Most liked posts in thread: Transfers (also ambition/investment/ground & lots more.....)

The last one I think was van Dijk

 

I did some digging the other day. Since Multimillionaire Rupp bought the club only three or four clubs having fallen more places. Accrington pay a fraction of City’s wages, they’re a division above. It’s not about how much money you spend, it’s how it’s spent. Proper planning, scouting, knowing which managers might replace the current one when he leaves, having the youth teams playing the same football as the seniors, having a recruitment strategy better than have they played for the manager before and are they cheap? City simply blunder from season to season, Richmond and Rahic might have ended in tears but at least they had a plan.

Look at last season’s squad, how much did Anderson, Devine, Riley, Taylor, Palmer, Cooke and Devitt hoover up in wages? How would proper scouting have improved that? How would a proper recruitment strategy have stopped us signing Guthrie to replace Vaughan? How would having a short list of next managers worked better than picking up the phone to your mate in the hope of selling more season tickets.

city’s problem isn’t lack of money, it’s the complete inability of those in charge to organise the club spend it wisely.

 

Ignore the ground for one moment, and I don’t necessarily disagree with some of your points. City supposedly had a £2.6m wage budget last season and finished 9th, it would have been lower if the season had gone to the end. Every season the squad is renewed with expensive players who in general fail to perform. There are sides in the division above who have lower salary budgets and succeed. The last time we were in league 2 we had big wage budgets and failed until striking lucky with Parky.

None of this, absolutely none of it, is Richmond’s doing. Divorce the stadium and wage budgets in your mind, City spend more on wages than most League 2 clubs and still can’t compete? Ask yourself why. It’s not the stadium lease, it’s not the six weeks of madness two decades ago, it’s not cheaper season tickets, it’s a failure to have the infrastructure in place to scout and recruit quality players and coaches. It’s appointing McCall for a third time because he puts bums on seats and you have his mobile number, it’s recruiting Billy Clarke for a third time because he’s cheap and you know him, it’s selling your two best strikers and signing a reserve from Stevenage a few days before sacking your manager.

It ain’t Richmond or his legacy that’s doing all that.

 

He doesn't hate the club, just has different opinions to others. At times raises some very good points about the club, other times he just waffles on. Like most posters i guess. He does highlight a severe lack of ambition from the current ownership and directorship, something which somewhat limits the clubs vision for the future.

 

Moderators...any chance we can have our transfer rumour thread back. This has descended into a boring thread about the merits of our current manager and previous managers or for some strange reason the merits of a couple of premiership managers I couldn't care less about.

If there are no rumours, fair enough, but I wont have to trawl through this out of hand thread daily looking for any

Cheers

 

Maybe so , but the majority of precious footballers are. Wish he'd had scored 25 in 28 for us this season like he did for a rival club in our league.
Always scored goals in the khazi league, should have been a certainty for 20 for Us
A manager should be able to man-manage 2 dozen or so footballers, that's his job to do. If you have to massage a few ego's so be it. get the results.
He was woefully managed at VP in my opinion.

 

Why is the manager your main worry?

See for me @Rogered Tart is spot on. The main concerns have to start from Rupp then down to Rhodes. Unless you know the direction and leadership of the club?

Let's all just sit back and think. We are allowing the manager to clearly bring the players he wants with no plan at all.

I can't stress enough when you look at football these days the sides that do well are doing well off the pitch.

Every single team that won the leagues in the country has or are improving off the pitch...EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!

I'll start with Swindon:

https://www.swindontownfc.co.uk/news/2020/february/major-milestone-reached-in-purchase-of-the-county-ground/

Brought the ground off the council. @Swindon will know more than me.

Let's move on to Coventry:

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/sport/football/football-news/coventry-city-training-ground-work-17770407

We all know about Coventry's problems but they are improving their training ground and do plan to build their own stadium.

Unfortunately, I have to talk about Leeds:

https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-united/latest-leeds-united-news/revealed-deal-place-leeds-united-now-andrea-radrizzani-owns-elland-road-483803

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/leeds-united-latest-training-ground-16965982

One of the first things the owner did is buy the stadium and now they're in the PL and now moving into a new training ground.

Gladly moving on to Champions of England, Champions of Europe and Champions of the World...Liverpool

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/liverpool-given-exciting-new-glimpse-18335366
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2019/11/29/liverpool-unveil-60m-plans-anfield-expansion-will-increase-capacity/

New training ground and once again increasing capacity at Anfield.

I can't stress enough who off the pitch activity matters and how if you want to improve on the pitch then off the pitch improves has to be done.I am shocked to high heaven that Bradford City as a club are not making any off the pitch improvements and haven't for years and years. Rhodes ideas are out of date and fans urgently need to start questioning the direction of the club.

So, having McCall has you main worry shows a lack of understanding football in the 2020. Football has changed since Bobby Moore the legend, a true legend (@Interested Bystander would firmly a agree) lifted the World Cup in 66. It's more than just a game! It's more than just a game and Bradford City urgently need to wake up to that fact.

I hope Rupp or Rupp and Rhodes now start to tell the loyal fans what is the plan for the future because most of you are mugs! Hate to say it but you are. You follow the club which is great but @Faithful Bantam has been saying it for years the club lacks ambition. You pay your money and now the club is getting overtaken by the lacks of Accrington.

You say you love the club? Well start wanting more and don't accept sound bites! Stop listening for excuses for failure! That's not been negative Park, it's being REAL! It's knowing the club and the club make excuses for non improvement. We are a club that should be in the Championship at least but in league 2 with nothing to show for it.

 

Thank the lord for that

 

Rumours on twitter that Wood is signing a new deal. He's at VP now according to his Instagram and the team meeting is tomorrow according to mccall. Could be guesswork but would be great news.

 

It's early days to be resigning the upcoming season to the trash heap as we don't know what beholds the club in terms of playing personnel. That said, my faith in the hierarchy of this club fills me with little confidence, so my expectations are tepid, to say the least.

Until we find ambition right from the top, then I feel we will continue to be a middling lower league club, with some of its support base continuing with the grandeur that we have big attendances, so this must equate to success and be signing higher league players!!

The current squad (well if you can call it a squad) is unbalanced, ageing (Donaldson), inadequate (see Guthrie) and whilst I read of these signings of Bolton et Al, I am resigned to not see signings like Spearing, Doyle etc because they are well beyond our pay grade and aspirations.

January showed our hierarchy for what it is. Doyle out, Vaughan out with Guthrie in. And to rub salt into the wounds, sacked Bowyer too late before appeasing some of the fanbase with the McCall reappointment. Weak, lazy and synonymous management of Rupp.

 

I’ll ask again. How does paying the stadium lease to Gibb change the fact that the club spends money on substandard players every year and has is on its fifth manager since Stuart was last sacked. Two and a half years ago.

The Richmond debts have gone, the two administrations have seen to that.

City have a big wage budget that is wasted every year. If they can afford to pay that, then how on earth is the stadium a millstone? If Gibb let City play for free in the stadium, they’d still have the biggest budget and still be shit. The stadium is an irrelevance in that context. It’s expensive, but even if it were free to play in because it hadn’t been sold to pay back debts, the club would be no better off on the pitch.

Blaming Richmond is a fallacy.

 

If the rumours are true and we are binning off Vaughan to save on wages then it is an absolute disgrace.

The club have learned absolutely nothing from Eoin Doyle - we were humiliated. Quality strikers come at a premium. Quality strikers win promotion. Quality strikers need teams building around them.

City have had 3 legitimate goal scorers in the last 20 years since the PL days. Windass, Thorne and Wells (Wyke debatable). That is absolutely atrocious.

 

Not a rumour but Callum McFazdean has left Plymouth having becoming a Dad and wanting to stay more local to Sheffield. Promotion winner in last two seasons, versatile in that can play a left sided wing back or centre half. Could allow us to push Connor Wood forward as his supply is so good. Would definitely add quality to the squad imo

 

So you dont pay your debts,you get kid glove treatment from the EFL for not playing matches,but you can fork out a quarter of a million in compo for a manager with no league managemant experience.The whole thing at Bolton stinks.

 

City to vote against salary cap being brought in next season. Quite rightly too. We should vote against it for as long as possible. A club with gates of our size should not be restricted to make it “fair”. We should be using it to our advantage.

 

The rest of league 2 are getting on with It now whereas we’re lining up excuse after excuse in the T and A.

 

Clarke isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I personally like him as a player. His stats last season look better than I expected too.

The problem here, is this is a typical bradford city signing. Cheap, lives local, "loves the club" and is in Stuart's phonebook on speed dial. No creativity, no imagination, no scouting, nothing. The exact problems that has been the root cause of our shambolic recruitment over the last 5 windows.

 

Why do you put yourself through this sort of purgatory season after season, just sack the club then you can live a happy life ?.

 

I'm glad there was no social media when we signed the likes of hendrie, abbo, singleton, babb.