The Hotel End

What is your priority at this point in time and what do you believe would constitute failure on the part of the management team and squad? It has to be said that at this point we do not have a playing budget figure and are unable to compare this against other clubs which would be a crucial influence on this. It’s interesting that the club claimed last seasons budget was a competitive figure? However, assume that the annual returns for last season show similar figures to the latest figures available at companies house. When cross referenced against the Deloitte report on football finance this suggests it wasn’t, as the average wage figure for Division 1 given considerably exceeded that of the club in the latest available accounts. So any statements by the club may be misleading without further clarification, such as they significantly increased the total salary figure. The next submitted accounts should shed some light on this, also bearing in mind not all clubs responded in the Deloitte report.

(Page 46 of the Deloitte Report states the average wage of L1 clubs was £6 million. Staffing costs in the clubs filed accounts for 19/20 show expenditure of just under 4 million for the entire 283 staff of the club. This suggests a massive increase in wage bill was required to be “competitive” for last season? The Deloitte Report gives an average wage figure for L2 of £3 million, so perhaps this season we should be competitive, assuming all figures are similar.)

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/sports-business-group/articles/annual-review-of-football-finance.html

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/00183917/filing-history

I think we have to be patient. There is clearly a plan in place and it will take more than just this season for that plan to come to fruition. That being said, I think anything below 12th would be seen as a failure. That’s not to say that a change of management should be made if that happens. More that targets won’t have been met and a performance review would be required.

For the record, I think we’ll be top 10.

I think that’s fair Charles. However, managing supporters expectations is perhaps one of the more challenging aspects to all this? I would imagine the majority would contest this, whether that’s reasonable or not is another question.

I would hope to see regular games for the younger professionals like Pollock, Chuk and later Dyche.

Anything else other than the playoffs is a failure in my eyes. We should have a good enough budget for this league to achieve that as a minimum. I reckon it will be around 1.8m

I know the club said they didn’t have a bottom 4 budget but did they also say they had a competitive budget?. I guess though the term could be interpreted in different ways, is it competitive in trying to avoid relegation or competitive with that of the biggest teams in the league, as the first seems probable to me but the second would be ridiculous. My guess is average wages would have been massively skewed by the likes of Sunderland and to a lesser extent Ipswich, Charlton & Portsmouth who it wouldn’t surprise me if they were still playing some crazy wages. Even Peterborough through there success in the transfer market are clearly paying big wages now. Accrington showed with probably the smallest budget in the league with some good recruitment they could challenge the biggest teams.

Why should we be looking at this from an avoidance of failure perspective? Very glass half empty that?

+1

Play off contenders at least. Would probably accept not making the playoffs if they play in the right way and can see that that base is there. Similar to what happened with Wilder

I asked JB whether or not we are promotion candidates and he told me we don't have the budget to cross the line.

I doubt we had the budget last time we got promoted. I doubt Wycombe had the budget to be promoted from League One. I imagine Salford have had the budget for a few seasons to get promoted.
Personally I think we have the right management team to get the most out of the players this season and to identify the players we need in either January or next summer to build on the current squad.

Sorry must have missed it, what is the plan? Are you referring to KT video where he doesn't give one straight answer and flip flops between developing youth and going for promotion. That is not a plan. There is never ever any conviction (or passion) in anything KT says or does. Sorry I wish it was different but it isn't.

The motivation and togetherness of the team / club are far more important than budget - unless your budget is 3 times that of everyone else

Be interested to know if other clubs trot out the line season after season, we have a competitive budget. OK WHY THEN DO WE UNDERACHIEVE EVERY SINGLE SEASON?  Even the promotion season was heading south until we got lucky

Not the rallying cry I want to hear. I hope he’s setting the bar a lot higher to the players. If he said that, it’s embarrassing

Nope. I'm referring to what Jon Brady and co said at the fans forum on Tuesday and on the Cobblers Show last night.

Good response.
Champions... 8)

I can’t see anything other than 10th at best with what we’ve got.

I’d say Brady has a bit of a free pass but will be under more pressure than many expect, simply because Calderwoods a ready made replacement if things look sour. He’s had 20 odd games already; he’s got his squad. He now has to perform. Good luck Jon.

Its a good job KT isn't picking the team then or leading the coaching sessions isn't.

We have a new coaching structure in place, we have a new recruitment structure in place, they have explained why they have offered the contract lengths they have, they have explained that approach of finding players who have a mix of experience but also young in their careers and 'on the up'. They spoke a bit about the style of play they want and identifying players to fit that.

I would say that's a plan! Time will tell how successful it is, the management team admitted it wasnt perfect but will be developed. I hope come Saturday you can see past the hatred for KT and support what JB, CC and MR are all trying to do on the pitch.

Sorry Dan but the plan is not for CC to takeover. There should be no pressure on JB, he has not got to perform now, we have a longer term plan

If things turn sour we should be saying we will stay strong together and it will work eventually. JB should be on a 5 year deal, he is either the right man for the job or he is not.

The coaching staff should be NTFC coaching staff and their role is also a long term 5 year plan

Anything else is just going through the motions and PR bulls*** 

I think expectations can be higher in League 2, we are the Third-Fourth tier West Brom after all. A year in League 1 midtable is a very succesful season, a year in League 2 midtable is a failure. If we were close then I'd be happy to embrace a second year of Brady, with the following caveats;

I don't want us to be bottom of the League for succesful passes, possession and chances again. I don't like the way other clubs look at us as footballing laughing stock because we don't even try to play it right.
I was us to press, and workhard off the ball, and not lead out heads drop. I know this is something Brady and particularly Calderwood would be more focused on than the first part.

Really happy with the new management structure & hope people don't start getting on their backs after a few dodgy results...

There is finally a real plan and identity to the way JB wants us to play, so I'm happy to ride the bumps along the way...

Not expecting a promotion push, just want to see a decent brand of attacking football, with more game time for our own youngsters.

If we make the play offs or better then great, but after the atrocious football under KC, I just actually want to watch some good attacking football.

Really looking forward to attending tomorrow, unlike the dread I felt whilst watching us last season under KC.

Disappointing if true. I'm a bit sceptical as to whether any manager
would express a sense of pessimism in precisely those terms. However, Brady is right to manage expectations and to talk about a long-term project of improvement and development rather than a desperate scramble to go straight back up immediately without any kind of long-term strategy.

I actually think that budgets are a bit of a red herring at L2 level as there is a kind of natural limit on the type of player who is prepared to play in the basement division.
Salford are the division's big spenders, but the height of their recruitment power seems to be the capacity to attract quality pros from the bottom half of League 1 who are towards the end of their careers (Matty Lund, Ian Henderson etc). I don't see many L2 clubs recruiting players who could be plying their trade at the top of L1 or in the Championship. 

Michael Duff, who has just won the title with Cheltnumb, has said that the key to success in L2 is being organised and hard to beat. It's not like L1 where teams like Hull and P*sh dominate possession and pass the opposition off the park due to their vastly superior technical ability.  I doubt very much that our budget is less than that of last season's promotion trio of Cambridge, Cheltenham or Morecambe.

Calderwood's arrival should add some extra steel to what has already shown signs of being a decent defensive unit (McWilliams, Horsfall, Mills) and I see no reason at all why we shouldn't finish in the top 10. As I've said before, play-offs would be slightly above expectations/ahead of schedule IMO and automatic would be a truly great achievement given the scale of the turnover required.





 

The plan has to be not to fail. If we are looking doomed (God forbid) then the obvious will happen inevitably. Patience is definitely required to build on something (especially if the football is attractive but we are not necessarily in and around the play offs) but no club in their right mind is handing out 5 year contracts to the any staff. The fans will speak before it got too bad. That's an expensive g amble, especially knowing what history tells us in football, let alone with the Cobblers! The £6m would soon become £10m+!

I'm just looking forward to getting back to some live sport and seeing some hopefully enjoyable football at the same time.

We'll win some, we'll draw some and we'll lose some. As long as we do more of the first two than the last one then I'll be happy. If we lose more, well, if the last 18 months have taught us anything it's that which set of blokes manages to kick a ball into a net more times than another set of blokes really isn't the be all and end all...

Well said, and I agree.

In an ideal world I would agree and this time I think fans will have a bit more patience than usual as there's clearly been a rethink about how to go about matters on the pitch. However, if things aren't going reasonably well after 8-10 games, the knives will be out. That's just the way things have always been.

That pretty much mirrors my entire thought process on this, the truth is the information is so limited it’s all generalisations and assumptions. Having said that, I would guess you could also level that at the club when they claimed a competitive budget. I would interpret competitive to be to maintain L1 status but it’s unclear as you say. Perhaps that was by design?

I agree Dan

I'm surprised at the general low expectations for this season - for me with a good start an average but organised L2 side can finish in the top 3  - as previously posted the top sides in L1 are much much better - looking at today's performance I think we can get better and CC influence will ensure we don't ship that many goals - always living in hope I think we hcan finish in the top 3 and anything less than a top 7 will be a disappointment for me.

Typical average Cobblers fans response in the survey;
Happy to accept mediocrity. :)

We should always be aiming for promotion in League Two. If we don't get that this year I'll be content as long as I'm seeing some good signs that we're on the way to achieving it, in much the way we did in the second half of the Wilder mid-table season. A more pleasing style of play on the eye and some blooding of promising youth-team players would also be welcome.

Agreed, promotion is great but we need to be going up in a way that means we will be sustainable in League One. If that means a season of consolidated improvement so be it, but I believe that most of us are fed up with the continual yo-yoing?

I agree, if Morecambe can get promoted then we can FFS.
The overall attitude of our supporters accepting the mediocre is the reason why Thomas gets such an easy ride, the current state of the stadium is truly shocking, from broken windows to disgusting toilets.

What’s consolidation going to do? The gap between L1 and L2 is getting bigger and like it or not it’s down to having better players which is down to budget, we have to grow our revenue and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

I think its probably a more complicated question than it initially looks. As well as league position, there are a number of other less measurable factors like style of play, progress, potential growth and how well the manager works with the players. If it’s just a positional thing, then if we miss that target is it a good idea to then sack the manager and bring in a new one with a squad of players under contract that they didn’t choose?. I know it’s not scientific but for me it will be more about the feel I get from the season and the overall direction I feel the club is heading.

Tell Accrington that! the lowest budget in the league last year

Ah, but if we don’t get promoted this season or next and you ask the same question you’re probably going to get the same response......Mediocrity reigns.

No because this season it’s a new squad in a new division, I’m probably prepared to cut Brady more slack. The year after you have a benchmark figure plus if he does fail all those players on 2 year deals are out of contract making it easier for a new manager.

Thee's always there odd exception but in all divisions it's generally the budget that determines the finished position. Man City will tell you that.

Not criticising Brady or cutting him any less slack, just saying that generally, a lot of Cobblers fans seem happy to accept mediocrity.

Other similar size teams have shown what is possible but football is a sport and what works in one place may lead to abject failure in another. I think all fans want their team to be as successful as possible but there is no magical formula for that. As I said before there are repercussions for sacking a manager, paying them and their staff will cut into budgets and a new man will have a squad selected by the old manager. Maybe we are reading the question differently but for me a ‘minimum performance standard’ means if we are not hitting it big changes are happening like the manager going. I don’t think by having a lower minimum finish I’m accepting mediocrity I just have a different opinion on the best way forward to achieve success, one that involves giving the manager more time to achieve our goals.

I think you’re right we’re reading the survey question differently. It gave a list of scenarios as to where we might finish or play and then what we deemed could be considered failure. Nothing about sacking the manager or changing the players..... The majority so far have voted for mediocrity.
In any competition where you’re on a level playing field the objective is to be the best and if you’re not you’ve failed. We don’t even have to be the best, we could end up being third best and still achieve our objective.

I think its a lot of Cobblers fans being realistic.

I guess it is a matter of semantics, failure for me goes beyond a slight underachievement and would definitely mean serious questions asked about manager and players.
You mention a level playing field but that’s never the case in the football league with each club having different levels of resources. The way I look at it you get a par finishing area in the table based on your comparative budget and those with similar budgets, with big deviations from this constituting success and failure. Obviously we can only speculate about budget but if we have the 10th highest (random example) and finish 9th is it fair to call that failure?

I’d say the 4th division is a much more level playing field than say the premier league or even championship or league 1. We all have different opinions and aspirations, but hey ho it would be a boring world if we were all the same. Let’s just leave it at that.

100% this.

If we learned anything from last year it should be that there's little point in going up
if you don't have the squad, recruitment infrastructure and tactical blueprint to support sustained
L1 football.

Hoofball merchants and short-term subjective recruiters like Curle are quickly found out at League One level where 90% of teams play possession-based passing football. To his credit, KT seems to have at least partially acknowledged this in his relegation post-mortem interviews. 

I've got to the stage where I would far rather see a 10th placed finish this year with attacking progressive passing football and the sustained development of youngsters like McWilliams, Pollock and Horsfall over a fluky s***housed play-off promotion playing Curle/Boothroyd style hoofball. Of course, my medium to long-term expectation is that this football club should be established securely in League One or the Championship, but this will only happen following a spell of judicious and incremental improvement in areas such as recruitment, possession-based tactics and youth development. If it takes a couple more seasons in L2 to get these elements right then so be it. If we get these elements right then we can punch above our weight in League One; if we get those things right and improve the off-field situation in terms of stadium development and investment then we can really start to fly.

Is that accepting mediocrity? No: quite the opposite - it's about raising our expectations surrounding the long-term progress and tactical identity of this football club.

While your points about the bedding of the youngsters in is a good one Bungle, they're unfortunately futile. We are a selling club, and if we bed them in and they do well, they'll just be sold off anyway, most likely next summer. We need to go for promotion this season and can't just take mid table finishes.

Reading through the comments, does anyone really care about the entertainment value as long as we are winning?
I can't think of a manager where the team had been performing above expectations but has got sacked but because the football wasn't pleasant on the eye. I also can't think of a manager that got a better deal after his team got relegated whilst playing attractive football.
The complaints usually arise when a team is doing ok but the fans are bored. They can't whinge too much about the results so they have to think of something else.
I've never seen people grinning after losing a game no matter how well their team has played.

Yes Larry. The Keith Curle years nearly destroyed my love of the game.

All I can say is your love of football must be hanging on a thread. Or perhaps you just don't like Keith Curle.

Let me get this straight so avoiding relegation and not playing unattractive boring football can be seen as a main failure standard for this coming season? Who writes this stuff?

So avoiding the lack of failing to not play unattractive football is good?

 ;D  ;D

Certainly excited to give him a few words when Oldham come to Sixfields.

Curle would be still here if he had kept us up.

You're right of course but, if the Brady bunch produce a team that is improving as the season goes on and there is even a sniff of a chance of promotion we'll all want just that! We're football fans, we can't help ourselves.

🖐

I think this obsession with our youth on this forum is massively misplaced. How many have actually come through to make it as a first team regular without getting sold in a hurry. I'll give you McWilliams but he's spent a lot of time injured and prior to that there was a lot of speculation he was off to the championship, same with Pollock. The others of any note were soon off once bigger clubs showed interest. Toney and Jacobs and now Chuck.

The key is recruiting a core of the side now that could operate in League One then improve where needed when we're promoted. League Two is a very tough physical league and a difficult place for too many kids at on time to be blooded.

2. Larry: 'does anyone really care about the entertainment value as long as we are winning?'

A couple of points here:

1. I would put youth development quite significantly behind improved recruitment processes and tactical coaching methodologies in terms of priorities. I'm certainly not 'obsessed' with it. However, I would argue that clubs that punch significantly above their weight tend to be effective at either developing young players for their own first team or selling them on for a profit. I would also argue that given that we are lucky enough to currently have a decent crop of youngsters in the squad (McWilliams, Pollock, Chuks, Horsfall) that one of Brady's targets should be to capitalise on this potential and develop them into either League One standard starters or lucrative saleable assets.

By 'youth development' I also mean the practice of bringing in and developing young players with potential who have been 'raised' elsewhere, hence the fact that I've included Horsfall in my list of players who we need to develop.

2. You'll notice that I used the terms 'progressive possession-based passing' football rather than 'entertaining'. 'Entertainment' is not my primary concern; producing a team capable of sustaining long-term L1 football is.

My argument is that long-ball football simply doesn't work in League One anymore, regardless of how 'entertaining' or 'dull' it might be. My argument is that primitive long ball football might get you promoted out of L2 but that it is highly unlikely to be successful at L1 level against teams who have the technical passing ability to achieve 70+% possession.

The aesthetics question is a different kettle of fish entirely. Personally I found Curle's style of play depressingly dull and primitive with a few honourable exceptions (the play-off games). Does that matter? Not if the side continues to win, but if you're playing s***e football and losing then fans start to question why they're bothering.

 





 

I would expect any player coming through our youth system to be sold if the show ability to play at a higher level. This happens at most clubs, look how many youngsters Exeter have sold for good money.
We are supposed to be following the Posh model of recruiting younger players with a view to developing them and selling for a profit so expect any gifted player to be sold.

Indeed BUT it’s when you sell the player that matters, we, with our horrible short term view, sell almost immediately therefore not maximising the potential.
This boils down to a chairman that wants out and will sell, although this has improved under Thomas it rarely helps the club, e.g. Charlie Goode.

I admire your optimisism but unfortunately long ball football will pretty much always happen in this league. They may not plan to play this way but, It invariably starts with centre halfs who tend to panic when nothing is on. How many times did the ball go long Saturday? Our keeper kicked long our centre halfs kicked long, its what happens. I've been watching the Cobblers for over 50 years, mainly in this league. To succed you need a good centre forward who can make his presence felt and win his fair share of ariel duels. Recent succesful teams had Oliver, Bayo and Marc Richards. I would love to see us play like Man City but it ain't happening

No one is arguing that we should 'play like Man City'. I think that 'playing-it-out-from-the-back' for instance is suicide at this level as the Vale keeper proved on Saturday.

However, there's a big difference between the kind of direct but fluent football we used to play under Wilder and the primitive hoofball we played under Curle. The best sides
at this level play a mixture of direct balls forward/into the channels along with some quick passing through the midfield and out onto the wings/through overlapping full backs. Sides that have a bit of variety and multiple 'routes to goal' are less predictable and ultimately more successful.

What I want to see is some evolution of the playing style. When we go up I want to be able to look at the squad and the tactical playing style and think 'yes, we can hold our own in L1'.

 

It’s like Groundhog Day every time we get promoted, sell our best players, sign a load of loans in Jan and get relegated.
The only way that will stop is if we increase our revenue in line with what we would need at league one.

More corporate, away capacity and much better sponsorship agreements for a start.