In, Out, Shake It All About: January 2025 Transfer Window

[BWFC_Insane]

I mean we’ve spent two years saying if you sign unfit players with bad injury records you are not going to see them that often. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

You can have all the data you want. But none of us needed paid for data to predict accurately before he was even signed that Etete was a bad idea. The data to know that was freely available.

[dave the minion]

Oh dear it looks like our new tall striker is out for 4-5 weeks, great signing this is turning out to be.

Another Markham special. Really recruitment has been awful.

I hope Schuey will get a grip on it now. He must see how dysfunctional it has been.

Well.... A large chunk of people have already written him off as useless, so him being injured is a good thing isn't it by that logic??

Plus, our recruitment has only been awful if we selectively choose to ignore the (many) successes. Simply repeating it as being awful whilst ignoring all the contrary evidence doesn't make it so.........

[Bertie Wooster]

Oh dear it looks like our new tall striker is out for 4-5 weeks, great signing this is turning out to be.

Another Markham special. Really recruitment has been awful.

I hope Schuey will get a grip on it now. He must see how dysfunctional it has been.

I would really like to know what the Markham rationale / criteria was behind the Etete signing, what boxes did he tick apart from being 6ft 6', because I can't think of any especially when he signed a new contract at Cardiff.

Anyone who thinks that we should reach the play off's with our current striker options needs to think again, we have been left absolutely toothless up front.

[BWFC_Insane]

Oh dear it looks like our new tall striker is out for 4-5 weeks, great signing this is turning out to be.

Another Markham special. Really recruitment has been awful.

I hope Schuey will get a grip on it now. He must see how dysfunctional it has been.

Well.... A large chunk of people have already written him off as useless, so him being injured is a good thing isn't it by that logic??

Plus, our recruitment has only been awful if we selectively choose to ignore the (many) successes. Simply repeating it as being awful whilst ignoring all the contrary evidence doesn't make it so.........

The signing was a poor one because he was injured - coming back to full fitness hasn’t played much football and is young without many real games under his belt. It ticked every box for ‘what we don’t need right now’.

And overall recruitment has been very poor in the last two seasons particularly. Otherwise we’d have a bunch of players who’d be in demand. Yet we don’t. I think since we sold Dapo one can say that recruitment has been pretty awful all round especially considering the money we’ve spent. To have recruited a mid table league one side with the fees we’ve paid…sorry you can’t spin that as good.

[BWFC_Insane]

Oh dear it looks like our new tall striker is out for 4-5 weeks, great signing this is turning out to be.

Another Markham special. Really recruitment has been awful.

I hope Schuey will get a grip on it now. He must see how dysfunctional it has been.

I would really like to know what the Markham rationale / criteria was behind the Etete signing, what boxes did he tick apart from being 6ft 6', because I can't think of any especially when he signed a new contract at Cardiff.

Anyone who thinks that we should reach the play off's with our current striker options needs to think again, we have been left absolutely toothless up front.

There are times when that sort of a deal might make sense. If we had two first choice bang in form strikers a young lad on way back from injury as a backup would seem reasonable. We aren’t spending big bucks and maybe the data suggests he’s potentially good.

But we just sold Charles and had a weird collection of not quite strikers and Vic and as you say desperately needed someone more proven at this level as a 9. I’d have taken Cosgrove - yep he wouldn’t fire us to promotion but we could bring him on as a different option at least. Instead we’ve got a lad who cost us a point and won’t contribute now till it’s too late. By the time he’s match fit it won’t matter either way I’d suspect.

[GhostoftheBok]

I would really like to know what the Markham rationale / criteria was behind the Etete signing

Cheap, available and able to hold the ball up.

He was a stop-gap to give Schumacher an option, without impacting his summer budget.

Unfortunately it was also risk, which I'm sure they all understood.

[Bertie Wooster]

To have recruited a mid table league one side with the fees we’ve paid…sorry you can’t spin that as good.

This is a very good point and spot on to some degree, however I suppose that we would need to know what others in and around us have spent - although I doubt that Orient or Stockport have spend anywhere near as much as us.

[dave the minion]

The signing was a poor one because he was injured - coming back to full fitness hasn’t played much football and is young without many real games under his belt. It ticked every box for ‘what we don’t need right now’.

And overall recruitment has been very poor in the last two seasons particularly. Otherwise we’d have a bunch of players who’d be in demand. Yet we don’t. I think since we sold Dapo one can say that recruitment has been pretty awful all round especially considering the money we’ve spent. To have recruited a mid table league one side with the fees we’ve paid…sorry you can’t spin that as good.

I do get that.

With Etete - and I don't know so I'm just sumising - what if there were no other targets that were available, and we're not paying much in wages etc, so we thought why not give him a punt? Risk free and significantly better than nothing? Plus, both Markahm/Evatt and SS have said he was a player they have been aware of / chasing for a while, so why not give it a go??

Recruitment hasn't been poor though. As has been said many times on here, its not a 100% success rate business. For every bad signing there will be at least 1 success. Human nature focusses us on the bad ones, but there have been many success stories and - as I keep saying - most of us were supportive of the signings we made at the time, and only now when they are not firing 100% do we pretend they were bad options....

[Bertie Wooster]

I would really like to know what the Markham rationale / criteria was behind the Etete signing

Cheap, available and able to hold the ball up.

He was a stop-gap to give Schumacher an option, without impacting his summer budget.

Unfortunately it was also risk, which I'm sure they all understood.

Should it have been a risk the club should have taken though ?, given that it's now left us with few striker options - shouldn't the recruitment team have been looking at someone fitter and more proven instead of taking such a risky gamble.

[GhostoftheBok]

Should it have been a risk the club should have taken though ?, given that it's now left us with few striker options - shouldn't the recruitment team have been looking at someone fitter and more proven instead of taking such a risky gamble.

Yes, probably - given it was likely him or nobody. You can say "Nobody would be better", but if we'd have signed nobody we'd be complaining about that.

I didn't like the signing and still don't, but I do understand it. We'd just binned the manager and we got a new one in, so we went to the "previously looked at" pile and picked up the one that was available.

Schumacher's looked at the squad and said, "Yeah, the rest is fine" and he's okayed that one addition to give him an option.

It's not a tar and feathers issue.

[dave the minion]

But we just sold Charles and had a weird collection of not quite strikers and Vic and as you say desperately needed someone more proven at this level as a 9. I’d have taken Cosgrove - yep he wouldn’t fire us to promotion but we could bring him on as a different option at least. Instead we’ve got a lad who cost us a point and won’t contribute now till it’s too late. By the time he’s match fit it won’t matter either way I’d suspect.

Yeah, but Charles was woefully out of form, coming back from injury, appeared to be sulking at not playing, and we don't know what was going on behind the scenes, so maybe the time was right to cash in and maximise the return we could get on him.

Cosgrove could have come in and might have scored a few for us, but could also have completely upset the balance of the squad if Toal still holds a grudge (& Santos - he certainly held a grudge when he shoed him off the pitch when they next came together).

I very much assume Etete was a player on the watch list, became available, presumably affordable, but risky from an injury point of view. For me, the problem was less in the signing of him, more the throwing him striaght into the first game....

[BWFC_Insane]

The signing was a poor one because he was injured - coming back to full fitness hasn’t played much football and is young without many real games under his belt. It ticked every box for ‘what we don’t need right now’.

And overall recruitment has been very poor in the last two seasons particularly. Otherwise we’d have a bunch of players who’d be in demand. Yet we don’t. I think since we sold Dapo one can say that recruitment has been pretty awful all round especially considering the money we’ve spent. To have recruited a mid table league one side with the fees we’ve paid…sorry you can’t spin that as good.

I do get that.

With Etete - and I don't know so I'm just sumising - what if there were no other targets that were available, and we're not paying much in wages etc, so we thought why not give him a punt? Risk free and significantly better than nothing? Plus, both Markahm/Evatt and SS have said he was a player they have been aware of / chasing for a while, so why not give it a go??

Recruitment hasn't been poor though. As has been said many times on here, its not a 100% success rate business. For every bad signing there will be at least 1 success. Human nature focusses us on the bad ones, but there have been many success stories and - as I keep saying - most of us were supportive of the signings we made at the time, and only now when they are not firing 100% do we pretend they were bad options....

I think the problem is if I’m being really honest that Markham has to justify his job and come up with something clever.

What we needed was an Ian Marshall. A big no nonsense striker with experience who adds a different dimension. Yes we weren’t getting one with loads of goals in them. Not now. But just something different. Cosgrove a good example of that. Plenty around.

Instead I think they’ve gone away and tried to find a younger player maybe with more ability long term but not what we need. Because obvious answers don’t justify data led recruitment teams and sporting directors.

We needed Ian Marshall. They came up with Darren Anderton.

It’s been and done and what it is it is. Schumacher I’m sure will have a look and in the summer try and influence the moves to suit what he needs.

[Bertie Wooster]

Should it have been a risk the club should have taken though ?, given that it's now left us with few striker options - shouldn't the recruitment team have been looking at someone fitter and more proven instead of taking such a risky gamble.

Yes, probably - given it was likely him or nobody. You can say "Nobody would be better", but if we'd have signed nobody we'd be complaining about that.

I didn't like the signing and still don't, but I do understand it. We'd just binned the manager and we got a new one in, so we went to the "previously looked at" pile and picked up the one that was available.

Schumacher's looked at the squad and said, "Yeah, the rest is fine" and he's okayed that one addition to give him an option.

It's not a tar and feathers issue.

As BWFCI said we could have tried to get the likes of Cosgrove, who is much more proven and fitter etc. if all we needed was a short term signing. If Stockport could afford a short term loan I'm sure we could (If he was interested in joining Bolton ?), Personally I think that Schumacher has just toed the line with the Etete signing, he was hardly likely to come out in public a day or two after joining and said that the signing was a bag of shite and he didn't agree with it.

[GhostoftheBok]

As BWFCI said we could have tried to get the likes of Cosgrove, who is much more proven and fitter etc

The finances involved in the Cosgrove deal are radically different.

[GhostoftheBok]

I think the problem is if I’m being really honest that Markham has to justify his job and come up with something clever.

Instead I think they’ve gone away and tried to find a younger player maybe with more ability long termhe needs.

But they've not. Cardiff intend to keep him.

It's not some "attempt to be clever" with a long term move. It's the cheapest deal in the market that fits the profile.

[Bertie Wooster]

I think the problem is if I’m being really honest that Markham has to justify his job and come up with something clever.

Instead I think they’ve gone away and tried to find a younger player maybe with more ability long termhe needs.

But they've not. Cardiff intend to keep him.

It's not some "attempt to be clever" with a long term move. It's the cheapest deal in the market that fits the profile.

So the club (not me) still has aspirations to go up via the play off's and they gamble on a partly broken, bargain bucket, cheap as chips option.

[GhostoftheBok]

So the club (not me) still has aspirations to go up via the play off's and they gamble on a partly broken, bargain bucket, cheap as chips option.

The club changed managers and he's told them he rates he squad. He needed another player in and didn't want it to impact his summer plans.

That's my understanding of what happened. Our mole may know better.

[Prufrock]

It's a shite signing albeit one of those things.

The blame for it IMO lies with the board who took too long to pot Evatt. You're not beating out anyone else to a player, all other things being equal they'll always pick the team with a manager rather than hoping the new guy likes them. So you're left with the bottom of the barrel rushing it through to get something done before the window slams shut. That's what you get.

[GhostoftheBok]

The blame for it IMO lies with the board who took too long to pot Evatt.

That's correct, I think.

Schumacher actually saw the squad as too big when he arrived, as he said publicly. He wanted lads out, not in.

He wanted time to assess the club properly and be able to make long term plans for the summer.

[The_Gun]

Yeah look, I think everyone can agree that Etete looked a poor signing on paper, and has worked out even worse in practice. In my opinion him getting injured will probably have very little bearing on us making the playoffs, though.