At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious....

We have no second tier leaders that should now be stepping up.

When you look at the Tigers and Bulldogs they have many players in the 24-27 yo bracket that have played over 100 games that are now excelling. They are being added to the ageing star list that every club has including us.

So the difference in the performance of the 3 sides (Carlton Richmond Dogs) is not so much the coaches but the players ages and experience.

Any Coach knows that you need a mix of experience and talent. We lack both but are really missing the experienced players ATM. The recycled players was an attempt to supplement our youth with some form of experience unfortunately you don't get "Browns and Riewalts" without picks and salary cap room- we had neither. So we ended up with a bunch of experiments all with their limitations. Such players should not be asked nor expected to be leaders, rather if they are to succeed they need to supplement an already talented and experience team structure- eg Martin Pike at Brisbane.

Instead of focusing on Pagans ability to get our team competitive again we should be wondering how we can regain our experience base -lets call it the "lost generation of Carlton".
We can address talent via the draft- but how do you address experience without either going after a name player(and when we do there will be cries of anguish amongst Carlton supporters because we will be percieved to be going down the old Elliot cheque book route therefore it "must" be bad.
Alternatively we go down the route just travelled - the recycled player route- and once again there will be cries of anguish that this route doesnt work either- "just look at our failures" and the lists that we have seen plenty of the last 2 months -the "delist lists" will be paraded around as evidence that this strategy doesnt work either.

Obviously we have to keep trying and turning over our list, this will require patience. It will also require some degree of stability in the football department -otherwise we could have the Pagan strategy taken over by another coach who starts the rebuilding process over again and this just delays the day when the vision becomes a reality.
If we had an unproven coach he would probably be sacked during this rebuild period, but one thing a proven coach brings to the table is a track record that buys him faith and time. That is what this team needs and thats what Pagan will get(well at least from me anyway)

That's an interesting way to look at it. And on a pure dollars and cents perspective one could argue a pretty strong case to say you're probably right. But let's not forget the manner in which Denis was signed. Sure the Collins lead board will be responsible for Denis' second contract, but relieving Denis of his duties during his first contract,after Elliott had signed him, was not really an option either. Indeed when Elliott signed Pagan do you think he was considering the points you raised in your post?

PAGAN - Has he been worth it?

But how would you go next year, and the year after? Which players would you draft, which players would you delist, which players would you talk to from other clubs? How many uncontracted players would think "I'd love the opportunity to play under Sydney Blue"?
you cant categorically state that a young coach would fail to develop a team. Drafting/delisting/trading is subjective as well and pagan has hardly been the master of either of those disciplines. Pagan, like most other people has favourites, and this influences his decisions in the above areas - who is to say that another young coach, or even sydney blue, would not achieve better results based on his 'favourites'? Also, on the subject of uncontracted players - how many players actually say, yes I want to play for coach XXX or I wont play for coach XXX? - Very few players have a real influence on where they may/may not be traded to, or picked up by in the preseason draft etc
People wanted Pagan to perform a miracle, and when he hasn't delivered one due to a terribly unbalanced list bereft of any outstanding talent, these people want to get rid of him.
No one has asked for pagan to perform a miracle. However I dont think its unreasonable to expect tangible improvement in a team following 3 seasons of footy (yes, this one isnt complete yet).

Name any other coach who would have gotten more out of the current list. Are u serious? Obviously naming any coach is pure speculation. Having said that - given that only 5 or 6 players out of 30 odd non first year players could be said to be having anywhere near good or consistent seasons, I dont think it would be hard for any half decent coach to have gotten more out of the list this year.
Name any other coach who could've rebuilt the list while having no early picks and no players of worth with which to make decent trades.
What rebuilding has Pagan done exactly? Draft stevens? - sorry, but any coach could have picked up stevens in the PSD. Draft Walker? - any coach could have done that. Lets talk about real trades/drafting - the only Pagan era players that could be expected to be long term sucesses atm are Fisher, carazzo and Betts. The jury is still out on the rest of them including Teague. 3 long term players in 3 years isnt that great.
Denis himself says Nobody wants to hear about the labour pains, they just want to see the baby, and I think this club is still in it's first trimester.

From memory everyone was onboard the Pagan bandwagon after the wizard cup and wanted to give him anything to re-sign...

We didnt need the floodmeister in Eade and Terry Wallace wanted the same dollars as Pagan and doesnt have a CV that includes winning flags...whats left Gary Ayres, Spud Frawley,......the only other candidates were assistants like ODonnell, Harvey etc.....

Have monitored and prob the thread has gone off the track but i think again people need to look at the wider picture and really know where we are at

Argument of Pagan being paid 600K vs untried Coach 200K

Suggest we at least have a few more facts

Fact Pagan has inherited a list which is way below what he or anyone expected if i am going to access Pagan i will be doing it from 2006 where he has more control on the list and can really have his stamp on.. Then i will be judging his performances based on this critera. Since his been here he has had 2 years of No proper draft choices exceot pick 2 and Priority and i am happy with Walks and also how we landed Stevo. last years draft he did the right thing again which was to hold onto picks 9 and 25 and prob tried to trade to get picks but alas we have very little currency to tradeso i will base my asseesment on the onfield performnce from 2006 onwards.

More than speculation: that's exactly what would have happened. Coming off a 930K fine, that might have been catastrophic. Pagan was one of the single biggest factors in getting things back on track off-field, and he's the best bet on the field as well.

When Collo said we had plenty of C-Z graders he was talking about the quality of our side as it currently stands. Many of these C-Z graders are our young players and have the potential to develop into A-B grade players. They're young and have limited AFL experience... therefore there's no way you can bracket them as A or B grade-players yet. Too say that Collo labelled all of our young players as shit is drawing a long bow.

And as far as how those comments will affect them.... Well, I'm sure if any of them are worth their salt as AFL footballers, Collo's comments should actually spur them on to do better instead of having a deflating effect.

I doubt that the players that aren't up to mustard haven't been made well aware behind closed doors that they're in the firing line. It's a cut-throat business and Collo is only saying the same thing that 90% of the football world is saying, we're bereft of talent. The players that currently aren't up to the task at the moment have two choices, either take their chance and do their best to forge themselves an AFL career, or bide their time until they get the chop.
I'm glad that Pagan and Collo are coming out and stating that we're crap, because it's true. Hard nosed men in charge will win out over touchy-feely corporate wankers (Thomas and Buttersssssss) every day in the sporting world.
The day Denis comes out and takes the full blame for a loss (ala Thomas) is the day I start thinking that perhaps he's not the man for the job ahead.

I, too, am a Pagan fan.

Pagan was a very good caoch at North. He started there at the under 19 level, and developed young players through the club, and eventually coached those players at senior level. He knew everything about those players.

He came to us and knew nothing about our list.

In fact there has been some suggestion he had no idea how bad we were. That first year for him was shattering. To have no draft picks just exacerbated his horror - it meant there was nothing he could do.

All he wanted was to coach Carlton. He understands the jumper, the history, what it means to be Carlton. Remember how he described his first MCG experience as Carlton coach?

He has done what he can with the senior list - 10 wins was extraordinary with what he had - but it simply stuffed us with picks, and misled all of us with that horrible "expectation" thing. I accept that we have gone backwards this year, but I for one enjoyed the pre-season win.

Now he is building from below. The bullants are growing in confidence and playing good footy, winning footy. Senior players are rotated through and the kids are being developed - the O'hailpins, Russell, Blackwell, Hartlet. ....

Mate, this is not about this year and never was - look at Raso - he's next year at best.

I think Pagan is as good as it gets, and we will all be bloody happy we have him when the wins start to roll in. And that will happen. I promise!

He came to us and knew nothing about our list.

In fact there has been some suggestion he had no idea how bad we were. That first year for him was shattering.

well coming back to the question 'was Pagan worth it' clearly chicken man you think not - so the can I ask ... is that we payed Pagan too much OR that he was the wrong man for the job?