My biggest concern is that when a player is enquired by the club to sign on, they'll see that we've finished outside the six for the past 5 seasons. Surely for a player that is moving to a new lifestyle and sometimes a new language, they'd want to be playing for a club that has been competitive in recent times?
I'm worried another batch of useless Visa players that nobody has heard of will come in and do nothing. The only reason we got Kim was that he had no other choice. Djuric has been massively disappointing because of his fitness, Kim is being played out of position because our centre-halves are dreadful, Jair is almost identical to Murray in the sense that he's more of a false nine, so that still doesn't make sense, and Jai Ingham gave up on us after a week. It's been another season of mediocrity in the Visa department. That said, it's light years better than the McCormack and Cisse situation last season.
That said, our scholarships look great. Nisbet is supposedly in the process of getting an extension, Miller has been impressive despite being played out of position, Silvera clearly has the talent and we're pumping out impressive results in the Y-League. I refuse to believe at this point that all hope is lost.
We do, however, need one or two heads in that boardroom that know what's going on in places like Belgium and France, where some of the best youngsters are being brewed. Theoretically, we should be able to hit up a club like Club Brugge and say "hey, can we have one of your kids on loan?"
Our recruitment is in a dire state, which is why I'd love to see a couple of people in the club allocated to scouting a country or two across 6 months to inform the club of possible Visa signings for next season.
And on that note, if we have ties with Sheffield United, Sao Paolo and Fererncvaros, use them! We saw two loans last season, so let's use our Sao Paolo connection, one of the biggest clubs in the most dominant country in South America, so surely we can have some way of luring in an 18yo wonderkid for 12 months on loan.
If we don't start using these connections we're going to lose them. And if we don't go back to building the club around our youth, we may lose the club altogether. I've been really displeased with how the club has been run of late as I feel Staj hasn't been given the players he needs to run the system he wants. He clearly wants this 5-3-2 to work, make it happen.
How much of a say does Staj have on signings?