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[Albion] Locadia to Bochum









Javeaseagull

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Feb 22, 2014
2,808
Sounds like he has found his level. He has made a pretty decent living out of his hobby, good luck to him.
 


Eggman

Well-known member
Jul 8, 2003
3,705
West Sussex
Shame really, for what we paid for him I hoped he'd do ok.
I can't remember in which game he came on at the beginning of last season(Leeds maybe) and he was bloody awful. He just looked so off pace and on a different wavelength with the rest of the team
Southampton away? Put through on goal and tripped over the ball.
 


Eric the meek

Fiveways Wilf
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Aug 24, 2020
7,093
I've come round to feel no malice or bitterness towards him. I mean if you were a very average stroke poor footballer and some deluded and confused recruitment team came to you offering unimaginable wealth and wages what would you do? More the fool us for paying massively over the top for a footballer out of his depth. I'd have kept quiet and taken the money, not his fault he was frankly a footballing turd. As for attitude, yes maybe poor but no amount of positivity and trying hard would make up for his shortfall in quality. Only against Coventry and Millwall in the Cup did he look any good iirc.

Perhaps the club and it's recruitment operation needed to fail with Locadia (14 million) and Ali J (17 million), so that we were more or less forced to take the engine out of the car, take it to bits and rebuild it so that it now works like a well-oiled machine.

Whatever happened, I think it's fair to say that we have learned from our mistakes and have improved quite spectacularly.
 




Springal

Well-known member
Feb 12, 2005
24,779
GOSBTS
Perhaps the club and it's recruitment operation needed to fail with Locadia (14 million) and Ali J (17 million), so that we were more or less forced to take the engine out of the car, take it to bits and rebuild it so that it now works like a well-oiled machine.

Whatever happened, I think it's fair to say that we have learned from our mistakes and have improved quite spectacularly.

My only concern is the recruitment improved when Ashworth came in , so now he’s gone have we learnt enough to avoid the same mistakes. We’ve not really signed any ‘new’ since Ashworth went
 


Eric the meek

Fiveways Wilf
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Aug 24, 2020
7,093
My only concern is the recruitment improved when Ashworth came in , so now he’s gone have we learnt enough to avoid the same mistakes. We’ve not really signed any ‘new’ since Ashworth went

Yes, I take your point.

Is our recent success in recruitment down to Ashworth? Probably, yes.
Have we learnt enough to avoid the same mistakes? I don't know. Only time will tell I guess. We do seem to be pretty good with succession planning, so I'm quite hopeful.

In addition, I sense that our systems and processes are tightly run, so Ashworth's contact database and methodology would have been open and available for other senior staff to see, at least until Newcastle came sniffing.
 


Nobby Cybergoat

Well-known member
Jul 19, 2021
8,622
Perhaps the club and it's recruitment operation needed to fail with Locadia (14 million) and Ali J (17 million), so that we were more or less forced to take the engine out of the car, take it to bits and rebuild it so that it now works like a well-oiled machine.

Whatever happened, I think it's fair to say that we have learned from our mistakes and have improved quite spectacularly.

The way I see it, if we'd have signed a load of 18 year olds from Poland or South America soon after promotion, we'd have gone straight down. The recruitment strategy was right for the time and given we stayed up for the initial tricky few seasons, i'm pretty happy we got more right than wrong. Locadia was a bad signing, but 14mil for a PL striker is never going to get you anything more than a hopeful punt
 




GT49er

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Feb 1, 2009
49,178
Gloucester
Yes, I take your point.

Is our recent success in recruitment down to Ashworth? Probably, yes.
Have we learnt enough to avoid the same mistakes? I don't know. Only time will tell I guess. We do seem to be pretty good with succession planning, so I'm quite hopeful.

In addition, I sense that our systems and processes are tightly run, so Ashworth's contact database and methodology would have been open and available for other senior staff to see, at least until Newcastle came sniffing.
The way I see it, though I'm sure TB didn't want to lose DA, especially to a rival, is that DA's skill-set is as a project manager setting up systems. Once set up, they can be carried on by 'lesser mortals' (apologies to messrs. Weir and Greer, no offence) so in many ways his work here was done.

That's my half full glass anyway.
 
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Eric the meek

Fiveways Wilf
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Aug 24, 2020
7,093
The way I see it is that, though I'm sure TB didn't want to lose DA, especially to a rival, is that DA's skill-set is as a project manager setting up systems. Once set up, they can be carried on by 'lesser mortals' (apologies to messrs. Weir and Greer, no offence) so in many ways his work here was done.

That's my half full glass anyway.

I like that summary. It rings true, and it reduces the downside of us losing Ashworth, which gets my vote.
 


Swansman

Pro-peace
May 13, 2019
22,320
Sweden
Weird year for him.

He left Brighton as a nobody, moved to a giant club - one of the most popular in Asia and with 70k attendances for the biggest games - and has turned into a hero over there, scoring a decent amount of goals so far during the season. In November he tweeted "Woman Life Freedom" and now he's returned to the Netherlands for "private reasons", with Perepolis fans begging him to return. Bit of a rollercoaster.
 




Lenny Rider

Well-known member
Sep 15, 2010
6,010
At least gets his £2.5M a year wages off the books though. Although I suspect we paid up part of his contract to
Someone mentioned this the other day, with all the local people's good fortune in Goring with the Post Code Lottery, not life changing money but money that will help make their lives better, tempered by the fact that the Albion paid Locadia 50 grand every week he was here regardless of him playing, more than most of the Goring residents got.

Locadia must have thought he'd won the lottery each and every day.
 


GT49er

Well-known member
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Feb 1, 2009
49,178
Gloucester
Weird year for him.

He left Brighton as a nobody, moved to a giant club - one of the most popular in Asia and with 70k attendances for the biggest games - and has turned into a hero over there, scoring a decent amount of goals so far during the season. In November he tweeted "Woman Life Freedom" and now he's returned to the Netherlands for "private reasons", with Perepolis fans begging him to return. Bit of a rollercoaster.
Personal reasons? It's probably just a damn good idea for westerners, with a western lifestyle, to get the hell out of Iran at the moment! His lifesyle - and indeed his very existence - might not go down too well with the supreme leader and the unelected Guardian Council made up of Islamic clerics (half of which are Islamic jurists).

Yeh, spin those discs, man! :facepalm:
 






Ali_rrr

Well-known member
Feb 4, 2011
2,848
Utrecht, NL
Weird year for him.

He left Brighton as a nobody, moved to a giant club - one of the most popular in Asia and with 70k attendances for the biggest games - and has turned into a hero over there, scoring a decent amount of goals so far during the season. In November he tweeted "Woman Life Freedom" and now he's returned to the Netherlands for "private reasons", with Perepolis fans begging him to return. Bit of a rollercoaster.
Dutch media reporting he's fleeing as he's worried about his safety now. At first, it was due to the supposed poor health of his wife but it seems that was a cover up for the real reason. I find it odd that he didn't just mention this at first but there you go.
 


Wardy's twin

Well-known member
Oct 21, 2014
8,866
Controversial maybe but I don't think he was a sh*t player he had the skill but not the attitude to make use of those skills. Same outcome maybe on the pitch but I make the point that it's very difficult to get stats on attitude, his playing stats were ok in his previous clubs.
 


A1X

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Sep 1, 2017
20,533
Deepest, darkest Sussex


Not sure if I'm being whooshed or not but it seems a genuine site
 






Ali_rrr

Well-known member
Feb 4, 2011
2,848
Utrecht, NL


Not sure if I'm being whooshed or not but it seems a genuine site

This guy who runs this, Michael, is widely considered an expert on Dutch football, however, Dutch media have got this wrong. They took this from an article which is just an opinion piece.

 




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