A lot of the players don’t feel particularly well scouted TBH. Simms for example all the same complaints about him were there at Sunderland if you look papered over by a hot streak of scoring. Wright has barely played until the last couple of seasons, Kitching and Thomas seem to have had one good season in L1, EMC two. Torp again quite old for the profile and doesn’t seem to have been consistent.
Compared to the four I mentioned we got under Badlan, who were all performing at a young age or in Hamers case at a European level standard. All younger and on the up, not players whose careers had stumbled or had only hit form recently.
To be fair you will of course get hits and misses regardless of how much scouting you can do.
Badlan you can argue found us Hamer but also found us Dacosta, The German winger, and Waghorn.
Even Gyok is a funny one, since it sounds like not everyone of the coaching wanted him and Robins drove that one himself.
Think the players we’ve signed are decent mostly and some really good. But think the lack of experience is hurting a few of them in there development.
If I’m Doug, I talk to my recruitment team about allowing a spine of older players with leadership capabilities to come in to help develop the younger lads, even offer a pathway to coaching if that’s what they want.
For example if we carry on with a back three we’ll need an experienced CB who can read the game and pick a pass. Wouldn’t mind Santos from Bolton if we would want to keep wages down. But there must be some premiership players on there way down we could start to target.
