An Evening with Josh Kennard & Karl Hancock - A Breakdown

I've been to plenty of fan forums over the years supporting the Alex. Never have I gone to one that featured the head of recruitment/technical director and a director that wasn't the chairman/deputy chairman. So first of all, credit to the Railwaymen Supporters Group and the club for arranging the evening and making it free to attend. Also, credit to Josh Kennard and Karl Hancock for generously giving up their Friday evening to come and give some insight on a previously unseen area of the club and taking questions from the floor. There was a lot of insightful information that they both provided, some of which I will discuss below.

No recruitment system

The evening started with Kennard revealing how he came to the club and mentioned how he was interviewed by Hancock and then manager Dave Artell. He was subsequently offered the job and he then revealed that an hour after he accepted the position, Artell rang him to say he'd been sacked. That was funny and bizarre in equal measure.

Kennard also mentioned how there hadn't previously been a recruitment system in place. It simply consisted of an agent ringing up the manager, convincing the manager to sign said player. And that was how Bassala Sambou came to the club.

It does speak to the frankly amateurish nature that the club did business during the Artell years. And it shows how in the dark ages the club had been during the final years of the Bowler era. Thankfully things do seem to have progressed significantly since then thank goodness.

Network in place

Kennard then revealed how the network for signing players has been totally overhauled since his arrival. He revealed that the club now has a network of 10 scouts of varying seniority and when they are sent on scouting missions, they are sent with forms to assess players. There is now a group discussion around signings, with a list being presented and a consensus being made on making the final call with regards to which player the club choose to target.

Kennard stated how he had a database of 5000 players and some players they ended up signing had been on the clubs radar for 4-5 years before they eventually joined. The whole system, whilst a long way from the levels the big boys operate at, feels streamlined, well thought out and nicely balanced between data and old school eye tests. It's refreshing to hear how seriously the club are now taking such a key aspect of squad building.

Financial realities

Those rumours floating around that the Alex have the lowest budget in the league? Yep, accurate, according to Hancock, who spoke during the middle part of the evening. Now, I would have liked to have asked why a club with the 14th highest average attendances and some of the highest ST and matchday prices can't match teams with far less fans than ours, but maybe that's not all that relevant at this moment.

The fact is, they are operating on a shoestring compared to the big hitters. Hancock stated MK Dons last season were spending 4 times as much as them and Salford this season are spending on one player as much as half the Alex's squad. That's a staggering gap in League Two of all places.

Even more staggering was him revealing that were the Alex to add £1m to their playing budget, they would only rise to 15th in League Two. Again, the disparities are stark.

Luke Offord

Whilst there were a number of players discussed by Kennard, he was asked about Luke Offord specifically. And he mentioned how Offord was offered double what he's earning at the Alex this summer after he left MK Dons, but because he was a home bird, he chose to come back to the Alex having never at any stage moved to Milton Keynes following his departure in 2024.

He talked about how the angle to convince Offord to sign was him being from the local area and how that longevity cold really help him. That in itself raised an interesting point, one I've been curious about for a while. Most players don't stay at Crewe for more than 4-5 years. They are either young up and comers to get sold by the age of 22-23 or they are free agents who stay for 2-3 years before departing.

But look at teams like Accrington with Shaun Whalley and Seamus Conneelly and Wycombe with the likes of Joe Jacobson. They convince these players to stay for almost a decade in some cases. Offord has already amassed around 170 games for the club. Barring any injuries, he should surge past 200 this season and be close to or past 250 by the time next season ends, when he'll be 28. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that they could have their first player to crack 300 appearances for the club and become a real long lasting and long standing member of the squad? I hope so.

The Future

This comes in 2 parts. The first is from Hancock, the 2nd from Kennard. Kennard was asked rather bizarrely and bluntly by a fan to comment on the status of the takeover. Asking a head of recruitment to comment on something like that and essentially demanding an answer was rather ridiculous, but you get one of those types of questions at every forum I find.

Hancock stepped in and confirmed what Charles Grant had said on the radio only 2 weeks ago, that the interested party looking to take the club over have been passed to the EFL and the independent regulator. He said he hoped that there would be some news in the next few months and that he was excited about the group and what they could bring to the club. He seemed bullish on the clubs prospects and talked about the plan for them getting into L1 and then maybe even pushing beyond to the Championship. I find that sort of talk fanciful given the current make up of the top end of L1, but hey, I can't knock the ambition.

Kennard too spoke positively about what he felt the future held for the club. He mentioned how they were looking at potential CBs(in case Josh Stephenson returned to Brentford) and STs(speaking perhaps about the possible return of a certain Stoke striker?). He talked about how optimsitic he was for the day when the Alex could maybe get better signings that currently go to other clubs who can pay more. He mentioned how the Alex spoke to Laurent Tolaj, but Port Vale blew the Alex out the water and have since reaped the rewards of that.

Whilst I do think his level of success with signings is more mixed than some fans might believe it to be(see last season with the misses on Louis Moult, Dion Rankine, Jay Mingi, Sam Waller and James Golding for example), he seems to have put solid processes in place so that in the event he departs for pastures new, they will be in good hands structure wise.

Conclusion

There was only one minor oversight/disappointment and that was that the advert for the evening promised a player alongside Kennard and Hancock. They never materialised and it wasn't mentioned by any of the speakers or host, so I'm not sure what happened there.

But all in all, a good evening. Whilst the conduct of a couple fans was frustrating(see blunt questions, talking over the speakers repeatedly by some and a constantly ringing phone at one point), all in all it was a really informative and insightful evening. The uptake by the fans was excellent to see, with more turning up to see the head of recruitment than the manager/chairman.

With the club seemingly in a good place off the field in terms of their running of football operations and now with confirmation that a potential transformative takeover of the club could be months away, things do seem to be trending in the right direction for the Alex. Let's hope that positive wave continues with some more wins on the pitch.