Nope
With the recruitment, Dan Rice and the team he has employed are being judged in two ways.
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Are the players improving our position in the league table?
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Are the players increasing in value?
The answer to (1) is undoubtedly no. We are 12th and have played more games than the majority of teams above us and below us. We were in 1st/2nd before they cocked up the January window looking outside for 10+ players instead of tying down the existing key crop like Joe Low and signing Aaron Morley permanently.
The answer to (2) is also undoubtedly no. As it appears right now, we have only one player which looks like they might, one day, generate ÂŁ1m or more for us. Jamie Mullins.
It is simply not up for debate right now. Categoric failure. The situation is obviously fluid and will change throughout the next few years, but right now the recruitment has to be perceived to be a resounding failure. We are 12th. We were in 1st/2nd before they meddled around with everything. We have worse players. We have very few saleable big assets, if any.
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We tried to sign Aaron Morley. Joe Low didnât want to stay. Repeat to fade.
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Weâre top of the form table, for goodness sake. Weâre the joint second-highest scorers in the league and fourth for xG. Dodds was holding us back, not our recruitment.
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Yeah I keep hearing this constantly, but the job of our âChief Football Officerâ / âChairmanâ / âTop Dogâ is to get the best outcome for the club. That meant signing Aaron Morley; not spending ÂŁ2m+ on a plethora of players that cocked up promotion and cannot be resold for profit. That also meant finding a way to keep our best player at the time (Joe Low - once Morley returned to Bolton).
Edit - and before anyone calls me Hindsight Harry, or some other silly name, I repeated this countless times during January 2025 and I also suggested, whilst everyone else was enjoying the fanfare of signing 10+, that it seemed totally stupid and felt like the wrong move. I was right.
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itâs like playing that whack a mole game at the arcade
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Iâm sure you understand that for a club to buy a player another club has to be willing to sell that player.
[One defeat in a meaningless competition and some of us are straight back to Dan Rice bad !!1! When does it end?]
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Wish I had a ounce of your self-confidence
Thank God we donât lose more than once every couple of months or weâd have to put up with this shite all the time
Stop wetting the bed and enjoy our promotion push
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Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Yep wetting the bed. I was the one that suggested I wasnât concerned whatsoever about losing yesterday. In fact, I referred to it as people throwing âtoys out of the pramâ in a post yesterday. Iâm allowed to critique Dan Rice whilst we are in excellent form, just like how I have criticised him during periods of poor form. Iâm not fickle like that. Or a bed wetter. The conversation has been about recruitment. Not the league form table of the last 10 games.
To the above poster about Morley. People keep saying he wasnât for sale. I suggest he might have been. The honest truth is that 99% of us will ever know. Subjective. Each to their own. Youâre allowed your opinion and fair play itâs a likely situation. My opinion is that we could have spent ÂŁ1.5m+ on Morley and got promoted. We were in an automatic promotion place in January. Bolton were something like 10th and 15-25 points behind us at the time. We were not in competition with each other that season. He was out of favour with Evatt, who was in no risk of being sacked at the time. Therefore, I believe we could have negotiated the purchase of him instead of signing 10+ others. Fair play if you disagree. But itâs definitely subjective.
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Donât agree at all. Henderson, Mullins, Allen, Anders are all proving to be good signings. Add to that the two later loan players Woodrow and Bell and all in all we have brought in six players in recent times who are very capable league one players.
Casey is improving quickly, Junior will develop into a very good acquisition and I still think Taylor will turn out to be a good player for WWFC.
Lowry is currently a bit hit and miss but no doubt the lad has talent.
If there are real doubts then they are Westagaard, van Sas and Bradley Fink and they may yet prove us wrong.
McNeilly and Huggins, I really donât know.
So, we are not unlike most teams throughout the EFL and Premier League, who donât always get every acquisition right 100% of the time.
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Given how good a player Ewan Henderson is I would suggest that not signing Aaron Morley is anywhere near as significant as itâs made out to be, this season at least
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Of course it is. I think itâs unlikely that Bolton would be willing to sell one of the best players in the division when they needed all the help they could get at that point. In fact i think their manager at the time said almost exactly that. From their point of view the loan worked out perfectly.
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You donât need to rely on results to know Dan Rice is an utterly reprehensible human being.
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Winning solves everything.
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you havenât watched videos of lommy when he was just startin
nothing.
Donnell McNeilly has struggled to replicate the couple of Fred-like cameo performances he put in immediately after his arrival. His pace and skill down the right made me think that he might be recalled by Forest in January. Since then he has been deployed more centrally - understandably because he was a prolific goalscorer for Chelsea youth teams. He only turned 20 five weeks ago so itâs still very early days and I hope he will stay with us and continue to develop physically over the remainder of the season.
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We are only a 2 or 3 top quality signings away from a very good squad indeed. Unfortunately some people may have to find new homes, thatâs football. Mistakes have been made but I believe that lessons have been learned, and with Duff at the helm the only way is up.
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How good was Kone in the latter half of last season when he was similarly left isolated and without support. That was on tactical reasons and last night was because of piss poor performance reasons all round.