Oliver Norwood

[Oldgold Wolfcub]

It was largely due to the type of player that we were after and the wage restrictions that we had in place at the time.

It was put on record that we were predominantly looking for players aged between 20-24 with good levels of (ideally Championship) experience. McDonald was always Jackett's first choice midfielder and after the failings of Rowe and Saville, we were looking for a more combative player to play alongside and complement him rather than another playmaker type. Coady had been identified by Thelwell and our scouting team the year before, and after he had a good season at Championship level with Huddersfield (including two very good games against us that year), it was decided that he would be the best available and affordable option that fit in with what we could afford wages-wise.

As to why we weren't looking at other Huddersfield midfielders. Well, Butterfield was out of our range price range and Derby were offering him £20k a week when our top earners were on just over half of that. Norwood is a similar type of player to McDonald so wasn't the type of player we were going for at that particular time.

The process hasn't changed that much since Mick's departure. Even with Stale, the likes of Sako, Boukari and Doumbia had already been identified as potential targets back in our final Premier League season. His 'signings' were Siggy, Pezsko and Margreitter. Kenny brought in a number of players that he had either worked with before (Afobe, Ricketts, Henry) or had targeted with Millwall but not been able to afford (McDonald, Golbourne). Percentage-wise, Lambert actually had more influence on his signings with 2 out of the 3 signed during his time obviously being down to him (and a further one subsequently signed in Bennett). Nuno has also brought in one player who he has worked with before in Miranda but will obviously still be 'given' certain signings that he had nothing to do with identifying (similar to Lambert with Costa, Jackett with Byrne etc).

It's a joint process but one in which Nuno will have less say in as Head Coach than Mick (who was pretty much in charge of everything) will have had as Manager.

Thank you for that well thought out reply. What it really points to for me is emphasising the limited outlook of how to achieve success for this club without the needed investment from Morgan.
Your last point is I find very sad on today's football. The argument as to whether a head coach or manager can be very telling more and more. Whoever it is that leads the club on footballing issues should dictate who he wants and how he wants the team to play. This used to be the manager who would also be responsible for the coaching. Now he could be given players not best suitable to his style. Not the best formula for the long term success and would lead to this head coach thinking more short term than long term.
Can you imagine the great managers of the past buying into this system of head coach. Shankly, Clough, Cullis and certainly we know that Ferguson would not. If it has been Thelwell then he is acting as a manager without the responsibility of facing the music when things go wrong and if he is still responsible for recruitment why should we expect anything to change or get better?
As far as limited resources go look at the number of clubs in the championship with less resources than we had and still did better than us eg. Preston and Barnsley despite their financial problems which forced them to sell players on the cheap.

 

[Wolvesfcneil]

We could do much worse than sign Norwood who in my opinion is a great player at this level

 

[Mr Wolf]

Personally I've seen Ronan drift past players I've never seen Norwood do that.

But you could easily go Ronan/Norwod then Saiss/an other as your 4 CM's across the season plus someone else as back up.

 

[Adrian_Monk]

yes please !

He and Malone are going to Huddersfield