Doncaster Rovers owners faced questions over poor recruitment at Meet The Owners

It was a query that drew a hearty round of applause throughout the room, and also little shying away from the topic from the club’s three owners.

“I think I would want to agree with you on that,” chairman David Blunt said.

“Regarding putting together the ineffective squad, there have been some mitigating factors.

“We did appoint Richie [Wellens] and, god bless him, he did do his best but unfortunately the results were not sufficiently capable of achieving what we believe he should have achieved and we unfortunately had to dispense of his services.

“The mitigating circumstances above all was - and this is a reason, not an excuse - was the level of injuries that have been experienced through the season.

“When we played Mansfield, we had 11 players that were not playing that were all on the injury list and would be predominantly making up our first team.

“The performances were not good enough but there were mitigating circumstances.

“The manager at the end of the day, chose the team and the system we played and it wasn’t good enough.

“What we had to do as a board was to make a decision and we did.

“We’re making changes to the manager, we’re making changes to the recruitment and we’re trying to make sure we stay in this division by providing resources for people to come in during the January window.”

Chief executive Gavin Baldwin also offered his thoughts on the issue.

“During the recruitment of the new manager, we are looking at the football structure because we have identified that recruitment is so important,” Baldwin said.

“We’ve looked at how we can support Graham [Younger, head of talent identification] and more importantly support the manager with recruitment.

“I have sympathy with the question and we need to put more resources into recruitment.

“And not rely on recruitment being manager-led, which is a criticism we’ve had in the past.

“Much of the conversations we’ve had about the recruitment of the new manager have been about the support structure as well.”

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