My point was we shouldn't be getting to the last day of a transfer window still needing to sign three/four players. Because if they do decide to go elsewhere, we don't have the time to find a replacement.
in real terms i am generalising but picking up your point highlighted, Players and especially their Agents do drag it out though and it therefore becomes a Domino effect. Player A is No 1 target he indicates he wants to sign, meanwhile his Agent contacts Bolton ipswich pompey and says Oxford have offered x. You are therefore waiting a decision. Meanwhile player B has indicated he would sign for say Sunderland so His Agent informs them Oxford will offer y and so it all snowballs.
Having been involved (in a very limited way) with some fun stuff, the amount that goes into a transfer a is crazy.
Yes the signings have generally been good - it's been the gaps we haven't filled that have been the problem, and I'd like to understand more about that.
Forget Pep. Between 2009-2011 the recruitment process was Mickey Lewis bringing a list of names to me so that I could print off all the stats that I could find about them online, plus whatever was in our subscription based scouting portal, and then Chris Williams leaning over trying to see the list and going, “Whatchu got there Birdio? Don’t be like that. Mickey tell him to show me. No he’s rubbish, oh no he’s rubbish too, he’s quite good though, oooh that’s a new one.” Then Chris Wilder would come through and ‘the other CW’ would ask him if he was finished with his big coat yet, because it had CW on the chest and he wanted it for himself, and Wilder would tell us who was likely to be ringing soon or who might turn up at reception. Sometimes Chris Williams would come back from Kelvin Thomas’ office with a list of names we were talking to (often after he had been bollocked for something he wasn’t involved in such as famine or an Ebola outbreak), which were based off Chris Wilder or Andy Melville having a ring round. If we were really lucky there might be a DVD sent in from an agent someone knew, and then Wilder and Lewis would sit and watch it while eating crisps and drinking beer out the mini fridge. Occasionally Chris Williams would disappear and come back half an hour later covered in crumbs and smelling of Becks, but I couldn’t possibly prove where he had been or what he had been doing. Then when someone eventually agreed to sign, the physio (‘Handsome’ Jon Brown) would give them a massage or something, slap them on the a**e when they hopped off the table and go, “Right then, big boy, I hope that was good for you too.” Then they would sign the contract and before you could say “Who is Lewis Chalmers and why didn’t we sign Charlie Austin when we had the chance?”, they were a professional footballer for Oxford United.
It’s a taster for his book
One of my all time favourite posts.
What’s that Part 1?
If people would buy it, I’ll write it.
Heck I’d read it. People are always curious about the insider stuff and my closest brush with ITK was seeing Dean Saunders coming out of Mothercare, and Ricardinho looking angry in the Coop.
You must live in Abingdon. My brother once saw him in the big Tesco there. I asked if he was doing keepy ups with an Orange. He said no. I asked if he was trying to get a picanha at the deli counter. He said no. I asked if he was buying waxing strips, because Brazilian. He didn’t reply.
Although we got it wrong with Cooper, Lavery was your man.
It was Rose Hill actually. I thought Ricardinho would be permanently smiling and happy, I was disappointed.
Ahmed Kashi would be more likely to do that. Then people would rush to defend him by saying he’s merely ‘committed’ and ‘a tremendous character’, even though you’re in a relegation battle and on the verge of not being able to afford the good baked beans anymore so it’s really not okay that he keeps going f*cking mental every week because it’s not helping anybody if he can’t even stay on the pitch for 90 minutes let alone be available for the next game and that doesn’t make you brave or a great laugh it just makes you a stupid idiot AND THAT IS WHY NOBODY WILL WANT YOU AFTER YOU’VE F*CKED OFF.
Totally spot on , we all said this at the time . We played like it was a pre season game .
That notwithstanding, an Ahmed Kashi might have been the difference between promotion and missing out on the playoffs this season...
