[Albion] #StrikerFail - who is to blame?

[OzMike]

And let's be honest, we had 18 weeks to balls this up, while Huddersfield had 13.

We've been arrogant, they've been humble.

We were still on the piss, they got on with deals.

We thought we could attract superstars, they were far more realistic.

We are licking our wounds and favourites to go down, they are flying high, in every respect.

Our #PLR team have royally ballsed up, through breathtaking arrogance, over 18 weeks.

18 weeks. That's more than 100 days. Christ, they judge a new President over what he can change and impact in 100 days, we can't even sign a single player who plays the game in the oppositions half!

It is, the most staggering own goal we have ever scored. It is frankly, not believable. But it has happened.

Finding it hard to disagree with this, after all the effort it took to get there I thought it would be handled differently.
In time it may prove ok, but prospects not really looking that great.
I watched the Japan v Australia world qualifier last night and his performance was pretty average, but so were the whole Aussie team as well.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

I could be completely wrong, but it's my understanding that, in the main, Winstanley identifies players, Chris okays them and then PB has to get the deals done - he talked about agreeing the Pritchard deal with Levy at Tottenham last year during a fans' forum. But then we saw pics of Winstanley with Izquierdo over in Bruges, so there may well be plenty of overlap in their roles.

 

[neilbard]

I could be completely wrong, but it's my understanding that, in the main, Winstanley identifies players, Chris okays them and then PB has to get the deals done - he talked about agreeing the Pritchard deal with Levy at Tottenham last year during a fans' forum. But then we saw pics of Winstanley with Izquierdo over in Bruges, so there may well be plenty of overlap in their roles.

So who is to blame?

 

[Triggaaar]

Sit on the fence. Mr Bloom is where the blame lies he's in charge ffs.

You don't know what remit or tools he gave to the staff. You don't know who's to blame any more than I do.

 

[neilbard]

You don't know what remit or tools he gave to the staff. You don't know who's to blame any more than I do.

Irrelevant.

 

[SeagullSam]

So who is to blame?

Normally JFC, Ashley Barnes or Matt Ryan...


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[clapham_gull]

Burke lost his job due to poor recruitment ? and so i guess Winstanley is in the firing line.


Signing players like Ryan in this window and no strikers is not good enough.

Not one single British player with Premier league experience was signed either. To many risky foreign imports for my likening also.

I think it's a mistake to link Ryan with strikers or (as others had) the signing of Krul on loan.

To be fair to the club this has been a bonkers window with ridiculous inflated salaries and fees. I suspect it comes down to a bit of inexperience which is acceptable under the circumstances,

Should have nailed a striker early that's it really.

 

[neilbard]

Normally JFC, Ashley Barnes or Matt Ryan...


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You have missed out Stockdale, Dunk and Skalak how could you..............

 

[spence]

I think it's a mistake to link Ryan with strikers or (as others had) the signing of Krul on loan.

To be fair to the club this has been a bonkers window with ridiculous inflated salaries and fees. I suspect it comes down to a bit of inexperience which is acceptable under the circumstances,

Should have nailed a striker early that's it really.

Signing a reserve keeper who really lacks height for a record fee {at the time) isn't inexperience but terrible recruitment. It really is. I simply couldn't believe it when i found out his height.. A key aspect of a keeper

 

[Triggaaar]

To be fair to the club this has been a bonkers window with ridiculous inflated salaries and fees.

I disagree. As I've said in other threads, Ulloa was £8m 3 years ago. Strikers haven't gone up that much.

I suspect it comes down to a bit of inexperience which is acceptable under the circumstances

Not really. We've been trying and failing to get more strikers in each of the last 3 windows, so it's not like we didn't know it was difficult. This really is unacceptably bad.

 

[trueblue]

Not much point blaming anyone. Surely no-one will be more upset than Bloom & I'm sure he'll look in detail at what can be improved. Seems to me the same problem was aiming for better players than ultimately we were able to attract - which is a perverse sort of failure. If we'd spunked the money on vastly overpriced known quantities like Wood or Zohore we'd have had a better front line now - but probably not one even close to the excellence we appeared to be aiming for. The vast majority of clubs do seem to have struggled to get good business done in this window - agents & players getting too greedy perhaps?

The one deal that did seem really odd though was using a loan on Krul and therefore having no option for a striker for a season. I'd Janssen had been just for a year, I wonder if that might have happened for instance.

 

[clapham_gull]

Signing a reserve keeper who really lacks height for a record fee {at the time) isn't inexperience but terrible recruitment. It really is. I simply couldn't believe it when i found out his height.. A key aspect of a keeper

Didn't suggest Ryan (if he is a mistake) is down to inexperience. You did.

 

[neilbard]

I disagree. As I've said in other threads, Ulloa was £8m 3 years ago. Strikers haven't gone up that much.

That is it in a nutshell the last decent striker that the Albion managed to put pen to paper was nearly 4 yrs ago.

Shambolic...................

 

[spence]

Not much point blaming anyone. Surely no-one will be more upset than Bloom & I'm sure he'll look in detail at what can be improved. Seems to me the same problem was aiming for better players than ultimately we were able to attract - which is a perverse sort of failure. If we'd spunked the money on vastly overpriced known quantities like Wood or Zohore we'd have had a better front line now - but probably not one even close to the excellence we appeared to be aiming for. The vast majority of clubs do seem to have struggled to get good business done in this window - agents & players getting too greedy perhaps?

The one deal that did seem really odd though was using a loan on Krul and therefore having no option for a striker for a season. I'd Janssen had been just for a year, I wonder if that might have happened for instance.

Bloom said at the fans forum that the market was inflated and it's a tough market etc. It's not as if he didn't know and so was well prepared. The failure is leaving important deals until the last minute. That's a huge risk and will ultimately cost us now our Premier league status.

 

[The Wookiee]

As I've said previously, we should not have used our last loan on an ageing keeper when we could have bought him. This would have left a loan option availble to us when the foreign deals for a striker weren't fulfilled

 

[clapham_gull]

The one deal that did seem really odd though was using a loan on Krul and therefore having no option for a striker for a season. I'd Janssen had been just for a year, I wonder if that might have happened for instance.

But the option for a loan striker was less than a day

.. and we were probably down to PB making a phone call.

The other striker deal was apparently done, loan keeper in, striker falls through, last minute panic to buy striker. Not defending the club (see other posts) but anything done on the last day is odd by definition so don't waste time trying to find dependencies.

The problem was it all "happened" last day, not what happened within it.

 

[clapham_gull]

As I've said previously, we should not have used our last loan on an ageing keeper when we could have bought him. This would have left a loan option availble to us when the foreign deals for a striker weren't fulfilled

He's 29.

Who was the striker on loan ?

 

[perseus]

What striker were signed by other clubs within our budget for wages (that would have been suitable and thought possible) ?

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/sommertransfers/wettbewerb/GB1/saison_id/2017

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

I woke up like a kid at christmas this morning, eager to see which striker we'd signed. Gutted and frankly staggered that it's no one. Not sure how we haven't been able to sign one striker in four months despite it being our most pressing area of need. I don't know who to blame, probably, it lies on several people as well as things out of our control but to not sign anyone, even on a loan is a major failure. The first since Hughton's been here but a huge failure nonetheless.

I can only hope that lessons are learnt and we have a player lined up to sign on 1st January(not holding my breath though). If we are within touching distance of 17th by January Hughton will have done a very impressive job.

I jokingly said in the Izquierdo thread that we didn't need a target man as we were clearly going for a front three of pace and skill in Izquierdo, Brown and Knockaert a la Barcelona. Maybe we actually are!

 

[jcdenton08]

I blame Nick Clegg for this. Bloody liberals.