Seems we're not alone with having an owner that's detached from reality and has finally woken up to how hard this league is. Richard Murray defends Charlton owner Roland Duchatelet Charlton director Richard Murray insists owner Roland Duchatelet is committed to the club but the Belgian has "underestimated" the Championship. Fans protested against Duchatelet's ownership of the Addicks both before and after Saturday's draw against Nottingham Forest at The Valley. "Through Roland's backing we have become financially stable," non-executive chairman Murray said. "No owner wants to run down a football club - it defies logic."
Steve Lansdown has said the funds are available to cotterill. He gave him 10m in the summer to buy a player and righty so told Cotterill we have a wage limit, because the last time we were here we didn't and we had players on (rumoured) 20-30k a week. Now you have 2 options. Option 1) Believe Lansdown, a man who has backed this club for years, is spending 40m to build our new stadium, is an actual fan of the club and someone who is so desperate to see us get promoted, when he says funds are available for the manager (we know they are due to the Gayle and Gray bids being accepted) Option 2) Believe Cotterill, a man who blames referees, pitches, weather, inexperienced players and practically every reason you can think of bar blaming himself when we lose. A man who ****ed up our summer by going for players who HE KNEW would want more than we can AFFORD to offer. By making us wait until the end of the window for any movement knowing if it fell through we'd be ****ed, a man who refuses to change a formation that clearly DOES NOT WORK and because of HIS failures in the window we now have 14 players at our disposal for Saturday of whom one of our starting strikers can barely move.... I know who I blame for this utter shambolic season and it's STEVE COTTERILL. Can pretty much guarantee we wont sign players this window, maybe 1, 2 if we're lucky and we'll get the same **** we had in the summer and people like you believe it Preston and MK Dons have a much smaller budget than we do and yet are able to attract players. Perhaps the reasons none of these targets we go for want to come here is because of the manager?.... Bristol is a beautiful place to live, we have a billionaire owner, top of the range training facilities, a 40m 27,000 stadium being built and the opportunity for a player coming in to get first team football due to a small squad. Lets face FACTS, Cotterill has never succeeded at this level, and before he came here he came across as a manager who was full of excuses for defeats and nothing was ever his fault. Now it may come across I want him out..... I don't, in fact I want nothing more than for him to be a success here but it's looking unlikely and im getting fed up of excuse and excuse from this guy when he is the big glaring problem, NOT LANSDOWN.
If SC is entirely to blame, then Lansdown/Board should relieve him of his duties right now, but I'm far from convinced that we know now, or will ever know the real truth, As I also said elsewhere, our geographic position has often hampered us with recruiting players over the years when compared to other areas of the country. We also have no football history worth talking about even when compared to the likes of Blackburn or Burnley,
I have to agree with Shiny's point about pi$$ poor excuses. I am getting sick of getting up,on Sunday mornings here in Oz to read his endless list of poor excuses, then see the same fu**ing team and late, pointless subs week after week. If its not working Steve, then change it. You cannot live off last seasons success. I have often wondered if just at the point he may be thinking about changing it we get a result that in his mind justifies sticking with his system, he strikes me as that arrogant in his own belief and ability, remember his "I'm a winner" comments? Like Shiny and others I want SC to succeed as that means BCFC succeed and managerial stability is generally a good thing for a club, but he or SL need to pull some of those irons out of the fire and shove up someone's arse to generate some activity!
Not too sure the Geography argument holds up, are Blackburn, Burnley, Wigan etc nicer places to live? Are Norwich and Ipswich not out on more of a limb than Bristol? We have a fickle fan base in the City who have never really bought in to football in a major way on a regular basis for either club. The truth is footballers now more than ever are mercenaries, if you pay enough in wages and incentives etc, they will play anywhere.
Blimey - from the greatest manager who ever lived last May to a rank no-hoper now Please can we all remember what SL said in his interview - we could afford to pay the wages of Gray and Gayle but they did not want to come here. Gray wanted to go to Burnley (who were my favourites to go up back in August) and Gayle wanted to stay in the Premier League. The problem these days is that we always want to blame someone. The best way foward is to acknowledge what did not go well, and fix it for next time (we will see by the end of january if that has happened) Oh and here's a thought - if we did get relegated to League 1 who would be the best manager to get us back up? How about the man who won the 2014/15 League 1 Championship title?
I'm with Shiny on this one, especially Cotterill's pathetic post match ramblings. With one proviso. WTF is Keith Burt's job ? Was it not to be the 'in-between' for the Manager and Board and also identifying players that would improve the squad. The silence is deafening.
come on mate you cannot be serious... at the start of June I would have agreed with you but now I just can't. The man's shot himself in the foot big time and yes he may have won us the double but that was with a side full of confidence, we had the best team in the league last year and it was just a matter of keeping them fit rather than managerial brilliance, yes Cotts needs praise for what he achieved but he also needs to be blamed for what has been allowed to happen this season. You say we all look for someone to blame, that's because this is football, someone is always to blame, you don't just get "bad luck" for 5 months it's down to someone, and that someone is the manager. Alright Gayle and Gray didn't come but we should of had so many back up options that it didn't matter, by the looks of it Cotterill put all his eggs in 1 basket and now they are on his face...
I think we're all pretty much sick of the constant excuses for losing. Blaming pitches and referees is silly - that all evens out over a season. From what I'm reading, we're playing well but there is no end product. There's simply no point in having possession if we have no way to score. Unless our game plan is to monopolize the ball to stop the opposition scoring? Clearly we aren't good enough for that plan! It's up to the manager and his coaching team to identify the weakness in the team (not too hard of a job), the manager and the scouts to identify targets for transfers and then the manager and the Board to ratify the expenditure and negotiate with the selling club and player / agent. Basically, it takes a village, so blaming a single individual is nonsense. Unless there is an individual or individuals who are not doing their job within the village. If that is the case, they must go. With one previso.....we cannot and should not want to get rid of our owner who has supported the club financially for years now. So that leaves us with the manager, coaches and scouts. If January's window becomes the Summer's window, then the manger, scouts and coaches are to blame and need to be fired. I cannot and will not believe that the Board will not make the finances, within reason, available. It would be ridiculous to think that Lansdown will not put up a fight to save this season and our immediate future. In fact it would be about as ridiculous to SC's post match comments each week...... Another depressing morning of inactivity.
I'd personally rather cut off my privates than live somewhere like Burnley (having been there) but what I was trying to get over is that places like that aren't a million miles from the 'big' cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds etc. The same goes for London and Midlands players who don't always need to uproot themselves or their families to move clubs. In terms of fickle fans, I quite agree that City fans in particular are, but the reason that people haven't bought into football down here is that aside from a few short years in the early 1900's and again in the mid-late 1970's there has been little or nothing to buy into or to sustain fans interest. In my 47 odd years of following them, City have stumbled from crisis to crisis and slipped up and down the leagues with a series of rudderless owners and managers. Always promising much, but delivering little or nothing. Norwich and Ipswich are out on a limb in terms of their location, but both have a football pedigree/heritage, and Ipswich have been in Europe (and won a UEFA Cup) and both have won domestic silverware that we will never achieve.
I think that Cotterell could get us back up if we went down but we'd be in the same mess as this season again. I am sceptical of his reasoning, massive overambition and delusion, and his stubborness with tactics. I believe that Cotterells inability to change tactics is a large reason for out failure this season and that a lack of a squad is a part of that
Got to be honest I'm in agreement with Shiny, you can't keep saying one good season guarantees future employment. IMO there is a problem with SC being too stubborn and won't change. We are in the second transfer window knowing we made massive errors on the last one and waiting on Eddie Howe to sell his player that he don't play. And it looks based on Cotts comments that he's prepared to wait?? Come on that's just ludicrous behaviour, it's like the team at the moment there's no plan B. If he just for one moment looked at the situation and decided this needs fixing and fixing now to prevent more losses then go out pay 500k over what you believe they're worth at the moment because it's a gamble and it could come off and save this season. I don't think there was a master plan last season just naive clubs around us, I can guarantee watching us this season teams will set up differently against us next season if it continues. Sheffield Utd, Preston and Colchester sussed us out last season Sheffield Utd especially carved us a new one at home. And Colchester got so far in front that they probably took their foot of the brakes. If you believe that it's ok to go down because we've got the best to get us back up then you are living in the past. Players who've been **** this season will believe now they are championship players and want out so the team itself would possibly be ripped apart. Smith, Freeman, Agard and a few others would be in their final year so even they will have a lower value. I want SC to succeed but to do that he needs to take his head out of his arse stop being petulant and get on with the job in hand. As to who to blame, I believe that's been sorted as he was sacked early September. But to succeed he needs to get players and get them quick before we start running out of games to get a good run going. Still think we will escape but would rather do it with games spare and build on going forward. And Redprint when you get that answer please tell me because I'm as confused as you.
It's not football - it's society these days - too much time spent looking for someone to blame and not enough time fixing the problem (of course you are going to reply that Cotts is the problem). I don't care if it was SL, Burt, Lansdown Jr, The Board, Cotts or the Tea Lady who was too blame, as long as they learn from their mistakes Too many football clubs want quick fixes - that quick fix is always sack the manager. Constant chopping and changing is seldom good for a club (always exceptions like Watford). It takes time to build something with real foundations. Also many fans treat real football like it's Championship Manager - it's not and it has actual human beings involved. Those fickle fans will be the same people who start booing the team when it's going badly rather than getting behind the team when they most need it (and I'm not saying that applies to anyone on this Board/Thread). ps - they are probably all to blame (well apart from the Tea Lady!)
I'm beginning to think it IS all the tea lady's fault. Well, it seems that no one else at the club is going to admit to a **** up of this scale in public surely ?
Excuses are never the philosophy of winners and quite frankly I am sick and tired of hearing them each week. The blame game is only another way of deflecting responsibility but my main problem here is that we will never know who should shoulder the burden of responsibilty and do we need to know? Steve Lansdown must have at some point been involved in the hiring the man who is in charge of the football team, and if you remember there was no competition for the position, so who takes the ultimate blame for the fiasco that seems to follow Bristol City year in and year out is up for grabs. Look at the common denominator in the whole equation and there,s only one conclusion to be reached so I´ll leave you to your own decision.
within themselves they are pretty tardy places, but 30 mins away they are in the Dales or getting close to the coast... support well Bristol has one of the biggest number of football teams in the country and they don't all play on Sunday or Sat morn.. quite a few year back I knew a lot of supporters that prayed for midweek games, they could never go on Saturday because the kids were footballing...
