Nigel is there any of the first team set to sign new contracts yet?
NP: Honest answer at the moment, no. Too early. That doesn’t mean that we’ve not been internally discussing where we think they’re at, but there’s a long way to go between now and the end of the season.
I think in all honesty and Rich has already touched on it, the financial climate within the game it’s changed massively. So, in terms of renegotiating contracts, there are players who are currently here, I don’t like talking about money but it’s inevitable that you’ve got to talk about it.
The trend in the last 12 months, 18 months in particular is that players generally speaking get offered less than they’re already on and whether I like it, they like it, or anybody likes it or not is how it’s going. So, it stands to reason with a squad of our size and with the number of players, it’s going to be an important summer with us with the number of players out of contract.
I think it’s important they earn their next contract and whether that sounds old-fashioned or not I’m not bothered. It is the climate that now we have to operate in, and I think the players are getting their heads around that, because they talk, and they’ll be aware of players that have signed and know friends who have moved onto other clubs that they’re earning powers become less.
So, it’s not as simple as, the question is have they been offered contracts? The honest answer is “no” but it’s more of a complex situation than I could just answer in one sentence. We have to have an open mind on it.
RG: Wages in the Championship, the market has dropped by 20-30%, something like that, but it’s a really weird division because you’ve got all these clubs that come in from the Premier League with untold riches. When we go to a club like Norwich, they’ll have a £50million advantage on us.
A club that’s been out of the division for two years, West Brom, have a £35m advantage on us and that’s why there’s a lot of discussion at the moment to try to achieve a little more balance in the Championship because the Premier League is at risk of becoming a 24-team league, four of which are bobbing up and down from the Championship every year. That’s not exciting, that’s not what we want as a country.
I was going to ask Brian about his favourite left-back but first, Nige, can you tell us a bit about Jason Euell, why he was appointed, how he’s doing and how it changes your role since you’ve been at the club, please?
NP: Of course, you don’t have to say please, the question was enough, but thank you for the polite end to that question. I was his manager at Southampton. I was only at Southampton, like many of the jobs that I do for a short time.
Whether that’s to do with my personality or quality I’m not sure, but he’s always struck me as somebody who is thoughtful. What I really like about him though and there are a number of things that give good reasons to bring him in. He’s a forward, he’s in terms of his ethnicity, let’s not hide from that. There’s not enough role models, there’s lots of black players in football clubs and not enough role models.
That’s a side issue if you like or a smaller part of it, but for me, he gives balance to us as a staff. He’s quieter, he’s very laid back, he’s very measured with his approach. For those who were here last year when I couldn’t make it because I wasn’t very well last year, you met Curtis (Fleming) and Curtis can talk indefinity. But Curt brings different strengths, Curt is a defender, very loyal, very hard-working, good defensive coach, somebody who cares about the players.
It’s really important to have a group of staff who bring different characters, you don’t want everybody being the same. If you’re a player within a squad, it’s really important that you have somebody I suppose you feel you can connect to. As the, I suppose the figure of authority, however people think about or whatever you think about how I am, or how I manage, in a workplace, it might be different but there’s always times where authority needs to be exercised and you can only do that if you have that balance within the squad.
For me, Jason Eull brings a point of contact on lots of different levels to our players, but I think the most important thing is and hopefully you will see it as well, there is a little bit more inventive attacking play. I think he takes plenty of credit for that, he’s a clever coach and he’s a persistently quiet coach which I very much like, because when you have members of staff and most coaches that I come across are on the other end of the spectrum. Very talkative, lots of information.
I do like it when you have a quieter coach too. It gives us as staff some balance too and I think as a manager that certainly helps me in how I pitch my interventions for want of a better word.
BT: What about my left-backs? Martin Scott was the first one and he was an outstanding left-back, but unfortunately, he got sold on not long after I came. I was lucky it was Jim Brennan for a spell who was an outstanding attacking left-back, all the full-backs suited the way I played as well.
They’d bomb on and I couldn’t bomb on, so I’d pass it to them and then Darren Bernard was another outstanding left-back and then Mickey Bell who came and had an outstanding time here. So, they were all really, really top players. Mickey’s a Geordie so I’ll give it to him, just in case he’s watching. Mickey Bell is probably the best one. And he’s on the staff and he’s doing very well.
Question for Rich, us supporters play our money and come through the turnstiles week in week out, when we bought a season ticket this year, there was nothing about fan incentives while we’re in a recession and we’re a third of the way through the season and the fans don’t know what’s going on?
RG: I apologise, the loyalty scheme is being revamped. It’s nearly ready for launch and I’m hoping it will be out before Christmas. We will make sure because we’ve got purchase histories that any kind of purchase whether it be tickets or retail will be recognised within that. We’re also going to make sure, and Charlie’s leading it and doing a very great job on that, it’s going to be very different to what you’ve seen before, so it’s not just going to be a way of getting discount in the shop.
There’s going to be other elements to it, whether it be experiences that money can’t buy. We’ve got a range of retail partners as well so when you’re spending money elsewhere it will also count towards the loyalty scheme. Apologies it's not with you yet, we think within a month or so please bear with us, but we’ll make sure people don’t miss out on the loyalty they’ve already shown.
For Nigel, is your mainstay always for your first part of your interview “um?”
NP: Yeah, well. Ummm, I’m thinking about what not to say, I’m thinking about not saying something that may be taken out of context.
RG: Contentious?
NP: I’ve been caught out a bit in the past.
This question is for Richard and Nige. First of all, congratulations Richard, thank you for all the work you’ve done so far. Nige spoke about continuity so what I’d like to know, if possible, with you moving on does that present an opportunity for a restructure in the club, with maybe a director of football or will your role likely be filled like for like?
RG: I'd like to think I’m irreplaceable, which is clearly not true. I think it does give an opportunity for the club to see how it’s best going forward. When you look at so many clubs have a different way of operating, whether it’s a technical director or a director of football, executive chairman.
There’s all sort of ways we go about our business, but it’s important we do have that continuity as Nigel’s alluded to, you can just feel and sense the progress behind the scenes. Sometimes the results don’t make it absolutely obvious to everybody and we want to keep that going. Whether it’s the way we play the football, whether it’s the culture that’s in the organisation. We’ve got a lot of, I wouldn’t say bureaucracy, behind the scenes, but we know what we want to do.
We know what kind of sustainability we could live with a set wage bill. We know therefore what we need to be paying a top left-back or centre midfielder. All of that is in place in terms of structure as to what we could afford in the market.
We’ve got a very able technical-recruitment team, we’ve got scouting systems, we’ve got coaches. So much of our insight comes from our coaching team and what they see day-to-day and then we’ve got Brian and the academy. The way that we tend to operate is not in isolation, we tend to try to use all our talents.
So, if we’re looking at players who are a particular target for us, who has the best contact? Is it one of our coaches? Is it one of our players? How can we best attract the players that we really want? Remember it’s kind of team talent that we use rather than a more isolated way of doing it. That does sometimes give some frustrations at times because it can be a little bit long-winded at times, but people’s views are taken into consideration.
I think we know what players are out of contract at the end of the season. At some point Nigel will make it clear, what offers we need to be making to retain players, that will then narrow down the targets we need to make in terms of recruitment and January, yes there may be some business, but we think more long-term than that. We’re really thinking what do we need in the summer and if there is an opportunity to fast-forward some of that recruitment and bring it into January that’s our aim. So, continuity is important, Gavin who is director of Bristol City is working hard now to look at the various options and hopefully the good work will continue because that’s what we want.
NP: For me it’s very much a case of there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need big change. It depends on availability of the right people and that’s really it. We certainly don’t need something new because we can do something new. It’s fairly straight forward in my mind.
RG: We’ve also had the benefit of stability in our ownership group over the last 25 years. I don’t think there’s another club that has that so there is a degree of in-built stability in there and that’s an advantage and we need to take advantage of that.
Why have we struggled against big, strong physical teams such as Millwall?
NP: Because they’re big strong physical teams and we’re not.
It’s the same every year it feels like, the Preston’s...
NP: We’re not like that, we’re not a big strong physical team.
RG: It’s an answer! The question was why do we struggle against big, strong physical teams?
NP: And I said because they’re big, strong physical teams.
Would you like to do better against those sides?
NP: I would like us to deal with any team we play against. We’re not that at the moment, we’re not in a position to make change quickly, our team has to evolve and sometimes the style of play that we adopt suits the players that we have.
What we have to be is a bit more clever at times. So, yes when you consider our game against Millwall, where they didn’t open us up once and we dealt with all their aerial balls, but we concede two goals because of two mistakes. We’ve suffered this season from individual mistakes as we did last year, unfortunately, and it remains a frustration for you as fans I know as it does for us too.
It’s the way that the game is, we don’t have a squad that you would ever say is going to be taller man for man, we don’t have that. Whether we want to evolve into that is irrelevant at the moment, the priories are to try to add one or two players as we go and mould the players we have and utilise them.
We have some very talented young technical players coming through the academy who are in the first team already. There’s some monsters coming through, so it could change with just a simple addition of our young players making the transition if they’re good enough to deal with the challenge into the first team.
Don’t think we don’t look at it sometimes and go “they’re big,” and I say, “Jay use your height!” But hey, let me tell you, inch for inch, centimetre for centimetre he uses his body better than anybody. He doesn’t get beaten very often and it doesn’t mean just because you’re a very big player doesn’t mean you’re bright enough to use it. Some of our big lads… yeah, have not exactly dealt with the challenges that have come their way. I don’t like to generalise.
I fully understand your question, I fully understand your frustration. What we have to do is make sure we manage the ball well enough and hurt them in the way that we can. The one thing in the modern game in our squad now, most people would die for and that is pace.
We’ve got a lot of pace in the squad and that’s something in the modern game, we talk about it and you’ll probably think pie in the sky, but to make the transition from Championship to Premier League more than anything is a squad that can play quick football and we have some quick footballers.
That’s the model for us, getting good athletes but also you have to both utilise and maximise the players that you have. You can’t always wish for something else because we’re not in a position to change that drastically at the rate we might want to or wish to. The reality is we have a decent squad, talk about the game against Swansea coming up, people talk about that as they’re a good technical side, they’ll pass you off the park.
They’ll be very concerned about our attacking options and the pace that we have, and they’ve conceded 40% of their goals from counterattacks, so it’s an opportunity for us. A long-winded way to answer your question, but if you’ve got short lads, you’ve got short lads.
Quick question for Richard, you touch on FFP already, could you specifically clarify, we haven't got a points deduction hanging over us do we?
RG: We don’t believe we’ve got a points deduction hanging over us. The uncertainty has been caused because the Football League have rightfully introduced the COVID add-backs. All of the numbers got put in in March-time and they’ve been trawling through the numbers and we've been waiting for the confirmation or validation of the numbers we've put in.
Some of those discussions are still ongoing but we are very confident there will not be a points deduction this year. If I did think there was a points deduction I would be sitting slightly further away than Nigel in case I got assaulted... it's not in his nature at all.
Nige you said earlier if you were a teacher the mark would be could do better... what do you think we require to achieve higher levels of consistency?
NP: We lose too many games that we should draw. We need to be more efficient. You hear me using the word efficiency a lot. Really good sides who maximise what they have, know how to not try to win a game and try to get something ugly.
At the moment we continue to either be a good side to watch or a very frustrating side to watch. Occasionally we have poor performances which you all know about and have your opinions on. But where we will go to the next level is when we can find and it takes enough knowledgeable players within the side who can influence their team-mates into being... I don't like to say 'settled for a point' but if we'd draw half the points that we'd lost, we'd be in and around the play-off places and you'd be here with a different view.
That's how tight the Championship can be. You look at it now from the bottom three to the play-off places and it's just crazily tight. That can either make you feel quite vulnerable or what it does if you're a bit of an optimist is to say well actually, we're not that far away.
I think more like that. It's what do we have to do to get us from there to there. Yes we can win more games, we know that, but we've only drawn three games. We've lost far too many and we've lost games we shouldn't lose and mostly that's been because of either careless mistakes or royal cock-ups.
It remains a frustration and it remains something that we have to work towards improving. The players never go out there to make mistakes on purpose and I would rather the players make positive mistakes and cost us a goal than be passive. That's the one thing that drives me bonkers and I don't see that as much this year as I have maybe last season.
Although the problems still occur and mistakes still occur from time to time they are still positive, the optimist in me says that's not bad but it's still very frustrating. It must be very frustrating for you fans too because you know that when we've played well, we've looked as good as anybody.
But were not consistent enough and we're not able to reproduce those performances which we should be able to and that becomes something for us as staff, that's our responsibility to rectify. That might be either selection or changing people. That's the reality of it.
Thank you for all the club does for the community already but with the cost of living crisis, what's the plan for season ticket prices next season?
RG: We haven't got into ticket prices for next year. There was a small increase this year of about three per cent overall. It's one of those things that is going to be on the agenda significantly. The government were wanting football clubs to help with some ticket discount systems a month or so ago. We pointed back that our most loyal supporters have already bought their season tickets and adding further discounts to people just buying tickets doesn't really help our most loyal fans.
I think when we're looking at prices or value we can provide, it's always going to be based on our season ticket holders. That's me trying not to give an answer because I don't know what the future is but hopefully gives significant assurances that we know our season ticket holders are the bedrock of the club. We want to grow our season ticket base, we don't want it to decline.
Brian, what main aspects do you look for in young academy players? Pace, physicality, technical ability?
BT: I think as Nigel explained before, the game is evolving quickly so an important part of a young player now is he has to be able to get around the pitch. He has to be able to run, be athletic. Obviously, we want them technically good because when I was talking about the discussions of who goes into the first-team, if you can't handle a ball then the likelihood is you're not going to get across there so you have to be a runner, be technically good.
We want it all really, in a player we want it all. We want all the best parts of what a player looks like. So you definitely have to be an athlete and be able to handle the ball.
The January transfer window, is there money to spend and what areas would you like to hopefully strengthen? In particular a centre half?
RG: When you ask the money to spend question it is something that Nigel asks me quite regularly. We don't have significant amounts of money to spend at this point. Partly because of the FFP limit that we've wanted to be able to control but also, in the past on average, we've sold around £20million worth of players a year for the previous four years.
We've needed that because of the salary we've had. We've needed that to see it through. Now we are bringing the salary levels down, we don't have lots of cash we can throw at things. If you looked at what we did last summer, we were targeting the very best players who were out of contract that year.
We think that is quite a sweet spot for us because we would always be looking to be in the top 10 in terms of salaries that we can pay in the Championship. Therefore for the best players coming out of contract in the Championship or League One we are very, very attractive.
That's really the market we are attacking at the moment. In the event that we sell a player and that's not something that we really want to do at all, yes a proportion of that will be made available for reinvestment. We need to sell before we buy and if you consider the average player's contract length is two to three years, so 30 per cent of players are out of contract at only one time, those are the ones that we're looking to target at the moment. We don't have money tree at the moment.
NP: The other thing worth adding and Richard says I'm always asking about money, yes but I'm really onside with where we are the situation that we're in. I say a lot to the staff and the recruitment team and that is, I don't believe in collecting players. Just because we might need to feel the need to, yes, get another centre back in which I would like.
But unless they're better than what we've got, I'm not wasting money because it's another wage, another player who doesn't make us better. It's important to remember that we are trying to build a better team than what we've got. Sometimes what you get in the management game is a protection and that is to try and fast-track to survive.
I've been in the game long enough, if I don't survive, I don't survive. But I don't survive on the terms that I live and manage by and that is we need to try and build a team which is better than what we've got and can compete at a higher level. I don't see any mileage in getting another bang average player to replace a player who may be coming out of contract who we can't afford again or a player who is a middle of the road Championship player.
When one comes along which is better, and we might even produce one. There's some really good youngsters coming through but it's a position that in all honesty, you need somebody like a Naismith in there to bring the youngsters through. In that type of position, like being a goalkeeper, you make a mistake there and it's costly and we've seen.
So the philosophy is always going to be the same and that is we want to improve. We'll improve when we can and when circumstances change and there is money to spend, we will spend it wisely. The days of throwing money down the pan are over.
RG: I'll bring Brian in here on the academy but if you look at the number of homegrown players in a squad last season was about two and a half. The average number of homegrown players we had in our squad last season was about six and a half or seven. Nigel deserves enormous credit for bringing them into the first-team environment and Brian deserves an enormous amount of credit for developing them in the first place.
So our academy and the HPC and where we are in the country gives us a unique advantage. If you're stuck up in the Midlands and you've got West Brom, Wolves, Birmingham and all these clubs competing for the talent or if you're in London where you've got about seven Cat 1 academies all competing for the same talent, it's quite difficult.
Here, our unique advantage is that we've got an amazing new facility which is better than anything else in the South West of England that we can use to attract the best players here. That's going to be our long-term future.
BT: As Nige said we have squad depth when the recruitment team work and we will work closely with them. It's like one, two, three, four from each position so we've always got our younger players beneath our first-team players. We know they're not all going to be first-team players but we want to give them the opportunity to get there.
So we do have real in-depth, charts of players in each position of one, two, three and four. The first team will probably be one and two, an Under-21s player and then an Under-18s player below where we think could have the potential to play in our first team. That's something that we always look at before Nigel goes out to try and sign a player, we will look at that chart and maybe there's a right-back that might be ready in two years who we can go and sign a right-back and give them a two-year contract because we know the next one is going to be there.
And that's throughout the squad depth chart. So there's constant conversation and that's where the HPC has been really important because instead of being at STS and travelling to Failand and then travelling back we can walk down the corridor and have the conversations we have every day.
It's really important and it's in a good place. Nige has touched on it the young players and we have some really outstanding young players coming through and we've got some outstanding young players in the team so there's a lot to be really positive about.
NP: But you know, we don't even need to be a Cat 1 academy. What we have that a lot of people don't have is opportunity. For the parents out there who are interested in their boys or girls' progression in the game, it's about opportunity. It's not about playing for a flash club. It's about playing for a club where they're going to get a chance and they'll get a chance here.
BT: You'll probably see less of our players going out on loan now because before they weren't really getting played and we were having to send them out on loan to prove they were good enough but I think the pathway is there now to not have to send them out to prove they'll actually get the opportunity without going there.
Tommy Conway had a couple of loans to get himself some men's football but those days now where you'll see 10, 12 of our lads out on loan are long gone. Because they will get the opportunity here.
RG: Just on loan players, and I'd get the stat slightly wrong but there's about 130 Premier League players currently on loan across the 72 clubs in the EFL at a combined cost of around £30million.
So you've effectively got EFL clubs paying for the academies of the Premier League club which is an interesting concept. There's always an option where we can take Premier League players on loan but what does that do in terms of creating a log jam for our players? Does that prevent a Tommy Conway from playing, prevent an Ayman Benarous from coming?
Given the unique position we've got with the academy, we don't want to stop our own talent from coming through. That will be a double waste.
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