But the allegation appears to be that Short has deliberately set out to get us relegated. Like I said in another post, accepting relegation as inevitable is one thing; many promoted clubs do that. Deliberately setting out to get relegated is something completely different. If that is the allegation then it falls within the same bracket as fielding a deliberately weakened team. For which teams have been punished. If its just a case of us not spending money to stay up then there is nothing sinister in Short's behaviour, there is no grand conspiracy, Short is just an idiot, who has appointed a string of other idiots, who together have ****ed up his football club. Personally, I think that is more likely. Anyone who thinks there is some kind of conspiracy should be investigating if the alleged conspiracy has broken any rules.
Well it's been public through Bain that the spending has been stopped. What better way to assure a relegation than to withdraw spending when every other single team are pouring investment into their clubs on every level. Mean while we're making redundancies.
The players' attitude from last summer speaks for itself plus Sam leaving and money being oyed away on below standard players, and no big signings (striker), but none of them have stood up for us this season apart from Defoe and Pickford, there is something deeper at this club than just a poor team, they probably do not get on together they don't on the pitch I know that, the fact that sky/BT are paying about 90% of the players' wagers says how much Short has put in, bad managers have contributed to this but also players part running clubs with strikes and thinking they are better than they are or getting their own way. It could have been a case of getting in a striker for £20-30m in Jan to save £100m etc. If the 'miracle' happens and we stop up will Short not heed the warning.
Name me a £20-30 million striker who would have come to us in January.........aaaaaaaannnnnnndddddddd GO!
I think everyone on here would say that as well mate as would every fan of every club. I just didn't believe the whole tenet of the article. I'm not into conspiracy theories.
I personally liked the article. I'm not saying that I agree with everything in it but I like the passion of it. If you head into a season with only one out and out striker like Defoe then we all know that will bring major problems. If Defoe had got a serious injury earlier on in the season our demise would have been a lot sooner than it is now. Yes, we got big Vic and all of a sudden on the back of a injury prone lad results picked up with 4 wins in 7 games. So not rocket science on how to navigate out of the sh*t we got ourselves into the earlier part of the season. Then big Vic got injured surprise, surprise but we had the January window to rectify this. Our supposed last minute offer for Ulloa came to nothing but realistically anyone think in there right minds another relegation rival would sell to another relegation rival....other than Sunderland would happen.....lol? So clearly to me the decision was made from the beginning of the season to restructure in the Championship. It was going to be a bonus if we managed somehow to stay up. The constant merry go round of managers had to stop at some time but the proven fact of changing a manager towards the end of the season can in most cases work to get survival. We used this card many times before and had our miracle 'escapes' but this time we haven't used this. Mean while we see Leicester and Palace move further away from the drop. My concern with Moyes as most people have expressed is that he looks 'shot' and devoid of ideas but most embarrassing of all he goes back to his old ways of using past players such as Lescott, Gibson, Pienaar, Adnan, etc, etc. This also has contributed to us getting f*cked. You would have thought Moyes should have learnt this lesson from his time at Man Utd when he cleared a successful coaching staff out to bring in his cronies. What happened after that.....my case rests your honor. We lurch from one crisis to another as in just the last couple of weeks with the 'slap' interview and Byrnes pay off.....ffs...really? People have a right and a passionate right to speak out about the way our club is run....it's a f*cking shambles at the moment. Bring back the days when peanuts were 'tanner a bag' and I can see passion in the club again to show the fans some respect what they deserve for their hard earned money that they pay through the turnstiles....sadly at the moment the club is taking the p*ss.......
I don't think weve actively tried to be relegated but i do believe we haven't put together nearly and adequate enough fight against it and deemed it acceptable
That's why the damage was done in the Summer when we couldn't afford one then. At least we'd have had a chance of attracting someone in the Summer.
I doubt we would have been able to attract a £20 million player even in the summer. If we had have done he would probably have been worth less than half of that. Thats what happened with Ndong. I seem to remember his former club saying that they bit our hands off when we came in with the offer. He's can be a decent player, but worth £6-8 million at the very best. Recent history has shown that we have generally paid over the odds (fees and wages) for average players. The best time to have attracted the sort of players where we may have been able to push on was when Bruce was manager. However as time has gone on, and the club jumping from one crisis to another, the quality of player that we have been able to attract has reduced but the fees and wages have stayed the same. What sort of player would want to come to a club where it must be well known amongst footballing circles that we are run and behave so amateurishly. We have basically been digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole which has come to the point where Short, the club and the fans have seemed to have given up on trying to climb out.
N'Dong is better than Ross McCormack IMO - who has fetched over £20m in his last 2 transfers and hasn't kicked a ball in any top division in the world. I think your comments (and this isn't blaming you BTW) are exactly the reason SAFC fans think we will only get £5m for players who are technically better than those going for £10m in the championship - everyone says £5m for Borini when, in all honesty, I'd rather have him up top than Ross McCormack or Dwight Gale for that matter - and the mags paid £9m for Gale IIRC. I think N'Dong will grow into a very good player - he took his time settling in but his performances have been much better more recently - just a pity that the rest of the team haven't stepped up with him I think all of our fans still think we should be paying £5m for players who are now going for £15m and, as a result, most also think that we should only get £5m for players who would be sold from any other club for £15m (OK an exaggeration but principle is right)
That's inflation though, it's not exclusive to us, which is why we had relegation rivals paying 27 million for Bentake and PVA for 14m. I know we broke our transfer record with Ndong but in todays climate it's peanuts. We actually moved for Ndong when under Sam when the window opened, we were knocked back and chased other targets until we came back with a big offer. That came out of Lorient too. He is only a 8 million player by valuations of two years ago, two years before that it would probably have cost about 4m for a player that standard. I think he would have gone on to be a decent PL box to box midfielder but was never going to set the world on fire.
Probably because they're both proven in that league and bought by clubs in that league. Borini played in that league too, for Swansea and did a decent enough job. Perhaps he'd be worth £12m to a Championship team. He probably wouldn't move to a Championship team though would he?
No probably not - but this sort of proves my point - he did a job previously at that level and players who are technically no better go for the same money - which is why we should be asking for that sort of money - we have Galatasaray and Fenerbahce apparently trying to sign Lens permanently so should get at least £10m for him - if Borini goes to a decent italian side then we should be looking at £10m for him too. There's a starter for getting us out of the championship
HE'll go back to Italy fella. I think we'll get most of the fee back on him but you know Italians clubs and how they need to spread payments. It would come in in drabs. Will be a wage shifted though hopefully.
