Makom

Sure, but let's not get crazy here. McLaren certainly wouldn't be the first manager who'd won a foreign league to completely fail in the PL. And his Boro record is massively distorted by Gibson, so much so that it's almost irrelevant to how he might work under Ashley. Given managers of NUFC can only currently buy certain players in a specific age/price range, or promote from youth, then this job currently might be more like international football than you might think.

I'm aware of that, but the combine model is not about better identifying the propsect (which would still likely be done through informal networks of scouts), it's about more effectively organising the time of the full time scouts whose job it is to actually go and look at the prospects and report back to clubs. it's precisely because there are so few of them, that it exists. Imagine if the only thing our full time scouts had to do was look at players in two European countries, safe in the knowledge the the rest of Europe was covered by the others? I don't see why it wouldn't work, the instinct to screw over another club is hardly going to be any stronger in the PL than the NFL, yet they make it work.

It's a pretty fair bet Bilic wasn't even on our radar, so what he could or couldn't do for us is moot. Should it have come down to a situation where he had to choose between taking our job or West Ham's, under the current conditions I don't think he would have even wasted a second even considering us. He's going to a club he knows, both both clearly want to back him and share his goal of good football, so good luck to him. I'd kill for a taste of that action, whoever it was. Would I surprised if he crashes and burns? Probably not. But would I be surprised if under McLaren to we finished below the ammers? No. And btw, when compared to McLaren, Bilic's CV is pretty impressive when you consider that in many ways international football is a better test of true tactical/coaching/motivational skills than club management.

Wikipedia is no help, as usual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_scouting_combine It appears the gym based test is the "Scouting Combine", but the thing I'm on about is what that page calls the Scouting Organisations. The programme I saw was about BLESTO - Bears, Lions, Eagles & Steelers Talent Organisation - and it definitely gave the impression that the scouts even at the early stages were still attached to a club, but were scouting on behalf of all of them. That may have simply been that they were assigned that particular club's patch (they divided up the US into areas). It was all quite complicated actually - the scouts all went out and looked at the initial prospects, sometimes several in one day driving hundreds of miles, then there was a second round where the scout covering the neighbouring area might come across and give a second look to some of the initial prospects. I think they even had a protocol where they'd make sure they looked at the best prospects at the start, middle and end of a season. They gave feedback to clubs using both scoring system and the face to face reports of all the scouts who saw him, so they could decide whether or not to go for him (and I think that's the stage where they get invited to the gym test), and then it's dog eat dog.

It's definitely the scout system. You might be right about them being independents though. No databases involved, except to identify the targets being looked at first, which is obviously easier in NFL than real football, but you could just substitute that stage with whatever method is used at the moment to identify prospects (which is probably still the local networks with contacts to bigger clubs). The combine is about efficiently organising the scout's time in how they go and look at the prospects, and then yes, in the later stages it's each club for themselves. But I wasn't thinking about the gym test combine, that's just odd all round, I can't even begin to contemplate if that has a place in real football.

And not that a chump like Charnley would realise it, but a model like this would actually be more beneficial to clubs like us with miserly greedy chairman with only resale values on their mind. But that's probably why we would never get invited into one, since it relies on mutual trust between chairmen.

I'm aware obviously that some clubs have partnerships with lower league scouts who will often tip them off if a great prospect is noticed in their patch, and there's obviously a good few independent scouts who likely have ties with a number of PL clubs, but that's obviously not the same thing as this combine concept. This would basically see us sending a scout to one part of Europe to bring back reports which say, West Brom, Stoke and Swansea would then read, and we in turn would get to read all the reports from their scouts, who all cover different parts of Europe. The clubs all then proceed independently on the targets we each liked best. It's all done on trust, with scouts expected to share all information equally and honestly with the combine clubs, on the principle that you'll end up signing more decent players this way even if you risk losing a few to rivals, than you ever could by working alone.

No, this is not some CT gen chat topic gone awry. I heard some numpty on Talksport today claiming that *all* PL clubs these days have a vast scouting network looking at thousands of players around the world, and my bullshit detector went off. Sure, the top clubs might have a few, but come on. And we definitely don't. It reminded me of the curious practice I only heard about recently in the NFL, where small groups of teams club together to share scouting resources in the early stages of the season to uncover as many prospects as possible as efficiently as possible, before each going their own ways in the later stages once they've narrowed down the list of potential targets. I wondered if it would work here. Obviously the natural reaction is what a crazy idea, helping your competitors identify targets, but clearly, even the rampant capitalist individualists in the richest league in the US have realised that due to the sheer size of the task it becomes if you want to do scouting properly, a bit of communist mutual co-operation does wonders.

Oy veh

Seriously, on what planet is it even remotely likely that Schteve McLaren will be issuing demands to Charnley who will then funnel them to Mike who will then say, yes, definitely, Schteve is such a hot property that I absolutely must repeat the same mistake I made last time and give him promises I know I won't keep, so he can shaft me in a tribunal 12 months down the line. On this issue, I'm inclined to believe fat Mike when he says, 'look guys, all I do is tell Charnley how much he can spend on getting a manager and how much he can then let that manager spend without selling first'. If it is Schteve, then I think you can bet your bottom dollar the interview lasted all of 5 minutes and consisted of McLaren simply saying yes a lot.

Rattled. Clearly a terrorist planning some kind of attack on the world's oil supply. When will these evil bastards learn? We are not afraid!

Hey CT, if you're half as interested in this lark as you seem to be, you should be able to answer this question. Are the odds of you hitting the jackpot while cow-bothering more or less than if you just went on a very long walk through the countryside to buy a lottery ticket?

WTF. Just WTF. Diamonds. And Triangles. Are they on the shirts now to remind the players how to play the game?

Shields is not a city. Where I live, and where you used to live, is a city. As far as I can tell, between the Irish and the convicts and the taxi drivers south of the river, it's only me and Gemmil on here who live close enough to SJP to be able to go to the game on a whim. If we had a ticket. Which we don't. Because we know the score. I guarantee you there'll be nothing worth watching at SJP next season, yet the season ticket deadline is fast approaching - you going to make your decision by then, or wait and get a half season ticket? There'll be plenty available.....

I think McLaren's job will entail trying to coach/train/motivate a bunch of players who were bought on the cheap and bought to be sold as soon as they show the slightest bit of talent. Y'know, like every other manager we've had since Ashley went all miser on us. I see nothing in McClaren's record in the PL that says he's about to launch us up the table without the sort of backing he got from Gibson, and I see nothing in Ashley's record that he's about to start backing this club even a tenth as much as Gibson did for t'Boro. It will be different only in so far as the name on the door will not be Coach Carver. Mark my words.

It's daft. I doubt if anyone even bothered to read that list it's so fucking long. As for asking people to choose Fosters over Carling (the only two cheap lagers in most pubs on this side of the Irish Sea), and then saying, well, you don't have to if you don't want to, each to their own, blah blah, the result of that's going to be pretty easy to predict. I'm with Gemmill - you want to hit Ashley in the pocket there's only two companies you need to avoid - SportsDirect.com and NUFC@SportsDirct.com. It's pretty easy to convey that message to supporters. If AO.come want to impact one of the sponsors with negative publicity, then for the love of Christ, choose the most fucking obvious one, the one with most to loose by being loudly associated with Mike Ashley's values and morals - Puma. And do something visible as well as simply telling people not buying their shit.

Watching the England game doesn't seem so much of a complete waste of time now.

I'm still wondering why he even wanted to know. Clearly keeping us all in suspense.....

Fucking hell, I missed this but stumbled upon the England Ireland game? There is no fucking justice in this world.

But I never said you said what you say I said you said. We both said it's an underwhelming appointment, we just appear to disagree on whether or not we should just accept it and hope he does well, or see it for what it arguably is. I never said you were excited about it, but if you're sensitive to people thinking you are.........maybe you secretly are! Dooof dooof doof doof doof /EastEnders cliffhanger

With the possible exception of snooker, which is pretty boring anyway, motorcycle road racing is surely the only sport that the Irish have made a significant contribution too that anyone else actually cares about ....so if you want some actual excitement today, then you need only tune in to the Isle of Man TT Superbike race highlights, tonight at 9pm on ITV4. It's fucking criminal that ITV won't televise something like that as gripping live sport (not even on ITV4, which is showing touring cars instead), yet they consider pointless friendlies like that turd they just served up as worthy of airing.

LOL. Just had to rewind it to check I'd seen it right, here's what ITV broadcast after the final whistle: adverts wilshere interview pundit panel clip of Hodgon's trademark facerub adverts tennis promo pundit panel Hodgson interview pundit panel trail for next weeks friendly and the touring cars end credits Anyone spot what's missing? Highlights! Can the Irish lads confirm what RTE did? Did you get a showreel? What's classed as a highlight in Irish football these days?

To be fair to ITV, they're not hiding about the fact the last 90 minutes they just broadcast was total shite, and you'd have been better off doing the DIY or something. Never seen the commentators/presenters/pundits look so embarrassed/underwhelmed. Still, I'm guessing it won't persuade them to stop paying the FA for it.

He's really not, he's trying to resurrect his career and he could very well do that simply by getting us to finish 10th, 9th and 8th, which the media and the club will then hail as progress. Any NUFC fan worth his salt has abandoned this ship long ago - and isn't getting back on until the captain has jumped ship. Really? Do you think we've been told the truth about the managerial recruitment process? Do you think we've scoured the Earth and come up with the manager who will put Ashley's sweet words of ambition and bolting the horse onto the cart into action, given all the financial resources we supposedly have at our disposal now? Do you think Ashley told the truth when he claimed he has no hand in picking the managers?

No, you really don't. You've got to see it for what it is, an underwhelming appointment that looks for all the world like it's simply designed to get enough fans like yourself to believe something will be different this time around about the way we train, play or manage injuries, or how much priority we give to cups, so they buy a ST. Surely it's been long enough for people to sit back and say, hang on a minute, we've been down this road before. Hope, optimism, and then crushing disappointment. By design. It's time to start demanding to see the goods before handing over the cash.