No need to reiterate that we are in complete freefall and there seems no hope of anyone picking us up. I don't care which side of the negative/positive fence you have sat during the last 2 or 3 years because I can't see why any of us have cause to be overexcited by our current plight. The blame game has been circulating on this site for about the same amount of time each season for the majority to discern that we are yet again in trouble, and the excuses that come to the fore each and every time seem to have lost their potency. So where do we drop the blame and who is at fault? Let's start at the top and say it lies with the board, and anyone further up the ladder, but if you listen to all involved in this fall from grace. There are many out there who say the manager is solely to blame for the poor on-field performances and yet others blame the supporters and also we 606ers. When the blame game involves just about anybody and anything to do with the club then you really know you don't just have a problem but rather a catastrophe. I would be surprised, no shocked, if this time tomorrow we are not looking for yet another manager to try and turn around our fortunes. Who in their right mind would want to take on what is fast becoming a poisoned chalice if indeed it is not already one. Someone will inevitably take the fall and, whether it is right or not, we must live with that decision. Problems are only removed by the decision to find solutions, and that is something that has long been missing from the business plan at Ashton Gate, so the only answer is to fix the leak before everyone drowns in the nonsensical drivel that has oozed from the top brass. The hardest question to answer is whether there is anyone in our midst that can solve the issues that beleaguer our beloved club and based on the actions and inactions of the last few years I have my doubts. HELP! SOS!
No one cares Mike The owner doesn't care, the players don't care The manager may care but isn't able to motivate the squad or buy decent players or get any sort of result They all need to go and a totally fresh start with serious investment not SL paying a few quid here and there is needed. The club has made cuts but they have been made too quickly and this is the result.
Serious money would be a good solution, but who would be attracted to an area who has a team firmly bottom of League 1, its closest rivals 89th in the football ladder with a rugby team and cricket team both in the 2nd tier of their respective competitions. Speaking of competitions, when was the last time any of these teams had any sort of cup run! Despite all that, I was amased and pleased to see that last nights attendance was still over 10,000. I wonder for how much longer?
2008 Steve Lansdown altered the way the club operated. He span the dice with extra funding past income. Huge losses ensued from that point onwards, but improvement on the pitch did not. Any decision. any signing now is dictated by what started in 2008 allied to FFP. On this thread serious money is mentioned, City, or rather Steve Lansdown spent it. It was serious money, enough to put other teams forwards not backwards.
. A change of owner, and all staff is needed including players and Manager. Most of the major decisions SL has made have been fatally flawed. They were probably well intentioned, but didn't work. Even under SOD we've seen O'Kelly leave after a few months. Forget the current idea of a transition and business plan with the current set up as it ain't working, and it never will because it's too late, and they have made cuts that are too deep, and notice that we are still falling and have been doing so, unchecked, ever since we lost at Wembley. If you want a comparison about what a club does in a huge crisis look no further than Coventry City. They are a great example of a team refusing to lie down or take any ****. They play for each other, score loads of goals and despite their 10 point deduction I wouldn't bet against them making the Play Offs Under this regime we on the other hand are being fast-tracked to non league football or going out of existence. Seriously.
Running a club in the manner Mr Lansdown is attempting will work. BCFC's income is enough to support Championship sides.
Well it's a bit of a shame that he didn't do a damn site more to try and retain our position there last season then !!!!
Any numbers to back this up? The last time I checked, our income was actually very poor for the Championship, and we were struggling to sustain ourselves even when bootstrapping the side.
It was, although it can't have been any worse than the likes of Barnsley, but poor results and performances for the last few years have seen attendances, and therefore income drop dramatically. It's all self perpetuating.
City's wage bill was above average in the Championship at one point. Blackpools expenditure was less than City's to gain promotion. Burnley spent similar to City and were promoted. City's losses have exceeded Millwalls total wage bill. There are numerous facts not opinions to highlight how poorly BCFC spent their money. Nothing needs to be made up to suit a point. City spent money on David James and Nicky Hunts and Stewarts and non entities costing millions... That was not boostrapping. Now that lunacy has to be balanced on the accounts.
Barnsley wage bills was tiny compared to City. City spend treble what they did. City lose fourteen million v Barnsley only spending six to eight million.
[/QUOTE] Barnsley wage bills was tiny compared to City. City spend treble what they did. City lose fourteen million v Barnsley only spending six to eight million. [/QUOTE] All comes down to bad management from the very top which I think we can all agree on
That's expenditure, and not income. I don't think anyone could possibly question how poorly we've spent our money. My biggest issue with how the club is run is that we've spent stupid amounts of money without even thinking about raising the income the club gets. First and foremost, Lansdown and co should be looking to raise attendances, and to put much more money into trying to get more fans interested in their local team. Aside from the community trust, the club does very little in regards to this. Hell, look at our online presence. Our website is ****, yet online we have a huge following on places like this and on the old 606 boards. To make things worse, Bristol is a hotbed for digital talent. I know that the ultimate success of a club is down to what happens on the pitch, but after a decade of Lansdown rule we don't seem to have grown at all off the pitch, It's like trying to run a shop, and spending all your money on a really fancy front door.
The whole club is in a mess and no different to some of these clubs like Leeds, Norwich or Coventry who in recent years have dropped a few leagues before picking up so currently I would not rule us out of dropping down another devision but in most cases it was a new board, owners coming in changing the sytem from top to bottom that changed the downwards spiral. None of us knows exactly what goes on behind closed doors but I do think if SL ran his main business the way he has ran the club he wouldnt have the money he does today and you have to look back to days under Danny Wilson I think when the club was stamble when it was Wilson who was trying to develop the youth side of the club by bringing in youth players from top clubs who just didnt make the cut. I think it all went a bit crazy from there that instead of giving Wilson a short term contract (as he had improved citys final league position every season in charge) we went for Tinion with no previous experience who brough it the big stars like Marcus Stewart and Michael Bridges to lead our attack but they both flopped and so did the team. Since then we had Gary Johnson who a lot of fans rated because he got us promoted but there was more failures than positives if you look with an open mind. He got us promoted and got us to the play off final (in a 2 year spell) but before that he went roughly 10 games without a win and after the failure in the play off final again the club started dropping. He sold off young talented players like Henderson and brought in Journeymen like Byfield and Stern John who wages at the time were £20k and spent a lot of money on Trundle who was the wrong side of 30 so spending was high under Johnson. Think letting McIndoe go and not replacing him still was one of the worst decisions, or not playing Noble or Hartley didnt help in those seasons. Coppell was the big name manager we wanted but left shortly afterwards claiming in interviews since then that the club had lied and gone back on agreements that lead to him joining the club Millen again was a cheap option with no experience similar to Tinnion. I think his mistake was not to keep Alan Walsh as his assistant who was when he was temp in charge following Johnson leaving when he did well as manager (only losing big to SOD/JET at Doncaster). McInnes was the big gamble that other English clubs looked at but pass. We gave him a chance and even though as a club in general he made changes to help improve the youth side but first team let him down. As for SOD he has just taken over where Innes left, similar type of manager / coach which has lead to similar results and there seems to be no help from the board. I think the biggest issue is that SL has got bored of the club as he has handed over control to his son and bought Bristol Rugby, taken over control of Bristol Academy, and bought the Bristol Basketball team at the same time Bristol are seen as one of the worse Cities in the country for sport with now SL in charge of the monopoly on sport and the only succes story is Bristol Academy thanks to the import of foreign players, which maybe we should look at doing the same with Tinnions Spanish contacts. Something needs to change whether thats the owners, but who are you going to find to take over as clubs like Everton have opnenly admitted trying to find new investors so what chance have we got. We could find a new manager but again the issues you have is are there anyone out there who is going to be able to turn the club around if they have no support from the board whos message is there is no money and you are on your own so the better managers wont want to come so you will only be left with the unsuccessful managers from other clubs.
I agree with most, apart from the GJ bit Andy! I blame the board for knowing nothing about football and what to spend the money on (David James a prime example) I blame the board for appointing Millen & Mcinnes at an important time when we were fighting for survival in the championship. I blame the idiots whom wanted to keep there swamp land and the idiots that agreed with them regarding the development of Ashton Vale. I blame a lot of the fans, whom thought after the playoffs, we had a given right to be playing like Barcelona and insisted on instant success. (GJ days)
Going back to our good first year it shocked me to see, despite mainly close to full houses, that we lost a shed load of money. With what should have been good revenues at the gate and the Wembley final and all the other televised games I couldn't understand why we went in to the hole so badly. Obviously the monies lost were due to reckless signings and bad management, and if you combine those facts with a board of directors that must have come directly off the Titanic, or some other disaster, then our goose was cooked. Someone once said that stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, well we must be the world champions in the stupid department and I can't see us being able to change a suicidal mindset anytime soon. Is there anyone capable off changing our business plane that includes playing moderately successful football? Not in my books but then you never know, and how come SOD is still in charge?
http://m.bristolpost.co.uk/articles/news/article/19980071 Note spike in wages post 2008. A 100% increase in seasons.
Its that old thing of reputations. Everyone knows that City have a financier who is throwing loads into the club, so they put their prices up to cash in. That is mismanagement by Lansdown, and frankly a piss poor performance by a man of his ability and standing. He should have been patient and spent proper money at the right time on ability. Case in point of when he got it wrong was Trundle and Hartley, although he did redeem himself somewhat by signing Maynard. That deal didnt lose him money, although we should have sold him to Leicester. Fact is we should have done a Maynard in January 2008, then our history might have been altered slightly. The value of hindsight I screamed on these pages back in 2009 that we needed a serious academy in place if we were to compete with the high and mighty. An academy with Spanish and German aficionados of proven ability. This would have cost millions, but we would now be sitting pretty and making millions. These are decisions of management, and not necessarily made by managers. Maybe you can see now why Coppell left. It is the make or break deals that govern pro footy, and fuels the excitement that attracts the high rollers. But it can all go very wrong, as we often see here in BS3 Its cruel that O'Driscoll is being judged on this club, this team. He deserves better frankly.
