The Arbroath Thread

[Tattie36]

1 hour ago, lichtie23 said:

The recruitment team has been a failure in my opinion 

I completely agree but didn’t want to say anything because it would have just added to my “mr negative” image with some people.

When, after last season’s shambles, they should have been concentrating on stability and sourcing players with proven capability and experience at this level or higher, they continued with this weird obsession of trialing English 8th tier nobodies. Yes a few signings have been decent - Hylton (played in the Scottish Premiership before), Bird and Steele, but the majority of trialist and some signings have been a bit meh or worse.

I know it’s clichéd as f**k but I’m convinced that the previous regime were convinced there were/are dozens of Noubles just waiting to be discovered down south.

I would imagine we’ll see a clearout in January and a load of solid if unspectacular signing brought in to steady the ship.

[lichtie23]

4 minutes ago, Tattie36 said:

I completely agree but didn’t want to say anything because it would have just added to my “mr negative” image with some people.

When, after last season’s shambles, they should have been concentrating on stability and sourcing players with proven capability and experience at this level or higher, they continued with this weird obsession of trialing English 8th tier nobodies. Yes a few signings have been decent - Hylton (played in the Scottish Premiership before), Bird and Steele, but the majority of trialist and some signings have been a bit meh or worse.

I know it’s clichéd as f**k but I’m convinced that the previous regime were convinced there were/are dozens of Noubles just waiting to be discovered down south.

I would imagine we’ll see a clearout in January and a load of solid if unspectacular signing brought in to steady the ship.

They need to scrap the recruitment team and hybrid system. Go back to what has worked in the past. Good solid part time players and loans 

[lichtie23]

32 minutes ago, clashcityrocker said:

This Saturday is a fresh start for the complete squad - management will start with a new slate and will aim to give everyone an opportunity to shine.

This is a new beginning for all the squad.

Lets start with a convincing win on Saturday.

 

 

 

A new beginning? So no more “Real Arbroath”? 

[ExiledLichtie]

Just now, lichtie23 said:

They need to scrap the recruitment team and hybrid system. Go back to what has worked in the past. Good solid part time players and loans 

Should we also go back to league 2 and 3 players on the bench?  The world has changed.  Youth academies and huge benches mean that clubs are keeping hold of more players, and the players they are loaning out are generally just not as good.   I don't know if you remember the past, but I was there, and it didn't always work.  We are not the same club as we were in the past either.  

FWIW, I didn't think the recruitment was that bad.  I was a bit of a lone voice on here calling for defensive replacements last season, but it seems the management didn't see it as a priority either.  In midfield and going forward, I think our squad is pretty good actually.  Good signings were made, I just think the management didn't get the best out of them.  

 

[ecto]

12 minutes ago, lichtie23 said:

They need to scrap the recruitment team and hybrid system. Go back to what has worked in the past. Good solid part time players and loans 

Due to bigger match day squads, the loan market hopeless for us, in the championship, very few good experienced pros available, alright loaning laddies to leagues 1&2 no use for the championship 

[JoseMarooniho]

9 minutes ago, ExiledLichtie said:

I was a bit of a lone voice on here calling for defensive replacements last season… 

 

I wish I had a pound for each time you’ve mentioned it  

[ExiledLichtie]

Just now, JoseMarooniho said:

I wish I had a pound for each time you’ve mentioned it  

I'm so bitter and resentful about it! 

[lichtiekev]

Glad it's a complete clean slate, 

Needed to be, the new management team will have there own ideas,

Agree the last few years recruitment has been pretty poor,  far more failures than successful signings, 

Fresh start, hopefully a fresh style and give us something to look forward to on Saturdays 

[1320Lichtie]

1 hour ago, ecto said:

Due to bigger match day squads, the loan market hopeless for us, in the championship, very few good experienced pros available, alright loaning laddies to leagues 1&2 no use for the championship 

Definitely not hopeless - definitely not as easy but it is only an extra 2 subbies the Premiership teams get. 
 

One of the biggest improvements Airdrie made from the first time we played them to the second time was the guy they got from Hibs (already had 2 decent players from Hibs) who had a much better time on the right than Watson did in the first game when Hylton gave them nightmares. 
 

 I think a quick count shows that there are 16 loans from Scottish Premiership teams amongst the other 9 clubs in the division. 
 

 

[Lichtie78]

10 hours ago, ecto said:

Due to bigger match day squads, the loan market hopeless for us, in the championship, very few good experienced pros available, alright loaning laddies to leagues 1&2 no use for the championship 

Not sure what you mean by this?Loan market has never been for experienced pros. Since we have come into the championship Miko Virtanen, Craig Wighton, Ben Williamson, Chris Hamilton & Jack Hamilton have all been young lads who've come in and done well. Dick & co seemed to abandon the loan market in the last couple seasons, but I wonder how much of that was to do with Prem clubs not wanting to loan us players due to the way we played, and how Dick used them (Was not a fan of him but Hancock playing left wing for example). I hope that with a fresh start at the club under McIntyre we once again will be able to use the loan market well. 

[Smokerson]

I think the loan market has changed due to the  prem teams going with smaller squads and the addition of 5 subs and listing 9 on the bench. Think there are 4 or 5 clubs in the Prem that have B teams.

There is also the fact that it can be a mixed bag,  wighton, virtanen, williamson and the two hamiltons and obvsiously Nouble were all very good, but in recent times, we have also had hancock, michael ruth, harrison clark, bitsindou, there was another lad from Livvy who were simply not good enough to play in our team. Its a hit or a miss. Despite that I can definitely see McIntyre bringing in a couple on loan, they have to be better than what we have, pointless having loans as bench warmers.

[SmokeyJoe]

Hopefully can get one or two decent loans in and get back to signing the best PT players that are actually known to us rather than randomers from down south that come on trial. 
 

recruitment been better this summer but still no great so all in all would say it didn’t really work out. 

[1320Lichtie]

40 minutes ago, Smokerson said:

I think the loan market has changed due to the  prem teams going with smaller squads and the addition of 5 subs and listing 9 on the bench. Think there are 4 or 5 clubs in the Prem that have B teams.

There is also the fact that it can be a mixed bag,  wighton, virtanen, williamson and the two hamiltons and obvsiously Nouble were all very good, but in recent times, we have also had hancock, michael ruth, harrison clark, bitsindou, there was another lad from Livvy who were simply not good enough to play in our team. Its a hit or a miss. Despite that I can definitely see McIntyre bringing in a couple on loan, they have to be better than what we have, pointless having loans as bench warmers.

I thought Ruth was ok and wanted him to get more of a chance. 
 

Bitsindou done a job in fairness. He played centre half that day we beat Dundee at Dens. Played there in a game we drew against Dundee at home too. Filled in there pretty well

 

Harrison Clark the only one who I thought was gubbins

 

I saw this tweet in the summer - I do think the way we played under Dick on the whole was massively over exaggerated - I do think that some Premie clubs definitely had this feeling about us though 

 

 

Also these rules were all in place when McIntyre was at Cove and he had Charlie Gilmour, Kyle McLelland, Jack Sanders and Max Johnston on loan - all 4 looked like good players in the game they beat us 2-0 up there. Sanders and Johnston especially 

[ExiledLichtie]

1 hour ago, SmokeyJoe said:

Hopefully can get one or two decent loans in and get back to signing the best PT players that are actually known to us rather than randomers from down south that come on trial. 
 

recruitment been better this summer but still no great so all in all would say it didn’t really work out. 

How many randomers down south did we actually sign?  Turan was from the previous summer and has done fine, and Norey has had one game where he looked great.  Hylton wasn't a randomer at all, and has been excellent, and Bird has been our best goalscorer has he not?  This is like the "Nouble's mates" thing, where nobody could actually list any of his "mates" that signed.

People were generally happy with the (non defensive) recruitment by the end of the summer, I feel like there's a lot of revisionism going on.  Yes, I would like to see us sign more of the best part time players, so I agree there, but our "recruitment team" had one window, and seemed to do reasonably well.  None of this summer's signings were Deri Corfe.

[lichtie23]

The recruitment team identified 12 players and brought them up for training in the summer. Bird was the only one we signed I’m sure 

[1320Lichtie]

Bird is as good as we could’ve got as a striker I reckon. 
 

Players on the whole on an individual basis are fine. Think Jacobs is hopeless. 
 

Squad as a whole lacks a lot of physicality in midfield and also has too many similar players / players who play in a certain position / lack of players who play in others. 

 

This has shown over the course of the season. 
 

I would also prefer us to go back to the way we recruited before. I think if we can pull or pluck one or two players who have played at a decent level in England and fancy moving up to give it a go here then why not.  
 

But any lower than the National League in England then no thanks.

 

Also do not want to see hordes of guys come up here on trial ever again. 

[clashcityrocker]

Barry Sellars was only involved in recruiting players for this season and did a good, decent job - he was still finding his feet, developing contacts and working towards potential new signings - you can't expect instant results, it takes time to settle into making new contacts and networking with clubs etc.

The only bad season we had with recruitment was season 2022-23 when we finished 3rd bottom, 3 points clear of the relegation play offs - lessons were learnt and the recent new signings have been good - we have quality players at the club.

We need another defender and battling midfielder - I suspect that Barry Sellars and co were working on that for January - in his short time recruiting players he did a decent job and would have become better over time.

A new manager has arrived with new ideas, that is understandable - happens all the time (maybe Barry has passed on a file to him for potential signings, who knows).

[lichtie23]

6 minutes ago, clashcityrocker said:

Barry Sellars was only involved in recruiting players for this season and did a good, decent job - he was still finding his feet, developing contacts and working towards potential new signings - you can't expect instant results, it takes time to settle into making new contacts and networking with clubs etc.

The only bad season we had with recruitment was season 2022-23 when we finished 3rd bottom, 3 points clear of the relegation play offs - lessons were learnt and the recent new signings have been good - we have quality players at the club.

We need another defender and battling midfielder - I suspect that Barry Sellars and co were working on that for January - in his short time recruiting players he did a decent job and would have become better over time.

A new manager has arrived with new ideas, that is understandable - happens all the time (maybe Barry has passed on a file to him for potential signings, who knows).

Barry didn’t do a decent job and you know that

[TheRoundO]

All the other Championship teams seem to have a fair few loanees. Strange we have none. Clubs making loans didn’t like Dick’s style of play?

[Smokerson]

1 hour ago, lichtie23 said:

Barry didn’t do a decent job and you know that

well you don't know the players he had a hand in recruiting and the players he didn't so pretty hard to say if he did a good job or not, I think it was worth a try, recruitment is now on McIntyre so we will see how it goes.