[Albion] Paul Barber: The Transfer Window

Kalimantan Gull said:

We do have three of top championship quality already, the only point of another one would be if we think both Murray and Baldock are out injured for a long time. But they must have assumed Andone was in the bag for most of the last couple of days, and then that plug got pulled

Click to expand...

Lower West Stander said:

Shut up Barber.

If you cock up you deserve criticism. End of.

Click to expand...

Icy Gull said:

We needed two more strikers, one could have been on a par with what we have to boost the numbers and give us options. History is being rewritten here suggesting that we only targeted the one. I am pretty sure CH said they were after two as soon as last season finished. The fact that we were apparently willing to sell Hemed if we got our marquee signing so we were only ever going to end up with gaining one and losing one come the end of the window. That would still not have been enough imo.

Currently we have two strikers who are very alike and one who spends large swathes of every season injured.

If this all sounds like reasonable planning to you who that's fine, it looks like a cock up to me.

Click to expand...

Kalimantan Gull said:

We do have three of top championship quality already, the only point of another one would be if we think both Murray and Baldock are out injured for a long time. But they must have assumed Andone was in the bag for most of the last couple of days, and then that plug got pulled

Click to expand...

Kalimantan Gull said:

Well, Brown and Gross are both touted as number 10's It was always worth going for better strikers than we already had, and I'm sure they were going for two. But we couldn't get them, no point settling for a Niasse or a Mounie in that situation

Click to expand...

Bozza said:

- it’s a complete myth that the best transfer business is always done early; if transfers can be done early in the window, they will be. If transfers are not done early, there’s usually a very good reason.

- equally, it’s a myth that transfers late in the window are “panic buys” or the player must have been “low on our list”; it can be the complete opposite: sometimes transfers just take all the time available.

Click to expand...

Kalimantan Gull said:

Well, Brown and Gross are both touted as number 10's

Click to expand...

Audax said:

I think Barber's responses here is pretty reasonable. Most of the points are brief and I think if he expanded on them he'd adequately address a lot of the knee-jerk anti-Barber reaction in this thread. Step back from the negative emotions of failing to get a striker in, and take a few minutes to consider both what (and how) he's written as well as what he's very carefully not written but still alluded to and I think most here will realise that he, and the club, are just as disappointed as we are. The key difference between us and Barber, is Barber's already moved on and set aside that disappointment - for the club, the focus is now on the future. There's no point dwelling on the past except to learn the lessons from where things went wrong, and Barber's pretty clear here that that's what they are aiming to do.

I think also that, reading between the lines, we got caught out with targets we'd done a lot of work for ultimately not becoming available because moves at other clubs also didn't happen. Transfers are like buying houses; there's often a bit of a chain that needs to be worked through, and if the first domino fails to fall (or falls too late) then the entire chain falls apart. It sounds like that happened to us with some of our targets, and simultaneously we got unlucky with the chain-free targets (Dwamena in particular).





That's a little unfair given what we know. We had 4 deals that were all-but executed and all failed as a result of external factors beyond our control. At least one of those (Dwamena) was a striker, and one of the others may have been Andone - making two strikers missed due to what are normally pretty rare factors.





Don't take what he wrote personally. It wasn't aimed at any individual. It wasn't particularly aimed at all, to be honest. It's a very fair assessment of the range of stuff that's been directed at the club since the window closed. I think it's entirely fair (and a very good thing) that Barber acknowledges the full range of feedback received, be it positive or negative. I prefer to see it acknowledged than swept under the rug. As long as they've taken the time to consider what lies beneath the negative commentary (which, I believe, they have based on some of his other comments).





Nope, I'd rather see him acknowledge that he's seen it, and digested it. Ignoring it can sometimes be the worst thing to do, because the spite and vitriol can often simply be a layer over the top of what is otherwise perfectly valid comments. I hope the club has someone there with the skill to wade through it all. As I noted above, my suspicion is they have done the wading - there's a few clues in what he's written (and, notably, what he hasn't written - some careful reading between the lines is needed).





Pretty fair response here, with the exception that I don't think what he's written was intended to be viewed as excuses. One of the careful bits of reading between the lines I mentioned being necessary is where and how he talks about how disappointed and frustrated the club were/are. I think, for those willing to read and digest his comments, it's pretty clear that the club knows they've failed to land a key recruitment and are as unhappy about that as we are - but they also know there's now nothing they can do about it until January, and they're moving on to work with what they've got. And that's exactly what they should be doing.

I think you're probably right that the list of potential strikers may have been too narrow, but I think it's also fair to say that we were unlucky with 4 targets (including at least 1, possibly 2, strikers) being missed through no fault of the clubs. And while it's not been stated explicitly, I think it's pretty clear that Janssen is who Barber's referring to when he says "when a player decides not to join a club, it’s often about him wanting to stay with the club he’s at, rather than snubbing the club courting him".






He's not said they aren't allowed to post unreasonable opinions. But, as supporters of the club, I firmly believe that it is our responsibility to not create an environment or atmosphere at the club that unreasonably places constraints on their ability to do the very best they can with the situation the club now finds itself re: the squad. We're very lucky to have a club that's very well run in the main (far, far better than many others). They've over many years done the majority of the work right to firstly rebuild the club, and then get us promoted to the Prem. That staff now needs to be given the trust and support to continue to do their best for the club; sending unreasonable, spiteful, destructive messages their way will do the exact opposite. I know many here will say "well, they should grow a ticker skin", but I speak from experience of working the last 10+ years in roles that involve collecting, digesting, and responding to public feedback. It doesn't matter how thick a skin you have: sustained, unreasonable, spiteful and targeted opinions will always result in reduced morale. And reduced morale results in reduced performance.

That's not to say that negative opinions can't be sent to the club. It's not the opinions themselves that are necessarily the problem; the problem is in how those opinions are expressed. It's called "constructive criticism".





The mistake you're making here is interpreting his comments in context of NSC only. But that's not what he's responding to here: he's talking about NSC, about Twitter, about Facebook, about emails and letters sent directly to the club that none of us have seen (or ever likely will). The worst of the personal attacks will most likely have been sent anonymously, and privately, direct to the club. Because at the end of the day, the sorts of people who stoop to that sort of thing are generally cowards and won't want public scrutiny (especially on platforms where they could be tracked and de-anonymised).

Click to expand...

Kalimantan Gull said:

I think most of us are pissed off that we haven't got another striker.

Click to expand...

Lower West Stander said:

If he wants to have a genuine connection with the fans, a greater ability to truly empathise with us is needed.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Mouldy Boots said:

Spot on again, the worrying thing is i think this genuine lack of empathy is filtering downwards within the Albion.

Click to expand...

timbha said:

Genuinely interested - how do you think PB could have expressed such empathy. My take on it is while we can sit around expressing our disappointment, what we would/could have done better, etc, PB and his team have a club to run (that includes amongst many other things comms with the fans).

Click to expand...

Mouldy Boots said:

If you look a couple of post up i have praised his communication, but the lack of genuine lack empathy does appear obvious to me.

All i am saying is he can do better unless he is an android.


View attachment 88954

Click to expand...

Deadly Danson said:

What do you want - some sobbing emojis, for him to tell us he sat up all night head in hands screaming "what have we done?", for him to tell us he feels he has let us all down and he begs forgiveness? Albion fans are so bloody needy. He's told us his side, we didn't get a striker - it's bloody annoying but this post mortem is going to last longer than the transfer window.

Click to expand...

Herr Tubthumper said:

Given the length of your own replies I can see why you're such a fan of Barber.

I can't be arsed to read all this.

Click to expand...