Anthony Vickers - Images of Middlesbrough to blame for lack of recruitment?

Cardiffdaffs said:
“isn’t offering the money”

I think we are all very aware of that. It’s a downward spiral alright which could only be halted by paying more than our rivals. That’s how you get players to sign now because it’s not the area or our prospects of promotion that are wooing them. And if we can’t we have an issue.
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From what I’m hearing we’re not evening matching our rivals.

The club’s PR arm is then putting out propaganda, blaming things that are outside the control of the incompetent people behind the scenes.
 
Back in the 1970s there were players who lived up Cricket Lane in Normanby if I remember rightly? There used to be an annual cricket game between the Boro players and Normanby Hall cricket club each summer.
 
goalscrounger said:
Back in the 1970s there were players who lived up Cricket Lane in Normanby if I remember rightly? There used to be an annual cricket game between the Boro players and Normanby Hall cricket club each summer.
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Aye that’s true. Mind you some of the 70s “starlets” still do.
 
Wasn't it always this way? Harry Pearson was banging on about it in c.1993 in the Far Corner, about the difficulty of attracting footballers to the NE as they thought they'd be unhappy in a land of golf courses & snooker clubs because there was no lemongrass or Philip Glass cds in the shops.
 
Getting the excuses in, no doubt about it. What happened to the 'we have the best training facilities in the country' line? I guess it was a dream that we signed Rav and Juninho. And it certainly blasts the myth that we've ALWAYS paid over the odds as Juninho would've earned more at Arsenal but we sold him on the 'project' and our ambition.

Expect another campaign of a McNair/Saville axis next season...
 
B0E86935-F826-4BEB-A4EA-3669C11926E6.jpegI’m guessing players/agents will look at the championship like that.. we come just below that list of teams atm thanks to our previous years performance. Now.. if we’re losing out on transfer targets to teams not on that list then something is going wrong. I’m concerned with the idea of every player being up for sale yet we’re only looking for one or two players, then three or four then blah blah
 
Most decent players signing for Championship clubs will do so in the hope that it's one year until they're in the PL following promotion.

I think that last season puts us out of the running as one of those teams.

I could understand a foreign player wanting to be near a major hub airport down south for family visiting, for example, but money will be the key reason The NE teams always had to overpay during the PL years too.
 
Michael_Vronsky said:
Getting the excuses in, no doubt about it. What happened to the 'we have the best training facilities in the country' line? I guess it was a dream that we signed Rav and Juninho. And it certainly blasts the myth that we've ALWAYS paid over the odds as Juninho would've earned more at Arsenal but we sold him on the 'project' and our ambition.

Expect another campaign of a McNair/Saville axis next season...
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Actually don't mind saville or McNair
 
When looking at the article and being based out of the area, I can understand what they are saying, even though it may not be true. The only way that you can see that it is not true is to live there.
From an outsiders point of view;
Is the football we play successful, well it was 16 years ago and we have achieved a promotion, but also relegation.
Is the football we play attractive, no, we have a reputation for being very negative and we can kill the reputation of any attacking players.
How nice is the area to live, yes we have some nice villages but is that really what a young player or family are looking for.
What entertainment is there, yes you can have a lovely time on the moors otherwise you have to travel to Newcastle or Leeds. The advantages that our competitors have are that you have nice cities on your doorstep. So for players in the North West you can join the football set near Liverpool or Manchester. Bristol is a fantastic city with good and easy links to London or Cardiff. The South east clubs is the easy reach of London.
The question of travelling, to travel up from the South, the journey through south Yorkshire is dire on the M1 or the A1. It is much nicer when you are past Leeds. The area does seem very remote when compared with other areas.
So we have to pay them more, to try to ensure that they may sign for a shortish contract.

Please don't take my opinion to heart as I am very proud to say that I lived in North Yorkshire and I love the few opportunities to return to the area. The area needs to up its PR to sell itself to outsiders, we our proud of our industrial heritage but we have to understand that others dont understand that particularly southeners.
 
Pog said:
I’ve worked and resided all over the country - London, Edinburgh, Dundee, Bristol, Kent, Crewe, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby and I can honestly say that while Teesside wouldn’t be top of the list, it certainly wouldn’t be bottom.

This line “It is understood that one player keen on a switch recently arranged to drive up for talks and got snarled up in a string of tailbacks, roadworks and diversions on the motorway and what should have been a routine trip turned into a draining six hour slog” is absolutely laughable. I spent most of my time in Birmingham and London sat idle in traffic, it was horrendous. We don’t realise how lucky we are with the lack of traffic congestion in this area.

To blame the media image is giving the awful recruitment team a free pass. Bristol and Swansea are hardly New York and Los Angeles, yet they’re trumping us.

Norwich is the back end of nowhere but they always seem to get signings, Sheffield has zero glamour about it but they attracted players to come and get promotion.

We can’t get players because the club isn’t identifying the right ones, isn’t offering the money other clubs are and has spent years on a downward trajectory.
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I agree what you’re saying about other places but they’re not usually near the top of every list pointing out the negatives. Don’t get me started on the traffic but unfortunately the relative calm and tranquility of the traffic In the north doesn’t start until you’re north of Ferrybridge. The time before last when I was visiting my parents in Redcar I had to be down at Heathrow for work and left at 3.30am.......it took five and a half hours!
 
Smog in Wilts said:
When looking at the article and being based out of the area, I can understand what they are saying, even though it may not be true. The only way that you can see that it is not true is to live there.
From an outsiders point of view;
Is the football we play successful, well it was 16 years ago and we have achieved a promotion, but also relegation.
Is the football we play attractive, no, we have a reputation for being very negative and we can kill the reputation of any attacking players.
How nice is the area to live, yes we have some nice villages but is that really what a young player or family are looking for.
What entertainment is there, yes you can have a lovely time on the moors otherwise you have to travel to Newcastle or Leeds. The advantages that our competitors have are that you have nice cities on your doorstep. So for players in the North West you can join the football set near Liverpool or Manchester. Bristol is a fantastic city with good and easy links to London or Cardiff. The South east clubs is the easy reach of London.
The question of travelling, to travel up from the South, the journey through south Yorkshire is dire on the M1 or the A1. It is much nicer when you are past Leeds. The area does seem very remote when compared with other areas.
So we have to pay them more, to try to ensure that they may sign for a shortish contract.

Please don't take my opinion to heart as I am very proud to say that I lived in North Yorkshire and I love the few opportunities to return to the area. The area needs to up its PR to sell itself to outsiders, we our proud of our industrial heritage but we have to understand that others dont understand that particularly southeners.
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Agree with all of that. What people are missing is the article was saying players have to sell the area to their partners and as people have said in the past the players lived locally and picked up some of the best looking lasses in the area got married and settled down. Nowadays footballers hook up with the Love Island brigade who want to be seen in the best places. They don’t want to be out all togged up where their handbag is worth more than the pub they’re in! The players are no better, just look at the bar bill for Harry Maguire and his mates!
 
We’re a small provincial club without a lot of cash on the hip. Our town centre isn’t pretty or top of many people’s bucket list in which to live, but like many provincial clubs, it’s possible to live in the picturesque surrounding areas and rarely visit the town.

Either way, it’s not a vibrant footballer/footballer’s wife hub like Cheshire or London, so we are arguably behind some of the north west clubs or even West Midlands clubs (like Stoke) on that front, without the funds to compensate. We’re also a bit further away from most major cities which may play into some players’ thinking.

There comes a point though where you just have to accept who we are, what we are, and what we are doing, instead of constantly thinking the people in charge don’t have a clue or that the world owes us something better.
 
I also think the fact we were fecking woeful last season won't help. We were bang in a relegation battle all season and at one point won 1 in 13 and lowest scorers in the league.

That's not a great 'sell'. You would think many players we've been linked with probably played against us at the Riverside. The grounds just over half full and moans and grones at every miss placed pass or chance.

Players will know what it was like last season.

So if its forest or Brentford etc then they will clearly have an advantage over us.
 
Michael_Vronsky said:
Getting the excuses in, no doubt about it. What happened to the 'we have the best training facilities in the country' line? I guess it was a dream that we signed Rav and Juninho. And it certainly blasts the myth that we've ALWAYS paid over the odds as Juninho would've earned more at Arsenal but we sold him on the 'project' and our ambition.

Expect another campaign of a McNair/Saville axis next season...
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Not sure there’s any evidence of that. Merson came to us not 18 months later because we doubled his wages and paid him more than Bergkamp.
 
Really dont get the vitriol towards the gazette Or Vickers. I enjoy his articles a lot. Hasn’t said anything that isnt concievably true in that article. Balances the wag that did not want to come with Hall, who did. Talks about restrictions due to finances which is a fact. People seem happy to have a go at anyone and anything because we aren’t signing players. Well if they dont want to come why is anyone bothered. We have enough of the Howsons and Mcnairs taking the money and doing a job as they see fit. Much rather have them come on our terms and them showing a bit of hunger as opposed to those who have just gone through the motions for the past 2 or 3 years.
 
Pog said:
The latest defence of Gibson, Bausor, Gill, etc.
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Hang on, there's no quotes from anyone in that article - it looks like a standalone Vickers piece based on his interpretation - and I'm pretty sure it is accurate. Players would rather be in PL before big city lights than up in the North East. That's all it is - YOU are putting the knife in to Gibson, Bausor, Gill, etc
 
I personally don’t like the gazette lads at all.

You have AV who bangs on about the DNA of a club. PT who imagines interviews with Gibson.

I personally preferred it when they were frozen out. They obviously get the nod, what to and what not to write now.
 
Players want game time time and a chance to progress. No way are players turning down boro to be closer to the trafford centre.. besides I haven’t seen us miss out on any top players.. yet.
 
The problem is he is spouting the bleedin' obvious and trying to dramatise it with little 'I'm in the know' anecdotes. It's a nonsense article. In the summer Garry Monk was appointed, plenty of players were happy to come and join the club because we were willing to pay well. Since then we've hardly a beans worth of quality come through the door and had more rejections than on Take Me Out.

I think the lack of words from Warnock speaks volumes about the current situation with recruitment.
 
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