Daily star article

What happens if you turn right then?

 

That's the way to travel.............................so they tell me .

 

You sit amongst the plebs .

 

See your point
Let's hope things are afoot and this is the beginning of a much needed change of direction (in all ways) for the club.

 

Not many can make a wheelie case look good.


Including you

 

An aircraft??

You have me confused with that international jet setter @PlatinumChaosX!!

 

No we mere morals can't compete with @PlatinumChaosX, he is a high flyer.

 

I'm sure no help is needed whatsoever.

 

It's good to see that you've given some serious rationale to your protest argument, rather than usual 'Edin out' sounbite

So basically you think that it's better to have a nice / safe owner who gets on with the community etc and except that we're a bottom two division club for ever more? I'm fine if you are - just asking

The realities of the world is that some eggs have to be broken to make an omelette. I can imagine that our set up was largely amateur hour a throw back to the good old eighties when I was surrounded by staff who basically wanted to avoid doing any work and used their skills to achieve this. I suspect that owners bred in the German ways of doing things will have been a shock to the system - but for me it's as shock we have to take, if we ever want to achieve what Burnley and Huddersfield are doing

Incidentally, I don't think this regime will take us to the promised land, but I think they'll make us lean, mean and hence make us more attractive to a wealthier buyer

I get you point about the community club and us all been bonded together, but it was largely due to the horror seasons of 10 to 15 years ago - the frequent times we nearly went bust or out of the footie league, i.e. everyone came together because there was nothing else to look forward to

 

I am shocked that they may be taking a lean and hungry club into Division 2, but carry with your comparison to Barnsley and Huddersfield

 

We're not 'lean' yet. That's my point. This club has to get out of it's L2 set up / Cup run sponsored existence and be able to thrive in L1 based on it's revenue streams. Then we can look upwards more positively

I'd say it'll take another two seasons. It took Burnley nearly 20 years to get the Premiership from L1 and 15 to establish themselves as serious Championship players. People forget that Hoyle took over Huddersfield, after they'd put the structures in place, such as the youth set up etc , i.e. it may be that we'll need someone like that next - but I suspect that when he on and off the field sustained improvement Rupp will invest more

 

No, you’ve misinterpreted what I’m looking for.

‘Safe and Nice’ isn’t a representation of what I want. The opposite, actually. I want us to accept a level of manageable risk in showing some ambition to move forward – and recognise that being completely risk averse is in itself a risk, as a lack of ambition can see you go backwards.

And ‘nice’ doesn’t interest me. I want us to be more demanding as a fan base. And I want us be more ruthless and less tolerant of mediocrity, as a club.

I want us to be professional and act with a degree of humility. And I want to see a realistic plan, in action.

I don’t really care if a kit man leaves. Or an accountant. And I don’t really care if, in isolation, someone leaves and has a pop at the club. I do care, when a stream of employees from every area of the club – from playing to coaching staff, to commercial and corporate leaders, to backroom support staff, all leave and all cite issues with how the club is being run. I didn’t much care for what I saw from Grayson in terms of football, but much of that was down to the quality of what he had – though I very much cared that a proven and experienced manager had several weeks to suss us out and chose unemployment instead. I care that the name of the club is talked about in negative terms in the press and by football officials. I care that the mood around the club and on the pitch has become toxic and broken in terms of spirit.

The biggest frustration I have is that Rupp and Rahic, COULD be fantastic owners – if they had more self-awareness and were willing to take a back seat, trusting more capable people to operate in key roles. And if they learned the right lessons over what’s transpired over the last couple of years. They MUST look at their approach over the last couple of years and at least privately admit to themselves ‘we’re f*cking this up’.

The model they inherited was VERY close to being what was needed to take us to the championship. I honestly believed that if they’d retained the model we had, with 2-3m of investment we’d have added that bit of extra quality to take us to that next step. And when I say ‘model’ – I’m talking about empowering the management team we had to continue doing their jobs. I’m talking about focusing on the strength of the first team and protecting the values that had established such a close bond between fans and club. I can imagine the first meeting with Parkinson, and Rahic saying – ‘Phil, you’ve done great. But we’re going to change it all. Here’s my vision’…. Instead, all they needed to say was ‘Phil, we’re not going to change anything. What else do you need to take us to the championship’. And even if Parkinson had already decided to move on before they even rocked up, it should’ve been the same conversation but with McCall. Both in the summer of 2016 and 2017.

Instead, they looked at 2 sides who’d fallen at the last hurdle and believed they knew better. They started going about reinventing the whole thing, alienating all and sundry. When they had a chance to reflect over the second half of last season – they talked about lessons learned and concluded that the problem was they hadn’t been aggressive enough in implementing their vision. They completely misjudged the landscape. That can happen – but good leaders adapt. I’m not convinced Rahic has the modesty to adapt in the way we need.

Much of what they’ve preached about sustainability and investing in youth as a means to grow the club and generate revenue are spot-on; they’re just completely misguided in their implementation. The idea of a development side is a nonsense at our level (unless you’ve got a massively inflated budget anyway, which we don’t). They need to understand the nature of this league – it’s a man’s league. It needs experience, as well as quality. If you’re going to invest in youth, do it gradually by adding a couple of the best young players you can find who’re ready to play to a decent standard NOW, each summer. Surround the youngsters you have with proven quality and experience to support their development. Don’t throw them all into the deep end, with a completely unproven and unqualified coach. And don’t adopt a scattergun approach of signing 10+ kids and German amateurs.

Appoint a manager and let him manage. Bin the development team and let the manager have full control of recruitment. By all means, apply some guidelines around having a certain number of players under a certain age (but be realistic) and let the manager apply those guidelines in a way that he sees fit. Then judge him on the results. Give him all the financial backing you can. Focus on quality over quantity.

Focus on the commercials, stay in the background, appoint professionals to do key jobs – both in recognition that they’re more qualified, but also to distance yourself from some of the responsibility of what we see on the pitch. Be realistic in how much of your vision can be implemented and over what period of time.

They need to act as owners and Rahic needs to accept his dream of being a DoF won’t end well. He needs to make a choice between being a hands off chairmen who could succeed brilliantly, or a hands on DoF that will end in tears and failure.

 

What’s all this German way that everyone keeps raving about ? Looks like a car crash to me .

 

Your so funny @banbrotam even Edin realised Collins was not the answer when you were still proclaiming to everyone to give him chance, your record with regard football matters is hardly good, weren't you the poster telling us to give Matthew Bates chance to prove himself.

 

Banbrotam - would just be interested to see what tangible reasons you can give for feeling are owners are taking us in the right direction? I like your positive attitude but dont think you can equate a lot of what has happened to being 'a shock' to the system - more down to bad decisions and lousy man management. Being a community club means a lot to many fans and I think there is a balance to be found to enable progression without losing our core values - just maybe ER has started to realise this

 

We should be a soufflé not an omelette.. edin out!

 

Breaking a few eggs would be fine. But we’ve smashed in the carton, wrecked the fridge and slaughtered a few chickens just to be sure.

 

@Faithful Bantam that is one of the funniest responses I have seen, hilarious

 

You may be right, but where have you got that information from? Have you got any links / sources?

 

I did overhear a particularly dumb discussion in the Vaults the other day whereby one of the people was insisting the evidence that Rahic was picking the team was that he was German, so it does happen! haha