Dean Keates

Pretty obvious to me that he’s not being backed by the board he had targets but lost out because of our pay structure on most of them from all accounts the season is upon us and yet again we are either scraping the barrel or relying on loans to fill the huge gaps in this squad. Correct me if I’m wrong but is it 9 players out and only 4 in? Doesn’t sound like a competitive budget to me unless we are playing in the national league this season ?

As discussed most of those were garbage.

Secondly Dean would have known his budget before deciding to move.

No defence of the Board on my part but Dean knew the situation.

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“Yes Dean, there will be a competitive budget for you to bring in the players you need”

Wonder if it’s the same “competitive” budget they tell us about and have done for ages that has proved to be quite noncompetitive,

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He deserves our full support while he learns his trade at a higher level, but he’s a long way off Dean Smith who seemed to have the club working like a well oiled machine through the ranks. A venue is always going to cost money which will detract from the playing side, and without a sugar daddy there will always be investers to keep happy. Whether it’s pension fund or lease / mortgage / whatever. My take on it is that a town with a population of nearly 68,000 shouldn’t be turning over season ticket sales of 2,500. Pityful. Importing jerseys from China which make stupid amounts of margin is really easy, and having no stock or website to sell them to the meagre fan base we do have is shocking. I’d fire the whole bloody marketing team for starters, they haven’t got a scooby.

So anyone who runs businesses on here (which seems to be most :smile:) - where is Jeff’s motivation? see a continued return on investment in leagues 1/2 or make a loss trying to survive in the championship?

I neither like or dislike him, he’s just a businessman and I don’t expect anything else from him.

I’m all ears for AFC Walsall by the way!

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Why not just support Walsall Wood? Infrastructure is already there, they carry the name of the town I was born in
■■■■ Bonser, the supporters giving up and going somewhere else probably gives him his “exit strategy” , he can then just wind down the club and sell the land, you’d get a lot of houses on Bescot Park!!

Well it’s the place of birth on my passport! I guess any local club deserves support if it’s local support thats needed as I said in my own argument, so you make a very good point and I’ll make a point to go look them up when I’m up and take in a game if it’s on. Its just frustrating that Walsall FC have so much potential yet seem to do so little with reaching the community. Aston Villa are more pro active in visiting schools in Aldridge than Walsall FC are. Jeff really isn’t actually that greedy as he could reap far more from WFC if he was more hands on in kicking the incompetent management behinds.

I’m not anti-Keates and no matter how his experience as manager goes will not tarnish my memories of him as a player - great players won’t always make great managers and visa versa.

A slow start isn’t always a negative, even though it is nice to start positively. Dean hasn’t had a great summer upto yet, far from it, but let’s see how he gets on in the last 8 days of the transfer window and then until the end of the month for possible loans.

Let us not forget that Smith came to us with zero managerial experience, lest for a spell as assistant manager at Leyton Orient between 05-09. We brought him in not even as assistant manager, but as head of academy. He was unproven in 2011 when he took the managers job and was simply a Walsall legend who had come in after the Chris Botchings rein was terminated.

I don’t really understand why the Keates appointment is being seen any differently. We all knew we needed a change, Whitney’s time was up after Newport, and here we have a manager used to winning at lower league level.

The transfer window has been frustrating, but I bet it hasn’t been half as frustrating as it has for Keates.

We have GOT to use loans. This was a fact that was true even before last season ended. For our club it is simply the only way to survive. Especially in the current tight purse strings environment that our miserly board are hell bent on inflicting upon the loyal paying punters.

Let us see how things pan out this week. I am expecting Saturday to be a struggle, but we must get behind the boys from the off. I note from some threads elsewhere on here that some have already decided they are turning on the manager. I just hope they aren’t sat by me and my lad.

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Well i suppose using good loanees would work? it did for barnsley but look what has happened to them since.

Agreed chunkster. Horses for courses. Barnsley’s problem was clearly not replacing the loanees for quality permanent replacements.

Strange club…

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I’m surprised to see a few fans already showing a bit of discontent with Keates. He’s different to Whitney, he is clearly a manager unlike our last. He has a plan and he has a style which has already proven to work at Wrexham. If anyone knows how to organise a defence it’s him and his staff. The problem here is the same old problem we have every season and that is attracting players on our budget.

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Oh I’m not surprised in the least. :slightly_frowning_face:

I agree, however the mighty JW had money and wasted it on dross players. DK has nothing and has wasted on what little he had on a load of old ex crops as back room staff!! So glad I didn’t renew my season ticket after forty odd years - Totally shambolic and feel sorry for all those long paying stalwarts with tenacity :-1:t3:

Yep. Davies, the scout, Oakes, Bowerman and Fryatt. All additions to Deans dream team and 2 goalkeepers one who does a bit of coaching. Crazy

We are back to the old chicken and egg conundrum.
Do you invest in better players in the hope that it will generate extra income at the gate
or
do you live within your budget and invest only in players that are willing to play for a smaller wages.

History shows that the latter increasingly leads to failure. I am struggling to think of any club in recent years that has achieved success on such a strategy - may be Burton, but they are on a decline. Sadly our owner is of a generation that will not speculate in the hope of getting success. He’s an age where retirement and his pension pot are more important.

We will not get extra people through the gates with the current squad.
Keates knew the budget when he took the job. Whether he was naïve and infact competitive wages are higher than he imagined or whether he was misinformed we will probably never know.

What I’ve seen is a manager who is determined, organised, and focussed. He is likely the best manager we can get in our circumstances. We must support him whilst applying pressure on JB to release the purse strings or sell up.

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Agree. With two seasons of decline and a restrictive budget this was always going to be a long term project. We can start to judge Keates once he’s shifted the players he doesn’t want, brought in his own players and his scouting network has been running for longer than two months.

I’m confident Keates can organise a defence, and I was really looking forward to that being the foundations of this season, I actually think 75 % of the squad is cause for optimism including the up and coming younger ones. Problem is, in order to organise a defence you have to have one to organise. If we are incapable of signing some of the steady proven centre-halves that have signed for other league one clubs, not to mention many league two clubs, then given that this was the number one priority it shows what are mess we are in. If this board are seriously interested in running a league one football club (which I doubt), and if DK is serious about managing it (which I don’t doubt) then somehow all parties need to pull together to get a couple of players signed Thursday.

Yes people can have a moan at DK for potentially not moving quick enough on deals, but, two points I’d like to make:

  1. DK wasn’t brought to the club because he’s a club legend. Maybe it was partially a reason, but the main reason being he would have been given details of the budget and must have been happy with it. Also, he’s fairly used to working with no money coming from Wrexham, which can only be an advantage to us.

  2. Whether he’s taken too long to move on deals, who knows, but regardless he knows what he wants and how he wants to play and won’t just accept any mercenaries or players just for the sake of it. Although slightly painful because of how thin the squad is right now, this should be applauded because he’s not wasting resources on useless tat like some in the past have. I’d rather have a thinner squad and bulk it up with people he wants and trusts, than having numbers for the sake of it.

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That said, I believe things will happen before the end of today!

Professional football clubs all have supporting back room staff as standard, most of ours left after Whitney was let go so any incoming manager was bound to replace them, why is that so difficult for you to understand?