Most liked posts in thread: Rupp & Sparks Out?

Can’t keep blaming the manager. It’s lazy saying oh the Board are not playing football.

Who picks the manager, who sacks a manager? What is Bradford City’s playing style? What is the clubs vision?

Look Rupp and Sparks are fully to blame for us going backwards. Can’t even blame Edin!

You stay at home if you can’t handle the heat but things need to get serious and we need to make sure Sparks & Rupp understand that they need to go!

 

Christ, Park, is there a world in which you could even imagine City trying to be better? Let's just give up and be crap forever, eh?

Your resistance to a desire for change/improvement/innovationn is baffling. If we were top of L1 and flying then fair enough but we've been bouncing about the arse end of the Football League for half a decade, when is it enough to call for change?

We'd all still be living in caves if it were up to you.

 

Bottled it? or maybe
"When you speak to a club, I think you're trying to understand where they are today and where they want to go.
"Then once you know the starting point and the destination, you can then decide whether or not you've got the skill set to put those stepping stones in place.
"These decisions are huge not just for your family but also for the football club. So, you have to make sure you have the right information to make a decision for the benefit of everyone.

"We just felt it wasn't quite right at the time."

No one could give them answers

 

You've got to laugh at that garbage from Dewhirst. Typical article from him - it's always the fans' fault and we just need to accept being lower league fodder and shouldn't aspire for better because we should've gone bust two decades ago.

He's an absolute embarrassment.

 

If we had a sleeping owner who employed a dynamic CEO with lots of experience and football knowledge we'd be fine. Or if we had a dynamic owner we'd be fine because he'd get rid of Sparkes and employ the aforementioned CEO. But we have the worst of all worlds.

 

Rupp never spoke to the most important man at the club for nearly a month certainly Alexander said he'd not spoken to the owner in an interview 2 weeks after he joined the club, that is very poor IMO surely he could take a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to speak with his latest employee, maybe I'm wrong but that for me shows his lack of interest in our club.

 

If that were the case for one manager I would agree, but this is a pattern that has repeated itself over the last 4/5 managers.

 

Who knows, they improve our team certainly. But we signed them with injury records which are questionable, so it was never highly likely they’d stay fit. Another factor is other teams get injuries, Stockport and Mansfield have had far more than us this season yet are comfortably above us. Sadly to myself and others it’s excuses and we are where we are, saying this is what you could have won is scant consolation to those of us sick of this regime. You may not be and I’m envious to your staying power and loyalty to rubbish, but lots now are absolutely fed up.

 

So you think only about 5% of our fan base are unhappy with how our club is being run then park? Because that is what myself and @Captain Grumpy were debating

If you believe that, then either you live in cloud cuckoo land or you are Ryan Sparks himself

 

And even more telling, it seems he’s exposed sparks for the bullshitter that we all knew he was

If Rupp is seriously sticking around and buying the ground, we need change in the boardroom. Sparks time is surely up, and Gents time here has been nothing short of a car crash

 

"For the avoidance of any doubt this is me. I’ve been going to City since I was 7. I’m 43. You can do the maths. I didn’t get everyone’s questions and I was polite otherwise you get nowhere but I got my points across.

I’d been shouting from my seat in the main stand at Alexander not realising SR was in attendance. Which was soon pointed out to me. As it quietened down I was shouting at Rupp and telling him to spend some money and shaking a bank note at him to try to get my point 3/?

Anyway I sought him out by the boxes to have a word with him because if no one tells him what we think he doesn’t know. He just trusts the people who tell him. Actually today’s result helps us on that front clearly 4/?

Rupp speaks perfect English. I told him he either needs to spend some money or sell up to someone who will and take a loss and not have the grief leave it for someone else to deal with. He was very apologetic. Saying he was sorry with how it’s been going. 4/?

The playing budget set for this season was £2.3M he personally put in another 500k as he didn’t think it was competitive enough against the higher spending teams 5/?

So playing budget for this season was £2.8M before we sacked Hughes. 6/?

I told him that IMHO we spend too much on older players on bigger wages and would get better value paying small transfer fees and not just looking at free agents every summer they get a free for a reason. He actually agreed & said it was something they were looking at

He also said in his opinion we have to any players on loan.

The main problem holding us back is the rent on the ground he told me. The price to buy VP is £5M he said. I told him he was a very rich man he could lend the club that money or get a mortgage on it. That would solve the issue and in the fans eyes buy him a fair chunk of favour.

Buying Vp is something he is looking at.

I told him look around at the empty seats, the pitch the club needs investing in properly and that won’t be cheap but long term the rewards are worth it.

He admitted he’s seen how low the crowds are. I told him it’s only making his investment value lower unless he does something.

He holds all the cards. He alone has the power to do something about it but the status quo of just bobbing along doing the same thing doesn’t work. He wouldn’t do it in his business so it’s not any different in his football club

I can’t tell you his answers weren’t just waffle but having spoken to him and Sparks in the past I know who I would give more credence to and I’m sure you can work that out for yourselves."

Copied and pasted from his tweets.

 

Refuses any interviews and fan interactions

Then suddenly our secretive owners tells a random fan everything about money he's put in and potentially looking into buying the ground, and budgets

 

Sparks just go now please. Take Alexander and Gent with you.

Go sell advertising boards at wakefield trinity wildcat's, something you might be good at.

If you think this is fulfilling any sort of ‘mandate’ you are utterly deluded.

 

After Saturday and Rupp seeing with his own eyes and hearing with his own ears just how bad things are, the absolute bare minimum he should be doing by the end of this week is issuing a statement to reassure fans that matters are in hand to address the situation. If that doesn't happen are we to assume that now he is back in Germany, it is out of sight, out of mind?

 

It's always a good idea for managers to deliberately lose a match.

Not only would it impress his current employer, any potential future employer will no doubt be impressed too as would his current players, and any mates they have at other clubs he might rock up to.

Seriously, some of this fanbase...

 

Does our absent owner actually realise the club he bought in L1 is now in L2?

or does he ignore that fact, just like he ignores the dwindling attendances and fan petitions?

remarkable to think he’s holding out to recover his investment.

 

Given the overwhelming silence coming from the club, I don't see anything changing any time soon.
Sparks has been a complete disaster, however my thoughts are that he's probably met the brief given to him by Rupp.
Rupp as we know, has absolutely zero interest in football and has no intention of putting in more funds than he already has. So we have the 'sustainability' model where progress and promotion are seen as a bonus rather than the number 1 objective.
For the first time, we are about to see a significant drop in season ticket sales which will inevitably be countered by a reduction in the players budget for next season. If this means another mediocre season, then honestly I don't think Sparks and Rupp care. Rupp is distanced from it all anyway and is more than happy to let Sparks take the flak, whilst Sparks is too arrogant to give a toss!
And so the cycle is likely to continue, but of course this model will come crashing down if we were to drop out of the league which is where we are heading under this regime.

 

According to Parker, he's taking part in the meeting today about the retained list. Absolutely no need for him to be there but he just can't help himself can he?