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Most liked posts in thread: Rhodes speaks

  1. Stevay_b

    Stevay_b Impact Sub

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    Do people actually buy the bs that ambition = splashing cash we don't have? Why is it so bad to want a scouting set up to match the teams around us? A knockoff copy of football manager plonked in front of mccall is hardly a setup for success.

    Rhodes and Rupp and their lack of vision and ambition are the reason we are where we are. Signing shite players, no infrastructure, not even targeting promotion just "it'd be nice". To criticise the fans for holding the club to a professional standard just shows how amateur the CEO and ownership are.
     
    Nottsy, How, YungNath and 11 others like this.
  2. Faithful Bantam

    Faithful Bantam Squad Player

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    Its a depressingly predictable statement. The only mentions are of surpluses, deficits and balancing the books. He's running a football club and says next to nothing about the fortunes of the team on the field.

    “You’ve got to given Stefan credit,” said Rhodes. “I know people will argue he should have been more hands-on or whatever.

    “But we had that bad period which started from when we lost at Wembley in 2017. We lost the best part of £2 million and Stefan put in an interest-free loan to cover it. "

    He says this as though someone robbed the safe in the dark of night. That loss was because the football club - on Rupp's watch - was being monumentally mismanaged. 'Hands on'? How about just having a competent grip of what's going on in the organization he's accountable for?
    “He put in an interest free loan. He couldn’t do much more than that.”
    Other than fund it himself, as many other owners do - seeing as he was accountable in the first place? As a result of it being an interest free loan, the McBurnie windfall was therefore swallowed whole, rather than being a tool to propel the club forward again.

    This isn't a self-sustainable model - its flying by the seat of our pants. You can't call a model 'self-sustainable' and then laud the owner for bailing the club out when it finds itself in a hole through its own mismanagement.

    There's nothing in there whatsoever that talks to an executable plan for taking this club forward. Nothing.

    “We need to get through this season financially okay and then we can start to build again. But obviously it won’t be with me.”

    COVID perhaps makes that inevitable. But this season is going to be grim, and forget any idea of a promotion push. It's clearly not part of the thinking this season.

    “All ambition means is they expect the owner of a football club to chuck their own money at it. "

    This is a complete misrepresentation and shows a real disconnect with what many fans want. Fans want to see a plan for progress. A strategy. In fact - many fans have argued that we should have been lowering the budget and investing more in scouting, coaching, recruitment instead. Ambition, would manifest itself as a CEO talking about how the club will actually move forward and start to compete more effectively. Ideally, it would involve the owner investing cash - not to prop up overspending on player wages, but to grow the fabric of the club. That doesn't have to be the case though - a capable owner and CEO, would put what we have to better use. A highly capable owner/CEO would attract investment from elsewhere. Its hard to be surprised that so many of our own fans struggle to see beyond a mantra of 'keep it cheap, be grateful you've got a club' when our CEO has the very same mentality, and indeed - a contempt for any fans who aspire to more!!

    Everything about that interview brings to life why we'll never move forward with Rhodes at the helm. Thank god he'll be gone soon. And lets hope his replacement has a vision and the means to take the club forward.
     
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  3. Gildy Pete

    Gildy Pete Emergency Backup

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    A sensible approach in my view.

    All the glory hunters can now desert the club because it doesn't have 'ambition'.

    I'm looking forward to watching City progress in a sustainable way. I hope we get to league one sooner rather than later but I'll focus on beating Mansfield first.
     
    Doodle, city exile, AJP and 9 others like this.
  4. Dennis

    Dennis Captain
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    That's right. I understand they were introduced by somebody involved with their bank.

    I don't fully understand Rupp's position in this. One of his companies loaned ER most of the money to buy his 22% shareholding in the club and he, Rupp, invested the remaining 78%. The result was that, irrespective of the arrangement between his investment company and ER, Rupp financed around 95% of the cost of buying the club. He must be a very trusting guy then to sit back and allow somebody who was little more than a stranger with very little personal skin in the game to take control of one of his investments in a sector he didn't understand and in another country where he had no prior experience! If it had been my money, I'd have been crawling all over the books every month until I was at a point where I knew I could trust my partner. And then I'd do some more!

    My own very short yet truncated chat with Rahic convinced me he was an affable, and very charming individual but not entirely trustworthy. But then so are most conmen. Rupp was either taken in completely by ER and had the wool pulled over his eyes or losing €6m was of little consequence or he was asleep at the wheel. I can only conclude it was the first of these.

    Imo they are both responsible for the mess our club now finds itself in.
     
  5. JonButterfield

    JonButterfield Star Player
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    I really like what he says, and if clubs start going bust or clinging on for grim death for a bail out, then those clubs are responsible for buying into the bullshit that is the Premier League and the sheer volume of crap that is cascaded down. That we are safe is huge, and something our fanbase can take for granted and make snide comments about.

    We ARE run the right way.

    However I accept the view that the plan for success on the pitch just isn't there - and that's why I've said (since Rahic left) we need a DoF and that it should be Stuart. If the new CEO can juggle both, great, but success on the pitch is radically different to success offit (ie, being self sufficient), and for me that needs an expert ensuring sensible transitions from one season and one manager to the next.

    We have handled management transitions as badly as I can conceive, waiting for transfer windows to close and pointlessly (even stupidly) switching between totally different managerial styles with no opportunity to actually make it work.

    Nail that, focus on getting recruitment right for the club (not just the window, as with the debacle over Vaughan's replacement) and we have a chance.

    Parkinson had to do all that on his own (excluding the managerial handover), and he was able to because he had time and support - the last four managers, less so.

    Getting it right on the field is never easy - but it's certainly not as hard as we've made it seem.

    All in all though, well said Julian.
     
  6. Dennis

    Dennis Captain
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    You've described JR really well. He is a nice guy with a safe pair of hands who knows how to run the club on a break-even basis. And that's a recipe for simply treading water.

    To grow a business in my experience requires spare cash beyond its day-to-day needs to invest in its future. That really means either the capability to generate cash itself to invest in the business or to inject cash from outside to invest in the club. We've done both in the past. Way back around 1997, the club borrowed a shed load of cash from an investment bank, invested it well in the squad and gained promotion. The club then borrowed more from commercial banks, invested it less well in a risky manner in a larger ground and paying out the cash to its shareholders before we were ready to do that and as we know, the club crashed. Secondly, we had a cash windfall, totally unexpected and umplanned for from a lucrative cup run. We used that cash by investing short term in the squad and failed to invest longer term to grow the business. Both are good lessons to learn from.

    We could invest again in the playing side if we could create more cash (which imo would really mean an injection of cash from outside of the club) but the notion of simply giving that to the manager would be the wrong. It needs somebody with a longer term vision than just the current manager to make long term decisions on what the club should be doing to safeguard its own future. That's what the owner and CEO should be doing, not the manager. Unfortunately, I don't see JR having that kind of vision. He is too concerned about balancing the books for the here and now rather than looking to the long term future of the club. With that kind of outlook, we'll tread water or have to rely on Lady Luck again for some kind of unexpected windfall.
     
  7. WilsdenBantam

    WilsdenBantam Squad Player
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    Great interview, it’s clear now we have a strategy. Just wait for about 40 clubs above us to go bust and we’ll be automatically put in the championship, simple :rolleyes:
     
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  8. Keefly Bantam

    Keefly Bantam Important Player
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    Interesting read. Interesting responses on here as well.

    Seems the guy can't do right from wrong.

    People hammer him for being silent and then hammer him for speaking out.

    When the new CEO arrives we shall hear what plans they have for the club. Until then its carry on and remain calm.
     
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  9. Mike Hunt

    Mike Hunt Impact Sub

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    Hopefully part of an effort to get fans to trust the club again. The fact that every interview, press release, signing, gossip and so on is interpreted negatively by many points towards a serious trust issue between the club and a section of the support. Originated in the Rahic era and needs to be mended for the club to move on.
     
    city exile, AJP, Stoneski and 5 others like this.
  10. How

    How Knows Football
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    i think these glory hunters have picked the wrong club to support. 3 good seasons out of the last 10? Maybe more? Come on.
    Fans just want a decent position for a club of our size. Not year on year regression.
    Also it’s nice to be in the black but I don’t think fans will take staying in the black year on year and finishing 9th in league two each season
     
    RCarol, Chad, Get Rid Of It and 5 others like this.
  11. Rogered Tart

    Rogered Tart Regular Starter
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    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.
     
    Ashton Bantam, How, Stevay_b and 5 others like this.
  12. johndewhirst

    johndewhirst Emergency Backup

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    Like many others in his position, SR invested pride in the venture and that probably has a big bearing on the fact that he gave ER benefit of the doubt because he wanted/needed to believe the original investment case would succeed. Ditto he put money into the club in November, 2018 to avoid the embarrassment of insolvency and I also genuinely believe that he felt he had a duty to do so. In my discussions with him I have found him an honourable, principled individual and a decent man.

    Whatever misgivings that he had about ER, the fact that he was not being forced to put money into the club (because they inherited a war chest from JR/ML) probably gave him a degree of comfort. Why did SR ignore what was being said an social media? Probably because of how it was being said on social media that undermined the credibility of the message. As I have said, ER only needed to point to the summer of 2017 when City fans feted him as a Messiah in Germany.

    I agree entirely the club needs a new owner and I was saying it ten years ago but sadly, reputable people willing to invest in the club appear to be a rare phenomenon now as in prior decades. We can wish it. We can demand it. But it doesn't mean to say that we will find someone who has the brass to buy BCAFC or indeed the resources to rectify the historic underinvestment at VP. There is equally a risk we get an owner who frankly we don't want.

    The finances, balance sheet and accounts are what they are and we cannot change history. I am not condoning what has happened and I am not defending how the club has been run, I am being realistic.
     
  13. Faithful Bantam

    Faithful Bantam Squad Player

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    You think this football club has glory hunters? What glory would that be then?
     
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  14. Faithful Bantam

    Faithful Bantam Squad Player

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    Nobody is arguing for progress at all costs. Or even progress. Just a plan for progress!
     
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  15. bantam2708

    bantam2708 Squad Player
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    The ambition comment really irked me. I'm not sure whether he actually believes that's what fans mean when they talk about ambition, or if it was a throw away comment to avoid actually answering it. Either way, it's not true.

    We're not asking for more money to be spent, we're just suggesting that it may be a good idea to spend it more wisely. And have a different approach so that we don't waste more money than we already have done. Just look at the dead money going out to the likes of Longridge, Ismail, DMH, Donaldson, Guthrie and BRE. You're telling me that if we had a professional recruitment setup, with a strict recruitment policy and employed 2/3 statistical and data analysts, we wouldn't be able to spend more those wages more wisely on not only better players, but players with potential reale value? Or that if we had a structure for replacing managers, we wouldn't be able to avoid the yearly clear out and rebuild and thus saving the club money in the long run?

    It's complete and utter nonsense to suggest that when people mention ambition they mean they want Rupp to chuck money at it and sign players on big wages for 6 figure fees every window. Complete crap and if that's what they truly believe down at VP, then they really haven't got a clue.
     
    Hoochy-Min, Stevay_b, trevor and 4 others like this.
  16. Idlebantam

    Idlebantam Squad Player
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    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.
     
  17. Hoochy-Min

    Hoochy-Min Squad Player

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    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.
     
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  18. NorthernMonkey

    NorthernMonkey Squad Player
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    You can see why he doesn't bother speaking before Season Ticket sales. It doesn't get much more grim than that.
     
  19. Mike Hunt

    Mike Hunt Impact Sub

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    Three good seasons in 10? How about seven or eight good seasons in the last century?
     
  20. bantamdave41

    bantamdave41 Regular Starter
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    Financial prudence, lacking ambition, the quiet one, whatever you think...

    I'm gonna say thanks to JR for being around following the madness era of ER (and SR). Might not have been an exciting period (and some mistakes IMO) in the recent history of Bradford City but a purposeful job appears to have occurred. So fair play Mr Rhodes.
     
    #27 bantamdave41, Oct 16, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2020
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