The husband of a family friend spends a fair bit of time with Ehab. Apparently he's a lovely fella, nothing like the media makes out. Fancies himself as a bit of a ladies man and likes the status that comes with owning a football club which he has never wanted to sell... No mention of what Papa wants, who the husband doesn't have anything to do with. His words not mine, don't shoot the messenger...
We may be able to identify players but many southern based players who were rejected as kids will stay local as they do around the midlands and Manchester , hence Burnley’s success . Brentford have exploited this over recent years gradually building reputation success and knowledge . If you get rejected from London clubs you will happily play for other lesser clubs if it’s only 30 miles or so . The Geordies struggle unless they pay high fees and high wages because it’s cold miserable and isolated up there , like here. We k ow it’s better than it appears here but reputation doesn’t help . We still have players interested in us because of recent history but that’s waning I fear. If you get to the premiership try and find Eastern European’s or South American’s who have no preconceptions also the latter will possibly have seen real poverty comparatively and so a few chavs here isn’t going to phase them . As a foreign immigrant taxi driver said to me he stays because ‘ everything works here’ and he dissent have to grease palms to do anything. iI am sure you will all quite various exceptions but they are exceptions
No I'm not I said Bruce spent £80m and we got relegated. Then he came back for more. I didn't sack him. And it's gone. If you want to spend another day splitting hairs then feel free.
I've met Ehab too in a non-football context, and can confirm he came across as a decent person, although when I said something that only tangentially referred to the club, he looked at me and realised I knew who he was and he edged away and didn't speak to me again! I was perfectly polite and civil as well, and didn't even start humming "where's the money gone" which was one of the chants at the time. Life is messy though, good people do bad things, bad people do good things. Someone you like in real-life could be a real **** at work. It's one of the perpetual conundrums about the Allam family in that Assem built a successful business, has made plenty of noises about being grateful to the people of Hull when he arrived all those years ago, he lives in a relatively modest house for the size of his bank balance and has been a very generous benefactor to the University and local hospitals. On paper the perfect owner for the club, but here we are, they've dug themselves into a silo and a sale is the only way out for them and us. I'll be honest, I do worry about new owners turning out worse for the club than the Allams and getting away with financial trickery if they are more personable or better at PR. But we do need a change in ownership now to move forward.
So did I, so that's two of us. Like I said we held on by the skin of our teeth. I'm not surprised we outplayed Sheffield Wednesday. All the players win, performance and other bonuses had been deferred. A win against Sheffield Wednesday meant they got paid. A loss meant they didn't.
Ok he spent a whole load of money when we were in the Premier League and still got relegated, but he stayed and got us promoted then he left during the closed season which seemed a strange thing to do.
but why ? what was Ehab's issue with Bruce ? Was it personal or football related ? His agenda to get Bruce out of the club started our freefall into Div 1, which is where we are currently heading again.
Not one of you on here can prove UP wrong and he cannot prove that he is right based on anything published. It is impossible. Some of you may believe that you can by using published accounts. Let me tell you that they mean very little. Unless you have all of the details of every contract you can only guess at the contents.
There's some aspects, particularly the inter-company arrangements, that are very difficult to get a grasp of based only on the summary of the accounts, but stuff like wages, loans and player spending are fairly clear. If Bruce had spent £80m for the relegation season, we'd have had to have paid an average of just under £9m each for all the players we paid a fee for ahead of that season and they include Brian Lenihan from Cork City and Greg Luer from Burgess Hill. We quite obviously didn't spend anywhere near £80m ahead of that season.
I've no idea what Ehab's problem was with Bruce, maybe he just wanted to get rid of his Dad's man and put in his own, but he was at war with Bruce pretty much from the minute he took over.
Do you think it could have had something to do with the debt the club were in after relegation from the Premier League ?
There was that story about Bruce wanting to give compassionate leave to one of his junior coaches/sports scientists and Ehab saying no, culminating in Bruce calling him a **** and supposedly Ehab hated him from there.
I’m a bit worried it’s all made up hear say this takeover rubbish. Why would Ehab go to every game if he’s think of selling the club? Bet it rumbles on till Feb 2nd, then they’ve pulled out supposedly.
If bonuses had to be deferred than that wouldn't just happen on a whim. Surely the players would have to agree and PFA would have been involved and there'd need to be some substance to the claim that the club was under significant financial pressure no?
