I think if you ‘can’ go up you go up, it’s a gamble any year. If we tried with a better side the following year as usual there will likely be a couple of other good competitors . So take it if you can, I look at the strength and physicality f Forst and Luton and we are way off- but - I think we play better passing football so it could work - look where they are .
they had only just given Bruce a contract extension in the March - ten games left and we were 15th - we ended up getting relegated - clearly they didn't want to pay him a huge compensation payment after 2 months - 12 months later he was effectively forced out when they wouldn't give him any more premier league transfer funds and he got more and more frustrated about the lack of activity and left - without compensation, by this time the debt was coming down but still around £70 million - I don't believe Allam was about to throw a whole load more at the club anyway, by this time he'd had enough and just wanted his money back - when Bruce first got us promoted without major investment Allam must have thought it was easy - a couple of years later after he gave Bruce the biggest war chest in the club's history he realised investing big doesn't necessarily guarantee success
Didn't we spend almost 3m on a striker, bring in PL quality players in Elmo and Meyler as well as sign Brady permanently ? I wouldn't call that minor investment.
Old man Allam got sick and Ehab took charge. That was the big shift in direction. Whether Assem would have left the investment in the club once it was covered by parachute payments no one will ever know, but he was at deaths door at the time and Ehab took over. But there was a clear decision not just to stop putting money in, but to actively disinvest in an acute manner when Ehab started making decisions.
We've never had a top championship budget or anything other than a relegation one when in the PL. We just couldn't afford the quality needed in forward areas to expect survival in the PL. What was significant investment by Hull City standards, certainly wasn't in the wider context of the Premier League. Even then. Even when we got a good looking combo with Long and Jelavic, we couldn't keep Long when a slightly bigger club came knocking.
and neither did I - Prozzie allegedly cost £2.6 mill but we never paid anything like that - the point is we didn't spend all that much and we ended up in the Prem and that was a fantastic achievement - 10 out of 10 for Brucie
Quite like it now you've put the daggers away. But we both know that's not the original context in which it was intended.
I think for the time it was a fair amount, I recall everyone being quite pissed off that all these funds were provided to Bruce that hadn't been available to Barmby.
Right, but that didn't mean he had an open chequebook. He was well enough funded in the championship but never a top 2 budget. And in the prem we could never go and pay the required 50m or so for a pair of strikers.
Assem said on 3rd October 2014, that he would not put another penny into the club if he couldn't change the name, true to his word, he never did. Bruce didn't leave until almost two years later, having just got us promoted to the Premier League, despite having £25m worth of players sold ahead of the season and being given less than £5m to replace them. There was never an issue between Assem and Bruce, they got on very well from start to finish and Assem didn't get rid of him, Ehab did. Your welcome to hate Bruce all you like, but you don't get to rewrite history and what you've just posted is simply not true.
Bruce left July 2016 departures August 2016 - Diame - £4.5 million arrivals August 2016 - Keane £1 million - Marshall £3.5 million - Mason £13 million departures Jan 2017 . Snodgrass £10.2 million - Livermore - loan arrivals Jan 2017 Mbokani loan Henricksen loan Niasse loan Elabdellaoui loan Markovic loan Ranocchia loan N'Diaye loan i've missed some of the lesser players but you get the drift - so a couple of months after Bruce left, Allam put another £13 million into City - so what you say isn't quite true is it - too much selective memories about what actually happened - it wasn't until after we got relegated again that the huge clear out of talent started and the debt finally started to come down - the rest is history
He'd cleared £20m the season Bruce left, so even if he had spent £13m ( and he didn't Livermore was a £10m sale to West Brom, not a loan), he didn't need to put anything in to do it and he didn't. You've also conveniently left the sales of Maguire, Clucas, Elmo, Hiddlestone, Jakupovic and Robertson off the 2017 numbers. What you posted is rubbish, however you try and mangle the numbers.
So NOTHING to do with his falling out the the council after they refused to give him the ground for a quid and the subsequent name change farce? You think it was ALL Bruce's fault?
Funds were made available for signings under Barmby, unfortunately, none of those funds were made available for the players Barmby actually wanted to sign.
It was also Jakupovic, who Barmby brought in on trial but wasn't allowed to sign, he almost signed for Ipswich after Nick was sacked and then when Bruce took over, he immediately made him a contract offer because Brucey wanted two keepers and the coaching staff were impressed with him. Jak was Brucey's first signing IIRC.
That was the one that really highlighted the differential treatment considering he'd trialled under Barmby then immediately signed under Bruce.
