Not a clue down in BS3 how to run a football club. What a sorry mess has been created, and my time is up to continue supporting a team that has not only lost its way but didnt have a clue where they wanted to go in the first place. Mr Lansdowne you have been feeding us bullshit for way too many years and how on earth you continue to treat some of the best supporters in the entire football league in the cavalier way you do is an insult to our intelligence. Are you so arrogant to think you can,t possibly be wrong, or are you a control freak who won,t listen to anyone other than yourself? Did you not notice how we were one of the best supported teams away from home last season or is it beyond your scope of thought to understand why the faithful are so disappointed by the crap that is being served up this time around? If there is one positive it is that we may have the best stadium in League One next season and I hope you enjoy the poor crowds that you deserve and I truly don,t believe you care one iota about us and the joke we have become. Same old story in my books and although some will consider my words somewhat harsh and negative I have got to the point where I have gone way beyond the point of caring anymore. Adios amigos.
Talk about an overreaction, **** me. Just out of interest, among all that SL hating, you didn't actually provide any reasoning. How has he been feeding us bullshit? How does he treat us badly? If you want an example of how not to run a football club, look at Portsmouth, Bolton, QPR, Leeds; there's more to that measurement than simply league position.
It will be a modern stadium, the best? Not sure about that but I cannot align that to "feeding fans ... !" Mr Lansdown has said on the backs of the redevelopment City will become more sustainable. Our season tickets do not sustain current spending levels. In the future it will be facilities and non match day revenue that sustains the FC. Judgement (my) will be saver for the future and how Bristol Sport raises income for the FC to spend.
I'm not sure we are "some of the best supporters in the entire football league" to be honest SL provides the money and without that we would be in deep do-do - he's fairly hands-off on the day-to-day stuff. Life without SL would be very bleak indeed. IMO it's the people that run Bristol Sport and the Football Club on a day-to-day basis that have much to answer
I'm reading this now in 2016 - but to be honest, if it weren't for the references to our new stadium and a couple of named individuals, it could have been posted at any time since 1980 - with perhaps 3 exceptions - 1998, 2008 and 2015. Those were our 3 years of positivity - climaxing in 2008. All the rest of the performances over the remaining 33 years could have provoked threads of this genre. It does amaze me that despite a £billionaire owner and a shiny new stadium on the way, the story on the pitch is dismally familiar. I should be used to it by now, following City for 40+ years, but it still hurts and frustrates.
there is no hope to hurt anymore ... oh hang on hope, ah yes there is hope, hope we we don't get down to the national league, what a stadium though
Spot on. And the real problem is that it's a recurring issue over and over and over again. As you say only the dates change, but hope wanes very quickly after the blip that was last years unprecedented success. As I've said on loads of other threads over the years Lack of management Lack of a plan Lack of ability Have always been our Achilles Heel, and these perpetual failings will continue to haunt us until someone comes along that knows what they are doing, because SL doesn't.
No hope from me for anything better so the best thing for me is to concentrate on walking my dog along the beach on Saturday afternoons and sleeping through East Enders on Tuesdays.
Invermeremike...... this is the best thing I have seen written on the internet for years. SL is the problem at BCFC! The blame lies entirely at his door!!
I can't, and even collectively we can't, but he could sell up, although I can't see a mad rush of people wanting to buy failing football and rugby clubs, although we'll have a nice (and empty) stadium for any prospective new owner. Right now SL has nowt tangible to sell, aside from a nearly completed stadium.
I completely disagree but I'm open to a debate. Why is it exactly that we need to get rid of SL? Off the field he's giving us everything we need to be self-sustaining, i.e. decent training ground, new stadium, etc. His managerial appointments are questionable I guess but no different to any chairman up and down the country. Where exactly is he falling short? I'm sorry but that opening post is just a rant but not moaning about anything specific. What exactly is he poor with and why exactly would having someone else be better? And please don't say transfers as he is the chairman, not the Scout, not the Manager, not the Director of Football.
Stadium revamp aside, and brushing the mess that was Ashton Vale to one side for now too, under SL's stewardship we've seen mistake after mistake and bad appointment after bad appointment throughout THE ENTIRE CLUB. Board members have come and gone, we have an anonymous DIrector Of Football and silent other Board Members, we've heard false promises, and we currently have a totally ill equipped squad to compete at this level. Our lack of Summer transfer dealings sealed our fate in this divieion before a ball of the new season had even been kicked. That's shameful lack of care and attention. The supposed chase of Steve Coppell and signing of David James were just odd. SL is the owner, bankroller, benefactor, overseer, gatekeeper or whatever you want to call him, but ultimately the buck stops with him. If that's not the case and he's already handed the reins to Lansdown junior then it would be as well to tell people. SL admits that he was naïve regarding Championship wages which is basically an admission of not paying sufficient attention to what is going on before the season started.Not meeting with his Manager or Board Members to discuss something which is one of the fundamentals surely ? The PR, such as it is, from the upper echelons of the club is also poor beyond belief. How can a supposedly professional business act like they have no clue about anything relating to the world of business, let alone football year after year ? It's makes the club I love a laughing stock. I don't blame SC for much of this. He has to make do with a small squad who just aren't good enough, for the players that must be soul destroying if they ever see any of the stuff in the media. Like a lot of people I've become bored of the same excuses being trotted out week after week, and defeat after defeat, but SC has been put in a position where he can't do anything else but try and keep the positives and try and not let it get to the players. If he admitted we're not up to it, he would be crucified. Players, Managers, Chairmen, Board Members all come and go at football clubs.. Only the club itself is permanent, and I want the best for it. I don't think it's being owned or run in a proper or fit way by the current incumbent. Every day appears to be Day 1 in BS3, or Guernsey. Bolton are nearly £200m in the red, but someone, or a consortium will always come along and bail them out. No club has gone to the wall recently. Blackburn and Cardiff (plus many other clubs) have had foreign investment or takeovers which their respective fans objected to strongly, after all the fuss has died down, both have stabilised and are frankly in a better shape than us, certainly on the pitch. If we started from scratch and SL sold up tomorrow, my question is, would we be in a worse position in the football pyramid in a year or 2 than we are now ?
The board members being quiet is no different to 90% of other clubs. Bolton very rarely even hear from their owner; at least SL gives interviews. No one was criticising the chase of Coppell and David James at the time; how was SL supposed to foresee how that would work out? Admission of naivety does mean they didn't meet ffs; this is completely made up. Of course he was naive regarding wages but in every subsequent offer it would be assumed that we've offered much higher wages i.e. Gayle being offered the same as he was on at Palace. Not only that, but look at the example of Bournemouth who clearly wouldn't have been paying more than us, it's about more than money. I will agree the PR isn't great, but to suggest they don't know how to run a business? Again, you're just making points with nothing to back them up! The guy is a self-made billionaire, I would hazard a guess that he knows a tiny bit about running a business! Not only that, but everything he has invested in off the field is to allow us to be self-sufficient when he goes, which is about as sensible business planning as you can possibly do with a football club. Yes, of course we would. For one we would be highly unlikely to have our stadium being worked on, we wouldn't be seeing bids out there for top players and our wage structure would most likely be even worse! I'm sorry mate but it seems that you're trying to find someone to blame in my opinion, and wrongly picking SL, when in all honesty he has actually made the same decisions that you or I would have made at the time. Use Steve Coppell and Sean O'Driscoll as examples; at the time could you have predicted that they would have gone so catastrophically wrong? SL could not have known that. It's football, everybody is trying to do the same thing. Problem is, we are a smaller club, and we are positioned away from most other major cities, meaning that even though Bristol is a great place to live, it's almost always a big career move for players to come to Bristol; they're highly unlikely to have any family here. As a consequence, we probably have to pay more, which in turn got us in a terrible mess years ago, much worse than we are in now financially (which is the ultimate goal, to keep the club afloat). I don't know who to blame, it's a **** up everywhere it seems, but it honestly only stems from our lack of ability to attract players in the summer, which I can only assume is why Pelling went. It just seems that it's a continuous **** up because that hole is one which is mighty difficult to climb out of, as we're seeing. IF we stay up this season, I would imagine next year will be a million miles away from this year, and it will be because of that one fatal mistake we made last summer. As I say, it's an illusion that it's a continuous **** up but in my eyes it was just from that one window (which admittedly was a complete abomination).
That's your opinions mate and that's what makes us all different. But in my opinion the club has made series of almighty **** ups over the years and doesn't appear capable of learning its lessons.
But this is my point mate, I know loads disagree with me and that's fine. But no one seems to be able to back anything up when they do. We've made **** ups yes, but if people are going to slate SL for it they need to have something to back that up.
100% agree I think and also ready Tetbury's thread on the transfer saga's was down to Pelling. He was the financial behind the deals and went to SL and said let's try and save a few quid. SL brought Pelling in to run the financials and thought ok if you think you can save a bit try it. That to me is the only blame to lay on SL was listening to someone he thought he could trust. Coppell like you said we all thought fantastic bit of business, and totally forget that Coppell walked from Man City but some believe it was because he saw this mystical thing in AG. That's bollocks he left because that's him and as stated it wasn't the first time Coppell agrees to something that he won't follow through. Venkys and Tan's of this world buy clubs when the stadia is already in place. Jack Walker done what SL is doing and improved their ground. Tan wanted to buy a club looked about saw Cardiff was about to move into this sparkling new stadium and bought into it. We ****ed up in the summer but that's gone and yet it's talked about to death. SL knows it SC knows it but it happened. IMO SC hasn't helped it since by refusing to play the loanees when he had them! Also he could of rested players in the West Brom game if he wanted to and played Williams, Wagstaff, Agard, Burns, Reid and Al Abd which equals the six that he says Preston had the luxury off. But he choose not to. So who's to blame, they should all take a share but let's discuss it all to death some more
Thanks for the nice words from some of you and I knew the thread would be contentious and I more than accept that fact. We are all entitled to our own opinions, and that is the reason for this site, as long as they don't become contentious and hateful, and in that respect I believe our moderators do an admirable job. When clubs get in our current situation it has to be the responsibility of the head honcho, but regrettably it is always the manager who takes the blame and Steve Cotterill's sacking proves the point. We can all second guess who is right and who is wrong but it is now firmly in the history books and that's where it should stay. So here we are again staring relegation in the face and although I, and many others, have seen this coming for quite a while, including the dismal off season, it remains to be seen whether any lessons have been learned along our rocky road. Just about all of us on this site and many other unknowns from the seats have been screaming for years where the fixes need to be made, and all of that reasoning never seemed to reach the ears of those who make the decisions. What happens next is anyone's guess but in my opinion the decisions that need to be made have to be the right ones this time around otherwise the apparent reluctance of targeted players to come and join us will not only be a vague rumour but a cold hard fact of reality. At this point in yet another restart for a team that has a terrible history of taking one step forward and two steps back the appointment of our next manager will say a lot about the real commitment coming from the boardroom. We need a manager who has the proper resume and is a proven leader and achiever with the right contacts to bring in players who can take us back where we should be and not where we are right now. Accepting second best is not an option.
