Rhodes speaks

What an embarrassing read!.

I can't wait until he leaves. He's ruining this club!

He needs to leave ASAP and we need someone with vision because that man is a joke.

 

Plan.

Buy the our ground back, or new land for a new ground. Long term.

Training ground (ours) above sea level.

Stop selling cheap tickets.

 

He's not ruining the club.

He's actively NOT ruining the club.

That's pretty much the main thing he's accomplished. He hasn't ruined the club, overreached, bankrupted, or crippled us.

Ultimately, in that interview Rhodes has competently dismissed whole swathes of his naysayers. What are the alternatives? Dramatically overspend, risk everything. For what? There's no light at the end of the tunnel, there's no profitable paradise outside the Premier League, and this idea of 'buy the ground' 'buy this, but that' is just another way of saying the exact same thing - 'please, sir, spend some more' - but for what?

That's not vision - that's just lack of imagination.

 

I completely agree that having 'vision' doesn't involve spending hundreds of thousands on players, buying grounds, investing in training facilities simply because 'we train at a school' doesn't sound cool, etc, etc, etc, - giving the club a 'vision' and a 'plan' is relatively easy to achieve and doesn't have to cost the Earth.

However blaming Rhodes because we supposedly have a worse scouting network than 'insert team here' is a bit rich.

Time and time again the specifics of the criticism of 'Rupp and Rhodes' are muddled with data that should be squared firmly at the feet of 'Rupp and Rahic', only it's not cool to bother differentiating when you can blame the club wholesale. That list of failed strikers since Charlie Wyke, how many of them were signed under 'Rupp and Rhodes'? Not very many! Why did 'Rupp and Rahic' sign so many duffers? Because Rahic incorrectly felt a Development Squad approach was the way to go, and there are (bizarrely) people that actually think he had the right idea - I could not disagree any more strongly with that. He got it wrong from day one - badly wrong - and while his execution was notably poor, that doesn't excuse his ideas as workable. They weren't, they were a daft, daydreaming nonsense.

While I'd have loved it from DAY ONE Rhodes had signalled his intention to assemble a good scouting network to assist Stuart in his return to City, and while I do agree that Rhodes doesn't seem to have the most dynamic imagination when it comes to driving City forward, I do take notice when he says how big of a job it has been to unpick the mess that Rahic left. That Rhodes is HIMSELF SAYING he is going to be replaced soon should get him a ton of slack - but actually, nah, it's easier for people to criticise and label him 'amateur' and a chancer who is merely hoping for promotion. We get it, the successes we had under Rhodes and Lawn are irrelevant because another idiot got us relegated back to L2, but for the last time, Rhodes did NOT take us backwards, nor is Rhodes TAKING us backwards. He is trying to turn us round AND hand over the reins. Even if you vehemently think he's not good enough for us, what more do you want from him than that? He's going.

 

This is heading towards a half-arsed season for the football league in general, maybe worse than the last. I'd be surprised if we get to finish our fixtures this season. It all sound like Batten down the Hatches and survive.

 

Are you forgetting he gave us the 2 clowns in the first place. We the fans didn't bring them in, he did. The least he could do is try and rectify the mess he instigated.
I'm pleased for what he's doing right now and over the last 18 months, because without him I dread to think where we'd be. My main disappointment is the total lack of of a plan. The OWNER should have made that statement, not the temp who gives the impression he'd rather be anywhere but here. In a week where we've just been handed our arses by the footballing giants in Harrogate, we get this troop rallying call from the acting CEO. As if things couldn't get any worse.

Maybe he could take a leaf out of the Brentford model.



Even a hint that we've looked at various clubs in the football league and we're going to adopt the model similar to club XYZ FC, would give us something to work towards. That doesn't cost money in the short term, but buys them time with the fans, who know what the strategy will be.

 

Agree with this. I said pre season that this will be a season of treading water with half a squad of players you suspect McCall doesn't want, but had little choice with some he inherited under contract.

I would say mid table at best this season.

I think next summer we will see a new CEO, a new manager, and a a new squad of players ready to kick of season 21/22.

 

'It's disappointing when you get the know it alls passing negative comments constantly'.

Can't help but think this bit is aimed at you.

 

I agree with you Jon.

Ultimately, Julian is pretty financially competent. He's going to run a tight ship and get things organised. He's not brilliantly visionary BUT he also doesn't pretend he is. He is what he is and he needs complementing with a director of football or manager with vision.

There's a few fans on this thread that are not trying to see things through his eyes. To him, not overspending on wages, securing young players who maybe saleable down the line or good players for us and securing some decent sponsorship during a health/financial crisis is good business. That's how he thinks.

The lack of quality on the pitch is still really a problem of the choices of the last couple of years and some poor signings in the last two windows. That's not really Julian's fault! He's not choosing the players. The problem is slightly compounded by the owner being pretty distant so there is a lack of vision from the top really. I've seen these kinds of businesses before and they tend to feel like they're stagnating but ultimately they are run pretty well (as a business).

I have no problem with someone like Julian inside the club. It will be well run. What is needed is more thought on the playing side so that the team choosing the players spend their x millions with a but more thought and future focused. Really, Stuart should be saying, give me another 2/3 years, here is my plan and what I want to do. Unfortunately there isn't anyone with that kind of long term focus ON THE PLAYING SIDE in the club.

 

That IS good business, not necessarily just how Julian thinks. The elephant in the room is of a squad of about 25 players, if you had a free choice to release the squad, you’d probably only want to keep half a dozen or so.

The problem is the wages spaffed on wholly unsuitable players through bad recruitment. Last season the wages spent on Anderson, Akpan, Taylor, Devine and Ismail, who contributed almost zero between them, would have been better spent on the backroom or one quality player. This season DMH already looks a pointless signing. On the other hand the rest of signings, with good coaching and clear instructions aren’t that bad.

Even the best clubs get recruitment wrong, but City seem particularly bad.

 

Our football experience over the last two years has been awful, wake up Rhodes you’ve hired two managers and let them sign a lot of (poor) players in that period.

I would have respected him more if he’d shared a Skype type teams chat interview instead of bleating down the phone to Parker and bigging up his ‘prudence’.

Feck off Rhodes.

 

That's what I thought when I read it. I had Thornton call me out on Radio and now seems Rhodes wants a bit.

The only negative person at the club is Rhodes hence why he takes no risks or hasn't improvement the club in any asset form.

 

A very accurate and detailed description of what the likes of myself have been advocating for years. Its called ambition, but on here and other social media outlets, as soon as you mention the dreaded word, folk lose their shit and go ultra defensive, citing administrations and BFGs '6 weeks of madnesss'. In reality, talk of ambition from the likes of myself was never about throwing the millions found inside the golden eggs willy nilly at players. It was about running the organisation like it had the full belief it wanted to be successful. I use the analogy of a friend of mine who is an accoutant at a medium size business with a healthy turnover in the 10s of millions. Despite their success their ethos is to run their business like its turning over 100s of millions even though it currently doesn't. But they're already doing well, why the change of direction? Because their long term targets are to carry on growing and being successful.
An organisation built on the 100% premise of craving ambition breeds success because its something you have to want so badly. The words from Rhodes don't speak that to me at all, if they don't talk to me in successful terms of ambition, what does that sort of talk say to the rest of the staff at Valley Parade? If your owner has no real path as to where this ship is sailing and your CEO is happy to balance the books, where is the incentive drawn from for your staff to better themselves, for your organisation to go one step better?
I realise this is league 2 and there are no golden eggs dropping from the arse of the billionaire goose, but at least make your supporters (customers) believe you want to be successful. It doesn't take an endless supply of money to do that.

 

With the wage cap in place we have the money (allegedly) to bring players if Stuart so wants. It’s outside of the playing side where the tiny acorns should be planted for the future. There’s no sign of that at Valley Parade. We’re all second guessing what the owner wants to do with us. Until he makes a definitive statement, we may as well go and sit by the riverbank, swing our legs to and fro, stare at our shoelaces then watch the league go by.

 

If the price of a steady ship and a safe pair of hands is mediocracy then the price is to high,

 

We haD ambition when we were twice on the cusp of the championship and moved forward every year. Without getting into debt which can spiral out of control.
Without a money bags JR is exactly right being sustainable is exactly right. However within that the right decisions have to be made. Things like doing research and finding the right manager better scouting. Now with the salary cap it’s a good opportunity to find and develop younger players rather than names on the way down.

 

Everything that's wrong with City fans

 

Except for when he has taken us into admin. Which is a few times. He is good at trimming the wage bill and getting you relegated though.

 

We're a lazy, lazy football club with zero ideas and innovation.

Need a CEO - ring Jules
Need a manager - ring Stu
Need a player - look through the manager's phone contacts

And repeat, repeat, repeat.

It's only one defeat to Harrogate but look at the difference in the 2 sides. One side was organised, well put together, very well coached, very well disciplined. Our side is the absolute polar opposite and has been since PP. Making do, getting by. We learn nothing from every season gone, we'll learn nothing from this season.

Prediction: a crap January window with a desperate last day signing or 2. Next summer we'll rebuild the squad yet again and start the whole merry go round for 2021/22.