Full Retained / Released List: Signed New Deal: Radhi Jaidi - 1 year Contract Automatically Renewed: Danny Butterfield - 1 Year Aaron Martin - 1 Year Dan Harding - 1 Year To Discuss New Contract: David Connolly Oscar Gobern Released: Anthony Pulis Sam Argent Tony Garrod Callum McNish Ryan Tafazolli
Happy with that and can see why Connolly and Gobern are being considered. Maybe pay as you play deals?
well it shows that NC is not messing around.. looking at this.. shifting the dead wood, putting contracts in place that minimises wage spend.. and extending fringe players by a year.. to me that shows real promise with this club going forward.. Oh the joys of being a saint
In their early days, McNish, Argent & Tafazolli we had big hopes for the future for, must have gone wrong somewhere along the lines for them, perhaps they didn't develop as much as predicted?
Not very surprising and to be honest the 1 year deals for those 3 defenders are ideal, even though they were automatic. If they don't play/perform/get injured/replaced then they can leave next season for free.
Some of those released might get picked up by clubs lower down the leagues and maybe make a modest living out of football. I thought Argent was supposed to be quite good, but not good enough obviously. Pretty happy with the retained list.
I personally think Martin is going to be used a lot more this season. The reason I think this is because more and more towards the end of the season, Adkins brung Martin on with 20 or so minuted to go, usually when we were winning. Now, to me, this is showing me that Adkins is trying to bring Martin on in no-risk situations so he has confidence when he plays. His confidence might have been shot after his run in the team at the start of the season, Under Wilkins.
I would 100% loan Martin out this season. Be good for him to get a full season of 1st team action under his belt.
Lack of opportunity is what happened to them. When Poortivelt and Wotte were in charge, Argent and Mcnish were considered for 1st team opportunities, and their talent was seen by them. After they left it all changed and they were thrown back a few steps and slowed down their development, almost rightly as we needed promotion, and got lots of money so we could bring in players. However, I fully believe Argent and Mcnish will find their way into a league 2 team and then progress their footballing careers because whats obvious is that they both still have a lot of talent.
I do know that McNish was highly thought of by Pardew though, he went to Switzerland with the 1st team squad, was named in the travelling squad for away games, made a couple of sub appearences as well under Pardew, who clearly thought he was good enough, but I do think lack of oppurtunites (at 1st team and U21 level) have damaged these players this season
Only Schneiderlin and Lallana came out of the Poortvliet/Wotte mess as better players and they were climbing the ladder from the start. We're a Championship team and we just have to accept that a lot of academy lads aren't Championship players. I'm all for bringing players through, but they need to be good enough and the situation has to be right. If we're sitting pretty in mid-table towards the end of the season, that would be a good time. A battle at either end of the table isn't the best time to be giving trial runs to kids with no experience of the tempo of first team football.