Quote Originally Posted by A Quiet Monkfish View Post
The question nobody seems to answer -even ask for that matter - is if we were a better run club would we be more successful ? Huddersfield hung on to the Premier league by their fingertips - not dissimilar to us apart from the end result, but the next season when they strengthened they were relegated pretty much by Christmas. They played some really good football an attempted to move away from their 'backs-to-the-wall' approach. I remember them looking impressive on TV a few times and they played us off the park here. Now look at them. They may move up the table as the season progresses, but maybe if they'd stuck to a playing style that their players were more adept at, they's still be in the PL..
Actually, I thought our way of playing in 17/18 was going to be quite a bit more effective in the Premier League than it turned out to be because it's rare to come across a team like us at that level these days. In particular, I was hopeful that we would be very effective from attacking dead ball situations and didn't expect us to be as suspect as we were when defending them either.

I think logic says most clubs will improve, maybe not be successful, if a lot of work is put into its structure and methodology. Look at what we are at present - a club with an Academy which fails on all levels because it doesn't produce first team players for us and doesn't raise any revenue through the sale of said players (truthfully, our Academy is just a loss making exercise while those in charge deem it that we either don't have youngsters good enough to break into the first team or feel that we cannot introduce Academy products into the senior team because it is too much of a risk). Also, If a club is not producing its own first team footballers, then it needs to have a a very effective player recruit programme to compensate for that - is anyone on here going to argue that we have that at present?

An increasing number of clubs have both a working Academy and a professional and effective player recruitment set up. Besides that, I heard Glen Williams of Wales Online saying he watched the Under 23s on Monday and couldn't get over how differently they played to the senior team - actually, I think the Under 23s have taken some steps towards playing like the first team in the last year (e.g. knocking balls into the channels and the use of long throws in attack and defence), Glen should see how the Under 18s play!

There's three ways in which the club would surely improve - having an Academy which does what it is supposed to do, a less haphazard approach to the transfer market and a system of play that is common to all levels of the club, that should lead to improvement of the first team shouldn't it?