What are Stefan's intentions for the Club?

We will see

 

If he moves upwards in the pyramid, I guarantee you he will not be responsible for football operations. Partly because properly run clubs have a DOF and partly because he has zero evidence of making successful footballing decisions.

I can just picture in an interview he's asked "so then Ryan, demonstrate to us how you've been able to set and execute a footballing strategy at your last club, including the recruitment of senior footballing figures at coaching and executive level?"

What's he going to say? "Well firstly I hired a head of recruitment because its important that there is continutuity in the football department between managers. I then gave a failing manager a new deal before sacking him a few weeks later, because I'd made a mistake. Then I appointed a couple of rookie academy managers who got me out of the shit because I had no idea where I was going at that point. I let them ride the wave of the manager bounce and naively gave them a new deal despite performances illustrating that the results were unsustainable. I then sacked them before the season was out because I realised I'd made another mistake.

I then hired someone who was a successful manager at this level, but gave zero thoughts to his style of football or his personality and whether that would be compatible with our fans. Strangely enough the fans hated him and so I had to sack him mid season because I'd made yet another error. Oh and remember that recruitment lead I hired? Yeh, we got rid of him too because said manager wanted to run his own old boys club, so I got down on my knees and gave him what he wanted.

Then I really was up shit creek. But fear not, a former league winner with a reputation for the style of football that the fans want to see expressed his interest in the job and even attended some fixtures. But fortunately, I checked my junk box and found an email from the son of Premier League legend Mark Hughes saying his old man wanted the job. I couldn't say no to that could I? I mean imagine the PR. Forget if he was the best candidate or not, it's Mark Hughes. That's enough isn't it? Well he failed in his objective to my absolute amazement, despite having the league's golden boot winner at his disposal. And remember that previous league winner I mentioned? Yeh well he got a job at one of out rivals instead and guess what? He won the league again. Oh and I hired another head of recruitment to rectify the error of binning off the last one."

I mean come on, how anyone could defend Sparks or think he isn't culpable for this mess is beyond me.

 

Got the making of a TV series that……

 

Nailed it .

 

That's a little unfair IMO, it wasn't the fans who changed our formation, we were so near last season why change what didn't need changing buy better quality players in the positions he believe we struggled.

 

100% I posted similar after our defeat at Carlisle as you say those three haven't been at there clubs for years developing there teams.

 

We were saying the exact same thing with @Rogered Tart yesterday being a club that generates enough off field finance to be self financing it should be a better situation for any potential new buyer.

 

Only just caught up with some of the post. This one is absolutely spot .

 

As it stands we are well run in a business sense and Sparks has done well to work with the little assistance he gets to create what is a good off field operation in the circumstances. As for being a good proposition for potential investors/buyouts it depends what plans Rupp has and what he values the club at. Owning the ground isn't problem, the rent would be factored in to any potential bid but it depends what Rupp values it at. Everything has a price if a buyer wants what you have. Theres just something about Bradford, the football club and the city, that seems to put people off. Lets face facts, bar the crazy germans, no one bar BFG has ever really been interested in buying this club.

 

If it's the link @Rogered Tart sent me a I read it the same as you, how good were doing generating our own finance, I don't have a problem with that.
Would a cash injection from Rupp make any difference if the man spending the extra cash doesn't spend if correctly, as mentioned above take Northampton out of the teams who got promotion last season non were big spenders, where as Harris who was appointed in Jan 2022 turned Gillingham around and with the extra finacial backing he's been given by the new owner looks to have added to an all ready good squad.

 

I'm sure its the same podcast Dave, the guy doing them is with the club for a year doing a load of these podcasts.

 

To be fair to Sparks he was thrown in the deep end by Rhodes because it was the easy option for him. He'd been training him for months in the day to day operations of the club. Not an easy gig being CEO of a football club.

 

Not having a go but what username did you go under during those torrid tjmes as your details say you didn't join the forum until April 2023, there were several on here quoting the situation at Valley Parade but I don't remember BantamJ being one.

 

100%

 

It was on my social media and I have also had conversations with James Mason when he was in charge around the concerns. I raised it with the T&A all of the social media commentators (width of post) had few lengthy DMs with Jon Dewhurst who I believe was the one to fly out to Germany. Also paid towards the demonstration which to this today infuriates me didn’t go ahead with it as I saw Rupp and Rahic as the same problem neglectful.

 

Mason contacting you as well eh?

 

Was just reading the DMS actually that we exchanged in April 2018 think that would have been the Grayson period where things were public about how the club was been run( oh god was it going to get worse )I contacted him with my concern and not to disclose anything in the message that wouldn’t be fair but his general theme of the response was I am doing my job as prescribed and his influence was clearly decreasing.

 

Time will tell I will stick with what I said. And that time might not be far away

 

Seems he was sending these messages out to quite a few people......

 

I'm with you, i think if you added say £500K to our budget and 'went for it' I wouldn't trust the Hughes/Gent partnership to spend it well given the players we have brought in over the last few windows. I think we are waiting on cheaper PL/CH loans in the last week of the window to pad out the squad, but they wont be in the starting 11.

In the case of Gillingham, it's actually Kenny Jackett who is solely in charge of transfers. In Harris' own words, he gives Jacektt a list of areas they want improvement in, Jackett draws up a list of targets, they rank them 1,2,3,4 etc in terms of best fit and go out and try get their men. Jackett was hired as the Director of Football by the owners, they hired another guy to be the director of all the off the field type stuff.