Bloom's Open Letter

[ac gull]

As good as it can be in the circumstances

Very careful not to make any promises

Be amazed if CH does not want a signing or two all sorted and ready to go on 1st January

No substitute for learning the hard way sometimes

 

[Albumen]

Thanks for the link.

 

[surrey jim]

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/news/2017/september/blooms-message-to-supporters/

Brighton & Hove Albion chairman Tony Bloom has written an open letter to Albion supporters following the end of the transfer window last night.

Dear Supporter,

Our first Premier League transfer window ended shortly before 1am this morning.

We have secured many excellent signings which have strengthened the squad in many areas. In doing so, we have invested many tens of millions of pounds and we have broken our own record transfer fee three times. However, in what turned out to be a very eventful final day, we failed to secure the additional striker which has left all of us feeling very disappointed.

Our recruitment team, led by Paul Winstanley, worked tirelessly throughout the summer - and indeed in the many months before - to identify targets, prepare the ground work for our transfers, and to put us in the best possible position to execute deals at the optimum time in the window. A far from easy task, and a far from exact science.

Transfer windows are highly complex and dynamic. They require considerable investments in time, resources, energy, judgement, and, of course, finances. We were short in none of these areas. Transfer windows also require patience and good fortune. We were patient from the outset but, in the end, fortune did not come our way.

As we have seen in our first three matches of the season, the Premier League represents a big step up from the Championship. Your support for the team - both home and away - will be vital.

During the remainder of the international break, we will be working hard to re-group and to start the process of preparing our team for our second home Premier League match when West Brom visit us at the Amex on 9 September. And, such is the nature of player recruitment, our work for the next transfer window continues without pause.

Thank you for your continued and excellent support for the club.

Best wishes

Tony Bloom
Chairman

 

[neilbard]

Thanks for the link.

https://www.brightonandhovealbion.com/news/2017/september/blooms-message-to-supporters/

 

[ac gull]

No pleasing some people

 

[Albumen]

Nobody on here likes the term unfortunate. It's not like we didn't try to sign strikers.

 

[Easy 10]

We may not have been short in any areas Tony, but....we still came up short.

It’s obviously never a straightforward process with so many factors involved to bring in a quality striker. But I still find it incredible that given the amount of time we had to sort this out, we still couldn’t get a deal over the line. Were our targets unrealistic ? Is our wage structure inadequate ? Going by the Janssen bid, it certainly looked like we were prepared to throw more money at the dilemma at the last minute, once our backs were really up against the wall, but by then it was all too late. Janssen looks like a last minute afterthought to me, not an actual target we were ever serious about until we were desperate.

I get that we’re PL rookies this season, but surely we *should* still be an attractive proposition to sign for. A club on the up, magnificent stadium and training ground, stable ownership with a well liked and respected manager, big crowds, great place to live. It’s not a hard sell to join a PL club like ours. And yet one by one, all our targets fell away until there was literally nobody left to bring in. Why ? We weren’t (to my knowledge) in any bidding wars with other clubs, where the auction just got too hot for us. Our targets stayed put, we were the only deal in town. So why ? What is the underlying reason ? This needs looking at.

I don’t just want to hear “its difficult”. Sorry, but other clubs seem to manage it, who on the face of it would be far less attractive propositions than ours. Is it simply a case that we refuse to pay the market rate ? Commendable to an extent of course, and I certainly wouldn’t want us to ‘do a Leeds’ obviously. But there is a balance to be struck, and at the moment, I think we’ve now left ourselves uncompetitive for the first half of the season. Come January the damage could be too great to rectify, and by the end of the season we could well be lamenting a swift return to the Championship, and left thinking “I just wish we’d really given it a proper go”.

Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Chicken Run]

We may not have been short in any areas Tony, but....we still came up short.

It’s obviously never a straightforward process with so many factors involved to bring in a quality striker. But I still find it incredible that given the amount of time we had to sort this out, we still couldn’t get a deal over the line. Were our targets unrealistic ? Is our wage structure inadequate ? Going by the Janssen bid, it certainly looked like we were prepared to throw more money at the dilemma at the last minute, once our backs were really up against the wall, but by then it was all too late. Janssen looks like a last minute afterthought to me, not an actual target we were ever serious about until we were desperate.

I get that we’re PL rookies this season, but surely we *should* still be an attractive proposition to sign for. A club on the up, magnificent stadium and training ground, stable ownership with a well liked and respected manager, big crowds, great place to live. It’s not a hard sell to join a PL club like ours. And yet one by one, all our targets fell away until there was literally nobody left to bring in. Why ? We weren’t (to my knowledge) in any bidding wars with other clubs, where the auction just got too hot for us. Our targets stayed put, we were the only deal in town. So why ? What is the underlying reason ? This needs looking at.

I don’t just want to hear “its difficult”. Sorry, but other clubs seem to manage it, who on the face of it would be far less attractive propositions than ours. Is it simply a case that we refuse to pay the market rate ? Commendable to an extent of course, and I certainly wouldn’t want us to ‘do a Leeds’ obviously. But there is a balance to be struck, and at the moment, I think we’ve now left ourselves uncompetitive for the first half of the season. Come January the damage could be too great to rectify, and by the end of the season we could well be lamenting a swift return to the Championship, and left thinking “I just wish we’d really given it a proper go”.

Hope I'm wrong.

This! It's always other clubs that seem to get their shit together.

 

[Diablo]

Shows the calibre of the Man, has spent many millions but dissappointed as most are that Striker not signed,However remaining positive and asking for all our support. Lets get behind the team big time next weekend...West Brom at home beatable !!!!

 

[Monkey Man]

Seems like an honest assessment of the situation to me.

Let's just support the players we've got and see what happens between now and January. I reckon we have the personnel to keep up us out of the bottom three.

 

[Clive Walker]

Asks for our support! It's all take and no give with him isn't it?

 

[Hungry Joe]

The one part of this statement that doesn't ring true is the part about finances in this sentence:

"Transfer windows are highly complex and dynamic. They require considerable investments in time, resources, energy, judgement, and, of course, finances. We were short in none of these areas".

We must have been 'short' in finances when it came to the strikers we targeted, otherwise at least one of them would be with us this morning. If we accept we weren't short in finances then by default we must have targeted the wrong strikers for the finances available. Either way, this statement doesn't quite ring true, but then again the club are hardly going to admit that they got it wrong are they?

 

[Commander]

I guess one thing to come out of this is that the club surely won't make the same mistake in January. We will know that we have to pay silly money and offer silly wages to get a striker in, so surely we will get it sorted out early on this time, and not try to play poker again.

The thing about being in a relegation battle is that the teams around you don't win very much. So even if we were bottom at Christmas and 6 points adrift, if we sign a decent striker on January 1st and win a couple of games, we can climb out of it very quickly. Here's hoping, anyway.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[neilbard]

Asks for our support! It's all take and no give with him isn't it?

 

[BUTTERBALL]

I have every faith in Tony Bloom and he didn't have to make that statement, he chose to. He's a fan at the end of the day.

Can you imagine Ivan Gazidis, The Glaziers or Daniel Levy doing something that? No, me neither.

 

[twickers]

We may not have been short in any areas Tony, but....we still came up short.

It’s obviously never a straightforward process with so many factors involved to bring in a quality striker. But I still find it incredible that given the amount of time we had to sort this out, we still couldn’t get a deal over the line. Were our targets unrealistic ? Is our wage structure inadequate ? Going by the Janssen bid, it certainly looked like we were prepared to throw more money at the dilemma at the last minute, once our backs were really up against the wall, but by then it was all too late. Janssen looks like a last minute afterthought to me, not an actual target we were ever serious about until we were desperate.

I get that we’re PL rookies this season, but surely we *should* still be an attractive proposition to sign for. A club on the up, magnificent stadium and training ground, stable ownership with a well liked and respected manager, big crowds, great place to live. It’s not a hard sell to join a PL club like ours. And yet one by one, all our targets fell away until there was literally nobody left to bring in. Why ? We weren’t (to my knowledge) in any bidding wars with other clubs, where the auction just got too hot for us. Our targets stayed put, we were the only deal in town. So why ? What is the underlying reason ? This needs looking at.

I don’t just want to hear “its difficult”. Sorry, but other clubs seem to manage it, who on the face of it would be far less attractive propositions than ours. Is it simply a case that we refuse to pay the market rate ? Commendable to an extent of course, and I certainly wouldn’t want us to ‘do a Leeds’ obviously. But there is a balance to be struck, and at the moment, I think we’ve now left ourselves uncompetitive for the first half of the season. Come January the damage could be too great to rectify, and by the end of the season we could well be lamenting a swift return to the Championship, and left thinking “I just wish we’d really given it a proper go”.

Hope I'm wrong.

We could over analyse it. The failed medical you can't legislate for.

The clubs who will only sell dependent on other business are more prone to us because we are not in the league of offering £70m for a player who is on a last year of contract...even those didn't happen for the big clubs.

We don't have a compelling proposition yet...we haven't done enough early deals to attract other players...we don't look like Premiership upsetters and our owner is sensible. On the flip side we haven't taken huge risks.

So the lesson learned is players will watch our form over the next few months, we probably need to take more risks and spend more than we'd like to, the net has to be cast much wider...we need to increase the chances of luck by getting deeper relationships earlier in the window.

 

[Grombleton]

This! It's always other clubs that seem to get their shit together.

But not always, look at the teams that didn't get what they wanted:

We didnt get a striker
Man City didnt get Sanchez
Chelsea...didnt seem to get as many as they needed
Newcastle...didn't really get anyone
Palace didn't get a striker
Everton didn't get a striker
Arsenal didn't seem to want to keep any players, let alone sign more.

I doubt there's many teams that will be fully really pleased with their work, there'll be upset, frustration at losing prime targets etc.

 

[Bozza]

I guess one thing to come out of this is that the club surely won't make the same mistake in January.

Indeed.

However, getting players to a team that looks doomed to relegation can be a tricky proposition and may require even greater money to be thrown at the problem in order to convince someone you actually want to commit.

We need to look like we still have a chance in the new year.

 

[scamander]

This! It's always other clubs that seem to get their shit together.

Not sure they do, few clubs are happy after the window shuts. I got some insight into how players are bought and sold in the final days of the window and it can be very nefarious. I know of one transfer (a few seasons back) where a player was offered to a club, a fee agreed and the deal pulled at the very last minute. The club never had an intention of selling the player in question to the club, instead it was used to keep that club busy and away from another deal.

Would be an interesting addition to the transfer engine in the next Football Manager game.

 

[dazzer6666]

I have every faith in Tony Bloom and he didn't have to make that statement, he chose to. He's a fan at the end of the day.

Can you imagine Ivan Gazidis, The Glaziers or Daniel Levy doing something that? No, me neither.

This. He'll be as disappointed, if not more, than all of us. He's a fan first and owner second. Sure some lessons have been learned.