My piece on the Brentford game brought about what I’ve called a challenging response from someone who I’ve known for a long time and has been a strong supporter of this blog – here is what he wrote;-
““Inferiority complex” etc – it’s value judgement. This retrospective banging on about the money that has been wasted may syphon off some of your frustrations, but is it ‘on’ the money? Tell us the player(s) you know would have made the difference you crave, who would have come here, who were available at a price we could afford (by what measure) and/or whose parent clubs would have loaned us, whom Harris missed the opportunity therefore to bring in. The emphasis being on ‘you know’. “Tease us, Bob! Tease us!” as Delboy would say.”
It’s a reasonable response to the sort of stuff you tend to get from people who write blogs on their football team in that there is usually plenty of talk about what is wrong at the club concerned and precious little about how it could be put right!
The person concerned posts under the name Royalewithcheese and is right to a degree to think I’m being critical of our manager lately because I believe his strange reluctance to add to the central midfielders he was left by Neil Warnock is costing us. It also seems odd that, having pushed for five subs to be reintroduced, he appears to be reluctant to use them, the style of play under him is not much more easy on the eye than it was under Neil Warnock and I found it depressing that he could think that we were “excellent” in the first half on Saturday, despite us not having a single attempt on the Brentford goal until the forty eighth minute of the first half.
However, despite this, I’m not really in the Neil Harris out camp. In fact, I think that, his non action on central midfielders and lack of cover at right back apart, he did well in the last transfer window and has been unlucky with injuries to two of his better signings. So short of suggesting a Barry Bannan type (he’s too old now for me), I’ve no real names to come up with to answer Royales’ question because I think the issue goes deeper than that.
I believe it’s the type of players we’ve signed in the past ten years or so which have played a part in creating a squad that, it seems, can only achieve consistent results when using the method of play our manager is supposedly trying to move away from which is the problem. I see this as dragging us down to the extent that, although there are welcome signs of some progress lately, we’ve largely been unable to incorporate youngsters who have been brought up to play in a completely different way from the senior team into the squad.
Now you can call me a liar if you want, but I’m being sincere when I say that the team I’m going set out now consisting entirely of players who were playing at what I think most would accept was a lower level than us at the time I saw them might have matched the promotions of 2013 and 2018, cost Vincent Tan a fair bit less to assemble, made him more money in sales and been adaptable enough to have enabled us to have more than just the one way of playing.
I saw all of these players at an early stage of their careers and thought they could do a job for City – see what you think of the side;-
Dan Bentley (Bristol City)
I saw him play for Southend at Newport in October 2013 (there’s a piece on the match here) and, apart from one howler which produced a goal, he was superb in a side that ended up being over run. In 2016, Bentley signed for Brentford for £1.1 million in compensation, but I would like to think he would have cost less than that if we’d signed him around the time he played that game at Newport.
Moses Adubajo (Sheffield Wednesday)
He was a stand out player in Russell Slade’s Leyton Orient side which almost made it to the Championship in 2014 and signed for promoted Brentford for £1 million during the summer of that year. Brentford reached the Championship Play Offs in 14/15 and Hull paid £3.5 million for him shortly afterwards. Odebajo was a regular in the Hull side which reached the Premier League in 2016, but the first of two serious injuries which have held his career back meant that he never got to play at that level.
James Tarkowski (Burnley)
I first saw him play for Oldham in a Sky televised match against Preston and he struck me as the best player on the pitch by a distance. Brentford paid just £45,000 for him in 2014 and two years later they sold him to Burnley for eighty times that – capped a couple of times by England.
Alfie Mawson (Fulham)
Yes, I know he could be classed as damaged goods now because he’s had something of a fall from grace, but, at his best at Swansea, he made the England squad. Was playing for Wycombe on loan from Brentford in League Two. he signed for Barnsley on a Bosman in 2015 after turning down a contract offer from Brentford. Within a year, he’d signed for Swansea for a reported fee of £270,000 (I thought it was a fair bit more than that) and Fulham ended up paying almost £20 million for him when he joined them in 2018.
Andy Robertson (Liverpool)
First saw him playing for Dundee United in 2013/14 when we were in the Premier League and I’m sure he would have very been tempted by an offer from us at that time. As it was, he signed for Hull in July 2014 for less than £3 million – Liverpool paid £8 million for him in 2017.
James McArthur (Crystal Palace)
As Hamilton Accies are my favourite Scottish team, I tend to watch them whenever one of their games are televised. He was signed by Premier League Wigan (so he probably wouldn’t have come here) in 2010 for a half a million pounds and cost Palace around £7 million four years later.
John McGinn (Aston Villa)
McGinn could have been bought at an absolute bargain price twice. He was a real stand out player when I first saw him playing for St Mirren in a televised match and couldn’t believe it when I saw him shortly afterwards playing for Hibs. We were in the Premier League when Championship side Aston Villa paid just £2.75 million for him early in the 18/19 season.
Romaine Sawyers (West Brom)
First saw him playing in the League One Play Offs for Walsall in 15/16 and he joined up with his former manager Dean Smith at Brentford on a Bosman a few weeks later, so maybe we wouldn’t have got him even if we were interested. Signed for West Brom in 2019 for a reported £3 million.
Ademola Lookman (RB Leipzig)
Although unlikely, I think there was a chance we could have got him from Charlton early on when he was playing for a side that ended up being relegated in 16/17..
Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa)
Stood out in an Exeter side which were beaten in the League Two Play Off Final in 15/16 and signed for Brentford a year later for just over a million pounds – according to Neil Warnock, he wanted to sign him when he was our manager, but was turned down by the Board, but we could have got him a year earlier.
Kemar Roofe (Rangers)
To be fair, it was a mate who saw him playing for Oxford United against Newport who first brought him to my attention, but a televised appearance by him a few weeks later confirmed his high opinion of him. There has to be a good chance that he would have chosen Leeds over us when he signed for them for around £3.5 million in 2016.
So, that’s it, who knows how that team would have fared in the table, but I reckon it would have cost something like £20 million to assemble given the fees paid for them when they left the clubs I’d first come across them at. Also, with athletic, attack minded full backs, centrebacks capable of playing out from the back, a midfield containing an experienced anchor man, a passer and a goalscoring box to box man and pace and ability up front, this youngish team would have obvious sell on value as long as the club didn’t mess up their development.
It’s only a bit of fun really and, of course, it’s easy to come up with these sort of selections after the event so to speak, but I strongly believe that around eight of that team would have been interested in coming here if we had made a move for them at the right time – as I mentioned in my piece on the Brentford match, it didn’t have to be like this.
I wouldn’t argue with any of those players and I appreciate the fun in dreaming of what might have been, but they are not players “whom Harris missed the opportunity to bring in”, are they?
Fans insist Harris hasn’t
a B games, yes he has we see it every week its an A game he hasn’t got.
All good signings but with our record of late, would we have put their careers on the downward slide.
I appreciate that no youngsters have been brought through at cardiff but we forget about matondo who was unfairly stolen from us
No, but I think that list of players is indicative of a scouting and recruitment approach that compares badly to many of our rivals. I don’t watch as much Scottish football, or televised football in general actually, as I used to and my knowledge of the lower divisions of the Football League is not helped by the fact that I’ve never been able to find Quest where they show the highlights now on a Saturday night, so it’s harder to come up with names, but I like the look of Josh Sheehan at Newport and think he could well end up playing in the Championship, while I can remember us being linked with Sam Field of West Brom whose career seems to have stalled somewhat in recent seasons, but he looked a great prospect two or three years ago.
As for how much Harris should be blamed for the current midfield, I’d say it’s about fifty fifty between him and Neil Warnock now – before this summer transfer window, I would have put it at something like 80/20 in favour of Warnock and, on the subject of our midfield, what is the point of having Keenan Patten on the bench in recent games? I was thinking that with us looking so lacking in a goal threat last night, it wouldn’t have done any harm to have given Patten five minutes or so just to show him that he is in the manager’s thinking – as it is, he’s only going to be used in the event of a couple of injuries or red cards.
“As for how much Harris should be blamed for the current midfield, I’d say it’s about fifty fifty between him and Neil Warnock now”. Genuinely interested to understand your thinking there, Paul.
Because Neil Harris has had two transfer windows to do something about the midfielders he inherited – doing nothing is suggestive of him being satisfied with them which seems odd to me given he has talked about trying to play a more rounded game. He has said himself that we went back to basics somewhat after the loss at Coventry which, again, is suggestive that certain elements of the team were finding it difficult to play in the manner the manager said he wanted – having seen various combinations of Ralls, Bacuna, Pack and Vaulks in our central midfield for getting on for a season and half now, I’d say that while they all might fit into a “passing team” individually, as a unit they would really struggle to impose themselves.
It is hard to see what Plan A is at times Michael isn’t it.
Happy New Year, Paul.
Sorry to be boring. I keep going back to the same point. As far as I know, the sort of midfield players you are referring to cost big bucks to buy, or choose to be loaned to a Swansea (you know what I mean), or preferably a Brentford near London. What major funding was made available to Harris in those two transfer windows? And/or which great midfield loanees that would have come here did he miss out on?
Chris