If the club manage to get in all the supposed 5 players being muted on the transfer thread then I will personally satisfied that Gao has the best interests of the team at heart.
There you go. We just differ hugely. You think we’ve been cheap. I just think we’ve not got the recruitment right. I have no issue with an owner building some profit in preparation to sell her asset. Even under Cortese we sold to progress. Would anybody be moaning about that now if we’d been sold to a gazillionaire who was now spending millions and millions on us?
I like the fact you know I know that. I didn’t, which is why I asked. Thanks for explaining. Everyday is a school day.
But we weren't sold to that person. I have no problem with Liebherr selling; in fact, I was pretty much alone in hoping she would. But after years of talking about how she had the club's interests in mind, she sold to the highest (or at least, most immediate) bidder despite knowing he was dodgy as all hell, and with apparent other interest on the sidelines that wouldn't have gotten her the money as quickly. She chose the option that benefited her irrespective of how it affected us. That would be because, for all the PR blitzes, she cared far more about her bank account than the club. Which is understandable -- at no time did she set out to become the owner of a football club, much less ours -- but not exactly laudable.
Now I see Loading’s strawman. Perhaps we all do that. I thought you and I were talking about spending money on players, not who we were sold to. On your last post (which really seems off topic of what I raised), I have always said that an owner of a club is entitled to do what they want. It’s their asset and their choice. As a fan, I have no control over that. It doesn’t stop me supporting my team.
Because I was the one who used the word “dodgy” It’s late, I think wires are getting crossed and I have a bike ride in the morning ... Night all Night John boy Night grandpa
The two are intertwined; why we chose not to spend and why we chose to sell to Gao owe to the same root desire. And the owner of the club is legally entitled to do with that asset as they please. They are not entitled to a Greek chorus supporting those decisions, however; if I am an employee or shareholder in a company, and their board announces that they intend to reinvest the FY profits in a massive hookers-and-coke extravaganza, I'm going to ask whether that's a sound decision. And if the sports team which I follow decides to tell a few non-truths in order to maximize their profit along the path to selling the club to a highly questionable buyer, I'm going to ask whether that's a sound decision as well.
I've always thought that anyone who can make £ms is dodgy, only because it takes a certain type of person to profit from other people to that extent. That said, I'll not make any judgements about our current owner because quite frankly I just don't care enough. I never expected Saints to become a force in football, I expect us to be amongst the also rans and savour the big wins accordingly... That might change for me if we ever got an owner who wanted to challenge the status quo but until then, I certainly won't worry about who owns the club, or how we seem to be run. We're not bust or relegated and until we're one or the other, there'll still be football worth watching (for me, anyway)
There’s a few things intertwined Schad. Yours and my thoughts for a start. You think we should have spent more money; I think we should have been better with recruitment. Good night.
I'm a realist Sa, and however much I enjoy football, it's always just a game, so I can't take it seriously enough to worry about it. If Saints ever folded, I'd be disappointed, but would quickly revert back to fishing and hunt sabbing as something to do on a Saturday
The reality as I see it is that our owner is ultimately seen as dodgy because he has NOT got hundreds of millions to inject into the club. People are looking to frame him as a terrible owner, criminal, looming bankrupt on the basis of just speculation. If Gao was pumping 100 miliion a year into the club on 3 big name players I very much doubt that anyone would be questioning how come he's so rich and where is the money coming from. City and Chelsea fans provide plenty of evidence for that. Seems ironic to me that when the money isn't flowing freely people are looking for issues with what we do have yet when there's an unlimited stream nobody cares. The opposite should be the case because money is always dodgy somewhere along the path.
I think we should have been better with recruitment as well, but I think that expecting that we'd be better with recruitment while hiring bargain-bin managers and offering below-market deals is a fool's errand. We've been in on better players; we were either turned down by the team because we failed to meet their demands, or the player opted instead to get paid more on teams with better prospects. Part of recruiting well is being willing to compete on the same field as our competitors. If our position is that we can spend less and get more on a consistent basis, well...we will really need to demonstrate that.
