I reckon this season is make or break for Ashley. It’s him in the difficult situation. If he loses Rafa the club devalues instantly. But maybe he has no interest in ever selling? Having said that if we get relegated because he has invested no money the club halves in value. The best time for him to sell was end of last season.
Not to mention the reduced efficacy of using NUFC as his free advertising vehicle that relegation would effect.
Off topic here but after drawing 1-1 in the Scottish Cup today, Forfar beat East Fife 5-4 on penalties. Yes, that old chestnut again
We have a record of spending in line with our competitors over the last 3-4 yrs. What you can’t do as a business is let an employee put himself above the business and dictate terms. If we cave in to Rafa and then spend, then he ****s off, we are then stuck with another expensive rebuild selling players people know we don’t want. It’s a leap of faith for Rafa and you can understand his mistrust but there is no other way.
Not correct to say there is no other way. The other way requires Ashley to have faith in Rafa rather than vice versa
Don't know what everyone's worrying about anyways, TV money's through today isn't it? Can finally get that Ayew loan over the line.....
Correct. However I don’t think many clubs or businesses would see that as a viable option. If we do we are basically saying Rafa is bigger than the club. He’s an employee. Clearly a highly valued one by the hierarchy looking at how they allow him so much control. He shouldn’t push his luck, despite the silly hero worship, he is replaceable.
I don't think this is incorrect. Many clubs, perhaps most of them, are prepared to trust their manager's judgement to the extent of making funds available for him to spend to an extent that the club would find itself in difficulties if they were wasted.. Those that don't give this support to a manager usually give it to a director of football. The concept is that the manager (of DoF) has been hired because he has an expertise and that the club is prepared to trust the manager to employ the expertise that the manager has and that the club doesn't. The same is true of most other businesses. Most businesses trust their senior management with sums of money which the business cannot afford to be wasted. It is what senior management are for: to make difficult judgement calls. Businesses which don't exhibit this trust only survive if they operate in a very low risk, uncompetitive environment.
I don't think we disagree in many respects. You do employ people for their expertise and a good forward thinking business would then empower the individual. However when there is a finite contract involved and the end is very near, and they are showing minimal interest in renewing despite statements to the contrary, then the decision to trust that individual becomes marginalised somewhat. Its only natural. We can only speculate, but you would imagine Rafa has said to Ashley I'll sign when you spend money. I can't think of many businesses where a lower ranking employee would dictate to the owner in a game of chicken. It doesn't really happen even when the employee is highly valued like Rafa is. No one is bigger than the company is often the cry in that situation
Question for you - how many examples could you cite where the manager leaves the club or gets embroiled in fairly public rows over a drastic lack of investment from the owners/board? Furthermore, of those examples (should you find any), which would see the owner - not the manager - as being in the right?
To be fair to the current regime apart from Keegan (very public and won a tribunal), Shearer (consistently upholding that there is no intention to invest beyond the bare minimum), Pardew (who gave numerous interviews to the papers about how getting financing for a good team was a struggle) and now Benitez I can't think of any managers who have publicly disagreed with Ashley claiming they are underfunded.
Come on. I didn’t get anywhere near enough credit for this comment. Likes will be reviewed and retrospectively provided back. X
The local rag in Bristol are claiming we've balked at their £6m valuation which would be bonkers since they sold Aiden Flint for £7m and Joe Bryan is the better player.
