Ross Wilson (Sporting Director)

[r0cafella]

Let's see how he does. Id love nothing more than to be proven hopelessly wrong! 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I'm not saying I'm not worried BTW. I just don't yet have any reason to believe he's incompetent. 

[clintdempsey]

Put this in the Munoz thread but its probably more at home in here. Mods can delete/move as they wish.   

There are ALWAYS ways to work smarter though isn't it? We can talk for months on repeat about cartels, different regulations and all that jazz. But we can still actively choose to go about our business in other ways. We have to box clever, we've got to get in fast and get bids accepted and have the player make a decision then off we pop to the next if it's a no.

We do seem to be making good progress on the business/commercial side of things and that part of the market is really, really tough at the moment. We will build our spending power at a faster rate than most of the others and that will of course help going forward.

We've had a good run these last few years with PIF/Eddie at the helm and had some great success a long the way. Last summer and last season was a de facto shit show, and we will be paying for that this window. Whose responsibility that is I have no idea, it's probably a mix of things.

The point is, the owners has hired the right types of people at different levels of the club. We SHOULD have a functioning team to be able to better ourselves. It's frustrating as fuck to get hijacked over and over again but let's not get dragged down in this supernegative cuck way of blaming everything and anything but ourselves. We might not own 100% of our destiny, but we can surely do things in another way to kickstart the next chapter. Work smarter, faster and be a bit more ruthless.

The Isak saga last year has definitely opened up some cracks and if we have to rip up the team and start again I'd say that we most definitely have the right manager in charge as well. Let the moaners leave, sign younger players on the up, let Eddie work his magic with a team of underdogs lead by Bruno and we'll have a much better season next year. The momentum needs to shift, let's have a clear out and go again. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

But haven't we done that? 

 

We didn't have a proper exec team, now we do. 

 

We were going for star players from PL clubs, now we're looking at promising youngsters from abroad like everyone wanted. 

[clintdempsey]

1 minute ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

But haven't we done that? 

 

We didn't have a proper exec team, now we do. 

 

We were going for star players from PL clubs, now we're looking at promising youngsters from abroad like everyone wanted. 

Remains to be seen I guess? So far we have signed a young keeper that certainly fits that bill. But we still need to clear out both dross and some unhappy players as well. I'd say the proof will be in how we bounce back for another go. Last summer most certainly wasn't it. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Of course it remains to be seen, yeah. You were just talking about being smarter which is presumably what our current strategy and structure is about. 

 

Whether we'll have a brilliant window because of it, we'll see. 

 

It's possible there's an issue higher up the chain with speed of decisions - but I don't think that's the case with Munoz since everything was agreed and ready to sign. 

[clintdempsey]

I don't think so either. We'll always be prone to being hijacked by the "bigger" teams. Which makes speed all the more important. And the idea of working on multiple targets at the same time that there has been a few mumblings about as well.

I feel a lot more positive about the "next chapter" now, I really don't think that owners/executive team/management are as clueless as some on here do. We seem to be going in the direction many of us wants. We're always going to lose a few signings (or probably more than that ). But get a few in, get the positive momentum going, win a few games and hopefully we can discuss other stuff than what Andy Howe does or doesn't do, the depressing SCR/PSR/Cartel stuff. Yeah, we know it's there, make it work for us to make sure last years league campaign was a one-off and go again from there.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I'm worried but I'm less worried since the Downie explanation of the deal. We seemed to have everything in place. 

 

The football hierarchy and the ridiculous financial rules is another matter but it's not Ross Wilson's fault. 

[Mattoon]

I don't think even "speed" makes a difference, Munoz's agent clearly got every bit of detail he needed out of us and then said "give us 24 hours" then proceeded to give all that info to Liverpool who immediately said "yeah ok we'll take him for a bit more than that" player gets a better wage, agent gets a bigger cut.

 

We do the leg work quicker, the agent still takes 24hrs to get a better deal. 

[clintdempsey]

2 minutes ago, Mattoon said:

I don't think even "speed" makes a difference, Munoz's agent clearly got every bit of detail he needed out of us and then said "give us 24 hours" then proceeded to give all that info to Liverpool who immediately said "yeah ok we'll take him for a bit more than that" player gets a better wage, agent gets a bigger cut.

 

We do the leg work quicker, the agent still takes 24hrs to get a better deal. 

Totally agree. My comments were not in relation to the Munoz deal. These things happen and one way or another we'll have to accept our place in the food chain.

"Speed" does make the difference in letting us know if it's on or not quicker though. Hopefully we do have different targets and talk to them at the same time. In such a case a pivot could be made even faster and take it from there. 

[TheBrownBottle]

There is a release clause for £35m.  We decide to haggle.  This takes weeks of valuable time. 
 

The issue isn’t getting gazumped - the issue is farting about over relative pennies.   If we’d simply triggered the release clause we would’ve had our answer weeks ago and would’ve moved on to new targets by now.  So the Munoz deal is 100% a speed issue. 

[simonsays]

3 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

There is a release clause for £35m.  We decide to haggle.  This takes weeks of valuable time. 
 

The issue isn’t getting gazumped - the issue is farting about over relative pennies.   If we’d simply triggered the release clause we would’ve had our answer weeks ago and would’ve moved on to new targets by now.  So the Munoz deal is 100% a speed issue. 

You have no way of knowing this, just as you have no idea what Liverpool are actually paying for him.  The evidence points to us having agreed a deal with the player and the club, but then a bigger club came in and he decided to go with them.

 

[Kanj]

If we triggered on June 5 as reported our interest, we’d have known in days if he was coming here or going to Liverpool. On June 18 we’d hopefully have signed a different Gordon replacement by now. The issue is we weren’t fast enough to end the negotiations with the club and allowed time for our deal to be shopped and stolen.  

[Rich]

Wasn’t there some supposed issue with tax if the release clause was met? On the Osasuna side?

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I don't think the release clause is really a factor. 

 

I also don't expect the club to just go and pay the maximum for every player. We don't have the money to be doing that. 

[r0cafella]

1 minute ago, Rich said:

Wasn’t there some supposed issue with tax if the release clause was met? On the Osasuna side?

I'm actually not sure who's side it is but it's cost of doing business right? Only tax dogers would let that be the stumbling block

[The Prophet]

Even in the first couple of windows, which were considered a success, we missed out on targets or were gazumped by other teams.

 

Thankfully it didn't matter too much because we either bought our first choice targets elsewhere or we had a decent back up in place.

 

It's on Wilson to make sure we land on our feet.

[El Prontonise]

Release clauses in Spain require tax to be paid on them.

[Si67]

Can we go to the Guinness Records people for the highest number of transfer experts on one website talking absolute bollocks based on the square root of fuck all?

[SUPERTOON]

3 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Even in the first couple of windows, which were considered a success, we missed out on targets or were gazumped by other teams.

 

Thankfully it didn't matter too much because we either bought our first choice targets elsewhere or we had a decent back up in place.

 

It's on Wilson to make sure we land on our feet.

There was also a lot of positivity and momentum in those windows, that has disappeared now. 

[SUPERTOON]

4 minutes ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

I don't think the release clause is really a factor. 

 

I also don't expect the club to just go and pay the maximum for every player. We don't have the money to be doing that. 

I assumed we target players with release clauses so that we don’t have to overspend tbh.

[KaKa]

The concern with Wilson is that he hasn't really been at a club where he has to go toe to toe with the type of clubs he will be now, when it comes to signing players.

 

They say they've got a much bigger list of options, and so lets see. They're likely going to need it that's for sure.

[The Prophet]

2 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

There was also a lot of positivity and momentum in those windows, that has disappeared now. 

 

In everyone but the first perhaps. Even then we managed to secure Trippier and Bruno.

[Kanj]

Does Wilson get this deal done quietly at Forest?

[TheBrownBottle]

15 minutes ago, Si67 said:

Can we go to the Guinness Records people for the highest number of transfer experts on one website talking absolute bollocks based on the square root of fuck all?

The release clause is pretty well known, no-one here needs to pretend to be an expert at all.  It’s all just opinions.