[Albion] Paul Barber: The Transfer Window

[rocker959]

Well said Mr Barber .

 

[Machiavelli]

My view on striker/s is very simple:
We've changed our formation from 4-4-2 to 4-4-1-1 which means that we need a different type of striker, one that has pace and a knack for scoring goals, with one (or, dream on, both) of good movement (like Hernandez or Aguero) or strength and power (like Lukaku or Costa). Of the three strikers we've got Murray and Hemed are similar in that they can play with their backs to goals and are target men that are decent goalscorers (with Murray the better), while Baldock has pace and movement, but simply can't play up-top on his own (Hyypia tried that; it didn't work out too clever). This meant that we really needed two strikers in the transfer window (enabling Hemed to leave), which was obvious from the point when we were promoted. We ended up with none, which is a colossal failure. We could easily have got Niasse, even at the late stage that we left it. A massive strategic error, which has left the club, CH and the players in a sub-optimal position even given the tough situation we were in as a promoted club.
That doesn't mean that I won't enjoy the season, or fail to get behind the team.

 

[Knotty]

I agree with your broad thrust, but:
-- I remain of the view that certain personnel (PB, primarily) did screw up in terms of not signing a striker
-- I am of the view that Hemed, Murray and Baldock will struggle to get to 20 goals between them, and will probably get far fewer than that, which is not to say that we won't get to 40, which is a realistic target to aim for in terms of surviving in the PL.

How do you know it's 'PB primarily'? Do you have some inside information?

TB holds the purse strings ... not him?

 

[rocker959]

Get behind the club and team

This is what matters .100%

 

[Icy Gull]

I still refuse to believe that we couldn't land a striker of at least top end Championship quality with the funds we have available. I accept that we couldn't sign the very best but we are desperately light on strikers and have been for over a season now and even a half decent one gives us more options than we have ended up with. The fact that we have the same number of strikers as keepers in the squad and couldn't field a striker on the bench at Watford really doesn't make us look as professional and organised on the pitch as the powers that be would have us believe.

Do I gather the club accept absolutely no responsibility at all on this?

 

[btnbelle]

Thank you to Paul Barber for taking the time to explain just how difficult signing a striker really is. It wasn't for the want of trying. It sounds very challenging job.

Surely the players and club deserve our support no matter what. Sometimes in life you don't get everything you want at first but with hard work and determination it is possible to succeed. Maybe a striker will sign in January. If the team have a few knock backs, we all need to get behind them and encourage them to be the best they can be. Bouncebackability....

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

I like Paul Barber. I think sometimes though he does seem a tad precious. Be it ticket swapping or transfer dealings, I've seen a couple of these statements where it seems like someone has hit a nerve.Tony's already said everything which needed to be said. I really don't think we needed a thousand word essay essentially saying "we all did our best".

We know that. I think most people don't want heads to roll they're just using social media as a place to vent their frustrations. And if we're planning on being a Premier League club for longer than a year, he'd better get used to it I'm afraid.

 

[pishhead]

Let's look at this pragmatically and look at our contemporaries and how they recruited for strikers, this is all off the top of my head so I may miss some.
Arsenal - Lacazette
Bournemouth - Defoe
Burnley - Wood Wells
Chelsea - Morata
Palace - None
Everton - Sandro
Huddersfield - Mounie, Depoitre
Leicester - Iheanacho
Liverpool - Solanke
Man city - None
Man Utd - Lukaku
Newcastle - Joselu
Southampton - None
Stoke - Choupa moting
Swansea - Bony, Abraham
Tottenham - Llorente
Watford - Gray
West Brom - Rodriguez
West Ham - Hernandez

As I said that's off the top of my head so I'm sure I missed some. It makes depressing reading in all honesty.

 

[Bry Nylon]

I've just received a note from Paul Barber concerning the transfer window, and he was happy for it to be shared on NSC...

 

[rocker959]

Thank you to Paul Barber for taking the time to explain just how difficult signing a striker really is. It wasn't for the want of trying. It sounds very challenging job.

Surely the players and club deserve our support no matter what. Sometimes in life you don't get everything you want at first but with hard work and determination it is possible to succeed. Maybe a striker will sign in January. If the team have a few knock backs, we all need to get behind them and encourage them to be the best they can be. Bouncebackability....

Agreed

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

I’m aware that NSC seems to attract the most vociferous of views

I very much like this line. I wonder how many times he had to re-write it...

 

[GOM]

What personal attacks have there been on Tony Bloom? I can remember one thread saying he should sell up and go, and pretty much every response told the poster he was an idiot. And "will never be acceptable to us"- what are you going to do? Round up the culprits and feed them to the pigs? We're fans of a football club FFS, not your loyal subjects..

He was referring to all social media, not just NSC. There has been some nasty and unecessary stuff I've seen on twitter

 

[Weststander]

I take Barber's point that decent strikers are like gold-dust and a glance at the other relegation candidates shows that there are other clubs as exposed as we are in the striker department, notably West Ham and Palace:

Bournemouth: Defoe, King, Wilson, Afobe, Mousset
Burnley: Wood, Vokes, Walters, Barnes, Wells
Crystal Palace: Benteke, Wickham, Lapado
Huddersfield: Mounie, Depoitre, Kachunga, Quaner
Newcastle: Gayle, Mitrovic, Joselu, Perez
Swansea: Abraham, Bony, Ayew
Watford: Deeney, Gray, Okaka, Zarate, Sinclair
West Ham: Javier Hernandez, Arnautovic, Carroll, Sakho

Great post. I've added Arnautovic at West Ham. (Stoke, Austria and West Ham describe him as a striker/forward, and he plays there, weighing in with goals).

 

[kjgood]

Seems quite reasonable to me, thanks for laying this out for us all to see.

I've just received a note from Paul Barber concerning the transfer window, and he was happy for it to be shared on NSC.

(My addition, this Bleacher Report video showing deadline day at Sheffield United is an interesting watch for those of on the outside: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...line-day-access-all-areas-at-sheffield-united)

The transfer window has, as ever, sparked a lot of debate on social media – some of it constructive and interesting; some of it, naïve and, in places, unjustifiably spiteful. Not surprisingly, and such is the way of the world these days, hardly any of the (largely anonymous) criticism directed at the club on social media has made its way to us directly in the form of emails or letters…

Nevertheless, our supporters do have every right to express their reasonable opinions. The game is full of opinions. It’s what makes our sport as popular as it is. But personal attacks on our people (least of all, our chairman), or attempts to scapegoat individuals through social media, are totally unnecessary and will never be acceptable to us, not least as we go out of our way to fully engage with our fans at all times.

As we’ve tried to explain, transfer windows are complex and dynamic. Things can change dramatically in a month, a week, a day – or, even, in an hour. Therefore, the tactics to meet transfer window objectives must always evolve as the window goes on. But even this doesn’t guarantee every target will be landed – and the club, as well as supporters, may end up disappointed (we are) and frustrated (we were).

We don’t publicise our transfer targets. We don’t comment on media speculation (unless we believe we have no choice but to do so). And only a very tiny group of people inside the club – usually no more than 4 - are aware of our specific priorities at any one time. Our approach is designed to minimise leaks, which can often compromise the club’s position, and give us the best possible chance of doing our business discreetly and professionally.

Inevitably, this does mean supporters' knowledge or understanding of what did or didn’t actually happen, could or couldn’t happen - or why something did or didn’t happen isn’t always right. In fact, in many cases - and quite understandably – supporters’ perceptions are very often way wide of the mark. This is the same at many clubs, not just ours.

So, to try to help our supporters digest this past transfer window, as usual I’ll be addressing the transfer window in my programmes notes on Saturday. However, as I’m aware that NSC seems to attract the most vociferous of views, I thought it night be useful for me to let you have my answers to the key questions posed in advance of the weekend. I’ve covered as many points as I can.

- this transfer window was more over-heated and more challenging than most of us had previously experienced. We were very well prepared but every club, even the biggest, was a little taken back.

- asking prices, and player and agent demands were very high. No surprise here either but it’s impossible to anticipate every nuance. Publicly, we will always try to manage expectations as we go.

- as with all previous transfer windows, speculation in this one was rife. Much of it nonsense. Like all clubs, we’ve been criticised for not signing players we didn’t bid for and were not even on our radar!

- it’s a complete myth that the best transfer business is always done early; if transfers can be done early in the window, they will be. If transfers are not done early, there’s usually a very good reason.

- equally, it’s a myth that transfers late in the window are “panic buys” or the player must have been “low on our list”; it can be the complete opposite: sometimes transfers just take all the time available.

- the recruitment team – scouts, analysts, coaches, our manager – looked at thousands of players in the past year or more; relatively few strikers are ever available and even fewer matched our specific brief.

- it’s no secret that we were looking for a striker different to what we have; we were not the only club looking for this type of player and, unsurprisingly, those clubs that have them wanted to keep them!

- despite all of this, and missing out on that additional striker, we still secured the overwhelming majority of our transfer window targets - and we have strengthened our squad in a number of key areas.

- most, if not all, clubs miss out on at least one target, sometimes many targets, in every transfer window. This one was no different. There will always be a multitude of reasons for such misses.

- a “miss” doesn’t have to mean a flawed strategy, poor negotiation tactics, a failure to meet demands, or that someone is to blame; mostly, it’s just about “circumstances" – often out of the club’s control.

- we didn’t lose out on players because we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, meet a particular transfer fee or a wage demand; neither did we break our wage structure to secure the players we did bring in.

- nevertheless, and regardless of ambition - ours is to stay in the Premier League - we always have a responsibility to run the club prudently and sensibly for the chairman and for the benefit of future generations.

- finances aside, failed medicals are rare – we had 2; players being recalled to their club at the point of signing for another because of an injury/issue affecting a team mate are even more unusual – again, we had 2.

- these issues don’t mean our scouting or due diligence was flawed; quite the opposite. Our medical staff were excellent in detecting unforeseen issues. We’re spending millions of pounds. We won't take risks.

- occasionally in a transfer window, different options become available due to totally unforeseen circumstances – sometimes very late on; such opportunities need careful but very quick evaluation.

- often, such is the recruitment team’s detailed preparation for any given transfer window, we’ve already done our homework on such players so we can make fast decisions on whether they are of interest.

- if they are of interest to us, we will always seek to agree a deal with the club and agent, on behalf of the player, then consider them alongside other options; however, it can still be down to the player’s choice.

- when a player decides not to join a club, it’s often about him wanting to stay with the club he’s at, rather than snubbing the club courting him; the two things are very different, albeit we know the net result is the same.

- it’s very rarely possible to fully complete one deal before starting work on another; in every window, it’s usually necessary - and desirable - to keep moving on a number of targets simultaneously.

- when we talk about “optimum timing” for a transfer, it’s not just about getting the player at the right price. It’s about a wide range of factors all coming together to make a deal possible at a given moment.

- and, no, we didn’t miss out on a loan striker because we signed a loan GK; we took a conscious decision to take an excellent loan GK when the opportunity arose.

- as with every transfer window, we will replay, review, discuss and debate all of our decisions and our tactics; as with previous windows, we will look to see what we can do better next time. There’s always room.

- right now, we have an excellent group of very talented and committed players, backed by a great manager and staff; they will need and, I believe, they deserve the support of all our fans.

- we are just 3 games in to the most exciting and challenging league season in the club’s history. It will be tough, very tough, so above all else, we need the club’s strong sense of “togetherness” to, once again, rise up!

I hope this note will help to answer at least the majority of the various queries, questions, views and criticisms expressed by supporters.

 

[perseus]

Interesting thread. No consensus, disparate views. It wouldn't do if everybody agreed.

8/11 ain't bad. Even the champions think they are two players short. I had even say 15/18.

I am not even envious of the strikers of the 12 clubs that matter. I'm a bit worried that Glenn Murray's legs would hold out for Premier League football for a whole season.

I think we going to need at least 42 goals from 35 games?

I'm counting in José Izquierdo as the second striker, rather than as a winger. That's where the pace is needed.

 

[Audax]

I think Barber's responses here is pretty reasonable. Most of the points are brief and I think if he expanded on them he'd adequately address a lot of the knee-jerk anti-Barber reaction in this thread. Step back from the negative emotions of failing to get a striker in, and take a few minutes to consider both what (and how) he's written as well as what he's very carefully not written but still alluded to and I think most here will realise that he, and the club, are just as disappointed as we are. The key difference between us and Barber, is Barber's already moved on and set aside that disappointment - for the club, the focus is now on the future. There's no point dwelling on the past except to learn the lessons from where things went wrong, and Barber's pretty clear here that that's what they are aiming to do.

I think also that, reading between the lines, we got caught out with targets we'd done a lot of work for ultimately not becoming available because moves at other clubs also didn't happen. Transfers are like buying houses; there's often a bit of a chain that needs to be worked through, and if the first domino fails to fall (or falls too late) then the entire chain falls apart. It sounds like that happened to us with some of our targets, and simultaneously we got unlucky with the chain-free targets (Dwamena in particular).

From what I can work out since Thursday, the recruitment team did their jobs in the identifying targets but it was the commercial team (Barber) who failed to execute the deals.

That's a little unfair given what we know. We had 4 deals that were all-but executed and all failed as a result of external factors beyond our control. At least one of those (Dwamena) was a striker, and one of the others may have been Andone - making two strikers missed due to what are normally pretty rare factors.

Over the years I have made hmmm more than a few complaints to organisations & corporations regarding their service or product. Never have I had a response from the CEO spitting the dummy and accusing me of being "spiteful". Usually I get thanked for my feedback and sometimes I am compensated. That is how a CEO should react.

Instead of that tome with its shopping list of excuses, how much respect would Barber have got if he had instead written:-

"Due to a lack of experience and knowledge of the transfer market at PL level, I screwed up the transfer window. I am truly sorry and steps have been taken to rectify the numerous errors that were made".

Don't take what he wrote personally. It wasn't aimed at any individual. It wasn't particularly aimed at all, to be honest. It's a very fair assessment of the range of stuff that's been directed at the club since the window closed. I think it's entirely fair (and a very good thing) that Barber acknowledges the full range of feedback received, be it positive or negative. I prefer to see it acknowledged than swept under the rug. As long as they've taken the time to consider what lies beneath the negative commentary (which, I believe, they have based on some of his other comments).

Jesus wept. For sure there has been a lot of nonsense written on social media etc but he really needs to rise above it and ignore it unless it's say a serious threat or trolling or something.

Nope, I'd rather see him acknowledge that he's seen it, and digested it. Ignoring it can sometimes be the worst thing to do, because the spite and vitriol can often simply be a layer over the top of what is otherwise perfectly valid comments. I hope the club has someone there with the skill to wade through it all. As I noted above, my suspicion is they have done the wading - there's a few clues in what he's written (and, notably, what he hasn't written - some careful reading between the lines is needed).

I've read Barber's comments and I take on board all that he has said, but I still maintain that as a Prem team with the money that goes with that there is no excuse for NOT bringing in a replacement striker for Akpom.

In particular, I was interest to read his comment "the recruitment team – scouts, analysts, coaches, our manager – looked at thousands of players in the past year or more; relatively few strikers are ever available and even fewer matched our specific brief".

Then maybe our brief was too specific? We have 3 strikers and of those Baldock has hardly played since March and has missed pre-season with an injury. We knew he was likely to miss the whole of pre-season when there was still 6 weeks of the window left. While the phrase "beggars can't be choosers" is a little too strong I think we should have brought in one striker for cover for Akpom at least until the January window.

That said, I take Barber's point that decent strikers are like gold-dust and a glance at the other relegation candidates shows that there are other clubs as exposed as we are in the striker department, notably West Ham and Palace:

Bournemouth: Defoe, King, Wilson, Afobe, Mousset
Burnley: Wood, Vokes, Walters, Barnes, Wells
Crystal Palace: Benteke, Wickham, Lapado
Huddersfield: Mounie, Depoitre, Kachunga, Quaner
Newcastle: Gayle, Mitrovic, Joselu, Perez
Swansea: Abraham, Bony, Ayew
Watford: Deeney, Gray, Okaka, Zarate, Sinclair
West Ham: Javier Hernandez, Carroll, Sakho

Pretty fair response here, with the exception that I don't think what he's written was intended to be viewed as excuses. One of the careful bits of reading between the lines I mentioned being necessary is where and how he talks about how disappointed and frustrated the club were/are. I think, for those willing to read and digest his comments, it's pretty clear that the club knows they've failed to land a key recruitment and are as unhappy about that as we are - but they also know there's now nothing they can do about it until January, and they're moving on to work with what they've got. And that's exactly what they should be doing.

I think you're probably right that the list of potential strikers may have been too narrow, but I think it's also fair to say that we were unlucky with 4 targets (including at least 1, possibly 2, strikers) being missed through no fault of the clubs. And while it's not been stated explicitly, I think it's pretty clear that Janssen is who Barber's referring to when he says "when a player decides not to join a club, it’s often about him wanting to stay with the club he’s at, rather than snubbing the club courting him".

Er, no Paul, our supporters have every right to express whatever opinions they want, not just the ones that you think are reasonable.

He's not said they aren't allowed to post unreasonable opinions. But, as supporters of the club, I firmly believe that it is our responsibility to not create an environment or atmosphere at the club that unreasonably places constraints on their ability to do the very best they can with the situation the club now finds itself re: the squad. We're very lucky to have a club that's very well run in the main (far, far better than many others). They've over many years done the majority of the work right to firstly rebuild the club, and then get us promoted to the Prem. That staff now needs to be given the trust and support to continue to do their best for the club; sending unreasonable, spiteful, destructive messages their way will do the exact opposite. I know many here will say "well, they should grow a ticker skin", but I speak from experience of working the last 10+ years in roles that involve collecting, digesting, and responding to public feedback. It doesn't matter how thick a skin you have: sustained, unreasonable, spiteful and targeted opinions will always result in reduced morale. And reduced morale results in reduced performance.

That's not to say that negative opinions can't be sent to the club. It's not the opinions themselves that are necessarily the problem; the problem is in how those opinions are expressed. It's called "constructive criticism".

What personal attacks have there been on Tony Bloom? I can remember one thread saying he should sell up and go, and pretty much every response told the poster he was an idiot. And "will never be acceptable to us"- what are you going to do? Round up the culprits and feed them to the pigs? We're fans of a football club FFS, not your loyal subjects.

The mistake you're making here is interpreting his comments in context of NSC only. But that's not what he's responding to here: he's talking about NSC, about Twitter, about Facebook, about emails and letters sent directly to the club that none of us have seen (or ever likely will). The worst of the personal attacks will most likely have been sent anonymously, and privately, direct to the club. Because at the end of the day, the sorts of people who stoop to that sort of thing are generally cowards and won't want public scrutiny (especially on platforms where they could be tracked and de-anonymised).

 

[HalfaSeatOn]

As a CEO said in response to an explanation of not meeting a key objective....and your point is?

 

[Weststander]

He was referring to all social media, not just NSC. There has been some nasty and unecessary stuff I've seen on twitter

Could they be from trolls, lying as to their club allegiance. On Palace and Leeds sites, I've seen comments about Bloom before, with adverse comments that touch on his physical stature and at the very same time his background / business 'acumen'. On the face of it just nasty, but with a barely veiled hint of 1920's Germany.

 

[B52]

What is the relevance between signing a striker and a loan GK we didnt need. First TB waffles to try to appease us now it PB. Nobody should have expected different from either after a poor window for whatever the reason was.

He sound like my mum we planned to have roast beef for dinner but the diced pork was cheap so I bought that.

The relevance is we should have saved the last prem. loan giving us more of a chance to get that elusive striker in.!

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

I still refuse to believe that we couldn't land a striker of at least top end Championship quality with the funds we have available. I accept that we couldn't sign the very best but we are desperately light on strikers and have been for over a season now and even a half decent one gives us more options than we have ended up with. The fact that we have the same number of strikers as keepers in the squad and couldn't field a striker on the bench at Watford really doesn't make us look as professional and organised on the pitch as the powers that be would have us believe.

Do I gather the club accept absolutely no responsibility at all on this?

We do have three of top championship quality already, the only point of another one would be if we think both Murray and Baldock are out injured for a long time. But they must have assumed Andone was in the bag for most of the last couple of days, and then that plug got pulled