"You can't win anything with kids", Alan Hansen once claimed, only for Sir Alex Ferguson's young Manchester United side to prove him wrong in 1996 by taking out the FA Cup and the English Premier League. That said, Manchester United teams of late have favoured spending and good recruitment over the promotion of youth - and you only need to look to teams like Chelsea and Manchester City to see how far that spending can go.
In the salary-capped A-League, spending isn't quite as much of an issue - but you can still see big differences in the way teams go about their business. Take the Queensland-come-Brisbane Roar for example; they've always had an eye on promoting youth to their first team; they've even trialled and played several ex-Perth youngsters. As for spending on marquee players, well last year's grand final between Brisbane and Central Coast didn't even feature an overseas marquee man on the pitch.
This is a bit of a contrast then to their southern neighbours, Gold Coast United. Backed by a man with very deep pockets, they have tended to splash the cash for big names and big results. Finishing in the finals for their first two years, you could argue that it was worth it - but it did fall a bit short of their aim of winning the title. There's some pricey talent that has walked through the doors of the GCU changeroom, too; Jason Culina, Shane Smeltz, Bruce Djite, Joel Porter, Jess Van Stratten, several Brazilians, Charlie Miller, the list goes on. Owner Clive Palmer spent up big, filled up all the marquee spots available, and pretty much declared his intention to buy the title. In the end though, it didn't quite work. Now there's a new feeling at GCU - to take the kids from their title-winning National Youth League side and play them in the seniors - a cheaper approach, but one that can also build future returns - assuming that GCU have a future at all.
However, Clive's big spending did have a lot more success than Perth Glory's. In 2009/10, Tony Sage gave coach David Mitchell a war chest with which to build a squad that could make the finals and challenge for a title. In came Mile Sterjovski, Jacob Burns, Chris Coyne, Victor Sikora, Branko Jelic, Steve McGarry, and other players from outside Western Australia. All were paid handsomely for their services. The end result? The club just scraped into the finals, in a very unconvincing manner, and promptly went out at the first hurdle.
Sage made it clear that he expected more last season; and with his assistant Ian Ferguson, Mitchell brought in Robbie Fowler to fill the extra marquee spot created by the FFA, alongside more eastern states imports in the form of Josh Mitchell and Michael Baird. The result? An unmitigated disaster. Mitchell was pushed to Technical Director and eventually out of the door, and Ferguson took up the reins on a season that went from bad to worse - only the now-defunct North Queensland Fury sparing Glory's blushes. Ferguson did end up trying some young West Aussie youth, but only because by that stage the season was well and truly over- a token gesture more than anything.
Now Perth look set to do it all again in 2011-12. Once more Tony Sage has taken out his wallet, and once more Glory have recruited mostly from the eastern states and overseas. A look at the incoming players shows the extent to our non-local bias:
- Liam Miller, Celtic
- Dean Heffernan, Melbourne Heart / China
- Travis Dodd, Adelaide
- Adam Hughes, Adelaide
- Danny Vukovic, Wellington
- Neil Young, Newcastle
- Shane Smeltz, Gold Coast
- Evan Berger, Melbourne Victory
- (Rumoured) Bas van den Brink, Gold Coast / Korea
That's nearly a brand new starting eleven - and of these signings, only Neil Young can claim to be a West Aussie. Perth have also looked locally - Jesse Makarounas is a young AIS signing from WA, and we've also promoted young Josh Risdon from the youth team. But overall it is once again a semi-annual cleanout of the Glory playing cupboard, with a few cobwebs from previous years still with contracts left to run. We saw this under Ron Smith, we saw this under his assistant David Mitchell, and now we're seeing it once more under his assistant Ian Ferguson. Whilst it is only fair to give Fergie a chance this year - it's not his fault that someone decided to keep him on, after all - you must wonder if the "cultural change" espoused by Glory during the Hatt/Charlesworth review was anything more than hot air; after all, it could be argued that the club is just doing the same thing, all over again. Looking at it logically, why should we therefore expect results any different to previous attempts?
Many pundits would point to last year's grand final as a perfect example of how to operate recruitment in the current A-League environment; no expensive international marquees (Fowler, Bridges), a few youngsters brought up through the ranks and able to make a difference on matchday (Nichols, Amini, Ryan), and select players brought in from outside to add a touch more class (Broich, Solorzano) without breaking the bank. What's more, coaches Graham Arnold and Ange Postecoglou seemed to recruit players to fit a system, rather than try and impose a system on a group of individual players - much like what David Mitchell's years were like at Perth Glory.
Once again though Glory have marquees in Smeltz and Sterjovski, and a squad whose average age and speed must be on the more undesirable half of the competition average. In fact, if you assume the Van Der Brink rumour to be true and we play a 4-2-3-1 as signalled by Ferguson so far, going by his historical preferences his ideal lineup would look something like this (all ages as of October 2011):
---------------------------Vukovic(26)----------------------------
Neville(22)-----Coyne(32)---VDB(29)---Heffernan(31)
--------------------Burns(33)----Hughes(29)-----------------
-------Dodd(31)----------Miller(30)--------------Sikora(33)
-----------------------------Smeltz(30)---------------------------
Depending on whether Sterjovski or Dodd plays on that right side, the average age of the squad is between 29.6 and 29.7 - and irrelevant to which one of those two are picked, there are only 2 WA-based players in the starting eleven. Dump out young Scott Neville and all of a sudden it would look even worse. This is an interesting segue to some of the recommendations of the aforementioned Hatt/Charlesworth review:
"There is no doubt that recruitment over the past two years has been largely unsuccessful."
"More needs to be done in the recruitment area to guard against the presence of players who simply seek a superannuated end to their careers."
Recommendations:
· Look beyond and outside traditional ‘networks', which have not worked in the past,
· With all things being equal the club should look first at youth and where possible Western Australian youth when making a recruitment decision and where appropriate err on the side of speed and agility (tested from a reliable source such as AIS, WAIS, VIS etc),
Where are Glory's traditional networks? Eastern states clubs, and the UK / Ireland. Where have we recruited from this year? Uh... Well...
The more you look at the squad, the more you think - well, this might be alright on paper, but does it really bode well for the future? Is it part of a long-term plan? If Glory do make the finals, then what? Do we buy again the next year, or do we assume the time spent in the reserves will make our 16-20 year olds ready for the rigours of A-League football? It gives the appearance of a bought-for-purpose team, rather than a planned one - and that will worry Perth fans who have seen the same thing year in, year out in the A-League.
I'd love, just love, Glory to come out with an angry denial of this fact in a press release- and list the concrete reasons why that argument doesn't stand up. But sadly, I don't think that will happen. Perth fans face the very real possibility of this all being hot air all over again, and when - sadly, I don't allow myself the luxury of 'if' anymore - this attempt to buy the title fails, what will they do next? Travis Dodd is on a three year deal; so is Shane Smeltz. Maybe Feguson's assistant will like Burns and sign him up for another couple of seasons (because you know the job will go to the assistant, it's just how things work)? We just don't know.
Perth's rapport with fans has improved a fair bit this year thanks to a lot more interaction through their Facebook and twitter accounts. But if the club want to be taken seriously this year - and get a bit of positivity back into the minds of their fans - it's going to take a lot more than a few tweets to do so. It's one thing to make a bunch of promises and hype up a season - it's another thing entirely to deliver it on the field.
And it doesn't matter how much money Tony Sage throws at this problem; if the bloke spending it and managing those new resources doesn't come up with the goods, then it'll be cash down the plughole for the third season running.
