Taylor recruitment v Garner recruitment

www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/13195710/ben-garner-exclusive-interview-right-to-dream-brings-purpose-and-elite-environment-missing-in-lower-leagues


In other words....no one was offering me a managers role with adult league football!

For us, I always see it as a costly experiment gone wrong that's cost us 5years and counting....

Worth remembering that people were originally very enthusiastic about Garner's recruitment.

Ehmer was viewed through the lens of Gillingham's robust defence, Westbrooke through Coventry's promotion, and Hanlan through Gillingham's efforts to keep him at the club. Daly was spoken about enthusiastically by Palace fans, eliciting further purrs of appreciation. A slimline Josh Barrel also gave no indication of subsequent horizontal expansion. Tutonda was a raw diamond, ready to be polished.

People didn't speak about a relegation struggle but rather a top six finish.

What went wrong? Everything. Players who weren't ready for L1, players who would never be ready for L1, and a lack of experience, guts, and know-how, things which Coughlan's side, for all its many other failings, possessed in abundance.

Also worth remembering that Coughlan was getting a tune out of younger players like Menayese, Kilgour, Clarke, Tyler Smith etc, as well as out of misfiringTom Nicholls. True he had some old heads like Craig in the team too in key positions. Difference between him and Benny is that he kept things simple and first and foremost made us incredibly difficult to beat and every player had ajob and knew it. Benny thought he was a tactical genius like Poundland Pep without the chip on both shoulders and the arrogance. As a result he set us up in elaborate formations that did not suit the players we had. I’ll never forget the 4-2-2-2 horror show at home to Doncaster where they took the piss and passed through and around us at will whilst the likes of Sercombe and Hargraves were chasing shadows. Tactically inept and our equivalent of Benny Lennartsen

Pretty much that o2.
Reading it reminded me of conferences I used to go to where they talked about good stuff but which had little relevance to your everyday job and the day to day work you did. Sounds like he’s swallowed a thesaurus and just regurgitated the words in lots of different ways. If he believes a lot of that he really was in the wrong business. He moaned about it all being about 3 points on a Saturday and yet is working with players who want to get into football teams so they can ….be part of football where they need to win and get the 3 points on a Saturday. A tad bizarre.

But at least it gives us an insight into his motivation perhaps. Iirc lots of us, in trying to understand his football, said he was no manager but was probably a very good coach. Which is what he seems to want to be. Good for him and I hope he can find whatever he wants. But boy his appointment certainly set us back. And I don’t know if Wael ever regained his confidence that he could do things with us after that poor decision. I’d say he never recovered from that appointment.

UTG!

If Matt v Ben is a kind of recruitment game buff off, only thing that needs to be said is Garner was here when we signed Josh Barrel, for actual real money, as was the contract.
Game over man, game over.

But is it really Matt v Ben’s recruitment, did Ben or Tis actually have any say or influence over recruitment under the era of that “Master Plan”?

The “Master Plan” recruitment arguably resulted in Cocko and Tis walking out without a fair time in the job, as well as pull any real chance of success out from underneath Garner. Though Garner did go on to prove in following appointments, he wasn’t so great as a number 1.

Managers and club need to work together to some degree on recruitment, during that crazy era it wasn’t the case was it, till Joey wrestled back control to managers desk and cleaned out the Augean Stables.

For further example of “owner and chums” madness, if you look closely at Chelsea you can even see the strings operating Maresca.

Could I be any fairer?

You could tell from Josh's body shape alone that he would put on weight easily. Albeit perhaps not that quickly. He also wasn't that out of shape when he joined unlike Gary Kenneth, who had quite clearly lost any interest in even pretending to be a pro footballer when he joined - something that, strangely enough, didn't deter McGhee from signing him. 

Ben's approach of bringing in players who were nowhere near the level required and then coaching them in the hope that they might get better was a slight improvement on McGhee's approach of turning our football club into a care home/sanctuary for past-it Scottish footballers. But only a slight one. 

I have a lot of time of Tisdale, but only when he's not managing my football club. We actually still had a chance of staying up even after JB took control. Tisdale committed himself to pursuing a patently uninterested Stockley and signed a mediocre L2 full-back in the form of George Williams, apparently in the expectation that this was where we would soon be playing. 

Worth mentioning that GC's recruitment, while showing a tendency to harvest Coventry reserves (thanks Tommy), was actually astute. He identified exactly what we needed at that time and recruited accordingly. Hare down the right, Ogogo through the centre, and the bruising presence of JCH upfront, mixed with the promising Kilgour, and the combative Clarke. Pushing out the obnoxious 'panic buy' Payne and adding a dollop of Mayanese was exactly what we needed at the time. 

I remember a public Zoom call with Widdrington and a few people from the club in which the former Soton man sneered at GC's unsophisticated player preferences. It was almost worth seeing the club relegated in last place just to see this blow up quite spectacularly in his smug face. 

Is anyone? 

You may remember the Zoom call? No fan of GC at all, but it spoke volumes about Widdrington. 

Wael ultimately made yet another disastrous decision and wanted to buy young , to develop and sell at profit. It was yet another of his bad choices. It put the club back a long way. 

Of course being a Baldrick, you love a cunning plan.  But this one didn’t involve a turnip.  It involved a barrel of Mars bars with arms and legs.  

But yes, some experienced heads in the backbone. The Master Plan era (that’s attributed to Garner but debatable how involved he was allowed to be in planning) was a side with the weakest backbone ever. Once he had wrestled control, Joey Barton took us straight back up by focussing on experienced backbone to the side.  Not to underestimate the achievement of bouncing straight back up after being in free fall previous season.  

Just a shame the Barton who shows promise as young manager is also the Joey who can’t keep himself out of court and prison, for completely preventable and unnecessary actions.  Even now, when in court for needless social media abuse, the News uses library pictures of him in Gas shirts with all our beloved logo’s on them.