Not sure if Mantom is still at Rushall but if he is you’ve got to ask why haven’t any League clubs signed him.
He’s gone to hemmel hemstead
Injuries done him I think,he’s only 29 still
Well, you probably would spend that money on a medical process if your commiting to sign a player for a million quid.
The Peterborough model is interesting because initially you saw them dropping 100-250k on non league players, usually forwards and over time that has risen as they have had the ability to spend more on new players. It’s not been a 100% success for them though. Didnt they spend about a million signing a striker called Barnett who disnt work out, and then I think the sold him for 100k.
But with their successes they can occasionally absorb that kind of loss on a player.
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I can remember them signing Aaron Williams (?) who was here for a year under Smith and then went to I think Telford and scored loads but he didn’t work out and went back to non league quickly. Lee Angol was another around that time (predictably under the madhouse of Graham Wesley) who didn’t do well although he’s now a league two striker.
Really the only time it’s been done here in recent times permanently was with Bradshaw and his record wasn’t anything special at Shrewsbury. Was trying to remember if he signed a 2-3 year deal as he only had a year left when he went to Barnsley which impacted on the fee.
Backups in that time like Hewitt and Grimes were truly non league standard, Jordan Cook league 2 level. This was when the team were mid table league 1, not now.
I can at least see logic in recent times in Adebayo, Ferrier and Gordon all being signed. One came off, the other two haven’t despite some decent form at times. Really need to get the experienced striker part right again, used to do it with Benjamin, Butler, Mooney and Macken all putting in good shifts between 2007-12 but Lavery been a big disappointment so that’s a problem when the senior striker in the group can’t do much.
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Before you look for your centre forward you need to have a plan around how you are going to score goals. Bradshaw was perfect in that lone striker role. In the family tree of the “Dean Smith way”, Bradshaw is absolutely the father of Ollie Watkins. Busy and quick of mind and body with a beautiful knack of understanding how to use every micro second of time to pass the ball into the goal.
If your plan is to play a high number ten and a lone number nine then that has to be the “type” you look for.
If however you plan to score your goals by getting it wide and getting ball into the box then it looks far more like an Andy Rammell or Elijah Adebayo. Or Don Goodman or Brett Angel.
If you play the former way, the latter group of centre forwards would look rubbish and vice versa.
And that’s where a search for a centre forward has to start. What type are we looking for? The big flaw here is that we don’t know who the first team manager will be next season and therefore no idea what system or method they will deploy and therefore no idea around the type of centre forward we should be looking for.
Which is why Leigh’s indecision over Dutton will already be costing us. For many the season ends in five days. Contracts expiring, players looking for clubs and looking for certainty. On our budget not only do we need to identify the type we also need to find value in the market. Who is undervalued and how do we attract them?
We really do need to be getting on with it.
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Aaron Williams ended up at Rushall where he won the Northern Premier League Golden Boot and one cap for the England ‘C’ team (against the Republic of Ireland). He was signed by Peterborough United (surprise, surprise!) and was then transferred to Newport County. He has since drifted back into non-League, ending up back at Telford.
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You might not be young enough… but Kyle “killer” Lightbourne and Andy “Rambo” Rammell were a couple of the best we have had my friend!!
Oh I remember Rammell. Free transfer from league below wasn’t it with not even that great a scoring record but Sir Ray had a word and rest is delightful history.
Really Cook should’ve been the second coming but didn’t quite work out for a few reasons.
Don’t remember Lightbourne’s time here but he went to Stoke and flopped didn’t he as I went to Uni up there and mentioning his name got them all in a cold sweat and speaking in even more non-coherent way than usual! Didn’t he also play a game or two for Coventry in the prem. Division 2 was just his level and very good at it he was aswell.
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I was at the Sjoke game where some of their fans got on the pitch and Kyle was punched. I think there was an invasion of the players lounge as well. They were really angry that day, they’d just been hammered but I think it went beyond that. I didn’t like to ask.
Kyle went to Cov from us, for big moolah, then Sjoke, and I think he won the Clayheads round eventually, but he wasn’t popular for a time.
That was a 0-7 home defeat to Birmingham City! Remember talking about it with my bluenose mates at school the following monday as none of us could believe what we saw seeing the scenes on local news.
They were protesting against Peter Coates and the forgotten Jez Moxey who was their CEO before he buzzed off to the dingles a season later.
Coates then came back a decade later and got them up to premier league so would be like Bonser setting up some Cypriot betting website, making a fortune and coming back and bankrolling Walsall to championship level and forgoing the rent.
Peterborough make investments into players. They will put up the money and get them on decent contracts so they get the full value when they come to sell them. We can’t even invest long term in Sam Perry so what chance we got of ever changing our 12 month each year policy. We’ve only gotta look at the Troy deeney and scott Dan transfer to see how wrong we get it. Anything close to the 500k ( pay a year rent) and we sell.
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The Posh chairman was on TV yesterday talking about the lad who has scored all their goals
I won’t be selling him for 5 million out of league one. 6 months in the championship he will be worth 15 million
Not anymore. He left and I think he plays for Hemel Hempstead now
He’s 
correct.
Adebayo being a casing example, guessing he will already have a 2 million price rate on him.
…and if we want to emulate them we need a director of football with an eye for talent and a silver tongue to get these prospects in, and get us promoted fast enough to benefit from their development at the club.
And a chairman with balls of steel to back him.
Going to be an interesting twelve months! JF has joined at just the right time to influence the next season. Just hope it’s positive.
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If there’s one thing Pomlett has going for him it’s balls to back people he believes in.
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One of the issues I have with longer term contracts is players sign a two or 3 year deal, then they kick back and don’t try as hard as they would when playing for a contract, e.g. Wes McDonald!
Commitment is a two-way street, we’ve signed too many footballers to contracts who have failed on the field. I understand the club’s hesitancy about long contracts, if a player gets one then it’s his responsibility to prove his worth.
It’s a risk, but every football decision is risk based. Both longer and shorter deals have their own pluses and minuses, so someone who knows a thing about football, can make a lot of difference. Earlier it was an owner, now there are directors.
I agree it’s a risk, we’ve hired people in the past who thought they knew a thing to two about football, only to find out they didn’t.
The club has given contracts to players who didn’t live up to them, in other words, players simply play for a contract then stop performing after they sign on the dotted line.
I guess all clubs face the same dilemma, its seems we’ve had more than our fair of under performers.