Money always plays a part in any sport and baseball is no exception. A trade decision last season was unpopular with the fans as the Brewers failed to make the play-offs. Views have changed this season as they have won 15 out of 21 games so far and the fans are back on board: "The criticism continued into the offseason, with the fanbase questioning principal owner Mark Attanasio's commitment to the franchise. Many already saw the Hader trade mainly as a money-motivated deal, and as the winter rolled on, the Brewers barely spent a dime. A slow start to 2023 could have been catastrophic for the impact on the field and in the stands. Instead, the mix of talented veterans and hungry youngsters has reinvigorated Brewers backers. Though the style of play (which has a "gamer" feel to it) has been part of the excitement, winning 15 of their first 21 contests is the most significant factor in Milwaukee's positive mood swing. Suddenly, the talk around town (ok, social media) is about the team playing with purpose and how there is a new feeling among this group." And so it goes in all sports. Think back to Farke's first season when we finished 14th and then sold Maddison, our best player, and brought in affordable players like Pukki and Buendia and won the Championship at a canter after a slow start and much discontentment. Results mean everything and that's the challenge facing Webber and Wagner. Full blog here: https://brewerfanatic.com/news-rumo...e-brewers-hot-start-aside-from-the-wins-r935/
Just for the record I don't think the American is going to build a Toys R us on the Carrow Road plot but ask Brighton & Hove FC about it
These sorts of decisions aren't made in a vacuum. Nor are they made on the spur of the moment or at the whim of one person, as Gozo seems to imagine. I go back to a question I first raised early in the 2021--2022 season when Michael Bailey revealed in an article in The Athletic that the footballing aim of the club had changed unannounced, from being a top 26 club to being a top 17 club, That post-Championship-winning summer was the one that saw Daniel Farke and his staff given new contracts and the sale of Emi Buendia to Villa*. Nothing that has happened subsequently can be understood without an answer to the question why the change? What led the club to jettison its previous well-understood and widely supported acceptance of its own, self-imposed, limitations? * That was also the summer which saw Kieran Scott leave the club to become Director of Football at Middlesborough. Scott was widely expected to be appointed our Sporting Director in succession to Stuart Webber, whose intention had been to leave.
When Attanasio came in, the Brewers were under a huge threat of losing their team to another city. Their previous team, the Milwaukee Braves, moved to Atlanta over 50 years ago. Attanasio calmed those fears but big cities are constantly trying to attract big league teams for economic and kudos gains. Fans naturally fear that happening as it's happened to so many other teams. It's always a possibility, for any team or city, but how much of it is fear and how much is fact?
IMHO all, or certainly most, of our woes stem from sacking Farke. Nobody knows of course how our season would have panned out after that Brentford win, but what isn't possible is that it would have been worse. Then we have Farke's record in The Championship. Would we have finished mid table?
Someone bought them & sold their ground to property developers who bulldozed it & built a Toys R Us , they had to ground share at Gillingham & nearly disappeared from existence.
https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/nfl-nba-mlb-nhl-teams-relocated 25 pro sports franchises you may have forgotten relocated from another city
I don't agree. I think the key mistake was the summer recruitment and no manager on earth could have kept that side up. So IMO Farke would have continued to struggle and the call for him to be sacked would have grown. Webber would have done it in order to deflect attention from his own recruitment failure and, if Smith was still available, we may have ended up with him anyway since Webber obviously has a high opinion of his ability (note how he made it clear that he didn't want to sack Smith even when he did, but he had little choice because of those pesky fans.) IMO we were probably heading for where we are now whatever happened.
Well, there is some relevance for those who don't want City to move to a new 'modern' stadium out of town. Having dropped down to the 4th tier and fighting relegation, with financial woes threatening, BHA moved from the Goldstone ground in the midst of Brighton & Hove, to the Withdean athletic stadium in Brighton until a new stadium could be built out of town. I was working in Brighton at the time and often went to see City play at the Goldstone ground. There was uproar during years of uncertainty, but now that they are an established PL team in the Amex Stadium one stop up the train line to London. As with Southampton moving from the Dell out to St Mary's stadium, there is a lot of modernity but not much atmosphere.
I agree Gozo and much as I liked Farkeball in the Championship, it was never going to work in the PL as we couldn't afford the players necessary.
You glossed over quite a few years of not having a ground to play in Rick. It certainly wasn't a case of simply moving to their new purpose built shiny new stadium. The guy that bought them had no intention of saving them he just wanted the land the stadium was sat on . I was living in Brighton between 1996 & 2000 & saw first hand the crisis they were in . The Goldstone stadium was used from 1902 to 1997 & the current stadium near the Uni was built in 2011. The US Franchise model is even worse as some owners are simply businessmen providing a product & happily move teams hundreds of miles away with no consideration of the history or fans . I don't believe Norwich would be relocated by our American businessman but stranger things have happened when you lose control of the club to money men. The Millwake Brewers fans are concerned their Franchise will leave their city
https://www.jsonline.com/story/spor...lwaukee-after-2030-without-funds/69907400007/ Could the Brewers actually try to leave Milwaukee when their lease expires in 2030?
I'm not as certain as you, Rick, that Farkeball was doomed to failure in the PL. If we had kept Emi and not bought Rashica, Sargent and Tzolis, plus not made such a hash of choosing the four loanees, I think it's likely we would have put up a much better fight than we did. I accept, of course, that keeping Emi may not have been possible because of some kind of 'gentleman's agreement' with him, but those three players and four loanees contributed almost nothing to our season, and IMO much less than Buendia was capable of contributing if he could have been persuaded to give us one more year.