That’s quite true smug However I don’t feel that many of the players we have at the moment will be good enough for the championship Nevertheless there are good enough to get us up What do you think ????
It's really hard to say but I'd be happy with half of the first eleven. A striker is the most glaring deficit but someone like Gayle, from Newcastle, or Billy Sharpe would be available. Staying up, in the first season, should be the aim and I think we'd manage it.
Maybe, nor did I expect Donald to spend a penny in the window as promised. Thats why the fans have the view of him that they have.
How difficult was that though? The majority of the debt was wiped out by Short and he took a big axe to staffing. How much did that stretch his business acumen?
I wouldn't know, not being privy to the club accounts and not having a business background. I believe at least some sources have suggested that the club was close to going under though. In reality, it doesn't matter how difficult it was to achieve. He did it at a time when no one else was going to do it. The fact that we still have a club when it was possible that we wouldn't is conveniently glossed over now that someone who is richer than Donald has started sniffing around.
Part of the thing I'm really enjoying about this team is that they seem to work for each other and a number of them are bonding with the fans as well. I'd be quite happy with Gooch, Hume, Dobson, O'Nien and Willis being part of our squad for a long time to come. I'd also be happy with McLaughlin, Power and Maguire to be part of our journey into the Championship next season as well. So I'd probably want 3 first teamers in an ideal world, but they don't have to be stars, just hard workers with potential who will fight for the team.
Except for the fact that there were Spanish investors in the international consortium that were originally going to buy us - hence MADROX was a portmanteau of Madrid and Oxford, with the Madrid part being the senior partner.
Yeah, I was aware of that. I'm not sure what your point is though. If you mean that the Spanish investors could have stabilised the club, they could have done but they clearly ducked out before it got to that point.
They were considerably richer than Donald and Methven, put it that way. And they didn't 'duck out' so much as Donald made the deal unworkable, and they (like FPP) are not necessarily people who want to try and run a club outside of Spain without someone in place to help manage that asset. They loved Donald at the start, were very much less keen by the end.
Or more likely SD and sidekick screwed them over by taking things on themselves because they smelled easy money on a quick turnover
Either way, they weren't involved when it came to the crunch, so it was down to Donald that the club was stabilised. Like I've said before, I've encountered several owners of clubs at a similar level to Donald's last club, Eastleigh. None of them are in it for the money. Coming from that background, I don't believe that in any way, shape, or form was making a profit Donald's motivation for getting involved.
Yeah I know a few owners of local non-league clubs...they are in it for the love of it not to make money. Although the old cliche, how do you make a small fortune, start out with a large fortune and buy a football club!
He was fairly clear about it all along I thought. He didn't have the money to take us all the way back to the Prem but he had enough to begin with. He was doing it for the thrill of the ride. He stated he'd have to get investment to take us further and the fact that he wanted to remain involved after any takeover suggests that it was being involved in a football club that was his motivation. What do you think the FPP boys' motivation is? Because I really doubt that it was their boyhood dreams to own an English football club.
Nah, he wanted to be involved for the additional money he would make - as shown by his asking for additional bonuses after having agreed to sell the club to FPP. I also doubt that it would also have been Donald's childhood dream to own a football club, but don't let that stop your glorification of him. As for FPP, they want to invest in an English club and I'm pretty sure that I've read somewhere along the way that they want to make money, but they also want to build up the club similar to that they have done in the US. I'm happier with FPPs ethos than Donald's because they have the money and expertise to back up their vision, whilst SD has always been fur coat and no knickers. He has always talked a good talk but last summer's transfer window showed how empty his talk was and then we all found out how divorced from truth his talk was.