Forwards | Page 6 | Vital Football

Forwards

Tbh I have always liked the scunny model. A pipeline of recruiting or producing younger strikers, getting some goals out of them, and selling them on for big £££. The strikers make you the big money, not the defenders and defensive midfielders I am sure they have had a percentage of misfits, but overall it has sustained them pretty well, considered their size.

We used to be very good at this also...........Harford/Hobson/Cunningham/Huckerby to name but a few. I would be delighted if we could produce our own gems or snap up one from the lower leagues but easier said than done.

For every Simon Yeo or Gary Taylor Fletcher there's a Rory May or Chris Fagan. Tricky game to get it right
 
Tbh I have always liked the scunny model. A pipeline of recruiting or producing younger strikers, getting some goals out of them, and selling them on for big £££. The strikers make you the big money, not the defenders and defensive midfielders I am sure they have had a percentage of misfits, but overall it has sustained them pretty well, considered their size.
Not worked for years at scunny! Swann sustains them now!
 
Swann could be the reason it stopped working! And because they changed management. And maybe teams became wary of scunny signing their talent

Nevertheless it was a strategy that worked at the time. Importantly, they had a strategy. I am not sure we have had any kind of strategy in terms of developing young players and selling them on, for years. Especially attacking players, the ones that make the big money. Hopefully things are about to change with the cowleys.
 
Swann could be the reason it stopped working! And because they changed management. And maybe teams became wary of scunny signing their talent

Nevertheless it was a strategy that worked at the time. Importantly, they had a strategy. I am not sure we have had any kind of strategy in terms of developing young players and selling them on, for years. Especially attacking players, the ones that make the big money. Hopefully things are about to change with the cowleys.

Not only do we not develop and sell-on, they don't even make it to the 1st team for us.
 
We used to be very good at this also...........Harford/Hobson/Cunningham/Huckerby to name but a few. I would be delighted if we could produce our own gems or snap up one from the lower leagues but easier said than done.

For every Simon Yeo or Gary Taylor Fletcher there's a Rory May or Chris Fagan. Tricky game to get it right
Still got the shirt( Rory may) and i proudly wear it in the coop upper and around Lincoln on a Saturday......given a fair crack of the whip he could have landed an England call up over time
 
Still got the shirt( Rory may) and i proudly wear it in the coop upper and around Lincoln on a Saturday......given a fair crack of the whip he could have landed an England call up over time

It may be my age again but from memory the only start he got was when Yeo got sent off for inadvertently kicking the ball away towards a ball boy?
 
On the theme of recruiting young, hungry non-league talent, the most prominent recent example has been Mo Eisa at Cheltenham, who came from some way down the pyramid (Woolwich??) and is now being touted as possibly moving to the Championship after 1 season.

Luck, good scouting? Was he on DC's radar last summer? For every Eisa there's dozens who fail, God knows we've had a few.

We need at least 2 new strikers, so spread the options - a 'proven' and one carefully scouted, vetted (copyright DC), possibly trialled, from non-league.
 
My guess is that the update to the transfer system has put the brakes on testing the young upcoming players.. no short term deals. No signing a non league player outside the window. no chance to sign a guy and then offload, no chance now for the one month loan. So much for the league wanting to develop young English talent.
 
15 minutes using of searching gave me a few names. Obviously they would need scouting properly.
- Jason Gilchrist, Southport
- Jason Oswell, Stockport County
- Alfie Pavey, Dartford
- Sam Merson, St Albans City (Yes Paul Merson's son)
Wrexham are currently a Club trying to convince Oswell to go FT i.e. not all players want to be FT, professional players.
 
Tbh I have always liked the scunny model. A pipeline of recruiting or producing younger strikers, getting some goals out of them, and selling them on for big £££. The strikers make you the big money, not the defenders and defensive midfielders I am sure they have had a percentage of misfits, but overall it has sustained them pretty well, considered their size.
Sustained them pretty well?

They could only afford them because of Wharton putting money in, as he had done for years before Swann took over where he left off. Although yes, they got good money for them, but a couple of years ago, they lost circa £110k a week (yes, a week). That's not very sustainable and I can only recall three strikers in that time (Sharp, Keogh and Hooper).
 
Sustained them pretty well?

They could only afford them because of Wharton putting money in, as he had done for years before Swann took over where he left off. Although yes, they got good money for them, but a couple of years ago, they lost circa £110k a week (yes, a week). That's not very sustainable and I can only recall three strikers in that time (Sharp, Keogh and Hooper).

2 million for paterson.

so in the seasons 2004/5-2010/11 they made circa ten million on 5 players that cost them circa 500,000. those four contributed 128 goals between them in 288 appearances and they went up two leagues into the promised land of the championship.
good business i would say.

looking at their forwards [2004 to date], a couple of things were news to me
1. they haven't produced a single decent forward from their academy in that time. so maybe our academy isn't so bad after all.
2. they paid money for all those four signings.

there were other similarities for the 4 signings that paid off.

the eye for a forward dried up after laws [keogh and sharp] and then adkins [forte, paterson, hooper, dagnall] left... illustrated partly by the fact that post-adkins they have signed and letgo both billy kee and lyle taylor.
 
I am of the opinion that if a forward is of the right age, and of the right fit (in other words would be suited to our style of play) and can adapt his style of play with ours should it change in the future. Then we should go for him no matter what league he is in, as long as the fee is not stupid.
However, for me the biggest stumbling block of all, regardless of fees or how much the player really wants to move is AGENTS. As soon as the agent gets involved it can scupper any chance of a signing being made.
I wonder if (and I am sure there have been) there have been players we are almost over the line with signing, only for an agent to turn round and say "hey we can get you an extra £300 quid a week if you don't sign just yet".
Unfortunately, it is a case of the agent running the transfer market at present :shake: