One major complaint I hear time and time again on here is poor recruitment. Players been labelled as injury prone and a waste of money.
Ok I will simplify this and speak generally with rough estimates. Money clearly does not always guarantee a players outcome and success at a club but the evidence is there that the more you spend on a player the more likely he is to be a success.
Top 4 players cost £50m plus
Top half players £20m-£50m
Bottom half premier players £10m-£20m
Championship players cost less than £10m
On this basis based on players transfer cost our expectations of our player successes at Leeds are as follows
We have 0 top4 players
Top half players 2 - Rodrigo. James.
Bottom half players 5 - Llorente. Koch. Firpo. Raphinha. Harrison.
Championship players 11 - Meslier. Dallas. Cooper. Klich. Roberts. Klaesson. Ayling. Strujik. Forshaw. Bamford. Gelhardt.
Home grown 2 Phillips. Shackleton.
I think it’s fair to say that this gives us a realistic expectation that anywhere from 17th and above is a successful season. At present we are on target to achieve that despite the injury ravaged season.
Ok now I know that despite the above the next item on the agenda will be “we don’t have a big enough squad" and “we brought in the wrong player positions" - I think there is a valid argument here and one or two more squad players would have been helpful not just this season but last as well. There is a fine balance between having too many players where some lose interest because they cannot get minutes and having too few when you can’t field a bench that can change a game.
Player positions - again a valid argument with the James signing. Did we need another winger when the midfield seemed the weak area. Signing players is not an easy task. Signing good players is very difficult. Clubs usually try and sign players that will helpfully be better than their starting eleven. Maybe we tried and just couldn’t get the midfield players we wanted? Gallagher we certainly went for. James has been a player the club have long wanted and there is nothing wrong with adding quality to your squad. A genuinely quick rapid player is something different to what we have at the club, it’s a shame he has been utilised out of position for most of his Leeds career so far.
Premier league clubs have had years to build squads. They have a
ALL made errors of signing players, they will all have found the odd bargain. It takes time and season on season building. You get the odd anomaly but those that spend the most sit at the top. We have spent nigh on the least over the past 5 seasons and our wage bill is at the bottom of the premier.
Has recruitment been poor? Far from it. Recruitment enabled the side to be lifted from the dark abyss of the championship mid table no hopers to the premier league.
Could it have been better - of course. In a perfect world we would sign 20 top4 successes for £5m each. It’s not going to happen though is it.
Could it have been worse - yes a lot worse. We could have failed to be promoted and forced to sell a number of players and be still floundering in the championship.
So have a think. A real long hard think about the recruitment, the expected levels for players bought. Also these so called injury prone players people mention…..have a think and let’s have the statistics of these players injuries prior to them signing for us. Don’t just make pie in the sky comments - back it up with hard facts.
Has recruitment been poor?
Recruitment
posted on 19/12/21
comment by Kebablegs (U17699)
posted 38 minutes ago
Nobody has challenged my rough estimates of costs v expectations yet
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Yeah but the Bielsa bashers aren’t interested in facts, stats and context behind those. They just want to be loud and “proven” right
posted on 19/12/21
Maybe the research is still being completed Aza.
posted on 19/12/21
This morning I find myself thinking about how Southampton completely outplayed us earlier this season. We were terrible.
The greater problem with which we are all struggling is: why has there been such a dramatic downturn in form since the end of last season?
Quality of recruitment is one very important aspect, but Bielsa's reputation is based on player improvement through rigorous training - and there's been lots of evidence that his methods are highly effective.
However, we are now in the fourth year of Bielsa's involvement with the club. This is uncharted territory for Bielsa - his methods have not been tested over the long term.
We're sliding into the drop zone, having conceded fourteen in three games and scoring only three in response, two of which were penalties. What is to be done to save the season?
Marathe and co will now be weighing up:
whether a maverick coach whose method may or may not be sound over the long term is capable of saving our season in the short term;
whether spending big in January to save our season is wise (it doesn't ever seem to be);
or whether, when faced with stick or twist, it's more cost-effective to stick, given the chaos a new coaching team may bring.
There have been a number of times I simply couldn't figure out Bielsa's substitutions. Not using Cresswell, sticking with James as some sort of false false nine when we have Gelhardt (winner of the two penalties and scorer) champing at the bit, subbing Klich last night, subbing Summerville (which is probably going to undermine his confidence).
Was this a possible Apocalypse Now moment for Bielsa as Kurtz? "I don't see any method at all..." He seems to panic during these moments.
A14 and others, yes I admire your faith, but the jungle is a brutal place. I don't want Bielsa sacked, but small squad is here and now very obviously NOT the right method.
posted on 19/12/21
small squad is here and now very obviously NOT the right method.
worked for the last 3 seasons
posted on 19/12/21
Another couple of ways to look at the squad situation and recruitment.
You can have a compact tight knit squad with players having a good chance of game time.
You've lost players like Samuel Saiz (remember him), Pablo Hernandez and you have a player in Phillips whose role is pivotal in the way we play and had played nearly every minute of 7 games for England in the Euros and had a 2 week holiday to recover.
The club clearly had identified a need for a midfielder with Cuissance in the building and medical away from signing and Gallagher show around Thorp Arch (another near miss)Harvey Barnes too in the past. Given those players that left and those that nearly joined where I am puzzled is why with, Costa, Poveda, Harrison, Raphina & Sommerville you'd then move in on James for £25m + add ons and leave the midfield alone. Not that James hasn't got potential but with the budget we had the acquisition of 1 maybe 2 midfieldplayers(1 of them could have been a loan) using that same budget feels like a smarter move.
Alioski goes, Davie goes to Bournemoth and Huggins too. Only Firpo comes in. To only have 1 left full back who could lose form or fitness and then have to plug the gap with Dallas leaving that already sparse midfield light is a consequence.
Overall I would not have any complaints with the amounts that have been spent it is where that money has been spent and the balance of the squad in certain positions rather than the numbers of players necessarily.
posted on 19/12/21
Yes, Kammy, but two of those three seasons were spent in the Championship, playing lower level opposition. Last season was so amazing because it suggested that there might be an alternative to the hypercapitalist model followed by most PL clubs. Don't we have one of the lowest wage-bills in the league at the mo?
Season 4 is uncharted territory re Bielsa's method: small squad, rigorous training. What mental impact does Bielsa's intensity have on players over the long term? Season 4 has so far been remarkable for not reflecting the success of seasons 1-3. Has recruitment since promotion therefore been such a significant element in our failure to really compete at this level so far this season? Our current form - P3 W0 D0 L3 F3 A14 - suggests that the rigorously-trained small and cheap squad model doesn't work over the long term in the PL. It's true that many PL clubs would have struggled with the fixtures run we've been enduring but to ship 14 in a week is pretty catastrophic, if you ask me.
How long will Radrizzani and Marathe let this run? That is without doubt the more important question. In the meantime, notwithstanding these doubts, yes, of course, I must follow Bielsa into the trenches at Anfield. As a fan, I owe him that much at least after these last four years. We've been treated to some extraordinary football. I think we can probably all agree on that.
posted on 19/12/21
Agree with the premise, Kebab.
The problem with recruitment has been we needed most of these signings to work to take us to that next level. Llorente and Raph have worked but for various reasons Koch, Rodrigo, Firpo and James haven’t as of yet. Still too reliant on our Championship core.
posted on 19/12/21
comment by Shaun M - Everywhere you go, always take Raphinha with you! (U9955)
posted 11 hours, 25 minutes ago
comment by A14... 152-0 T20 + Tea was fantastic پاکستان زِنده باد (U2805)
posted 46 minutes ago
Spot on article.
Also those that blame recruitment and say we have a lack of depth and “back up”…. Do they want championship back up players because the first team
Is effectively that too? Or do they think we should have rice, Fabinho, jota and gundogan is as replacements for these guys players.
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Championship players as back up is better than having kids on the bench that can't be Barrow or Salford. Might aswell have Salfords players on our bench.
Raphinha a Bottom 5 player and Rodrigo and James and top 4 players?? Seriously? James is the biggest waste of money in our transfer history, he's 10 million at best.
People keep harping on about Bielsa and the current regime lifting us out of the glums of the championship .... Sheffield Utd, Watford, Bournemouth, Huddersfield all did it before we did, its not that impressive getting a club twice the size of those lot promoted, plus we were top in January under Christiensen, 6 months before Bielsa took over an apparently awful championship side.
Phillips is injury prone yet we've not had cover for 2.5 season's, poor management.
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You need to re-read the article Sean as you have clearly misread it. Those players have been put in the categories based on their cost alone not actual performance........and i thought i was simplifying it!
posted on 19/12/21
So the conclusion to recruitment is
1) James money should have been spent elsewhere.
2) Left back issue has not been resolved by Firpo.
3) We lack adequate cover for Phillips.
4) There is no evidence that we have signed injury prone players.
5) Recruitment has contributed to lifting us from bottom half of the championship to the Premier League.
Overall i would personally conclude that there have been some mistakes made and some valid points have been made. However, recruitment has not been "poor".
Poor recruitment gets teams relegated.
Poor recruitment sees teams go into admin.
Our recruitment value is that of a side that has been successful if we finish above 17th in the Premier League. Now back the boys and help them achieve that.
posted on 20/12/21
I think opinions on recruitment at every club will almost always be negative.
The vast majority of fans appear to fall into the trap of comparing every signing to the likes of Kante to Leicester but thats a 1 in a 1000 signing. And how many unbelievable signings can you really think of for less that £30m? The irony is that we have a 1 in 1000 signing in Raphinha and for some reason that's excluded from the conversation.
People don't realise how hard it is to achieve a 50% success rate with signings for the first team. Wilkinson himself quoted as saying that it's very impressive if 50% of signings are a success.
The other factor to consider is that we are deliberately making riskier signings that have the potential to go right up in value. but the reason why there is that potential is because of the risk attached.
Overall I think it's quite clear that the total value players signed for is less than their total worth. obviously Raphinha does help that massively, but Bamford, Klich, Alioski, Struijk, Harrison, Roberts, Meslier are all players that proved to worth more than their fee.
i suspect Firpo will turn out to be a great player next season, much like the majority of Man City's signings (£50m+ btw) it often takes a year to establish yourself at a new club. Rodri & Cancelo are two perfect examples.
Also people talking about his success rate of u23 signings being so low. Of course it's so low, thats why they cost pennies!!! all it takes is one to break through and it's paid for itself. struijk has more than covered the entire spend on u23s himself. Nevermind Joffy and the rest coming through now.
This is all while working with Bielsa, a notoriously difficult job. And tbh it looks like Bielsa's influence in who we sin is being a hindrance to Orta if anything. James signing is clearly the one Bielsa dreamed of, it's the club's job to provide for him.