Martin Foyle Recruitment Discussion

[fizoxy]

I saw him mentioned on the Robbo thread, and thought we could look at his signings since he joined in 2016ish and assess whether we think he’s been good or not.  This is a list of what I got from Wikipedia or the top of my head, might be the wrong years, but a start. I’ll update if needed.

Since foyle is the head of recruitment i think he should be held responsible for all transfers in good or bad, otherwise it’s hard to draw the line where he identified a player or whether it was someone Robinson knew, or Gallagher’s mate, or a dodgy YouTube video.

What constitutes success? That’s definitely up for discussion. Did the player actually play a decent amount of games? Did we sell him? Did he go on to “better” things?

2020 - Lang, McGinley, Fox, Lamie, O’Donnell, White, Hastie 

2019 - Gallagher, Polworth, Carroll, Sloth, Hylton, Long, Seedorf, Ilic, Manzinga, Mugabi, Watt, McIver, Robinson, Aarons, Cole, O’Hara 

2018 - Gillespie, Johnson, Taylor-Sinclair, Donnelly, Gorrin, Mbulu, Ariyibi, Sammon, McCormack

2017 - Fisher, Bigi, Tanner, Carson, Rose, Griffiths, Dunne, Kipre, Newell, Plummer, Ferguson, Petravicius, Grimshaw, Hartley, Main, Aldred, Gordon , Hendrie, Ciftci 

2016 - don’t know who were his signings or the other guy’s. 

In the same rough period, players to come through our system and play more than a token game or two:

Cadden, Campbell, Hastie, Turnbull, Maguire, Scott, Semple 

[fizoxy]

From the above, I find it hard to see where he’s exploiting inefficiencies in the English lower leagues to our benefit. Many of our best signings recently have been Scottish - Gallagher, O’Hara, Polworth we’re all a big part of last season, supplemented by Scott and Campbell. Donnelly and Gillespie are definite plus signings from him. 

Outside of Kipre. Our previous fees were Heneghan and Johnson, and then we have Scott and Hastie who came through our system. Our next bunch of sales will be Campbell, Turnbull and maybe Gallagher. 

[fizoxy]

Think I’ve depressed myself, I’m going to drink beer, watch wrestling, and change my mind about moving back. 

[CoF]

It's easy enough to make a judgement on the success of individual players, however that doesn't help make a judgement on the success of the head of recruitment. To do that fairly, you'd need a comparison of others in his role at our level with similar resources. 

My instinct is that in recent years our average of absolute 'duds' is no higher or lower than any other year, however we've brought in more successes - either guys who have contributed on the field and / or brought us some money in. 

No idea how it compares to other clubs though. 

[Onthefringes]

58 minutes ago, fizoxy said:

From the above, I find it hard to see where he’s exploiting inefficiencies in the English lower leagues to our benefit. Many of our best signings recently have been Scottish - Gallagher, O’Hara, Polworth we’re all a big part of last season, supplemented by Scott and Campbell. Donnelly and Gillespie are definite plus signings from him. 

Outside of Kipre. Our previous fees were Heneghan and Johnson, and then we have Scott and Hastie who came through our system. Our next bunch of sales will be Campbell, Turnbull and maybe Gallagher. 

Stopped reading at O’Hara. Hailing his empty jersey as one of our best signings tells you all you need to know.

[Haggischomper]

Might be a good time to resurrect this thread

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Shaka]

On 8/23/2020 at 10:25 PM, fizoxy said:

I saw him mentioned on the Robbo thread, and thought we could look at his signings since he joined in 2016ish and assess whether we think he’s been good or not.  This is a list of what I got from Wikipedia or the top of my head, might be the wrong years, but a start. I’ll update if needed.

Since foyle is the head of recruitment i think he should be held responsible for all transfers in good or bad, otherwise it’s hard to draw the line where he identified a player or whether it was someone Robinson knew, or Gallagher’s mate, or a dodgy YouTube video.

What constitutes success? That’s definitely up for discussion. Did the player actually play a decent amount of games? Did we sell him? Did he go on to “better” things?

2020 - Lang, McGinley, Fox, Lamie, O’Donnell, White, Hastie 

2019 - Gallagher, Polworth, Carroll, Sloth, Hylton, Long, Seedorf, Ilic, Manzinga, Mugabi, Watt, McIver, Robinson, Aarons, Cole, O’Hara 

2018 - Gillespie, Johnson, Taylor-Sinclair, Donnelly, Gorrin, Mbulu, Ariyibi, Sammon, McCormack

2017 - Fisher, Bigi, Tanner, Carson, Rose, Griffiths, Dunne, Kipre, Newell, Plummer, Ferguson, Petravicius, Grimshaw, Hartley, Main, Aldred, Gordon , Hendrie, Ciftci 

2016 - don’t know who were his signings or the other guy’s. 

In the same rough period, players to come through our system and play more than a token game or two:

Cadden, Campbell, Hastie, Turnbull, Maguire, Scott, Semple 

O'Donnell, Gallagher, Polworth, Watt, Gillespie, Carroll, Donnelly, Gorrin, Carson, Dunne, Kipre, Aldred, Hartley, so 13 good players out of 51 or in other words, 3/4 of his signings are utter shite

[wellsince75]

1 hour ago, Shaka said:

O'Donnell, Gallagher, Polworth, Watt, Gillespie, Carroll, Donnelly, Gorrin, Carson, Dunne, Kipre, Aldred, Hartley, so 13 good players out of 51 or in other words, 3/4 of his signings are utter shite

O'Hara ,Tanner would be added to the list but your point remains valid.  

[grizzlyg]

You will always pick up a few gems but that list does make scary reading.  Some of the players on that list I just cant figure out how they were scouted and it was decided they would improve the squad.   And yes our budget is tight but we have brought in more money than most spl teams in last few years through 2 cup finals,  player sales etc..    Scouting needs to improve but so does the youth set up as doesn't appear to be anyone ready to step up. If that is case then again questions need to be asked.  COYW

[joewarkfanclub]

There definitely needs to be a rethink on our signing policy. 

We appear to trawl the market and bring in more players than we need in the hope that one or two will make it. That seems a waste of resource.

Id much prefer that we scour the market, identify one or two of decent quality and push the boat out to get them in. 

If we have a few with experience and / or quality and supplement them with youth, it will do far more for the development of our younger players and hopefully improve the product on the park.

[C&A not the shop]

6 hours ago, Shaka said:

O'Donnell, Gallagher, Polworth, Watt, Gillespie, Carroll, Donnelly, Gorrin, Carson, Dunne, Kipre, Aldred, Hartley, so 13 good players out of 51 or in other words, 3/4 of his signings are utter shite

O'Hara, Grimshaw, Rose, Grimshaw, Ciftci, Aarons, Aryibi, Lang, Main, Tanner and Cole all did or are doing enough for us to be called successes at this level.

So its closer to 50/50.

I'm pretty sure you're just constantly fishing with these so fair play to you, you got a bite.

[C&A not the shop]

3 hours ago, joewarkfanclub said:

There definitely needs to be a rethink on our signing policy. 

We appear to trawl the market and bring in more players than we need in the hope that one or two will make it. That seems a waste of resource.

Id much prefer that we scour the market, identify one or two of decent quality and push the boat out to get them in. 

If we have a few with experience and / or quality and supplement them with youth, it will do far more for the development of our younger players and hopefully imprive the product on the park.

We've stayed in the league comfortably while making profits. That says our signing policy is a success. 

You might not like it but its not a waste.

[0Neils40yarder]

7 hours ago, Shaka said:

O'Donnell, Gallagher, Polworth, Watt, Gillespie, Carroll, Donnelly, Gorrin, Carson, Dunne, Kipre, Aldred, Hartley, so 13 good players out of 51 or in other words, 3/4 of his signings are utter shite

You've gone from 'good' to 'utter shite'...with nothing in between...it sort of fucks up yer argument 

[middleeastdave]

I am surprised that he doesn’t go into Irish market as St Mirren are certainly proving there is some good players coming from the Emerald island!!

[0Neils40yarder]

1 hour ago, middleeastdave said:

I am surprised that he doesn’t go into Irish market as St Mirren are certainly proving there is some good players coming from the Emerald island!!

We've tried that before and it didnae work out well

[clueless]

What gets me is the seeming lack of due diligence.  We sign players who have had a long list of injuries - on one year contracts. Or players who will take three months to get up to speed - on one year contracts. Or ex-internationalists who are two stones overweight. And injured.  The ability might not be in question, but their utility to us is questionable, at best.  We also sign players who are good at something, but can't fit into our pattern of play.  It seems that the remit of recruitment is just to find players, not to find guys who will be up and fitting in in August.  

[Welldaft Mk1]

1 hour ago, clueless said:

What gets me is the seeming lack of due diligence.  We sign players who have had a long list of injuries - on one year contracts. Or players who will take three months to get up to speed - on one year contracts. Or ex-internationalists who are two stones overweight. And injured.  The ability might not be in question, but their utility to us is questionable, at best.  We also sign players who are good at something, but can't fit into our pattern of play.  It seems that the remit of recruitment is just to find players, not to find guys who will be up and fitting in in August.  

In summary we sign players within our budget. And that budget determines that a high % will be shite. 

Need to get Poirot on this as it is a mystery.....

[mfc]

Signings are always going to be a mixed bag,it's just a pity we signed so many poor players over the summer at the one time.

[Electric Blues]

7 hours ago, Welldaft Mk1 said:

Need to get Poirot on this...

Can he play left back?

We should bring in Miss Marple to ply up front too, she's got more chance of getting into double figures than Chris Long.

[The African]

46 minutes ago, Electric Blues said:

 

We should bring in Miss Marple to ply up front too, she's got more chance of getting into double figures than Chris Long.

Not as daft as you might think. Was it Mick Channon who used to go mental about "bodies in the box" when working as a World Cup pundit for ITV? Something that any Agatha Christie creation cannot be criticised for lacking.

[Shaka]

15 hours ago, C&A not the shop said:

O'Hara, Grimshaw, Rose, Grimshaw, Ciftci, Aarons, Aryibi, Lang, Main, Tanner and Cole all did or are doing enough for us to be called successes at this level.

So its closer to 50/50.

I'm pretty sure you're just constantly fishing with these so fair play to you, you got a bite.

I was 100% fishing wi this one aye , couldnt be arsed going through properly as there are prob 3 categories of players

[Spit_It_Out]

Signings in general are always going to be hit or miss i mean Kipre for example we were not going to even sign him the fact the guy we were going sign got an injury I think and we took Kipre instead look how that turned out.

I do think this seasons has been the poorest in recent years really really awful.

[mfc88]

12 hours ago, clueless said:

What gets me is the seeming lack of due diligence.  We sign players who have had a long list of injuries - on one year contracts. Or players who will take three months to get up to speed - on one year contracts. Or ex-internationalists who are two stones overweight. And injured.  The ability might not be in question, but their utility to us is questionable, at best.  We also sign players who are good at something, but can't fit into our pattern of play.  It seems that the remit of recruitment is just to find players, not to find guys who will be up and fitting in in August.  

In addition, it often feels like every season we sign players without much thought to how they are going to fit into any system. Seems like we sign and hope we can shape a team around whats there rather than targeting players to fit "our" system. A real bugbear of mine last few years. No doubt we've had successful signings in that time, but surely we can be more shrewd about how we go about things.

[wellsince75]

11 minutes ago, mfc88 said:

In addition, it often feels like every season we sign players without much thought to how they are going to fit into any system. Seems like we sign and hope we can shape a team around whats there rather than targeting players to fit "our" system. A real bugbear of mine last few years. No doubt we've had successful signings in that time, but surely we can be more shrewd about how we go about things.

can build on that - how many players do we sign with  a vague reference to their position eg 'can play anywhere in defence '  'great midfield player and can play in defence'

Trev is a great goal keeper and potential target man up front.

This stuff takes the jam out my donut 

[joewarkfanclub]

19 hours ago, C&A not the shop said:

We've stayed in the league comfortably while making profits. That says our signing policy is a success. 

You might not like it but its not a waste.

I think you are confusing me with one of the glass half empty brigade. Im not saying that the signing policy hasnt delivered on the balance sheet, and Im not advocating the manager or anyone else be sacked. But no one can argue that the quality on show at times hasnt been great to watch. Given that we are in the entertaiment business and the vast majority of the revenue we get comes from paying customers and our league position, I dont see it as a particularly left field suggestion that we at least assess whether a different approach might achieve better results. Not saying it would be easy. I know every other club in Scotland is in the same position, but the turnover of players we have had in the last few years is incredible.....