Our recruitment this season.

The Card Cheat

Well-known member
Apologies if it's been covered recently but I think our recruitment this season has been superb.

Steffen-big improvement on last season, vital to how we play.
Giles- Fantastic attacking left back, assist machine.
Smith-Best RB in years the model of consistency
Lenihan -Same as Smith except at Centre Back.
Forss-Such a good player, great finisher, Incredible work rate. Absolute bargain.
Archer-Changed us from a very good championship side to an excellent one. Not just a great goalscorer but an all round really good forward.
Ramsey - A really great player to have. Gives us different options when he plays. Fast, skillful and fearless.
Though the other players we've bought have been less involved so far, I don't think any of them look like bad buys, and I think either this season or in the future will play a big part for us.
 
Probably the season with the fewest duds signed in a long time.

Only really Clarke, Mowatt and Muniz, and even then they all have mitigating factors.

Clarke had an excellent pedigree and then suffered a freak season ending injury only a few weeks after signing.

Mowatt is being kept out by the evergreen Howson and the emergence of Hackney.

Muniz got injured and then can't get in to the squad because of loan limits and the signing of the excellent Archer.
 
I forgot one, I guess there's Hoppe where you can say it just didn't work, but he might be a success in future seasons.
 
The best bit of recruitment all season was undoubtedly by Gibson when appointing Carrick.

My biggest bugbear year on year was poor player recruitment. This season nobody can argue it hasn’t proved very successful in the main, Carrick inherited a good squad, arguably better than what many, myself included, felt at the time, in part due to results Wilder was achieving.

It took the signing of Carrick to quickly assess and identify the abiliteh signed by Scott, under Wilder’s time. Wilder clearly wanted ready made shoe ins the club could not realistically afford. His comments about some being developmental players implies he was of the view some were not ready. I personally doubt we’d have seen much of Hackney either.

The improvement in some of the summer signings under Carrick speaks volumes, his tweaks such as Akpom as a 10, Forss on the right, even Crooks as an emergency striker, the continuation of Hackney introduced by the caretaking team, playing a back 4 etc, etc has shown magnificently the signings were in fact very good at our level. The January signings proving excellent and added to our infamous rise to where we are.

I will add, that the suspension of the Championship due to the World cup may well have been a blessing in disguise, although, that is just my view and we shall never truly know if it was as significant as I feel it to be.

Scott has proven to have hit the ground running, the change of manager being the catalyst to bring the best out of the recent recruitment, Well done Boro, we have good reason to have faith we are finally on the right track.
 
I think this is too positive. It's revisionist because of what Carrick has managed. Our recruitment in summer was terrible because it left us with gaping holes in midfield, strikers the manager didn't want and we failed to get the left sided defender we needed.

I'm hindsight the bad recruitment has worked well because we signed good players but they were wrong at the time we bought them. I don't believe we were recruiting with a view to sacking the manager within a few months so you can only really judge the recruitment on whether or not they were right at the time.

January recruitment was top notch though.
 
I think this is too positive. It's revisionist because of what Carrick has managed. Our recruitment in summer was terrible because it left us with gaping holes in midfield, strikers the manager didn't want and we failed to get the left sided defender we needed.

I'm hindsight the bad recruitment has worked well because we signed good players but they were wrong at the time we bought them. I don't believe we were recruiting with a view to sacking the manager within a few months so you can only really judge the recruitment on whether or not they were right at the time.

January recruitment was top notch though.

Giles, Lenihan, Smith, Steffen, Forss. You call that terrible?
 
I think this is too positive. It's revisionist because of what Carrick has managed. Our recruitment in summer was terrible because it left us with gaping holes in midfield, strikers the manager didn't want and we failed to get the left sided defender we needed.

I'm hindsight the bad recruitment has worked well because we signed good players but they were wrong at the time we bought them. I don't believe we were recruiting with a view to sacking the manager within a few months so you can only really judge the recruitment on whether or not they were right at the time.

January recruitment was top notch though.
Clarke was a poor signing within the context of Wilder wanting an overlapping cente halve. Mowatt was also a poor signing within the context of us needing a box-to-box midfielder to replace Tav, although I believe Mowatt was a Wilder signing.

It really just highlights the fact that Wilder was the problem though, and why I feel Wilder will struggle to be successful in management again unless he becomes more flexible. Wilder is too one-dimensional and stubborn in the way he wants to set up his team. A good manager would have realised early on into the season that we needed to try a different formation. We were all desperate to see him change to a back 4 but we knew there was little chance of it happening due to his stubbornness.

It was always going to be a tough summer for the recruitment team, due to the turnover in players which was required but it was made even harder for them due to Wilder's rigidness of only having one system, and a player having to be the perfect fit for each role within that system.
 
Giles, Lenihan, Smith, Steffen, Forss. You call that terrible?
Yes and no. Some good players in there but you can't just assess single players. As a whole we recruited to fit a formation/style badly. Smith is a good right back but we were playing wing backs so was no good for that. Lenihan was good but we were playing with 1 CB which meant no place for one of him or Fry. Forss was a development striker unwanted by the manager etc.

Like I said, with hindsight (and Carrick) it went well but we ended up being forced to start a striker we were trying to give away because we couldn't sign the players we wanted. We sold our best CM and didn't replace him. We failed to sign a back up or replacement for Howson. We didn't know Howson could keep it up for another full season, we didn't know Hackney was championship ready, we didn't know Forss was capable of playing on the wing and we definitely didn't know Chuba Akpom was the best player in the league.
 
Yes and no. Some good players in there but you can't just assess single players. As a whole we recruited to fit a formation/style badly. Smith is a good right back but we were playing wing backs so was no good for that. Lenihan was good but we were playing with 1 CB which meant no place for one of him or Fry. Forss was a development striker unwanted by the manager etc.

Like I said, with hindsight (and Carrick) it went well but we ended up being forced to start a striker we were trying to give away because we couldn't sign the players we wanted. We sold our best CM and didn't replace him. We failed to sign a back up or replacement for Howson. We didn't know Howson could keep it up for another full season, we didn't know Hackney was championship ready, we didn't know Forss was capable of playing on the wing and we definitely didn't know Chuba Akpom was the best player in the league.

I haven't assessed single players. I've assessed 5 players! All of whom have been excellent. How anyone could call that "terrible" is genuinely beyond me.
 
I haven't assessed single players. I've assessed 5 players! All of whom have been excellent. How anyone could call that "terrible" is genuinely beyond me.
We didn't just sign 5 players though. You've just cherry picked the ones that have worked out and half of them have only worked out since we changed managers and not in the position we signed them to play.

We lost something like 15-20 players, failed to replace many of them and left the squad really short at the close of the summer transfer window.

On an individual basis, with hindsight, we made some good signings, especially those you have mentioned but on the whole that is because they have got lucky with the club changing manager, formation and playing style. There were also some (expensive) duds in there and if you had judged it on the day Wilder left instead of now then probably only Giles would've been judged as a good signing.

The recruitment team aren't just blindly signing players. They are supposed to be filling a squad with players that suit the manager/formation so you can't just judge whether player A is a good player or not. We signed good players that didn't suit us. If they had been recruiting for Carrick then it would have been successful recruitment but it was recruiting for Wilder so it was poor (whatever you think about Wilder is irrelevant, he was our manager at the time).
 
The best bit of recruitment all season was undoubtedly by Gibson when appointing Carrick.

My biggest bugbear year on year was poor player recruitment. This season nobody can argue it hasn’t proved very successful in the main, Carrick inherited a good squad, arguably better than what many, myself included, felt at the time, in part due to results Wilder was achieving.

It took the signing of Carrick to quickly assess and identify the abiliteh signed by Scott, under Wilder’s time. Wilder clearly wanted ready made shoe ins the club could not realistically afford. His comments about some being developmental players implies he was of the view some were not ready. I personally doubt we’d have seen much of Hackney either.

The improvement in some of the summer signings under Carrick speaks volumes, his tweaks such as Akpom as a 10, Forss on the right, even Crooks as an emergency striker, the continuation of Hackney introduced by the caretaking team, playing a back 4 etc, etc has shown magnificently the signings were in fact very good at our level. The January signings proving excellent and added to our infamous rise to where we are.

I will add, that the suspension of the Championship due to the World cup may well have been a blessing in disguise, although, that is just my view and we shall never truly know if it was as significant as I feel it to be.

Scott has proven to have hit the ground running, the change of manager being the catalyst to bring the best out of the recent recruitment, Well done Boro, we have good reason to have faith we are finally on the right track.
Absolutely Col(y)
All the necessary components were there - it took shrewd judgement by Steve Gibson - to appoint Carrick and back Woody, Leadbitter, Fettis and Danksy. They have pulled all those components together and turned them into a bloody good outfit from top to bottom. Im glad we let "abiliteh" burn us out - we dont want his ilk here again.
 
Absolutely Col(y)
All the necessary components were there - it took shrewd judgement by Steve Gibson - to appoint Carrick and back Woody, Leadbitter, Fettis and Danksy. They have pulled all those components together and turned them into a bloody good outfit from top to bottom. Im glad we let "abiliteh" burn us out - we dont want his ilk here again.
Whilst i agree, we don't want a repeat, i must declare I was a big Wilder advocate prior to and on his appointment, I was shocked and saddened at his behaviour post that Burnley link and we saw a side of his character that was unpleasant.
We must also acknowledge Gibsons role in appointing Wilder though too. Warnock was 100% right about Wilder, and he already has my (very begrudging) apology for doubting him 😱 😬 😉 🤣
 
Definitely wait before thinking recruitment has significantly improved. We still went into the season massively lacking in midfield. Thankfully Smith turning out to be brilliant and the emergence of Hackney covered the gaps we had.
January recruitment was the best in years, can’t remember the last time two players have had an immediate impact to the extent of Archer and Ramsey so hopefully things are starting to turn. We have still wasted a lot of money on Clarke, Mowatt and Munez however.
 
I fully agree. Also the likes of Hackney / Mcgree and Forss are ours and a good age. So very much increased in value.

I imagine the likes of Muniz and Mowett have cost us a few quid in wages and loan fees. Simply not worked out at all.

The likes of Giles and Archer show the value of a tremendous loan. These are players we simply couldnt buy.

That said. These are short term fixes. We will need to address the goal keeper and CF situation again in the summer. That is also league dependent.

Agree though. The recruitment has been cracking 👍
 
Recruitment was difficult in the summer due to the breakdown between manager and club. I've given two ratings: first for WilderBoro then for Carrick Boro. Focusing just on first team squad.
Summer
Steffen 7/9. Real coup to get him but he took a long time to get up to speed. Best sweeper keeper in the league. Fits Carrick's system better than Wilder's.
Roberts 5/4. Every team needs a back-up keeper. Hasn't impressed on his few appearances but on a hiding to nothing. Distribution possibly not good enough for Carrick.
Smith 4/9. Bought as a back-up for Jones, had been playing as a wing-back at Stoke but most comfortable as an attacking right-back.
Giles 10/9. Best left wing-back in the league. Probably second-best left back.
Lenihan 6/9. Superb free-transfer misused by Wilder. Underrated ball-playing centre-back comfortable with either foot. Best on right of a 3 or either side in a 2. Wilder insisted on playing him in the centre of a 3 to replace Fry.
Clarke n/a Mom performance then injured. In theory a first-class, ball-playing centre-back most comfortable on the left of a 3.
Luongo. 0/0. Not really his fault
Mowatt 3/5. Loaned in as a left-sided #8 to placate Wilder. Better as a #6 under Carrick. Has improved as the season continued and played an important role as this season's Peltier.
Muniz 4/1. At least we didn't pay £8m for him.
Hoppe. 0/2. We're not the kind of club who can afford to pay £3m for a striker to send out on loan. Feels like this season's Payero.
Forss. 4/8 Probably underrated by both Wilder and Carrick but can't argue with his performances under Carrick.

Overall, the summer window was painful but the fault was largely Wilder's. As Carrick has shown, most of the signings are decent with a real focus on technical ability. We have, though, largely failed in our stated goal to buy young players and improve them. We're also still really bad at judging the ability of non-UK players playing abroad.

Winter
Archer. 10. 'nuff said
Ramsey. 8. Possibly the most gifted player in the team but feels like he slightly unbalances it.
Barlaser. 6. Looks like he'll prove to be a good signing but lacking opportunities due to the excellence of double-H.

All in all, recruitment has got more right than wrong. We haven't really acquired anyone (other than maybe Forss) who we can develop and sell on at a profit but we have bought in a lot of experience at Championship level. Winter window indicates that maybe we finally have the recruitment team, head of football and coaching team all working together.
 
I think this is too positive. It's revisionist because of what Carrick has managed. Our recruitment in summer was terrible because it left us with gaping holes in midfield, strikers the manager didn't want and we failed to get the left sided defender we needed.

I'm hindsight the bad recruitment has worked well because we signed good players but they were wrong at the time we bought them. I don't believe we were recruiting with a view to sacking the manager within a few months so you can only really judge the recruitment on whether or not they were right at the time.

January recruitment was top notch though.
I think if you head back to October on the board here our recruitment team weren't getting the plaudits they are now.

I remember Chubba being crucified on one thread.

What a difference 6 months in football makes!
 
In fairness balogun was another top signing as he’s showing this season criminally underused by the old regime.
 
Wilder was sacked on the 1st of October.

He only managed 4 games after the window shut, I'm not sure you can say it was a failed window throught that lense when Carrick managed 9 games with the squad from that window before January and it excelled.

Smith was brought in as cover, he did exactly like that under Wilder.
Likewise with Roberts.

Mowatt struggled to claim a place.

Lenihan was absolutely fine, as was Steffen.

Muniz started brightly under Wilder.

Forss was misused by Wilder and has more than proven himself to be a great signing.

Giles was and is brilliant for us.

Hoppe offered nothing under any of the 3 managers, same with Luongo.

With a Wilder perspective, we did fail to strengthen the midfield sufficiently, that much is true, but that's it.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top