I had to spend 90 seconds scrolling to the top of this post to check it wasn’t Ian Thumwood. And to be fair, can’t argue against any of this. Top post.
The people in charge under Gao did well to keep us up for several years with nothing to work with. But we had no future under Gao. You can’t survive for long in the PL with no money to spend and we would have been ****ed financially as a club when the inevitable eventually happened. So yeah, SR are **** at the football part of running a football club. They have made too many mistakes to list and continue to do so. They’ve been the ones in charge and the ones to tip us over the edge with our last relegation and the most annoying part for me personally is that they appear to be ****ing slow learners and are just making a bunch of the same mistakes again as we sleep walk to one of the most embarrassing ‘attempts’ at survival in PL history this time round. And yet, we won’t ever be up **** creek financially as a club under them. They want the club to be successful, despite doing an awful job of making that happen. And so whilst there is money, and whilst there is ambition I will always, always prefer that to no money and no ambition. At least there’s hope that they’ll get more things right eventually. There is potential upside under SR whereas there really wasn’t any under Gao. Now if an incredibly wealthy person/people who are excellent at running football clubs want to take us over then sign me up. But that doesn’t seem terribly likely to happen, so we’ve just got to hope they start learning from their many mistakes quicker and put some proper football people in charge rather than constantly trying to be clever ****s.
Some very good posts describing our present situation, but on this forum it is preaching to the converted, it is hard to think of ways to persuade the owners and Manager to change their ways. Individual action is futile, it is bad for the Club and self harming for the individual. The old fashioned method of writing a letter of complaint or a co-ordinated petition doesn't happen any more, instead it is left to the keyboard cowboys on the Internet to do the work, but sadly that gets fouled up by some of the idiotic posts which are mostly ignored and are of no help at all. It needs a sensible co-ordinated effort but who is clever enough to organise it?
That top six is really interesting. All of whom have the type of model we *should* be looking to emulate. All of whom have good, talented and pragmatic managers.
Sure. I mean everything is cyclical. We used to be the one at the top of that pile and they all copied us.
I'd never seen this article before (and wish I hadn't) how the **** have we ended up with someone like this at the sharp end of decision making at our club? The guy is outrageously deluded. Don't need to worry about the league table lads, everything is a-ok. I bet when Martin met SR he couldn't sign the contract quick enough. Knowing that he won't be measured on actual results. https://www.newstatesman.com/cultur...-lies-data-unravels-footballs-biggest-lie-all
Bang on for me. Think it’s tougher than it was when Markus bought us originally with all the FFP & PSR. The approach and recruitment has been for the most part fine, especially after Wilcox came. Think they’ve stuck with Martin, and given him more freedom post Wilcox due to financial constraints & that they’ve finally committed to a footballing philosophy after 3 different managers/styles (if you can call them styles lol) the season before last and these are largely the reason I think the club will stick with Russ. If we sack him we lose 80% our signings straight away imho. He has the backing of board and players & think WHEN we do finally go down, if he sticks around we might somehow manage to persuade some of our better signings/players (THB, Fernandes, Dibling & Downes) to stick around on a KWP type agreement that if we don’t come straight back up then they can bugger off
The recruitment has been appalling! (with perhaps the exception of Lavia and Livramento) If being bored ****less for an entire game and still losing is a philosophy, then yes SR have really committed to it. When we break Derby's PL total do you think the fans will want him in the Championship?
Livramento wasn't even a SR find; he signed in the summer of 2021. Lavia is probably the only true gem they've found (and before someone mentions Fernandes, it's far too early to say)
Personally don’t think it been as bad as your making out since Martin has been here. Most of this forum were buzzing with our summer recruitments if I remember rightly.. minus the £30/40mill Striker we never signed or were ever going to, we’ve done good as we can. THB, Downes, Ramsdale, Fernandes = Quality signings Sugawara, Archer, Lallana = Good / arguably very good signings Fraser, Brooks, Rothwell, Charles, Edozie = Decent signings/loans that helped us get straight back into the Prem For me the mega flops have been Sulemana, BBD & Stewart really. Feel for Ross situ as he was quality at Sunderland but defo yeah poor piece of business signing injured player Alcaraz could be considered a flop too but showed glimpses of real quality, Tall Paul not fair to judge in my opinion, not exactly had a fair run in of game time. Ugo / Cornet probs turn out as flops. Think a lot of peoples expectation levels are bit too high right now. We simply can’t compete without spending the higher amounts of money needed / signing way more players. Look at Forest and where they’re at right now, spent **** loads when they came up & now competing at the top Even Bournemouth & Brighton have spent far far more & are established top half competing Prem clubs. Hence why the likes of our main summer target O Reilly will pick a Brighton over us all day long
For the record I’m also not defending our style of play or the boards defence of that, Martin & the board defo has a lot to answer for with all that malarkey and should have replaced Wilcox, and I’m obviously just as unhappy as everyone else with the situation we find ourselves in but I don’t agree that we haven’t made some good & sometimes arguably quality decisions/signings since we buggered it last time around in Prem. The gap between Prem & Champ is far greater than it ever has been and we needed to break the rules (like other teams in this league) and spend way more money in order to make the leap & genuinely compete
