Sean Morrison and Brett Williams - Confirmed

[Snowball]

Has anybody yest said they will never be a footballer
will never play Championship football?

[LoyalRoyalFan]

I know Reading is a brilliant club from living down the road in Swindon. - Morrison

[brendywendy]

[Hampshire Royal]

Is it me, or does Morrison look like Trevor Senior?

[brendywendy]

i cant tell without knowing how much you look like trevor senior

[Ferris]

Nice.

[NR_Royal]

Brett Williams isn't on Football Manager 11?

[brendywendy]

then he doesnt exist!

JM out!

[Ian Royal]

fae and matejovski were big signings,with international pegigrees - didnt work out, but thats go nowt to do with the ambition involved.

Yes, that's why I mentioned them as the type of signings we needed to be making, those that we thought would improve the side even if they ultimately failed.

seol and bikey were internationals, and very good players

But brought to the club as squad players (which was needed at the time, no disputing that).

also multi million pound bids for mensah and scott brown scotland turned down.
hunt and armstrong both improved the team that year

Bids are one thing, turning them into signings is the key bit. Armstrong yes, he was a good replacement for Shorey. Hunt was basically a squad player though. I'm pretty sure Doyle and Lita were the players Coppell was looking to start upfront and provide the firepower, with Hunt and then Long as the backup. That didn't work out either.

tabb was an improvement to the team imo too

Yet, he hardly started for long periods of his time under Coppell.

& from the start of 05/06 till we came down i think we broke our transfer record every window didnt we?
that certainly shows some ambition

Not sure if that's true or not, but we I think the other week I showed we'd signed about 1 player per window who you'd expect/hope to come in and strengthen the side there and then. For me that's not enough to maintain your strength or, as I always hope we are looking to do, improve on or current side.

This isn't the time or place for the debate, and it's clear that there isn't a lot more to be said, so I don't want to be dragged into it all again on here...it's too boring and been done to death many times!

Not sure signing players to come straight into the team is definitely that necessary, providing a decent proportion of your slow burning punts come off and that's timed well eventually. It's actually the more forward thinking and well planned system that mitigates the chances of panic buys, paying through the nose, or being badly hurt by a big signing failing.

How many times did we really bring in players that went straight into the first team as an improvement before we got promoted? Convey took a year, Little was on loan originally, Kitson and Doyle weren't bought to go straight in. Sonks was a player to bring in slowly.

I accept your concerns completely, and it would be nice if we did bring in players straight for the first team. But our model seems to be working. In fact the only time it consistently didn't is when we were in the Premier League, which is a different ball game entirely. And I think thats at least partly due to our scouts and Coppell just not really knowing how to go about things under the changed circumstances.

[Wax Jacket]

does anyone know what Brendy has to say on the subject

[Hoop Blah]

Ian, from the team that won promotion most players were bought as starters (IMO).

Hahnemann, Murty, Ingimarsson, Little, Sidwell, Harper, Convey and Lita. They all came in as expected starting players.

The likes of Forster, Butler, Cureton, Caskey, Steve Brown, Williams, Hughes, Salako and Watson, the players who played the biggest parts in our successful period of the last 10 or so years were all players we bought to improve the side.

I love to see young players come into the side, improve, and develop into match winners of the future but the reality is that if you don't introduce them into sides of enough quality and with the right balance it's hard for them to develop. It's all about balance.

[Percy's Rocket]

It's all about balance.

Yes...bank balance. Players who are bought on potential are much cheaper (and a gamble) ..but they won't get us up this season.

[royalsteve]

who is the short fat bloke in the middle of the pics on the official website

[royalsteve]

It's all about balance.

Yes...bank balance. Players who are bought on potential are much cheaper (and a gamble) ..but they won't get us up this season.

like:-
kevin doyle
shane long
steve sidwell
james harper
marcus h
trevor senior
ade williams
sonko
kitson

etc

[RoyalBlue]

It's all about balance.

Yes...bank balance. Players who are bought on potential are much cheaper (and a gamble) ..but they won't get us up this season.

like:-
kevin doyle
shane long
steve sidwell
james harper
marcus h
trevor senior
ade williams
sonko
kitson

etc

Oh come on! You really are stretching things with some of those names.

Sidwell an Arsenal product who had already more than proven his ability whilst at Brentford and Brighton. Harper another Arsenal product IIRC. Marcus signed from a PL team having already proven himself way better than what we already had whilst on loan. Williams came right up through our youth system IIRC. Kitson had scored loads for Cambridge and, IIRC, had already caused us all sorts of problems when we came up against that team.

[Hoop Blah]

It's all about balance.

Yes...bank balance. Players who are bought on potential are much cheaper (and a gamble) ..but they won't get us up this season.

like:-
kevin doyle
shane long
steve sidwell
james harper
marcus h
trevor senior
ade williams
sonko
kitson

etc

Read my post above. You need the balance in the team to get the best out of those gambles and give them the chance to grow. I'm not sure we have that right now. We're not far off, I just believe we need to see a couple more signings that improve the side as opposed to look for a long term pay off.

It may well be, understandably so, that these purchases will only be seen in the summer window as this winter one throws up some odd transfers and prices.

On your list of players though, only Doyle and to an extent Kitson where in the bracket of cheap unproven players who came good relatively quickly. Long and Sonko were given time to progress. Harper was quite a big investment (c. £400k) and was bought in to slot straight into the side. Similar story with Sidwell, he may have been young but he was proven and although he had massive potential he was an immediate improvement on what we had. Hahnemann might've been relatively cheap, but again, he was bought in as number 1, not as a slow burner.

[brendywendy]

does anyone know what Brendy has to say on the subject

i have yet to break my silence on the subject

[brendywendy]

It's all about balance.

Yes...bank balance. Players who are bought on potential are much cheaper (and a gamble) ..but they won't get us up this season.

random guesswork? or genuine psychic future seeing abilities?

[rhroyal]

Picking up on the Hoop Blah - Brendy debate, why do we need players who will be first team players now? Morrison is a squad player for now, but will only improve and could improve the team in the long run. Williams is a more unknown quantity I admit, but Manset would be a little like Morrison if he signs.

Looking at our team now, squad players for the future are fine. We have a half chance of promotion this season. If we don't achieve that, we can be pretty sure that the team will be better next season so long as we keep them together. Very few players are in the twilight of their career so the first team will continue to improve, with greater understanding too. Add to that today's signings bedding in and knocking on the door for first team football; we're looking good.

You don't show ambition by spending big. If there is a specific weakness in the team (strikers 2005) then maybe you look for a bigger name who can hit the ground running. Maybe we'll next that at left back in the summer. However, investing in players for the future shows enough ambition at this level. That's how we achieved promotion in 05/06, with the likes of Convey and Sonko coming to the fore for that season. Perhaps next season it will be Cummings, Morrison, Pearce, Karacan and Church. Pearce and Karacan in particular are already realising a lot of potential, but there is definitely better to come.

Of course ambition is really tested at this level by your resolve to hold onto your stars. In the build up to 05/06 we showed immense ambition keeping Sidwell, Kitson, Shorey and possibly Harper at the club after failing to win promotion. Likewise we now have players growing every year such as Kebe, Federici and Long. If we really have ambition, we will fight tooth and nail to hang on to players such as these and build a promotion team around them. I'm not sure whether the club has the ambition to hang on to those sorts of players these days; I'm merely saying that it's a decent benchmark to measure ambition by at this level.

Right now I see a young squad loaded with potential and a couple of players already reaching their potential, who have even more to come. Hold on to the latter and we could easily be looking at promotion within the next few years.

[Hoop Blah]

Picking up on the Hoop Blah - Brendy debate, why do we need players who will be first team players now?

To improve the side.

If you accept standing still you just move backwards. You need to be constantly improving. We didn't look to do that in 2006/07 and it cost us our place in the Premiership and ever since we've pretty much made do with what we already had in the squad replacing the players we lost or those who's form/prowess waned.

It's not so much a comment on what we need right now, as a review of how we got here in the first place.