Another Free(hopefully) lesson...

To rebuild the network it took us 4/5 years to build takes far more than 6 months.

 

I fully appreciate that and I dont disagree mate. Iv not written Klimala or Soro off but i firmly believe that they were bought to challenge and to play, and the harsh reality is that they havent. And i know we cant always go big for the Edouard calibre but and that our wage budgets and who can attract dictates our business, but i still think we can do a good bit better than what we have done.
I dont think its unreasonable to say that.

 

so do you think we spent money on these players without having scouted them? There must have been conviction from somewhere in order to move for them. We were drawing up targets from April/May last year, so going on that, the last window would have been after 6/7 months.

 

The summer recruitment was good. For whatever reason, the vast majority of our January signings in recent seasons have been write-offs.

 

They were, like I said, we had 4 scouts. Then we had Congerton’s leftovers, Lawwell’s contacts, Lenny’s own contacts.

It’s not what it was under Park though, that set up was absolutely torn apart by Rodgers and Congerton. We’re going through a huge rebuild in the background with our scouting team.

 

In a word - yes. I’m happy with how we did business in the summer. I can’t judge yet how our business in January turned out. Would I have liked to have seen them make more of an impact? Absolutely. Am I prepared to say they’ve been poor signings? Absolutely not.

There’s no appropriate level of time really for a transition really. The best case scenario when a new manager comes in is that he hits the ground running and I believe Lennon absolutely has. Out of the guys who we brought in this summer (first team guys) I’ve been happy with Hatem, Julien, Frimpong, Taylor, Mo and Forster. I simply can’t judge the two in January yet.

I think there’s an expectation from some that a successful transfer window is one when every signing turns out to be a bit of a gem. It might happen at a club that has a really solid strategy in place and only needs to add a couple of players over the course of a window, but when you need to literally reassemble a back line, with a new manager, and a hastily pulled together scouting system, it’s simply impossible for us not to get a few wrong.