Do you trust the decision making of the leadership/ownership?

For 400? I hope it’s Jessica Alba

 

https://x.com/BradfordCity190/status/1708161093338607700?s=20

 

Saw this on Facebook.

When you look at what happened after Stuart in 2018, dear God...

Sometimes we like to be optimistic and think "but surely it can only get better", then you look at the reality of the situation.

I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but if we think it's a bit crap at the moment, this might just be the boring calm before the storm.

 

I can hardly believe this list. Just so depressing. I am literally done. These can’t all be crap, but they were for us. Then you need look no further than the sale of the club back in 2016. We need football ppl in fact we are desperate for a change from top to bottom.

 

It's so unbelievable that people think for some reason Derek Adams was being a jerk for pointing it out.

The reality is...

... well, the reality is worse than anyone could possibly imagine.

This is the managerial merry-go-round we should all be so desperate to avoid, but without those football people like you say, we're just living in pure denial of the issues facing this football club. Mark Hughes hasn't been a resounding success despite achieving something last season, but who at the club was there to question him on any meaningful level at all? Anybody? And if the answer is nobody, well, what do we expect?

 

3 years left of their 10 year plan to take us to premier league

jokers.

 

The reality is Rupp will not sell for anything less than he thinks the club is worth. However, it is worth much less now than he paid for it; this part of the nightmare is in his court. If he doesn’t know how to take a football club like ours forward then he should find somebody and fast. His alternative is to sell us at a reasonable price, yes he may well lose money, but nothing like what he will lose both this season and the next. If we become relegation fodder considerably more. So Rupp it is head out of arse time and start to look further than the next balance sheet.

 

It's a firm no from me.

But alas, I think we're are up sh*t creek without a paddle. Rupp won't sell unless he gets an offer we all know isn't going to be made, we don't own our own stadium either.

We need a miracle and I don't think we're going to get it. (But I hope we do)

 

I would love an owner who has a plan and is passionate about our club but we don’t have one. However, Hughes has been really well backed. He’s been too well backed. Sparks went full in on Adams and once again with Hughes. We needed someone above the manager, someone he could be accountable to. Someone who would question him rather than let him run all things football.
He’s blown the budget on players brought in for a system we don’t play because he could n’t get it to work and brought in far too many players. At the same time he has sucked the life out of the club, the players and the fans. There are loads of ways we could improve the club, a DoF being just one but the one change we could do to improve immediately is easy and that’s to get rid of Hughes. Yes it may be costly but mistakes are.

 

I have confidence in Sparks to run the club well, choose a manager and I’m not a relative @BantamJ . Met him a few years ago during a shirt launch and he is very ambitious and driven. A lot of experts want Dave Baldwin and trust him to make a correct manager appointment. However he was strategic advisor at Huddersfield town from May 22. In that time Danny Schofield was appointed and sacked soon after, then Mark Fotheringham was appointed and again quickly sacked before going for the correct appointment of Neil Warnock. Picking a manager is not an exact science and most were happy with Adams and Hughes when appointed. Not one of our experts on here can name our next manager and guarantee success.

 

A little distorted as it includes caretaker managers which most clubs appoint between managers. Trueman and Sellers were joint managers,if you include caretakers then Huddersfield Towns list has 12 names since David Wagner left in Jan 2019.

 

While that's true, how have Huddersfield done since Wagner left?

 

Had a great season under Corberan but had some battles against the drop. I’m not against changing managers ,this stability thing is fine if you have the right man in charge. However if it’s not working make the change.

 

I seem to remember that Trevor cherry worked on a six month rolling contract, meaning he would always get six months compo.

Seems sensible for both parties.

 

We are reminded by the WOTP that switching ownership to whoever is fraught with danger, as well as maybe an owner who might want to invest. Nevertheless, we have to understand and actually be grateful that Rupp does have ethics and will not sell us to any Tom Dick or Harry that turns up. It is worth reading the whole article tbh but this extract in particular.


And there are other cautionary tales at play. That Boxing Day afternoon where Rupp and Rahic made their scoreboard proclamation of course came against Scunthorpe United. At the time, both clubs were consistently riding high in League One. Both clubs initially declined at the same time, with Scunthorpe owner Peter Swann becoming deeply unpopular. As Scunthorpe continued to fall further and harder, Swann sold to David Hilton. The situation has got even worse. Right now, Scunny’s very existence is under huge threat.

It has strong of echoes of Bury, where in 2018 the unpopular owner Stewart Day sold up having run up huge debts for the club, paving the way for Steve Dale to take over. He imploded the club further, seeing it go out of business completely.

The point of mentioning Scunthorpe and Bury is to highlight the perils that can arise from driving an owner away – even if they’re not good football club owners in the first place. There are always buyers to be found, but are they right for the football club? Would Rupp selling Bradford City make the club better? Only if he is careful and choosy over who he sells them too. Desperate sellers tend to attract opportunistic buyers. Unethical investors are out there. Finding the good ones is not so easy.

In the long-term, there’s a lot of logic in Stefan Rupp and Bradford City having a parting of ways. Rupp does not have the football expertise, and does not want to pump his fortune into the club. He has his own life in Germany, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Bradford City is a big football club with a passionate fanbase – one starved of success. To get the club where it wants to be requires investment, drive and more hands-on leadership.

But if and when the baton is passed on, as fans we need it to be carefully looked after by the right people. If there is someone out there who wants to buy Bradford City from Rupp – great. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say. Let’s find out your background. Your ideas. Your credentials. Your financial resources. But if the strongest argument any would-be buyer has going for it is the fact they’re “not Rupp”, we should be cautious.

 

Good points r.e. Scunthorpe and Bury serving as stark reminders of how things can spiral out of control. The ethical stance of Rupp in not selling Bradford City to just any buyer is indeed commendable and something we should be thankful for (not selling to WAGMI was a good thing even if they are 2nd at the moment).

However, we need to consider that while the absence of malice in ownership is crucial, the absence of active and effective management can also lead to a gradual decline, as we've witnessed with our drastic fall from the top end of L1 to the bottom end of L2. The lack of investment, drive, and football knowledge, even without malicious intent, has evidently not safeguarded us from descending through the leagues.

The argument isn’t necessarily about pushing Rupp out without consideration of who comes next, but rather he publicly list the club for sale at a reasonable price, to attract an engaged and proactive ownership to reverse the decline we’re experiencing.

The key is to find a middle ground – advocating for change while ensuring that the future of the club is in the right hands.

There's a lot of fear among the 'Rupp is not the problem' group that almost implies we're statistically very likely to go the same way as Scunthorpe or Bury if we are sold - it's just not the case, and the evidence over the last 7 years suggests we'll be more likely to be playing at their level soon enough if we're not sold.

We need to look at Scun/Bury within a broader context. While the stories of Scunthorpe and Bury are tragic and alarming, they are not necessarily representative of the majority of ownership changes. There are numerous instances where clubs have been purchased by well-meaning, interested, and financially stable owners who have managed to steer them towards success and stability.

In the landscape of the 92 clubs within the EFL and Premier League, the instances of malicious or egregiously poor ownership, while impactful and highly publicised, are not overwhelmingly common. Many clubs have experienced stability and growth under new ownership without falling prey to the perils of Scun/Bury. They are always the examples used in discussions about ownership due to the extremity of their situations (and obvious recency). Yes they serve as potent examples because they illustrate a stark and tangible decline under new ownership, but they represent the extreme end of the spectrum and not the norm.

Anyone mentioning the extremes of Scunthorpe/Bury should mention the likes of Brentford/Brighton in the same breath, IMO.

TLDR: Malicious ownership and absent/disinterested/inept ownership hint at the same end course. It's death by a thousand cuts for us instead of a beheading. We're already becoming the next Scun/Bury (on the pitch).

 

Excellent counter argument. As I have said on previous threads, standing still and or walking round in circles can quickly find us in relegation territory.

 

Southend got takenover today, I can guarantee they will either be in the same league as us or above us if Stefan is still in charge.

 

I'm not sure that I'd trust the current set up to wipe their own arses without poking a finger through the paper and ending up with shit on their finger.