Mister Legend

Chapter 516 Recruitment Strategy
Coventry is less than 160 kilometers away from London. If you drive by yourself, you can get there in about 45 minutes.And if you take the train, because of the direction of the railway, it will not save much time, but it can save a lot of energy.As an excellent lazy cancer patient (except for taking care of his daughter), Li Moody's choice is obvious, and he still failed to get a driver's license.

As a male human being with a lot of money, he has no preference for cars since he was a child, and he even has some dislikes. He can be regarded as an outlier, so after he becomes an adult, he obviously has countless opportunities to obtain a driver's license, but It has never been considered, which is relatively rare in today's China where almost every post-[-]s generation can drive, and it is even more weird in Europe and the United States.

When coaching the Turin team, Moody Li hired a bodyguard and driver Forcina in order to facilitate his own travel, but when he left Italy, he terminated the contract normally, because the rest of the day was spent on a farm in Mallorca It is to travel around the world, no longer need a special driver.

However, the birth of his daughter changed what he thought had been deeply ingrained in his habits. Because he had to go to the business district to buy some baby products, and the paparazzi in the UK were so annoying, it was extremely inconvenient to take public transportation. , so Li Modi came up with the idea of ​​taking the test book.

It's just that the road test in this country is the most stringent in the world. Various regulations make the Arsenal coach who has never touched the steering wheel directly become mentally handicapped. Basically, he has been declared disqualified as soon as he hit the road.

According to unreliable rumors on the Internet, in 2010, 300 people in the UK took their tenth road test, and the final pass rate was less than one-third, which is very scary!No wonder Britain is one of the countries with the fewest traffic accidents in the world. It can be said that there are two completely different worlds from places where some road killers are rampant.

After three attempts, Li Moody officially announced that he had basically lost his life with such things as a driver's license, and began to consider recruiting a new driver. However, before, travel for longer journeys still had to rely on planes or trains.

After meeting with Raul who picked him up at the station, the two drove to the Coventry club's residence, and held a meeting with all senior management in the afternoon of the same day to discuss the team's first season after changing the boss behind the scenes. development plan.

Since Arsenal's running-in work should be completed as soon as possible, after providing some suggestions on signings to Hierro and others, Li Mudi never distracted from the operation of Coventry, because roughly The plan has been finalized in the previous several group exchanges, as long as it is carried out according to it.

However, the various problems in the actual operation are far from being well-prepared on paper. The difficulty of running a football club that is already mature in all aspects is naturally not as difficult as sitting in front of the computer and clicking the mouse. The game can be compared, after not seeing each other for more than a month, Li Modi can clearly see the deep tiredness on the faces of these old friends.

And from this meeting, he can also find very clearly that there is a lot of difference in business philosophy and courage between their new senior management of the club, which is composed of many Real Madrid celebrities, and the original staff of Coventry. There are some gaps, which make the club's development speed always in an unsatisfactory state, which somewhat makes Hierro and others who hope to make a big difference feel helpless.

Of course, these are not big problems. It is quite normal for Spaniards and Britons, new employees and old employees to have some problems in thinking and getting along with each other.Generally speaking, as the time of contact with each other increases, it is basically possible to coexist with crabs.Even in the worst case scenario, the CEO who is in charge of personnel power is hired after the new boss takes office, so he will naturally make adjustments.

So Li Moody didn't pay attention to these situations at all. His main purpose of coming here from London was to observe the strength of the team up close. In addition, he wanted to hear about the development progress of the club in terms of youth training.

As mentioned before, the competitive level of Coventry's first team is not outstanding. According to the predictions of the outside world, it is only about three or four places above the relegation circle.There are two main reasons for this result. One is that the team's hematopoietic ability is not strong. It has been cultivated in history-well, it seems that there have been no outstanding people in the ancestors, so embarrassing!The veteran team established since 1883, even without a famous star, is also drunk!
(PS: Robbie Keane was 19 years old when he joined Coventry when he debuted in the Wolves youth training; Sturridge only stayed in the Coventry U18 team for one year, so he is not eligible for the team's youth training Qualifications. It’s just that even if these two people can be regarded as cultivated by this team, this level is too low, and it’s tears to say too much.)
The second reason is the short-sightedness of the former club management. Although the youth training camp is already very bad, it is inevitable that there will be occasional blind cats and dead mice. It is still good to be able to sign some talents. seedlings.It’s just that Ray Ranson, the former chairman of Coventry City, and his team did not pay enough attention to those hard-won future stars. Under the temptation of other teams to spend a little bit of pounds, they easily let go of the ball the future of the team.

The most exasperating thing is that the departure of these good seedlings did not bring any decent returns to the Sky Blue Army, and it can even be said to be a serious "asset sale".

The versatile midfielder Charlie McCann, who was praised by the media as an "incredible football genius", was poached by Manchester United. Since the player under the age of 15 was transferred, the Red Devils only needed to pay a training fee; at the age of 19, he was firmly established The team's main midfielder, Ben Stevenson, was sold to the Wolves for a transfer fee of only 60 pounds; , the participating teams are the third to fifth level teams in England) in the final, scored the winning goal to help the team beat Oxford United to win the trophy young striker George Thomas, and even switched to Leicester City in a free capacity , Did not leave a penny to the old club.

In terms of transfer investment, Coventry has maintained a record of zero for five consecutive years. All new players are either free transfers or loaned from other teams. The difference in quality can be imagined.

I can't train a good youth training by myself, and occasionally there are a few players with better potential who can't keep it or don't want to keep it at all. In terms of signings, it is the most cost-effective operation method. The team's performance can be good. When I got up, I really went out of my way.

Therefore, after Li Moody became the actual owner of this team, the first thing he thought of was to follow the strategy he implemented when he coached the Turin team-while increasing investment in the club's youth training, he went to various places in England. First-level teams poach corners, and strive to use a large number of "second-hand goods" to respond to emergencies before their real youth players grow up.

It's just that although the plan is good, it is extremely difficult to operate in reality.

It’s okay to improve the quality of the youth training camp. As long as you can continue to pour money into it, the hardware facilities will soon reach world-class standards.As for the coaches, it's not too difficult. Hierro and others have enough connections in Spain, and with Li Moody's cheats, it's quite easy to hire some outstanding youth training coaches.The most troublesome thing is the selection of young players. After all, although the football population in the UK is among the highest in the world, the competition is fierce. It is still attractive to families who show their children.

Therefore, Li Moody has nothing to worry about in this aspect of development, there will always be a day of harvest, it's just that the time is sooner or later.

The problem that made him scratch his head actually appeared in the second plan, because he handed Hierro the name of all the English players in the scouting tool who are under the age of 21 and have a potential of more than 140. On the list, there are almost no successful "seduces", which makes it difficult for the new Gunners coach who has been invincible in this regard before.

However, after careful consideration of the environment they are currently facing, he cannot vent the dissatisfaction suppressed in his heart, because the difficulties that this work needs to face are far beyond his previous estimation.

If we say that the distribution of the potential monsters in Italian football today is: Juventus dominates, Torino catches up, Milan duo remains stable, other teams attach great importance to it, and if they want to poach corners, they must spend a lot of real money In terms of silver, the situation in the UK is basically the same. The young players with excellent development prospects are basically in the hands of several Premier League giants, especially the five giants of Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea. hands of the club.The difference is that before the above-mentioned teams completely give up those young players, it is difficult for others to poach corners successfully.

得益于各家俱乐部经营理念的改变和足协各种有利政策的出台，英格兰各级国家青年队自2016年起就成为了冠军收集者，先后夺得了一届U20世界杯冠军、两届U19欧洲杯冠军、一届U17世界杯冠军和一届U17欧洲杯冠军，可以说是统治了21岁一下年龄段的世界足坛。

Including Manchester City midfielder Ben Knight, central midfielder Tommy Doer, forward Bobby Duncan, Liverpool midfielder Curtis Jones, midfielder Matt O'Leary and other teenagers in the FM system The potential value has reached 160 or even more than 170, not to mention Joe Gomez, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Josh Timon, who have already gained a solid position in their respective teams and gradually began to transform into star status And young talents such as Callum Gribbin.

The teams with these good seedlings basically adopt an extreme protection policy. Even those weaker teams will not choose to easily sell such future cores unless the giants come up with a very considerable transfer fee. Membership fee, otherwise, I would rather sell it at a high price after cultivating myself.

The reason why Coventry's strategy of attracting other team demons ended in failure for the time being was mainly because they could not come up with a transfer fee that could impress other clubs.In addition, the situation of temporarily living in the third-level league is not very attractive to the players themselves and the teams they belong to. Even if they want to implement a plan to rent out a few potential stocks and wait for an opportunity to buy them out, they fall through because the other party looks down on them. .

After more than a month, only two teenagers with a potential value of around 145 have become members of the Sky Blue Army's youth training camp. This was only achieved by Hierro's acquisition at a premium.This reality forced Li Moody, who was leading Arsenal in the pre-season warm-up match, to change his previous plan, and turned his attention to attracting potential demons to places other than the British Isles.

Affected by the household registration and labor certification policies implemented by the Premier League, as early as 2008, the transfer value of British local players has almost doubled on the basis of the original high.In addition, after Brexit in 2016, the FA made new adjustments to the foreign aid policy of the league, which made the transaction price of local players move towards the direction of breaking through the sky, which directly caused the number of foreign aid in low-level leagues to increase rapidly. , because small teams can hardly afford British players.

Different from the "account book" policy of the top leagues, teams below the English Championship are much more relaxed in terms of foreign aid restrictions. Before 2019, it was stipulated that these teams do not need to submit a full-season roster, but only the first start of each game. Of the 11 players and the 7 substitutes, there must be at least 6 "hukou books", which means that if conditions permit, they can have an unlimited number of non-British players.

However, since last summer, the Football Association has revised this rule, increasing the number of "hukou book" to 8 people, which in disguise has strengthened the restrictions on the use of foreign aid by these teams, but there is still no way to introduce foreign aid. Make changes.

With this in mind, Li Mudi decided to get rid of the few foreign players in the Coventry team and replace them with a new batch of promising foreign players. This can strengthen the team's talent pool, Make up for the vacancies that local talents cannot come in large numbers.

Specifically, on the one hand, the team's future performance can be guaranteed, and on the other hand, it can be cashed out at an appropriate time to earn a huge price difference and provide sufficient funds for subsequent localization.

This strategy is obviously a curve-saving method adopted by Li Moody in desperation. In the environment where the Premier League's restrictions on foreign aid will only become more stringent, he must pave the way for the team's lineup after rushing to the Premier League in the future.Otherwise, once the FA will implement a labor certification policy for all non-British players in the future, as expected by the media, Coventry, which is unable to compete with those giants in a short period of time and meets the requirements for introduction, can only temporarily rely on It would be too passive to be supported by the remaining "All England Class" selected by the giants.

So for the day that may or may not come, the transfer strategy of the Celestial Blues began in an unusual way in the summer of 2020.And it was in this general environment that foreign teenagers who were recognized as having great potential in the FM system began to arrive at the team's training base, including Li, who had already represented the Chinese Men's Football Senior Team once. Tamron.

　Thanks to book friend yywz520 for the monthly ticket, thank you!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)