"Well now we have it....." Not really. We have 1 side of a story. By your own argument above, surely you must be interested to hear Stendel's side?
I once jokingly said that the board were just holding on awaiting all the other clubs to stop taking on debt and living within their means, thus creating a more level playing field. **** me! It's become reality. Conway actually alluded to it in the interview! Naive or what?
No. Thats 2 contradicting stories from the board.....wanna go for a 3rd guys....or just keep changing it until you appease the fans...they care so much about.
have to agree with BR Stahlrost. your passion is undeniable but I would agree that your reaction was knee jerk.
Hitting 'like' again because I get all of that. A couple of weeks ago I seriously thought about whether I wanted to continue to offer my unconditional support and after 50+ years of doing just that I found that very uncomfortable. I also felt that I would be betraying my dear Dad who first took me to Oakwell and attended several hundred games with me during my youth. I know some will say that by just by thinking about it I can't be a 'true supporter' but nevertheless I did. After some soul searching I decided that I didn't want to walk away. I accept that I'm possibly looking for evidence here to support what I want to see / hear to justify my decision and totally respect your view. There are lots of different views and I accept them all, we'll all have views on the actions and steps to achieve success but ultimately it's the fact that we're all Reds and want what's best for the club that binds us together.
Would you not buy him a shot for last seasons efforts? All our idols have feet of clay, so for me it doesn't really change anything. He gave a lot more of his time to the fans than a lot of managers do, at the open day they were trying to drag him off but he stayed until hed signed all the autographs.
Yes he was backed so well by the board too in the windows he was here and they gave him the experience he asked for cant weigh him up it's not like they sold his best players and replaced them with gambles..... oh wait
And a successful football club doesn’t do good business by weakening the team in a higher league by buying 10 or so poorer players in a stronger league when maintaining most of the promotion team and adding 3-4 better quality players would’ve sufficed after selling a third of their better first team players, namely defenders. We are bottom of the championship for this reason and will be relegated because of it. God awful footballing business, fact. These owners and their flawed footballing ‘plan’ are not for me and never will be.
Or being completely honest and realistic? Red Rain has been banging on and on (and on and on!) about this but people just don’t want to listen. Eventually more clubs will end up like Bolton and Bury. Maybe even someone will do something about it but if not then at least we won’t be one of them.
End of day he was caught out and trying to take staff with him, Mr stendel (spelling correct) if he had gone to a rival club as quoted with himself and staff we wouldn't be praising his efforts of that season would we, the point is he was caught out and the board how ether we may not like them did the right thing...
Thank you, I appreciate your opening line! I'm not one of those that accuse the owners of ripping off the club, and I totally agree with the strategy of being financially self-sufficient. As an objective, it's admirable, but it's the implementation of it that I believe is incompetent. I measure the output of the club's activities in football terms first, but within reasonable financial constraints. I believe they have put out a weaker team in a higher league than last season in a lower league. That. in my eyes, is incompetent. By their own admission, they've put together a squad that is too large, so that 5 months later they intend to reduce its size. That, in my eyes, is incompetent. I believe it would have been possible in the summer (and yes, that's with the benefit of hindsight) to put together a competitive squad on a similar budget to what we've expended so far, and I've posted it on here before, it's not new. We could have put together a squad of about 18 first team players, including a few proven Championship players, supplemented by 4 or 5 junior/fringe players. That may have allowed us to compete. Included in that we should have considered a couple (3 at most) of loans, to improve the quality on the pitch with players that we otherwise could never have attracted. With a squad of that small size we would have been very vulnerable to injuries/suspensions/loss of form, but we can't have everything. We may well have had a bad run while players were recovering or sitting out suspensions. Tough. We're a small club and, as you rightly say, we have to balance the books somehow. I believe we could have held our own with such a strategy, but I am aware that not everyone will agree. Whatever the views are, it's been proven (so far) that the current strategy is not working. We're bottom of the table. I just don't sit comfortably with what appears to be the current profit motivated, legalistic, go to court mentality of the owners. I'd love to get back to just trying to win football matches.