I am not trying to start up a blame game by targeting certain individuals upon whom to lay the blame but rather to highlight some glaring business errors that have led to our demise. Many posters have made comments over the last few years saying that we tended to take the cheap option at certain key points in our club's evolution and I am now starting to think many of those comments were close to the truth. However I will temper that statement by shifting the wording from cheap to outright wrong and to understand that you have to look at the entire decision making process during our stay in the Championship. So many wrong decisions on behalf of our board during the last 5 years has taken us back to League One and if they continue to stick their heads in the sand then our tenure in League One will not be the roaring, come back fighting, tally-ho chaps world that so many seem to think is going to happen. Our managerial appointments have to brought in to question when you consider where we are today and quite frankly I have not seen one yet who I truly believed was going to save us from the inevitable relegation. I know the name of Steve Coppell is not mentioned with any kind of warmth around City fans but I had a strong suspicion at the time that he saw something rotten in the BCFC barrel which I hazard a guess was the lack of boardroom footballing savvy and support. When he held his first interview I heard his words but his body language told me that he didn't really believe a single word he was saying and I predicted to my wife that he wouldn't be around for very long. I know I live a very long way from Ashton Gate and rarely attend games but I feel I am capable of reading between the lines when I make my assessments of certain situations. I truly believe that the entire business entity that is Bristol City lost it's way and the guidance from all levels including the board, managers, and players were all mixed up and certainly not reading from the same page. Many people on this site have pointed to the overall financial picture as being a factor in our fall from grace, but surely anyone who thinks that by throwing money at the problem will neccessarily fix it are wrong, and it was more a case of money being spent in the worst possible way on over inflated salaries and players like Jody Morris (never quite sure what he was supposed to bring to the mix). No individual, or decision, has brought us to the drop but it is more a case of wrong time, wrong decision and all the wrong reasons made over the years, and now that ineptitude has cost us dearly. Unless there is a brand new business plan to bring us back to stabilty, both in the boardroom and on the pitch, I fear for our future and the FFP factor does not help us but might indeed bring us back to sanity because my last feeling on the matter is that everything about us recently has been insanity personified.
Mike, Very well constructed resumé of the last five years at Bristol City Holiday Camp FC. Your assessment of the situation(s) is spot on and I/we can only hope that the Owner and Board members have done some real soul searching and have now put in place a more realistic way of operating OUR football club. Where it goes in the next couple of seasons is however still anyone's guess.
