes in and tears up the league and decides to stay past Jan - not a basket I want to put all my eggs in.

We can't hold the ball and we get murdered on turn overs. Our build up is too slow. We lack physicality. Coaching is an issue, but we also need some players in and it's not a one signing fix. We need the two fullbacks we failed to get in the summer, the attacker we didn't get and then the quality we'd have been lacking even if we'd got those deals done. Big ask.

[TANGODANCER]

we lost what looked like our best signing to injury.

Seems we are fated with ill luck with our better players historically, and now our current crop . Would be nice to be total injury free for a few weeks . Doyle might not be Kevin Davies, but at least he tough and resilient unlike some of our "marque" heroes.

[Mar]

We can't hold the ball and we get murdered on turn overs. Our build up is too slow. We lack physicality. Coaching is an issue, but we also need some players in and it's not a one signing fix. We need the two fullbacks we failed to get in the summer, the attacker we didn't get and then the quality we'd have been lacking even if we'd got those deals done. Big ask.

We can hold the ball as our possession stats can maintain, it's doing something productive with it that is our occassional bugbear. As for the build up being too slow, I think to a large extent this is right at times and wrong in others. When we're performant we can tear teams open such as the case with Gillingham's last 30 mins, it's ensuring that we can do that consistently that we've been struggling with.

Coaching doesn't seem to be a problem for the most part as the players are well drilled and trained in what they are trying to do.
Maximising set pieces needs work though.

As for recruitment, you are right. We need players to either step up or bring in higher quality players. Hopefully they will step up but thats a big ask.

[Mar]

In tonight’s presser Evatt was asked if he’d consider a free agent:

“No, that’s a really dodgy market. On the back of a pandemic now, these players that have been out of contract for a while, they would take a long, long time to get up to speed and we want real impact right now.

“We’re not going to make rushed decisions. We’ve showed that we’re strategic in our recruitment, myself and Chris Markham do a lot of hard work, along with rest of the recruitment team and recruitment analysts and we’ll look at things for January.

“Of course we want to strengthen and go again. We’re always looking at improving this team, so obviously there will be money available in January to go and recruit who we need to.”

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/19 ... departure/

Interesting that he's considering it a risky strategy. That's probably why Wilshire isn't getting many offers. He looks like the sort that could do a job but given his injury record he'd probably get injured getting back up to speed.

Would be nice to see Wilshire back for the charity match, might suit us and him to get him involved but I can't see it happening.

[GhostoftheBok]

We can hold the ball as our possession stats can maintain, it's doing something productive with it that is our occassional bugbear.

The trouble with our possession stat is that it's once we attempt to transition that we turn the ball over cheaply time and again.

As you say, "we struggle to do anything with it"; when we try we lose the ball in really bad areas.

We can afford to take risks and lose the ball in the final third as part of how we play, but we lose the ball in really dangerous areas....a lot. It's those turnovers that kill us and would have again against Gillingham if they had composure.

When I say couching is a problem I mean to say that our other issues don't totally excuse the manager and his staff. They are making mistakes. It'd be easy for my view of recruitment being the main issue to be seen as making excuses for them, which I am not.

[Mar]

We can hold the ball as our possession stats can maintain, it's doing something productive with it that is our occassional bugbear.

The trouble with our possession stat is that it's once we attempt to transition that we turn the ball over cheaply time and again.

As you say, "we struggle to do anything with it"; when we try we lose the ball in really bad areas.

Definitely more noticeable as of late. Think there's definitely a call for mixing it up and causing other sorts of problems rather than sticking with an approach that is clearly causing us problems. Maybe react to their pressing game and shift the play up quicker. Target man would give us the option at least.

We can afford to take risks and lose the ball in the final third as part of how we play, but we lose the ball in really dangerous areas....a lot. It's those turnovers that kill us and would have again against Gillingham if they had composure.

When I say couching is a problem I mean to say that our other issues don't totally excuse the manager and his staff. They are making mistakes. It'd be easy for my view of recruitment being the main issue to be seen as making excuses for them, which I am not.

Fully agree regarding Gillingham killing the game off. Mistakes are to be expected but they've got to learn from them. Hopefully its not a sign of a repeating pattern.

[BWFC_Insane]

We can't hold the ball and we get murdered on turn overs. Our build up is too slow. We lack physicality. Coaching is an issue, but we also need some players in and it's not a one signing fix. We need the two fullbacks we failed to get in the summer, the attacker we didn't get and then the quality we'd have been lacking even if we'd got those deals done. Big ask.

We can hold the ball as our possession stats can maintain, it's doing something productive with it that is our occassional bugbear. As for the build up being too slow, I think to a large extent this is right at times and wrong in others. When we're performant we can tear teams open such as the case with Gillingham's last 30 mins, it's ensuring that we can do that consistently that we've been struggling with.

Coaching doesn't seem to be a problem for the most part as the players are well drilled and trained in what they are trying to do.
Maximising set pieces needs work though.

As for recruitment, you are right. We need players to either step up or bring in higher quality players. Hopefully they will step up but thats a big ask.

I think part of the issue is believing our own hype. What happened yesterday was Gillingham sat back deeper and deeper and allowed Dapo to roam and find space and also the full backs to really start to stretch them.

I think claiming that we ripped them apart or whatever is stretching it. We had a good period of pressure but again relied on a super strike from Dapo to open things up and in truth hadn’t created many great chances against what is a poor side even with our possession.

We should forget possession, it’s a useless metric. For most of the game we completely dominated the ball but Gillingham didn’t care as they did far more with their tiny percentage of possession than we did with ours. Before the last twenty they were 2-0 up, had hit the bar and missed two absolutely glorious chances second half that really were clear chances. I don’t think even after our rousing finish we came close to creating the chance number they did.

Football is about two boxes. What happens between them dictates a lot of what happens in them. BUT our issues are at both ends of the pitch we aren’t currently doing enough. And I think we need to take yesterday for what it was. A good fightback but Gillingham inflicted much of it on themselves. Our vulnerability at the back needs sorting and our inability to create chances is becoming more and more obvious.

[brommers95]

In tonight’s presser Evatt was asked if he’d consider a free agent:

“No, that’s a really dodgy market. On the back of a pandemic now, these players that have been out of contract for a while, they would take a long, long time to get up to speed and we want real impact right now.

“We’re not going to make rushed decisions. We’ve showed that we’re strategic in our recruitment, myself and Chris Markham do a lot of hard work, along with rest of the recruitment team and recruitment analysts and we’ll look at things for January.

“Of course we want to strengthen and go again. We’re always looking at improving this team, so obviously there will be money available in January to go and recruit who we need to.”

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/19 ... departure/

Interesting...I wonder if that's money for transfer fees or just money for wages and small loan fees

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

“Of course we want to strengthen and go again. We’re always looking at improving this team, so obviously there will be money available in January to go and recruit who we need to.”

Interesting...I wonder if that's money for transfer fees or just money for wages and small loan fees

Well, I'd say probably the latter, but it's not impossible we could buy out some contracts. Either way, don't let it restrict the scope of your e-scouting

[brommers95]

“Of course we want to strengthen and go again. We’re always looking at improving this team, so obviously there will be money available in January to go and recruit who we need to.”

Interesting...I wonder if that's money for transfer fees or just money for wages and small loan fees

Well, I'd say probably the latter, but it's not impossible we could buy out some contracts. Either way, don't let it restrict the scope of your e-scouting

Got plenty of names on my 'shortlist' but obviously they're all under contract at this stage of the season so would require a fee. Suppose we could do an 'MJ Williams' and come to agreements with out of favour players to cancel their existing contract and sign with us.

Then there's the loan market. My knowledge of Prem and Champ U23s is virtually non-existent but I hope we try and get in a young loanee or two. We've got some world class academies on our doorstep in United, City and Liverpool. Every other team seems to have about four or 5 loanees from clubs higher up the pyramid compared to our one. I'm not saying build the spine of the side on unproven kids but we don't appear to be currently optimising the resources available to us.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/league- ... 0&intern=1

[GhostoftheBok]

The trouble with the top academies now is that even the youth players at those sides are on silly money. As Evatt said in the summer, it can be tough to reach a reasonable deal on player wages for the more sought after lads.

Permanent deals will be complicated if we can't string a few wins together, because the calibre of player we want will be harder to get in if we look at risk of the drop.

There are young English academy lads who have gone abroad (something Evatt says he likes) like Samuel Shashoua, but you'd think those kinds of deals would be for summer windows.

We did well last January and I'll remain hopeful we can do what we need to do.

[brommers95]

The trouble with the top academies now is that even the youth players at those sides are on silly money. As Evatt said in the summer, it can be tough to reach a reasonable deal on player wages for the more sought after lads.

Permanent deals will be complicated if we can't string a few wins together, because the calibre of player we want will be harder to get in if we look at risk of the drop.

There are young English academy lads who have gone abroad (something Evatt says he likes) like Samuel Shashoua, but you'd think those kinds of deals would be for summer windows.

We did well last January and I'll remain hopeful we can do what we need to do.

Yes exactly I suppose that’s where the ‘sales pitch’ that Evatt and Markham have spoken about before comes in.

“Look Mr academy/loan manager, we can’t pay 100% of the kid’s salary or even 50%, but what can do is develop your player in a system where they’ll see plenty of the ball, be structured out of possession, learn how to press and when” etc , etc

It’s not impossible though, even teams with the smallest budgets have some Champ and Prem loanees: Daniel Jebbison (scored on his Prem debut back in May for Sheff Utd) and Harry Chapman (Blackburn) at Burton, and Harry Trafford (Man City) and Joel Mumbongo (Burnley) at Acrrington to name a few.

[GhostoftheBok]

Yes exactly I suppose that’s where the ‘sales pitch’ that Evatt and Markham have spoken about before comes in.

“Look Mr academy/loan manager, we can’t pay 100% of the kid’s salary or even 50%, but what can do is develop your player in a system where they’ll see plenty of the ball, be structured out of possession, learn how to press and when” etc , etc

It’s not impossible though, even teams with the smallest budgets have some Champ and Prem loanees: Daniel Jebbison (scored on his Prem debut back in May for Sheff Utd) and Harry Chapman (Blackburn) at Burton, and Harry Trafford (Man City) and Joel Mumbongo (Burnley) at Acrrington to name a few.

Certainly not impossible and, as I say, I remain hopeful.

I do wonder how much the sales pitch will be hit by poor form. If you say "we can offer development and great football" do they say "Okay, but you're getting battered every week"?

Not to be overly simplistic, but winning matches just makes everything easier in football. We need to find some form if we're to go to promising young players with a straight face and tell them we can make turn them into class players.

[The_Gun]

Yes exactly I suppose that’s where the ‘sales pitch’ that Evatt and Markham have spoken about before comes in.

“Look Mr academy/loan manager, we can’t pay 100% of the kid’s salary or even 50%, but what can do is develop your player in a system where they’ll see plenty of the ball, be structured out of possession, learn how to press and when” etc , etc

It’s not impossible though, even teams with the smallest budgets have some Champ and Prem loanees: Daniel Jebbison (scored on his Prem debut back in May for Sheff Utd) and Harry Chapman (Blackburn) at Burton, and Harry Trafford (Man City) and Joel Mumbongo (Burnley) at Acrrington to name a few.

Certainly not impossible and, as I say, I remain hopeful.

I do wonder how much the sales pitch will be hit by poor form. If you say "we can offer development and great football" do they say "Okay, but you're getting battered every week"?

Not to be overly simplistic, but winning matches just makes everything easier in football. We need to find some form if we're to go to promising young players with a straight face and tell them we can make turn them into class players.

We did alright attracting players last January when we were in pretty poor form. If we can keep bobbing along in mid table I think the style of football, location and size of the club should mean we're an attractive enough proposition for promising youngsters.

Looking forward to Brommers' scouting reports!