Is it time for a 'Managerial Merry go round' thread?

[GeneralLee]

A well coached side that plays decent football should be able to get 12-15 wins over a season you would think, it’s not like being a promotion contender where you need to be able to grind out win after win.

So even if his style does have it’s flaws exposed by some teams it probably won’t be a big issue as the pressure won’t be the same to win every week, unlike at Notts. Average just under 1 win in 3 and we should stay up.

In theory, yes.

League One is a different beast. Rochdale tried that very strategy and it was never going to work. It made for great entertainment (we had a cracking Tuesday night fixture there with something like nine goals!) but they lost virtually every battle as in League One including that Tuesday night fixture.

The measure of League One is much different to the gap in quality in League Two. The drop off in quality between the top 8 and the rest of the pack is sizeable. We could obliterate the 'lower tier' sides over the last couple of seasons and yet face any of the top sides and look decidedly average or on occasion, hopeless.

If you have the budget to recruit capable League One players at the top of the pitch, you can get away with it. In our case we manage to get away with our defensive deficiencies due to our offensive quality (which isn't cheap nor commonplace throughout the division). It depends on your budget and who you can retain; if you don't have the budget yet are attempting to outplay sides paying 10k per week plus, it just won't work. The better sides will simply pick you off and you'll fold, quickly.

 

[Chris FGR]

Well our top earners are on between £2-2.5k a week apparently, I think we had 7 players earning in that bracket with the rest under £1.5k.

That will likely increase but will certainly not be anywhere near £10k. £10k a week seems mad, that’s literally £1million for two players. What’s a competitive budget in this league?

 

[Greenacres]

Wages is an interesting point, at one game towards the end of the season someone showed me a list of our players and how much they were on...a couple of our better players were on something like £700 per week, which is about £35k per year...a decent wage for many, but maybe not for a professional footballer.

 

[Essex2Wessex]

Really we are expecting to struggle next year. At this point anything better than getting the lowest place that is staying up is a bonus. I don't expect Burchnall to be sacked if things aren't clicking by Christmas though (well, maybe, if we've lost every game without exception), that's really not how Dale Vince has viewed his relationship with managers/head coaches at all. - the idea has been of being in for the long haul.

Not sure how quite to define "the smallest club to have got into League One", but we certainly compete with Morecambe, Accrington Stanley and Dagenham & Redbridge for that title (Crawley too, but they really are tinpot, maybe Stevenage also). Yes we have a wealthy, but not irresponsible, owner, but our recent approach has been to attract talented young players, especially from non-league, and build them up, seasoned with just a few more experienced professionals, the best of whom (like Jamille Matt) have served very effectively as mentors alongside their other roles.

My view is we are going to enjoy playing some really (formerly) big teams and do our best to wallop them, as we did with Coventry in our first very difficult EFL2 season. And we fans are looking forward to visiting the likes of Wednesday, Derby, Pompey. It's gonna be tough but hopefully fun. Really a new challenge for us.

We promise to play more attractive football than Wycombe at least

 

[GeneralLee]

Well our top earners are on between £2-2.5k a week apparently, I think we had 7 players earning in that bracket with the rest under £1.5k.

That will likely increase but will certainly not be anywhere near £10k. £10k a week seems mad, that’s literally £1million for two players. What’s a competitive budget in this league?

Forgive the rough guesstimates.

You have the top sides who will still have players on comfortably on or above 10k (Aiden McGeady and Barry Bannan spring to mind although the former has just been released). Some of the players on better money tend to be relegated sides who just haven'tbeen able to shift upon relegation. Equally we had Sam Winnall who was reportedly on comfortably above 10k before we signed him. We'd have been paying him somewhere between 3-4k and he looked incapable of playing league football, so you get bad investments too.

For some context our top earner likely sits just short of 7k with most players on anything from 1.5 (squad fillers) to first names on the team sheet starters on 2.5k - 7k. I suspect this summer those figures will only increase.

Football at all levels is broken. It's frankly madness and it does make the exercise of signing players incredibly difficult when in the same league you have Accy paying peanuts and being forced to fish for rough diamonds in non-league and unheard of youngsters from higher levels. You then have ourselves paying decent transfer fees for good young players with some pedigree at league level to Derby who (should they be taken over) will more than likely given their income stream be able to blow us all out of the water without much effort. There is a sizeably uneven playing field, though it does make the wins against the 'bigger sides' more enjoyable than the experience of playing in League Two.

Our budget is going up this season and will be above 4 mill at a guess. In reality that will give us a top 6 budget

 

[David Brent]

Well our top earners are on between £2-2.5k a week apparently, I think we had 7 players earning in that bracket with the rest under £1.5k.

That will likely increase but will certainly not be anywhere near £10k. £10k a week seems mad, that’s literally £1million for two players. What’s a competitive budget in this league?

An average wage in league one is about £2.5-£3k. Higher earners are on about £4-5k.

Yes the likes of Barry Bannan are on big money (£10k+) but you can definitely survive in this league without extortionately increasing your financial outlay.

Must say I’ve been very impressed by Forest Green’s recruitment in recent years. You must have a good recruitment analyst/scouting department. If you can carry on finding those gems like Cadden, Wilson, Hendry etc you’ll be fine.

 

[91SPP]

Well our top earners are on between £2-2.5k a week apparently, I think we had 7 players earning in that bracket with the rest under £1.5k.

That will likely increase but will certainly not be anywhere near £10k. £10k a week seems mad, that’s literally £1million for two players. What’s a competitive budget in this league?

I do find players earning £2k a week as a good wage in this league particularly mad. No wonder there is such a disparity in this league. When some teams best players are earning less than a good car salesmen.

 

[BarrieOwl]

Be interesting to see how the EFL govern Derby after admin, we had to adhere to restrictions with signings last summer and this is our first window "off the leash".

I read DCFCfans a bit, have for years and some fans on there seem to be oblivious to the issues the club still face, the transfer thread is frightening

 

[FGR Stroud]

Last manager that FGR signed from Notts Co got them promoted in first season and then two more promotion play-offs: - Mark Cooper.
And he arrived in the Summer break.
Good omens perhaps.

 

[Stripes]

Important to have got this done so quickly. Feeling much happier now. Sounds like he will fit in really well. Great continuity. I have no idea what to expect in this league, other than survival would be great, but not down to the last match though. Hopefully uncover a few gems and give the local teams a good game.. Nice that Notts County were cooperative. Thanks to them. Looking forward to the next signing.

 

[thewwfc]

Got some concerns given Notts fans seem to be saying they were a bit of a soft touch under him, but maybe his playing out from the back style might be better suited to league 1?

Hell no. Most teams who try playing out from the back at this level simply aren't good enough to pull it off.

It *can* be done, but unless you're incredibly confident that there are no weak links in your passing chain, then it's barely worth trying.

Yeah yeah, that's coming from a Wycombe fan, what would a mere "hoofball merchant" know. Well I'd know enough to have seen how many times playing out from the back fails horrendously with the level of players that you typically get in this division - and if you give the ball away at an early stage of playing it out from the back, it's pretty obvious what the risk is.

There was one team last season and I can't remember who it was, made a point of not punting it long from goal kicks...but instead only ever playing short passes to either one of their fullbacks. Said fullback would then hoof it, instead of the goalie doing the honours. Maybe the goalie wasn't fully fit to take long kicks or something - in which case why were they playing in goal? - but otherwise I have no idea why you'd do that.

 

[91SPP]

Be interesting to see how the EFL govern Derby after admin, we had to adhere to restrictions with signings last summer and this is our first window "off the leash".

I read DCFCfans a bit, have for years and some fans on there seem to be oblivious to the issues the club still face, the transfer thread is frightening

I assume it’s different as we will have a completely new owner, with administration already gutting the club. We have five players contracted to the club, with maybe four or five left in the academy.

Mel Morris’ sins have resulted in -21 points and a relegation. The new owner essentially gives us a new start, but what that looks like we just don’t know until wheels start in motion. Rooney has mentioned that we’re essentially 40 players light across the board was I’d imagine there will be a lot of movement, even if most of it is at academy level.

 

[BarrieOwl]

I assume it’s different as we will have a completely new owner, with administration already gutting the club. We have five players contracted to the club, with maybe four or five left in the academy.

Mel Morris’ sins have resulted in -21 points and a relegation. The new owner essentially gives us a new start, but what that looks like we just don’t know until wheels start in motion. Rooney has mentioned that we’re essentially 40 players light across the board was I’d imagine there will be a lot of movement, even if most of it is at academy level.

There's squad limits in Lg1 mate and can't see you being allowed to spent fees or big wages.

We had about 8 players last summer and rebuilt.

 

[huddsmoose]

Oxford have players on up to £7k a week? Madness. They don't even have the 'excuse' of being relegated from the Championship recently.

At Cambridge I'd be surprised if we have anyone above c.£2k a week.

 

[GeneralLee]

Oxford have players on up to £7k a week? Madness. They don't even have the 'excuse' of being relegated from the Championship recently.

At Cambridge I'd be surprised if we have anyone above c.£2k a week.

Cameron Brannagan is likely the highest earner around £6-6.5k. If he accepts a new deal you’d expect it’ll be higher than £7k. There is probably one other on at least £6k with the bulk of the starting 11 on somewhere between £2.5k - £5k.

I think the realisation being that to be semi-competitive you need to pay the money and we didn’t even reach the playoffs this year nor looked capable of really winning them.

Scarily, when Burton got promotion some years ago their budget was near £6 million off the second lowest wage bill in the Championship. I can only imagine that gap has only widened further so in effect even if you got promoted on a budget of say £4 mill, you’ll still have a significant deficit on everyone else. It’s no wonder there is such a gap in quality between all three divisions.

 

[Luke Imp]

Rochdale was absolutely kamikaze stuff wasn't it. Fun to watch, albeit highly frustrating, I suspect but long term was never going work.

In 2019 the average L1 wage budget was £4m so it'll not have changed too much I wouldn't have thought.

 

[GEORGE]

I just hope we stay up.

 

[91SPP]

There's squad limits in Lg1 mate and can't see you being allowed to spent fees or big wages.

We had about 8 players last summer and rebuilt.

I doubt we will be spending any fees at all, I’d imagine the loan market and players out of contract is our lot.

 

[Greenacres]

I just hope we stay up.

I would take staying up as success next season!

 

[Davidimp]

One for the Oxford fans regarding our recently departed Mr Appleton.
He's signed a few players on decent length contracts then hardly ever played them, did he do this at Oxford?

 

[GeneralLee]

One for the Oxford fans regarding our recently departed Mr Appleton.
He's signed a few players on decent length contracts then hardly ever played them, did he do this at Oxford?

His signings on the whole were brilliant. He made the odd blunder (not tying up Danny Hylton to a longer deal) and not really finding that elusive 20 goal a season striker… Otherwise if anything, we didn’t tie players down for long enough losing players for less than market value or on frees.

There was something on our forum about how we were set to sign Mason Mount, Oli McBurnie and Harvey Barnes on loan whilst securing Liam Lindsey on a perm before word got out he was leaving… So surprised to hear that.

 

[Marked Ox]

One for the Oxford fans regarding our recently departed Mr Appleton.
He's signed a few players on decent length contracts then hardly ever played them, did he do this at Oxford?

Most were on shorter contracts, certainly in his 1st season when he was ruthless if a new signing was not very good, whilst the longer contracts were generally given to players he trusted and used. Junior Brown springs to mind on not very good players, got subbed off in our 5-1 away defeat at Cambridge in October and never played for us again, loaned to Mansfield who he signed for permanently in the following January.

 

[Devon_Lad]

Who needs to pay players £10k a week when you can pay better players through your academy on a tenth of that?

 

[Chris FGR]

Who needs a great academy when you can sign players from someone else’s. We’ve certainly benefited from Exeter’s academy down the years, Jon Richardson, Elliott Frear, Mark Ellis, JMT are a few that spring to mind. Wonder which ones we’ll take off them next Wouldn’t mind Josh Key and Matt Jay tbh.

 

[HutchECFC]

Who needs a great academy when you can sign players from someone else’s. We’ve certainly benefited from Exeter’s academy down the years, Jon Richardson, Elliott Frear, Mark Ellis, JMT are a few that spring to mind. Wonder which ones we’ll take off them next Wouldn’t mind Josh Key and Matt Jay tbh.

You can have Key.

I don't rate him, at all.

 

[FGR Stroud]

How is Barnsley's search for a new manager progressing?
Michael Duff, current manager of Cheltenham Town, is top of the short list.
Could mean that both Gloucestershire teams start next season with new leaders.
Both Duff & Edwards (FGR) set very high standards for those who follow. Both men have won EFL2 title.

 

[CTFCfan99]

Duff speaking with Barnsley today and is now also favourite for the Blackpool job, interviewing with them at the end of the week. This is really dragging on now and no doubt impacting our preparations for next season - it's time to shit or get off the pot Michael.

 

[kieran_vale]

Got to think if Blackpool are in for Duff that’s a really good job to move into. Now owned by decent people and a solid squad to work with in the Championship. Far from ideal all the uncertainty for Cheltenham though, just got to hope the board nail the next appointment as much as for Duff.

 

[Bartonyellow]

Duff speaking with Barnsley today and is now also favourite for the Blackpool job, interviewing with them at the end of the week. This is really dragging on now and no doubt impacting our preparations for next season - it's time to shit or get off the pot Michael.

Hasselbank also interviewed for the job. So hope he gets it. And take his prehistoric assistant with him.

 

[SF_]

Got to think if Blackpool are in for Duff that’s a really good job to move into. Now owned by decent people and a solid squad to work with in the Championship. Far from ideal all the uncertainty for Cheltenham though, just got to hope the board nail the next appointment as much as for Duff.

Their squad is gash, Critchley worked wonders last season. It'll take someone very good to follow him.