Daniel Wales and Charles Hague-Jones discuss Bristol City selling prized assets to finance a squad rebuild.
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00:00Dan, looking at Bristol Rovers and sort of their, historically, their sort of transfer
00:06strategy, you know, it's been come out that they had to sell a lot of homegrown talent
00:11to succeed in the Championship, but not really managed to even go higher than where they
00:16were before in the Championship. So it's sort of a difficult situation for them. What do
00:22you make and what do the fans sort of feel around this and the way things have gone with
00:27their ownership and their transfer strategy as of late? Because, you know, you have January
00:31coming up and Bristol City could look like a side who certainly could do with a few assets
00:37from that window. They are running out of assets personally as well for them. They tend
00:42to become this club where, you know, as soon as a player breaks through, he's sort of being
00:48sold on to a top echelon Championship side or even a Premier League side as well. So
00:53how do you look at where they are and where their sort of strategy has been with transfers
00:57over the last few years and what needs to actually improve in order for the team to
01:02go on and do better things as well?
01:06It's hard to say, though, because, of course, I think what they've done with some of the
01:08homegrown talent they've had, such as Antoine Semenu, Tommy Conway and Alex Scott, is they've
01:14not held these players back even when they've outgrown the club. Of course, you've got Semenu
01:19now playing straight at Bournemouth week in, week out and scoring goals and playing well
01:22in the Premier League. Tommy Conway went to Middlesbrough and then Alex Scott as well.
01:27He joined Bournemouth too. So it's hard because, as I say, you don't want to hold these players
01:32back. But at the same time, if you still had those players in the team right now, you could
01:35be really challenging up towards the top of the Championship. I mean, the technical director,
01:42Brian Tinnian, he said that, look, they had to be sold because, as I say, you didn't want
01:48also because you could get some decent money from them as well. And that's important because
01:53then it helps to develop the club and helps to finance a rebuild for the whole squad as well.
01:59And that is important because, to be honest, Bristol City have established themselves as a
02:03solid mid-table Championship side since they got into the league. But the last time they
02:08reached the playoffs in the Championship was 2008. It's that long ago and that's,
02:13for a club that clearly has ambition, that's not good enough.
02:17Now, the head coach, Liam Manning, he was quoting and saying that
02:21they want to try and follow a similar model to the Brentford model that we see in the Premier
02:24League where, yes, they will have to sell some of their prize assets at times, but that's for
02:28the greater good in the sense that it will finance rebuilds of the squad and you can then bring in
02:33players to fill the positions where perhaps they need it. And eventually, gradually, the whole
02:37squad will improve and you might then gradually, season upon season, get to where you want to be.
02:43It's a long process. Of course, it did, in the end, work for Brentford and has stabilised
02:47Brentford in the Premier League. But it must be a bit frustrating for fans of the Robins though
02:52because, of course, year upon year, they're not really achieving much and, as I say,
02:55the last playoffs they reached was 2008 and that needs to improve.