Some light reading here to make you all feel better about the Swans.
It Could Always Be Worse
- Thread starter jackodiamonds
- Start date
Behindthegoal
Key Player
CroJack
Key Player
In 2013 Vincent Tan informed Cardiff's board he'd prefer to buy players with 'eight' in their birth date, as the number is a respected one in Malaysia.
Then he questioned David Marshall's goal-scoring rate.
Then he appointed 23-year-old Kazakh Alisher Apsalyamov as the head of recruitment. Apsalyamov's previous work experience at the club was painting the walls of Cardiff City Stadium prior to the appointment and had no experience in recruitment.
Then he re-branded the club by changing the colors of the kit to red and club's crest to feature a red dragon forgetting that Cardiff Dragons are the Wales first LGBTI+ football club.
Then he questioned David Marshall's goal-scoring rate.
Then he appointed 23-year-old Kazakh Alisher Apsalyamov as the head of recruitment. Apsalyamov's previous work experience at the club was painting the walls of Cardiff City Stadium prior to the appointment and had no experience in recruitment.
Then he re-branded the club by changing the colors of the kit to red and club's crest to feature a red dragon forgetting that Cardiff Dragons are the Wales first LGBTI+ football club.
The Blobster
Prediction Champ
If you are on utube search for BLUEBIRD WANKERS ,( by Bernie Hertz ) I laughed my socks off at this musical gem .
CroJack
Key Player
CroJack
Key Player
That's an interesting read.
"There are an enormous number of details about the transfer window process that I just cannot publicly discuss, although if you knew more about what happened in reality, most of your incredulous questions above would be answered and more.
Honestly: do you genuinely believe we didn't have the list you outline above going into the window? Do you honestly believe that our football department didn't compile a detailed list of players they believed would be good fits, could be available for sensible financial deals, and who were motivated to come to Swansea, and share it with us in advance? Of course we had that. And of course we had extensive, ongoing discussions about it, before and during the window. And the list evolved as players dropped off of our radar and as players came onto our radar (those who were not available in the early days of the window but became possibilities later in the month).
To your point about knowing in advance whether or not a player is motivated to come to Swansea: NO SHIT, we absolutely should have the best intelligence possible for this before we spend significant energies attempting to sign that player. This is an area where it turns out our club was not as well informed going in as we'd thought we were, hence our comments about improving many aspects of our process in the future. I say that not to blame any individual person or lay fault at anyone's feet--just saying that there were players who we genuinely believed were actionable for us and it turns out there were considerations beyond our control that we were not aware of in advance that made them out of reach. It sucks and was super frustrating.
Why would you think that we don't have the whole recruitment team (with Russ on the front lines) trying to convince young players that they'll love Swansea and that we'll make the transition easy for them? Of course we do that! It's central to our recruiting process!
The situation Jason described was one where during our recruitment process for a loan player we decided we really wanted to sign, the player simply made it clear that he was only willing to entertain a move to clubs within a certain driving radius of his family---we offered his home club a higher wage contribution than the club he ultimately went to, but it didn't matter because we were not the destination he preferred! We didn't know this until after the player had selected his ultimate loan destination. It's not like we had a young player say "I'm not sure I want to move away from home at the minute, I am uneasy about the transition..." and we respond by saying "here's a fistful of American dollars, kid! Come to Swansea!"
I have already explained in detail elsewhere how Karlan Grant's wages and our contribution to WBA for his services would work. I have also explained that extending a permanent player on a different wage structure has not a whole lot to do with how much we contribute to a short term impact player on loan's wages in a push for the playoffs--the players on our squad were excited to have a player of Karlan's skill level joining them, not salty that WBA has a different wage structure to Swansea's. They, like we, thought Karlan could help us push for top six this year.
I appreciate your passion and your frustration about what happened--I assure you, I share it. This is not only the club I support, but it is the recipient of an enormous amount of my life force, time and energy, and coming up empty in the transfer window was gutting on many levels. The idea that "the truth" is as simple as "other teams had lists and acted quicker" and "sold their vision" better is an enormous oversimplification of a hugely complex situation. I understand that from the outside it may seem like your explanation of what's happened is painfully obvious and you don't understand why these stupid Yanks just don't even grasp basic things about football, business, or life--but the reality behind the scenes is wildly more complicated. I hope you understand that I am not trying to be condescending or invalidating towards your frustrations and concerns, just trying to shed light (to the extent I can without violating confidentiality) on the fact that things are much more complicated than it probably seems.
I have to say: I have been really patient and measured in answering an awful lot of very heated questions, not just this weekend but during the fans forum in October. The idea that we don't respect the club or that we think of it as our "play pen" confuses and offends me--what, exactly, do you think we are getting out of this that makes you compare it to a toy? We are pouring our own money (millions of pounds every year), our time, and our energy into trying to keep the club financially stable and pushing for promotion. And along the way, we get to be called liars, idiots, and snakes. This is hard work, and we are doing it because we believe we can ultimately succeed.
I have flagged before that I cannot talk about specific players. In response to your other broader questions, as I said before, we targeted multiple permanent players and several loan options during the window--balancing a desire to build for the future with a desire to give us an extra leg up pushing for the playoffs this year. Of course our preference (!!!) would always be to find permanent transfers where the player can grow with us long term, but sometimes the best option available at a given moment is a high-talent short-term loan (like Grant would have been for us towards the end of the window when we switched our focus to him). The January window is really, really hard. Our top targets, as I have said elsewhere, were a blend of permanent transfers (our preference all else equal) and hugely talented loan options (opportunistic pieces to bolster a playoff push). I'm not sure why people outside of football don't understand how difficult it can be to effectuate complex deals with multiple parties (players, agents, other clubs) involved.
I'm not talking about money except to clarify that we have indeed invested our own funds (and continue to do so), and reminding everyone that it is our commitment to the club's long term health that makes us focus so closely on judicious, thoughtful spending rather than living beyond the club's means. I am sorry you feel I am shooting the views of the fans down--I am trying to give thoughtful responses and I assure you I am hearing the emotion and passion underneath it all. I have already really enjoyed meeting a lot of fans and engaging with the community, and I plan to continue to do so even more with time--and if you have specific recommendations for ways you think I might do that in a wider sense in the future by all means I welcome the suggestions. I'm not sure how anyone could really accuse us of hiding or being nonexistent--I am literally typing honest direct responses to individual unfiltered supporters' questions on my computer right now, on the back of a video interview this week, and a fans forum two or three months ago. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't know of a lot of other football club owners doing that at the moment?
I have to disagree with the premise--Swansea have made the playoffs two of the last three years, and after the defeat at Wembley we intentionally embarked on a multi-year process with a young head coach to build something different. We knew this would take time and success wouldn't come immediately, and we committed to the most important element of building something new--ownership patience with the process. If you attended the fans forum in October, you heard Grimes talk about what it means to the players and manager to know that ownership is behind the long term vision and is very vocally supportive of what we are building rather than worrying if we are going to freak out and upend everything if the team goes on a losing skid. I know everyone wants us to be higher in the table this year (trust me, I do too!) but we believe in the process.
Russ's input was not disregarded at all--his is one of several opinions that we take into account as we reach consensus on a decision. And I believe people are in general making a bigger deal about stuff between Russ and Morgan than is warranted--Russ feels great about Morgan and has told us he's been looking terrific in training and he is excited to have him back in the squad. But more broadly, sometimes Russ and other members of our football department disagree with each other, or with us, about something. Or at least sometimes there's initial disagreement, so we try to make sure that ongoing conversations are had and people are given the opportunity to have their minds changed by their colleagues as we work towards reaching consensus and making a decision.
We will not stop signing off on player transactions--we of course want to make sure that our process in the future is clearer and better and more streamlined than what happened last month, and we must build a better-oiled machine internally around how these things work, but we are always going to be involved in the club's most crucial business.
Yankee_Jack
Key Player
That's a pretty forthright response.