Fair do's, but your point about them being badly advised is the core issue, let's be honest Rodgers was hired on the advice of a "soccer expert" in the States, that's were they ****ed up, from minute one they should have taken on a high profile football director from this side of the pond who would have steered clear of someone with hardly any experience and no success. I like that the ground improvement and extension will also improve the area around the ground and hopefully will give the people of the area a better standard of living though.
Mostly right, but they did come in with this Red Socks, 'Moneyball' idea. True on the ground - eventually. But don't forget that RSB's justification for selling the club ' £200m under book price (yes, I know it was a distressed sale!) was that NESV, as it was, could IMMEDIATELY start work on the ground. True, they did, with sleight of hand, write off ' £50m of stadium development costs (Hick's fee for getting associated architects to draw a few pictures of a castle in the air), but they've taking nearly five years to put their own spade in the ground. That said, the owners are not the problem, except that they chose Brendan, sacked Kenny for less and didn't challenge the FA over the Suarez kangaroo court. But you don't want me to ride that hobby-horse again, I expect.
But celebrating them on their success in the business side of the club is like watching the money roll in and watch an amateur manager waste it, they need to maximise their financial input, but its easy to see Werner and John Henry have been mesmerised by the Rodgers Blarney going by Werner's interview in August.
They've funded the spending of £300m on players since they installed Rodgers. They have every right to expect CL football in return for that investment and he's only delivered it once so far. The prime issue has been the vast sums wasted on players who were either no better (or worse!) than those you already had. A success rate of 1 in every 6 or 7 multi £m buys is truly shocking. Sure, every manager gets one wrong every now and again, even the best of them - but Rodgers / the fabled committees record has been appalling in the last 3 years. They now face the prospect of sacking him and bringing in a new man, who'll no doubt want his own players, so they'll need to dig deep again....
Yeah, but you'd think with all their business acumen they'd have saw something was wrong when they weren't getting very much bang for their buck.
And the alternative if they don't bite the bullet and bring in a new man is handing Rodgers more money to waste and watch their investment wallow in midtable obscurity.
Absolutely no argument with that. The logic of taking a £16m punt on Balotelli whilst not going for Shaqiri and/or Berahino for the same price (as they were in '14) was just astonishing. And Markovic and Lovren @ £20m? Too early to judge Firmino, but looks @ £10m over the odds. Hope I'm proved wrong.
True although the whole purpose (according to FSG) of having a DoF / Committee was for continuity. In theory, the players are bought based on a certain style of player, managers are then recruited based on that same style of play meaning new managers can work with the players already purchased. Great in theory but won't work in practice.
They put the vast majority of those "on the wage bill" on the wage bill. They have been badly advised by those they put in place themselves. I can live with them making mistakes but not repeating the same mistakes. Financially they have done great things and they have provided funds but my initial point still stands....on the field we haven't improved. In fact we've gone backwards since they sacked Kenny. That is partly down to Rodgers being hopeless and partly down to the men they have surrounded him with. It's all very well throwing money at the squad but whats the point if it's being given to a bunch of rank amateurs to spend? The buck stops with them because these people are ALL "their men" now. The disastrous " committee" was their bright idea brought in to help a manager they had initially employed with the remit of full control over transfers. It hasn't worked and nor was it ever likely to work yet they persist with it. Ian Ayre has made more blunders than Frank Spencer and Basil Fawlty combined yet he's still there as well. Rodgers team is in the process of breaking records even Woy failed to break and yet he's still there as well Laying the blame at the players door is daft. Laying the blame "solely" at Rodgers door equally so.
Yeah but when the manager is in essence the Chair of that committee then it's pretty ****ing pointless. As he's always going to push hard for the players that he personally wants and his opinion is always going to hold sway, and that's obviously happened in this case. If you're going to have that model then it has to be a DoF or head of recruitment who brings in all the players and hands them to the first team coach / manager. What they've ended up with is a half arsed halfway house, between that model and the traditional manager who does everything one.
I agree with Billy - the whole structure is a mess. Either give Rodgers complete control or the committee. Everyone is at fault.
