I don't understand the love for Roos and his list management approach around here. Cross did his job in 2014 but faded towards the end and will be gone by the end of 2015.

Yeah a broken leg will slow you down a bit won't it....well probably not you,, superman but most mere mortals would struggle...

Suggest you check the B&F results to show you what the club think of his performance.

I have some concerns about how MFC is handling the upcoming trade period.

We all remember the famous 'moneyball' trade period of 2012 where we lost players Moloney, Rivers, Martin, Gysberts and Petterd and brought in Dawes, Byrnes, Rohan, Pedersen and Gillies. Since then, Dawes has been underwhelming, Gillies delisted whilst Byrnes and Rodan have already retired.

It appears now that we may be undertaking another 'moneyball' trade period. Merrett, Lumumba, Frost? Two of these players are past their primes just as Byrnes and Rohan were and Frost looms as a potential Pedersen or Gillies comparison, meaning he could either improve and contribute well or fall away.

Note as well that all these players are usually played in defence. Roos has also made it very public that our improvement needs to come from the midfield so I am a bit confused by this. Some have posted on here that this is all smokes and mirrors for our real targets, I am not so sure.

Don't get me wrong I am glad we are targeting players with experience, we obviously cannot recruit only 18 year olds. But I was beginning to wonder if our excitement of having Paul Roos as coach is leading us to believe that "we know what we are doing this time round, its a new board" etc etc. but is this strategy really going to work?

I think we need to back ourselves in to only get these players if the deal is right and not payer overs because we are desperate for senior experience (for example I would argue that pick 22 for Lumumba is paying overs). If these players come cheaply then I understand our attraction but I am not so sure they will. Otherwise, I would rather see us go to the draft and back MFC to mould them into strong players of the future. Even if this means trading down picks so there is less pressure on the players (trade pick 2 to gold coast for picks 7 and 14) as all the media seems to indicate that the players in the 5 - 15 range are all of a similar standard and could go anywhere.

Just confirming I am very happy with Paul Roos and PJ but just a bit concerned.

Thoughts?

Edit: spelling

Moneyball is risk versus reward. Dawes aside what did Pederson, Byrnes, Rodan and Gilles cost us?

I have some concerns about how MFC is handling the upcoming trade period.

We all remember the famous 'moneyball' trade period of 2012 where we lost players Moloney, Rivers, Martin, Gysberts and Petterd and brought in Dawes, Byrnes, Rohan, Pedersen and Gillies. Since then, Dawes has been underwhelming, Gillies delisted whilst Byrnes and Rodan have already retired.

It appears now that we may be undertaking another 'moneyball' trade period. Merrett, Lumumba, Frost? Two of these players are past their primes just as Byrnes and Rohan were and Frost looms as a potential Pedersen or Gillies comparison, meaning he could either improve and contribute well or fall away.

Note as well that all these players are usually played in defence. Roos has also made it very public that our improvement needs to come from the midfield so I am a bit confused by this. Some have posted on here that this is all smokes and mirrors for our real targets, I am not so sure.

Don't get me wrong I am glad we are targeting players with experience, we obviously cannot recruit only 18 year olds. But I was beginning to wonder if our excitement of having Paul Roos as coach is leading us to believe that "we know what we are doing this time round, its a new board" etc etc. but is this strategy really going to work?

I think we need to back ourselves in to only get these players if the deal is right and not payer overs because we are desperate for senior experience (for example I would argue that pick 22 for Lumumba is paying overs). If these players come cheaply then I understand our attraction but I am not so sure they will. Otherwise, I would rather see us go to the draft and back MFC to mould them into strong players of the future. Even if this means trading down picks so there is less pressure on the players (trade pick 2 to gold coast for picks 7 and 14) as all the media seems to indicate that the players in the 5 - 15 range are all of a similar standard and could go anywhere.

Just confirming I am very happy with Paul Roos and PJ but just a bit concerned.

Thoughts?

Edit: spelling

I don't know why we want Merrett he's 30. I don't like recruiting players past it see Rodan & Brynes - we pinched Collingwood's recruiter no 2 we should let him show if he can select young talent coming into the system rather than players that are near the end for experience.

if you look at the three best players for hawks in GF - Hodge (30), Mitchell (32) and Lewis (28).

They are all experienced midfielders. With limits on runners, and speed of game you need experienced players on every line, and especially in the middle.

Moneyball is finding statistical value in players that other teams don't rate and then bringing them in for cheap and having them exceed expectations. It has no place in describing our 2012 recruiting.

What we know is:

- Our list sucks. At least 8 or so spots (Clark, Frawley, Byrnes, Nicholson, Strauss, Blease, Tapscott, ?Evans) will be need to be filled and we only have 1 rookie upgrade in Jetta. We can then use extra rookie spots but committing to more lower paid players isn't really backing yourself in.

We have 2, 20,42,60, 80 PSD pick 2 plus the assets brought in by Clark's trade and Frawley's free agency compensation.

It's still a pretty young (though no longer that young) list and definitely an inexperienced list. We are losing the 2 experienced players. Given all that and Roos' philosophies and game style it would be crazy not to get some experienced players in with the draft picks.

Neeld went for keeping most of the draft picks (or spinning them in to Hogan). Plus trading for Dawes. The rest of the high currency he mainly spend on 18 year olds (Viney, Toumpas, Kent, Barry). He's then used late picks in the draft (M. Jones and Terlich), made a trade for Pedersen and brought in Byrnes, Rodan and Gillies for very low cost. In the end he paid peanuts for the depth experienced players and spent the top picks on a bunch of kids as well as Dawes (who has disappointed but not been horrible). How this gets labelled moneyball I don't know.

Lumumba and Frost would both be good options and if we could some how secure them for the price of whatever we trade out Clark for and for a mid/latter pick then that would still be preserving our draft position. You give up a little but you get much more guaranteed results. Then we use our top picks either on kids or on true class players.

Smart recruiting not denying yourself options based on principles of keeping all your picks or spending this pick or that pick is probably the right thing to do. I'll be happy if every decision we make seems to hold good value and if we get the balance between experienced players and keeping high draft picks.

He's a bloody teacher with time on his hands!

Takes one to know one.

We got pick 23 as compo for Sylvia and traded it on for Bernie. Hard to complain about that. You could argue pick 23 was steep for Vince (I don't think so) but by the same token pick 23 was generous for Sylvia (even before he bombed in Freo). I'm stoked it worked out, Bernie has been very useful. For the record the Crows then took Matt Crouch at 23. Doesn't look like there's an obvious miss in the draft that beats Vince.

In terms of what we could have traded 23 for instead, other roughly similar trades in 2013 (i.e. pick for player):

Bulldogs got Crameri with 26.

West Coast got Elliot Yeo with 28.

Richmond got Shaun Hampson with 32.

Carlton got Sam Docherty with 33.

GWS got Mummy with 35.

Edited October 1, 201410 yr by G-max

We got pick 23 as compo for Sylvia and traded it on for Bernie. Hard to complain about that. You could argue pick 23 was steep for Vince (I don't think so) but by the same token pick 23 was generous for Sylvia (even before he bombed in Freo). I'm stoked it worked out, Bernie has been very useful. For the record the Crows then took Matt Crouch at 23. Doesn't look like there's an obvious miss in the draft that beats Vince.

In terms of what we could have traded 23 for instead, other roughly similar trades in 2013 (i.e. pick for player):

Bulldogs got Crameri with 26.

West Coast got Elliot Yeo with 28.

Richmond got Shaun Hampson with 32.

Carlton got Sam Docherty with 33.

GWS got Mummy with 35.

Mummy, Crameri and Yeo might be better deals but they weren't want we needed nor were they available to us. We needed Vince to get a level of confidence in the midfield.

I'm not sure we need Lumumba so much for the same pick.

TWO comments -

1. Moneyball under Neeld is probably very different to moneyball under Paul Roos.

2. Tom Gillies...

Competitive types who can play for 8-10 years would be great .

If we get Harry O, Merrett, Frost and use our early picks on mids hopefully this is the last year for a while that we have to have a massive clearance. It seems over the past couple of years we are moving on 10-11 players. Hopefully next year we might just target 1 player and go to the draft with our picks having moved on 4-5 players.

Edited October 1, 201410 yr by Al's Demons

If we get Harry O, Merrett, Frost and use our early picks on mids hopefully this is the last year for a while that we have to have a massive clearance. It seems over the past couple of years we are moving on 10-11 players. Hopefully next year we might just target 1 player and go to the draft with our picks having moved on 4-5 players.

Might take another little clear out but nothing like we've had to. But definitely along these lines as you suggest