New Signing

To be announced tonight according to Twitter. Anyone else excited? No, just me.

I was at the club earlier and held the door open for a player I didn't recognise so maybe it was him. Think he said "thanks" so if anything at least he has manners.

It's Naby Diallo from Aldershot and formerly WsM!

Just had to have an Wsm connection. Where does he play?

midfield apparently.

Aldershot fans seem sorry he has left...

http://www.shotsweb.co.uk/mb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38283

One fan described him as a "promising younger player that had energy and a bit of pace". What, like Ross Stearn and Dan Bowman?
Are we releasing anyone? Do we have new injury concerns?
Given we have had a nice run and seem (and I know there's plenty of season left) to be heading for a safe finish to the season, can we afford the luxury of new players just to fill the bench - a role the management seem reluctant to put our own academy players in?

We rarely seem to have a bench that has more than 3 plus Rollo so it would seem we do need more depth. Good time to be strengthening for the Wembley and play off push !

Eddie Hitler wrote:One fan described him as a "promising younger player that had energy and a bit of pace". What, like Ross Stearn and Dan Bowman?
Are we releasing anyone? Do we have new injury concerns?
Given we have had a nice run and seem (and I know there's plenty of season left) to be heading for a safe finish to the season, can we afford the luxury of new players just to fill the bench - a role the management seem reluctant to put our own academy players in?

Is Ross a candidate?

He does not SEEM to be flavour of the month.

Luton Roman wrote:We rarely seem to have a bench that has more than 3 plus Rollo so it would seem we do need more depth. Good time to be strengthening for the Wembley and play off push !

That's it. Even if everyone is fit and available we basically have a squad of 16 plus Jim.

How is he being paid for? We have already brought McCootie in this season which I was surprised about given the gnashing of teeth at the start of the season about the budget. Obviously the bars are doing well. Keep drinking people.

Hopefully it won't mean we ship anyone out. I had a dream last night that this move meant that we sold Andy Watkins to Chelmsford, who awarded him a three-year contract.

As soon as "three-year contract" was mentioned I knew it wasn't real. Only Ebbsfleet would offer such a deal in our league.

We've netted £15k in Trophy prize money with possibly almost as much again in our share of all the gate money so while I realise that helps defray expenditure, it should be additional monies with which to play.

It says on Facebook that the deal was possible due to a donation to the club.

I'd like to thank this person/company whoever they maybe for this kind gesture. Hopefully he'll fit in well with the rest of the lads and we can start winning on a more consistent basis, starting with Staines tomorrow!

My thoughts on bringing in players from other clubs is fine, provided they are better than what we have already got or it's felt that they can in the long term produce for BCFC. Otherwise, the club has got to be seen to be introducing more of the development set up to the 1st team squad. I was told only yesterday that the problem this season is that these youngsters have had very little competitive football this season and wouldn't be able to handle the step up. If other local clubs face a similar problem, perhaps there is a need for them to solve it by creating a competition for next season.

I am always dubious about any assertion that someone wouldn't be able to handle the step up. Some will and some won't but it cannot possibly be a blanket - they all won't.

It is probably a euphemism for - Not Good Enough.

It is an interesting philosophical debate. If you have a big squad then you are likely to have some (relatively)poorer players in it. The youth are therefore likely to make a reasonable comparison to some of them. If you a have a trimmed down squad it is less likely the youth will be up to the same standard.

The jump from Academy to First Team is enormous. We're playing Staines on Saturday and going through their pen-pics an awful lot of their players recently are those that have progressed from youth/reserve football at the club. Looking at their position in the table it hasn't benefited them as yet.

I just don't think we can say "oh he looked good against Shepton, he deserves a chance in the first team". I'm not knocking those in the Academy setup at all, I saw some pretty useful footballers last year when I regularly went along. In the past I can't think of many, if any, occasions where we've let a player go after leaving the Academy and they've gone on to flourish at a much higher level. The only ones I can think of are Yan Klukowski but think he went to USA on his own accord and joined Forest Green when he returned, and Will Puddy, who has played a few games in the Conference despite the fact that I think he's prone to the odd mistake.

that's the difference between a good coach and a good manager.

In my opinion too few managers improve players through their coaching, they merely manage what they've got. Having said this what a manager wants from a player is not necessarily the same as what a fan wants.

Yes, the jump from academy to 1st team is enormous and I was not suggesting that those youngsters should leap frog those in the under 21 set up. A great amount of time, effort and money has been invested in setting up the various levels below the 1st team. I wouldn't expect the club to publicly target how many should be coming through each season (as Keats and Bowman have done) but surely there needs to be proof that the system is working.

sorry - I'm confused. I thought the players that played against Shepton were U21s not kids. If they were kids where were the U21s? if the kids did alright against Shepton how would the U21s perform?

Going back to our new signing, I read in the chronic that the management wanted to sign Naby 2 years ago - and would guess monitoring his progress. Now which player does that remind you of???