Just wtf is going on at the City ground? I dare say Brian Clough will be turning in his grave once again at the latest developments at one of the former best English football clubs. I still have good memories of Forest being a dominant force both in England and Europe but since Brian stepped down (a little too late IMO) they have gone from bad to worse. I am well and truly stunned at how badly this is going for them (the fans that is). While moving away from specifically from Forest and without QPR bashing, the whole question of foreign ownership/investment (call it what you want) I believe should be called in to question. Yes it would be lovely to have millions and millions of ££££'s injected to the club but other than Chelsea so far, it always appears to be not much more than a short term solution and maintaining whatever success is achieved is far from guaranteed. Even Chelsea though are now having a harder time of it although still comfortably a top 6 team. Forest are just one of a number of clubs that have gone down this route and not the first to suffer from it - have you seen where Portsmouth are in L1 recently? Who's next? Cardiff and Leicester both have a great chance of making it to the PL this time round and both are backed by foreign owners, who is to say they will not go down the same road having set their sights on a high placing in the PL in the short term. It is not a trend yet but I do wonder just many years it will be before the likes of Man City, Leicester and any other team back by foreign owners are going to be left to count the cost.
I am probably going to get called racist here but I think the problem seems to be largely with Asian/Arab owners who are wealthy but don't buy into our culture.They tend to want immediate results and have unrealistic expectations.I guess this may well be the result of their background with flunkies giving them everything they want as soon as they want it.Blend this with a natural flash-harryness and you have the kind of result we see at Ci£y,Forest,Blackburn,QPR. Abramovich also shares this childish impatience. They buy in for the glamour and reflected glory but paradoxically often end up not achieving what they seek.As I said these seem to be cultural as opposed to racial characteristics as Americans also seem to share this to an extent.
It is not racist at all. Except they don't like to be called Arabs. My Mother in Law, after her divorce, went out with a guy from Egypt. Clever chap, did the computer work behind scanners. I called him an Arab. He quite firmly told he was Egyptian. Arabs, he said, are the ones who let flies crawl across their faces! Back to the point. So many owners do not and never will understand the passion that is most prevalent in football. All other sports have supporters and followers but not with the same passion. Half of these new owners aren't there half the time and probably have to read the programme to know the names of the players. Delia is a Goddess of course.
Redruth,we are men of a certain age which may be why we don't regard it as such.I used to be very friendly with a shopkeeper who came from Uganda when the Asians got thrown out of that country. His generosity was bordering on embarassing at times and he was a genuinely nice man.He wasn't actually rich,just comfortably off. But I could imagine that if he was mega rich it would have caused problems,especially if he had expected something in return.I imagine Tony Fernandes is much the same and he is getting his leg right royally lifted.
I would say that man city's owners seem fair and living in the real world! Yes they have paid huge fees for players etc but with what they have planned for the youth development is unbelievable, they want better than what barca have at that level and that's what theyre concentrating on now. They seem to be running the club sensibly if you can call it that, even the manager is lasting when many outsiders were saying its mancini's end as soon as they were knocked out of the champs league. I also believe the running of a club could be purely down to how the owner has been advised etc
If you want an indication of what could happen to Forest, Blackburn and a host of others if it all goes tits up, here is a reply I got from the Pompey board when I asked what was going on down at Fratton Park As a football fan first and foremost I find this to be unbelievably sad. As they are the first club to be stung in this way then yes I would be very sorry to see such a demise but for the clubs that follow the same route I will not shed a tear, the writing is on the wall for those who want to take heed of it.
I feel that the OP saying only Chelsea have had success is a bit harsh on Man City who won their first title for a generation last season and have gone from Division 3 to the title and they will certainly be in the mix again this season. As ICHB said they are investing heavily in youth development and this is likely to leave them in a very strong position 5-10 years from now. Regardless of who owns their club only one team can win each competitioin so if every club suddenly found a hugely wealthy foreign investor the vast majority would fail. There is clearly an issue with club owners execting instant rewards if they throw money at a club and the management getting the chop if this is not delivered but the likes of Pompey have been destroyed by owners who have not had pockets deep enough to match their ambition - if an Arab sheik with surreal wealth takes over your club you will, in all probability be fine unless he gets bored and moves on. It is when you have someone who is by our standards wealthy but in football terms not so who tries to take a club on to the next level and does not make it before the funds run out. Owners need to be strong and not let managers chuck away all the cash on expensive player contracts - for all his plaudits Harry Redknapp did Pompey no favours in his reign and neither did O'Leary at Leeds BUT the owners should have said "no" at some stage. You can't blame the fans or managers for wanting the best players to be at their clubs but the buck stops at board level as it does with any business - if you don't have the money to spend and you let someone under you spend it anyway then you only have yourself to blame when you go bust. On a side note I think that QPR will be OK financially - yes they have made some ruiniously expensive mistakes but TF appears to have a huge amount of funds to back his management and even if they go down this season they will get a parachute payment and he will pay for the players necessary to get them back up and they will continue to spend until they make such progress as he wishes.
I am not sure so sure that is what has happened. My understanding is that everything was okay until Manderic left, the following owner and subsequent owners (one didn't actually exist apparently) were the one's that systematically destroyed the club. The point the Pompey fans made was that once their main benefactor (Mandaric) lost interest, it was a sharp downhill course that has spiraled fully out of control. Not saying the exact same set of circumstances would happen elsewhere but neither would I rule it out, or even a different set of circumstances that produced the same end result.
So Pompey had an owner with surreal wealth and they were fine and then had several subsequent owners who did not have pockets to match their ambition then it went horribly wrong? Is the point you raise not just backing up my post?
The warning signs have been there for a while. In 2000 Boston Utd turned professional. In 2001 they were docked points and fined for breaking rules of player registrations due to some shenanigans by their chairman and manager. In 2006 Boston entered administration due to 'financial irregularities' which saw their manager and former chairman given suspended jail sentences. They tried to wiggle round a points deduction by going into administration after they knew they were going to be relegated from the football league, thus avoiding the points deduction the following season. The Conference had none of it and demoted them further to the Conference North. Obviously this is on a much smaller scale than the billions floating around the corridors of Stamford Bridge and The Etihad, but it still shows that throwing money at a club works in the short term, but ultimately not in the long term. The chairman and the manager were fiddling the books and not paying HMRC all they should have done and five years later it came back and destroyed the club. I'm not in any way suggesting that Chelsea, Man City, Blackburn etc are tax dodging, but they are going down the route of throwing money at a club and with the exception of Chelsea and Man City it hasn't worked. Unfortunately it will keep happening until one of the big clubs goes under. Its happening to Portsmouth and sad as it is, once they dropped out of the Premier League, people lost interest. If Ambramovich pulled his billions out of Chelsea and they went into administration and subsequent free fall, or the £359 million debt that Man Utd owe was called in and they went belly up, then people might start to take notice, but as it is a Portsmouth here, a Coventry there means nothing to the money men in the Premier League.
In all the discussion about buying success everyone seems to give a free ride to Wigan, it this due to Dave Whelan bring British and an ex-footballer, but ask yourselves would Wigan be in the prem without his undoubted financial backing. Wigan if they go down this season would be in serious financial trouble, do you think the crowds they get now will hold up without prem football and prem away support. Without Dave Whelan they are in desperate need of staying in the premier league. Sorry that has been bugging me for years. Edit: it also annoys me when Dave Whelan moans about clubs like Chelsea and Man City buying success, insert seething about pots kettles and the colour black here.
Difference is that Dave Whelan genuinely cares about his club and knows how to run a club. Without Delia we would of gone bust, but nobody here has a bad word for her!
While I do not doubt Dave Whelan cares about about Wigan, it does not seem that they are self sustainable without Whelan or the premier league cash which to me leaves them in a precarious position if the get relegated. But that is just my opinion from the outside looking in
I am not saying that they currently are, this thread was about clubs who have bought some kind of success and those that have subsequently spiralled downwards, and in my opinion if Wigan go down the have the potential to do this.
For me the jury is out on Wigan, first they need to go down. I get what you are saying about the crowds dropping like a stone as a significant part of their crowd is away following. I think if Dave Whelan was to remain at the helm they would probably be able to ride it out for a few seasons, then if they cannot get back up could begin to suffer as have Coventry, Ipswich, Derby etc. and indeed as we did last time.
I have to say, I don't think it's necessarily all foreign owners to be honest. I think Man City's owners have actually done really well, stuck with Mancini last season even when they were behind United and were disappointing in the Champions League. They're investing in young players and have some good players coming through. John Guidetti for example will be top player. Mohammed Al Fayed is a good owner too, who's done very well for Fulham. There are some good foreign owners who I think do understand the culture in the game, and I think the awareness of owners potentially having a negative impact on a club probably comes into play more often now. I think Wigan are doing it spot on, buying players fairly cheap and selling them on a year or two later. It's worked for them throughout their Premier League years and I don't think it's a model they should be embarrassed about. Valencia, Moses, Palacios, Cattermole. That is what has kept in the league getting in young players who eventually are sold on for a profit, the same will happen to James McCarthy and Fraser Fyvie. We don't need to do that as much as they do, because we draw in the crowds, but should be something we look at, be the stepping stone team for some top players.
This is very true, but alas, for every Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Citeh, there are several Tony Fernandes types around, who think because they hurl obscene amounts of money at a club, it's going to be a rip-roaring success Fawaz Al-Hasawi is taking Forest in a direction that will alienate the fan base, and is doomed to repeated failure. Tragic to see. So, who's the money on to follow in that direction next - Cardiff or Leeds??
