A couple of questions for SM.

[Jonathan]

The latest reported quote from AB is that he wants a squad players that belong to the club .I think the danger of an interim manager changing the model so fundamentally is a mistake and hopefully it is not the end of us taking top loanees .

The quote only tells half the story. He wants a core of contracted players that want to be here (and I agree with him) and then supplement that with some high calibre loanees. Makes perfect sense to me and preferable to how we’ve ended up this season with more loanees than we can put in the squad, and amongst them some mediocrity if we’re honest.

The full interview is linked on the Football Heaven Twitter account.

I don’t think anyone is arguing with the benefit of bringing in players like Smith, Richards, TJJ and Sims (first spell) on loan.

[Chris Black come back]

It’s a fractured, messy season I know but who have been our consistently best players?

James. Anderson. Copps. Bostock to a lesser extent. We own them all.

Loan players are excellent but it is not them dragging the permanent players along.

[dickos1]

I love copps but I’m struggling to be able to find an arguement to suggest he’s had a better season for us than sims

[drfchound]

Copps hasn’t had as much game time as Sims has he.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

I love copps but I’m struggling to be able to find an arguement to suggest he’s had a better season for us than sims

Whilst I don't disagree, have we overinflated sims' impact somewhat? Our best run came after he got injured and his impact upon return has been pretty poor.

I do like him absolutely, but would and should we make him the main guy, top earner etc?  Not sure.

[Michael Shaw]

I would be surprised if the board are not already considering possible replacements for DM. AB might have the job until the end of the season, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have another in place ready for pre-season. Much as we all love AB he is not an experienced manager with the right contacts to put in quality loan signings. Even AB can’t understand the current fall-off in team performance, but if it continues the chances of AB getting the job fulltime will diminish as the season goes on.

On the subject of loan signings, the board said at a previous Meet The Owners night that statistics showed that most teams who got promoted had around 7 loan signings, so that was to be our target.

[BobG]

That final paragraph, Michael Shaw, is an extremely interesting snippet. Thank you.

BobG

[NickDRFC]

That final paragraph, Michael Shaw, is an extremely interesting snippet. Thank you.

BobG

I've just looked this up as it seemed unlikely to me and it's certainly not true in any of the last 3 seasons. The average for the 9 clubs promoted over that period is 5, with only 1 having 7 (Charlton in 2018/19), although they only had 5 at any one time and 2 of them didn't make a single appearance.

I'm not trying to decry our use of the loan system, but suggesting that recently successful clubs at our level loan as many players as we have (if the board did indeed suggest that) is misleading.

[RoversAlias]

I was gonna say, surely that comment that Michael mentioned came from a MTO event from a few years ago, before they abolished the short-term loans system?

I can't think of another team in our league who have elected to go over the loan limit as a strategy like Darren Moore has. I am all for utilising the loan system but he took it too far and having 7 on the books at once is largely pointless, even if injuries mean you only have 4-5 available at a time.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

I was gonna say, surely that comment that Michael mentioned came from a MTO event from a few years ago, before they abolished the short-term loans system?

I can't think of another team in our league who have elected to go over the loan limit as a strategy like Darren Moore has. I am all for utilising the loan system but he took it too far and having 7 on the books at once is largely pointless, even if injuries mean you only have 4-5 available at a time.

No, I remember it. It was only fairly recently when basically, they were supporting the manager, Can't remember if it was McCann or Moore, when challenged about the number of loans being used.

I don't think GB for one minute was stipulating that we should always go with 6 or 7 loans but was saying it can work.

I'm pretty sure the board will not be that specific and will allow the manager of the day to recruit as he sees fit but acknowledging like most of us do, the benefits of utilising good young talent from Premier league clubs. .

[Chris Black come back]

In theory the McCann model sounds best, where 2-3 top quality loans add to a strong permanent spine. That feels right....

...but Gavin rightly talks about “try before you buy” which is not so easy if you want to convince a young lad to come on loan and can’t really offer them much more than bench time as you have a permanent core you don’t want to disrupt.

[GazLaz]

Rotherham’s wage bill in their L1 promotion season was £5.8m according to their accounts. I’d say that is double ours.

[roversdude]

Did Rotherham have a parachute payment

[eastender]

Did Rotherham have a parachute payment

No, only relegated Premiership teams get parachute payments.

[ravenrover]

Perhaps the decision to go for 7 loans was to do with Covid? Trying to keep the wage bill down with no income?

[sedwardsdrfc]

Think it’s been said that the extent we’ve used the loan market this season is a DM thing. We did the same last year thinking about it so makes sense.

[ravenrover]

Poor memory from me, how many did we have last season?

[sedwardsdrfc]

Can’t remember exactly but I’m sure we had the situation where we couldn’t name one in the squad.

Off the top of my head we had the following; Sheaf, Dieng, John, Ennis, Lokilo and Ramsey

[Chris Black come back]

Daniels and Sterling.

[5 on Tour]

Does Sterling really count? He was only fit for half an hour while we had him.

[Chris Black come back]

I don't think Moore cancelled the loan for a long time. Maybe in January and then season collapsed in February.

[steve@dcfd]

Can’t remember exactly but I’m sure we had the situation where we couldn’t name one in the squad.

Off the top of my head we had the following; Sheaf, Dieng, John, Ennis, Lokilo and Ramsey

That’s correct we had six loanees and it was at a meet the owners meeting while DM was manager that Gavin said about 7 loanees.

[RoversAlias]

I stand corrected in that case, fair enough. Quite surprised by that comment but it doesn't seem to track with reality.

[Michael Shaw]

It was certainly Gavin that made the statement about the number of loans. Had it been a manager who said it the policy could have changed along with managers, but coming from Gavin it is more likely to be a policy that still applies now. It probably was 2 or 3 years ago as we didn't have a MOTO last year.