Most liked posts in thread: Signatures - fans forum with Stefan Rupp

I've just signed and will be joining as a member. @Bantam Steve , I hope you are successful in getting the numbers required to make us the largest supporters group.

This is the comment I posted on the website. I realise that it asked for a short comment but I found it difficult not to put down everything I wanted to say. Feel free to edit it before sending to Mr Rupp, if necessary.

Dear Mr Rupp,
When you bought the club, you promised us Premier League football within five years. Instead we have seen multiple seasons of decline and the club has become a perennially embarrassing under-achiever in League 2. We currently look a long way from any prospect of promotion back to League 1, let alone challenging for promotion back to the Championship, as we were when you took over.

Bradford is the fourth largest Metropolitan District in England, and the fourth most populous. Our population size and our regular crowds dwarf most of L1 and many Championship Clubs. It is absurd that we languish in League 2 while places like Rotherham, Stevenage and Wycombe prosper in higher divisions. We are the very definition of a 'sleeping giant', requiring only competent management and reasonable financial investment to take us up to where we should be.

I recognise that you are not a football man, that you were duped into buying our club by Edin Rahic, that you put money in to cover Rahic's debts and that you kept us afloat during the Covid pandemic. I also applaud your refusal to sell out to the WAGMI crypto speculators. However, in my opinion, these measures were the least you could do, given your otherwise disastrous tenure as our club's owner. Whilst you may not be passionate about football, the club's supporters are. Bradford City is a major part of our lives and it is painful for us to watch it decline while you remain in Germany, apparently uninterested in actively addressing the obvious problems.

The Bradford City fanbase is currently demoralised. We need reassurance that the club's inexorable drift to the bottom of League 2 will be urgently addressed. The current strategy of financial self-sufficiency and hoping for another Phil Parkinson to get us promoted on a shoestring is clearly not working. Ryan Sparks is a fine Commercial Manager, whose ability to generate sponsorships etc is commendable; but his football expertise is negligible. Since the ridiculous sacking of Stuart McCall in 2018, we have burned through a long list of managers, of differing styles, with no consistency or obvious plan. The recent recruitment of Graham Alexander was yet another shambles - sold to the fans as the club's first choice when it is obvious to everyone that we were turned down by the Cowley brothers, presumably because they were not convinced by the club's setup or willingness to improve the playing squad. The result of this constant manager churn is an unbalanced, bloated squad full of too many mediocre players, which doesn't appear to suit any particular playing style and is nothing like a promotion-chasing squad. It's already clear that this season is a write-off for promotion. What confidence can we have that next season will be any better?

It is obvious that the club lacks direction, leadership, football expertise and the investment required to get us promoted. We are being routinely overtaken by smaller well-run clubs, promoted from non-league, who are leap-frogging us as we stagnate and decline. If you are not prepared to invest more in better players and a properly professional setup then please sell up to someone who will. Please be realistic - the club owns nothing and its reputation is sinking by the day, so holding out for an unrealistic sum to get all your money back is just making matters worse. It's highly likely that next year's season ticket sales will be markedly down, given the extent of supporter disillusionment. If we continue as we are we could easily end up in non-league and your investment will be worth even less than it is now.
The long-suffering City fans need to know that you have a realistic plan to either do things better or to sell the club to someone who will. Please come to a Fans Forum, as requested by this supporters' group, to let us know how you intend to move the club in a positive direction.

Respectfully,
Steve Benson

 

We are well past results mattering to if we want Rupp to leave or not, we could win every game from now until the end of the season and the message has to be the same, good luck Rupp but sell to the first realistic bid you receive and don’t overprice the club.

The ‘forum’ should have been the last straw for any excusers of him. He literally told the CEO that his brief is to survive, he’s not bothered about righting the wrongs of his partner, I.e getting us back to where we were when they poisoned our door, he’s just bothered about not losing his investment and sitting on it until he can get his asking price, which considering how many clubs have been sold in recent years or had investment in them is likely to be far too high to appeal to any sensible business man or woman.

For the future of the club, we absolutely need an owner with an actual interest in taking this club forward.

 

I've signed both the petition and to be a member.

If a genuine dialogue is the ultimate aim, then might I suggest vitriolic comments directed at either Rupp or Sparks need to be removed.

Strength of feeling needs to be expressed but not at the expense of coming across as a group of 'cranks'

You only need to look at 'commrade manny' to see how a potential voice to the club has been discredited both within the club and by fellow fans.

I'm not in the @Fordy117 camp but neither am I a happy clapper who will forgive and forget for a few weeks if results pick up. My patience is wearing thin. We seem to be stuck in a loop of failure where the only solution is to keep repeating what we're doing in the hope we'll land lucky the next time.

This needs to stop. The club needs to take a different approach and direction if it wants to break this cycle.

I don't care if Rupp and Sparks take the club in a different direction or someone else. But it needs to change.

 

Nothing changes. Sparks out. Rupp out.

 

If Rupp fires Sparks the new CEO will probably work under the same mandate. Rupp has to sell up.

 

Spot on and that’s why even if we some how got promoted we need positive and honest dialogue with him, nothing nasty he just needs to know we aren’t happy with his custodianship and should be encouraged to sell. No fan should want an owner who’s soul mission is just to survive and they don’t really have any interest or knowledge of football, it can’t last and it’s a big reason we’re down here like it or not. As for the budget, he provides nothing, literally nothing, the fantastic fans turning up to watch crap year in year out is what provides our supposed top 7 budget, Rupp doesn’t put his hand in his pocket, we do.

 

Silly comment. One fluke last minute win for the first 3 points since before Christmas doesn't cover up the mess that's going on.

Rupp Sparks and Gent OUT

 

Some of you are truly beyond help, feck me. Carry on clapping the club into oblivion while shitting on anyone attempting to change things for the better

 

An owner with no interest in the club or the fanbase. He undoubtedly knew what the package contained. It was all over the Internet and social media. No doubt Sparks will have updated him too. He doesn't have the decency to address the fans regarding the failure to honour his pledge, about getting us back to where he found us. I can't believe we have supporters that are happy to have an owner who shows so much contempt for his biggest asset. If he ever sets foot back in the stadium, I hope those of us unhappy with the situation let him know how we feel, over those who are pleased to see him.

 

For some it's just having a club to support.

For some it's sticking their head in the sand hoping it will all get better

For some it's just clapping harder

For some its taking action to try to engage in conversation with the absent "proud custodian" of the club and to get down to brass tacks

For some it's all over and they have had enough of the dross being served up.

Sad times.

 

Jesus wept

 

This is the thing about folk like you. Always bloody miserable and whatever happens there's always a negative oar to stick in.

Fans are complaining so you sit there and say "why don't you do something"? Or "Why don't you buy the club and then you can make the decisions".

Then when a group of fans create a plan and start to take action its a case of negatively criticising whatever the action is or anything that goes wrong.

If you've got nowt worthwhile to contribute then do us all a favour and don't bother chipping in. You can save your own carbon footprint by not creating metadata on a website and using up storage capacity to keep your rubbish post somewhere on the Internet.

 

I've said before that if this club somehow gets a promotion, it wont be because of the Rupp model and guidelines he has set to run the club, it will be in spite of it.

If the mythical promotion was to happen this season, there is no chance the current model would bring in a competitive budget in L1. We need 15,000+ ST holders and seemingly 500,000 local commercial deals to have the budget we do now. Costs of the squad will jump massively, all players will have wage rise clauses, then you're new signings will be on a shed load more than you were funding in L2. Agent fees will skyrocket too in the league above. Without increasing ST prices by 20-25% in L1, there is no chance this model would give us a leg to stand on in L1, and he wont do that (surely!) with the current relationship between club and ownership. The promotion would NEED to have an ethos re-think, otherwise it's an inevitable relegation and another 5 year project to get us back to basics.

 

Personal opinion, keep to yourself. You wouldn't want someone giving out your email on a social platform

 

Yes I signed up and sent the link to many Bradford City fans who don't post on forums but I believe will sign because as with us they do care about our club going forwards.
I get the need to get Rupp involve and maybe sending him emails and the like will get some response but I would have prefered him live (at any time convenient to himself) rather than a written reply, but once again should we expect anything different from an owner who takes over 2 weeks to welcome the most important man to the club in Graham Alexander, even the busiest of people in this day and age could make a 5 minute call and that for me shows exactly what Stefan Rupp thinks with regards Bradford City Football Club and its fans.