His ownership started with a hell of a lot of goodwill from the fans ...nearly everyone came on board. The crowds thats turned up in our first season was testimony to that. However.....it became very apparent that he was super limited in what he could invest in the club....His big gamble of promotion at the first attempt went tits up in injury time at Wembley. He now is the owner of a club he cannot afford, his decision making at crucial times have seen to be terrible ...Maja, Ross, Parkinson, Gigg, ON the plus side as any businessman should do was look at the cost base and to be fair he has done a reasonable job there, but on reflection he put ALL his eggs in the basket of promotion at the first attempt and I assume he would have sold the club at a healthy profit...Now he is suffering the consequences. His gamble has backfired in a big way.
I reckon you’re spot on. In the early days, like a lot of others, I believed that we were on the way back. New ownership, the ‘Dortmund’ model, debt free, the “piss taking party stops now” and countless other soundbites. I’ll be honest, being a thick northerner (I was actually born in the south but that’s a different story), I didn’t understand all the business stuff that Mr Methven said I didn’t. But all that aside, I truly did believe that the new owners ‘got the club’. I even met SD once in the first season and made it onto an outtake of STID. And even then I still believed. I still believed at the beginning of the second season. The thing is, even to someone like me who doesn’t really understand the financial side of things, it eventually became very obvious that something was wrong. And the more I read and see about the inner machinations of SAFC under the current regime I can’t help but think that SD and CM honestly thought that they could take all us supporters for idiots and that we wouldn’t notice. All I can hope for now is that SD et al still have a spark of decency in them and think of the greater good during the takeover negotiations rather than their own pockets.
Donald & Methven appear to have very little respect for the supporters. Their actions, and comments, are nothing short of disgraceful. "I do want SD to move on, because he cant progress the club any further." Any further 'progress' and we'll go out of business
I can very easily reduce the costs of any business. Simply rip out all of the electrics and sell any electrical equipment. As if by magic the costs have come down. I must deserve respect and praise for that?
I didn't mention Methven and certainly don't condone his comments. SD steadied the ship and has got us to a position where we are investable, that's progress. Your American friends wasn't sniffing around when short had the club for sale. But I'd like him to move on, as we cannot go further forward under him.
What he has done is effectively the same. He hasn't made us significantly more efficient, he's simply ripped out the future of the club. We were always investable. Ellis Short cleared the debts of this club. Donald has got rid of high wage players (most who he either paid off or had their contracts run out) which is hardly a difficult job, but he's also sold off every promising youngster we have, and he's created an inflated League One squad on low end Championship wages.
We've no idea who the list of buyers were - Donald admitted at the time that there were multiple offers but Short preferred their offer. In addition, it wasn't exactly clear about what Short would do regarding the debt. That has all gone now, of course the club is more attractive - but that wasn't done by Donald.
I remember short picking SD as he believed SD would progress the club. Now that hasn't gone how short probably believed, but it hardly says much about the rest of the parties 'interested'
Perhaps, or maybe he was just desperate to sell and SD was the only person serious. I guess we will never know.
Are we more attractive to investors now than when SD took over? When he took over, any buyer was purchasing a club who were massive favourites for promotion from league 1 and were debt free. (You say Donald did this when Short did and, had anyone else come in at that time, the chances are the same thing would've happened) We had a great academy when he took over and he has almost single handedly removed this. It's a poor academy. Class 1 in name only. Great facilities (except for thre £20m lift of course!)
You can't have it both ways mate. Either you think Donald has done well and deserves respect or he's bad which means that you can infer other interested parties must have been worse.
Dancingstripes - a username made up of two commonly used words in the English language, namely Dancing and Stripes. The first letters of each words, D and S. Reverse those letters and you have S and D. The same initials as our present owner. Therefore my police powers of deduction have deduced that @Dancingstripes is in fact Stewart Donald. Boom! Have that ya ****a!!
A bloke who bought a club debt free with it's own future income and then proceeded to run the club into the ground including selling possible future players coming through the academy. Yeah fantastic job.
Any man and his dog could have removed high earners to lower costs. Also, take the N’Dong thing, expensive court case and settlement to release him, he went to Ligue 1. Could easily have said ‘£2million fee’ and would have been gone quicker with less costs. Academy destroyed, needs started from scratch more or less. He lowered costs, fair enough, his legacy is non existent. He inherited a debt free club with assets, lowered costs, and will now sell a club with small debt and no assets. Forgive me if I don’t hi 5 him on his way out.
I'm not saying he's done a great job. I want him gone like the rest of us. What I don't like is the abuse and nasty comments that our fanbase are throwing his way. People saying they hope he loses vasts amounts of money etc, its classless.
