Most liked posts in thread: What are Stefan's intentions for the Club?

Sorry but this isn't a difficult league to get out of. You don't "need time" to build a team.

Richie Wellens appointed at Orient the same time as we did Hughes. In League One.

Steve Evans appointed at Stevenage the same time as we did Hughes. In League One.

Paul Simpson appointed at Carlisle the same time as we did Hughes from a far, far worse position. In League One.

Gillingham - 6 months of proper investment and sat with 4 wins out of 4 and looking likely to go up or certainly be at the business end of the table.

In past seasons Coventry, Bolton and others have all got out at the first attempt.

The context of the anger is we're in our fifth season at this level with crowds way surpassing every other team. We don't utilise our comparative advantages and bumble along. We could forgive one year at this level, even two. But it's our fifth. It is unacceptable.

And it's quite clear that our recruitment isn't up to scratch and despite whatever the club say about being happy with the squad, we've regressed. Fans aren't daft, it's about time we weren't treated as such.

 

If he moves upwards in the pyramid, I guarantee you he will not be responsible for football operations. Partly because properly run clubs have a DOF and partly because he has zero evidence of making successful footballing decisions.

I can just picture in an interview he's asked "so then Ryan, demonstrate to us how you've been able to set and execute a footballing strategy at your last club, including the recruitment of senior footballing figures at coaching and executive level?"

What's he going to say? "Well firstly I hired a head of recruitment because its important that there is continutuity in the football department between managers. I then gave a failing manager a new deal before sacking him a few weeks later, because I'd made a mistake. Then I appointed a couple of rookie academy managers who got me out of the shit because I had no idea where I was going at that point. I let them ride the wave of the manager bounce and naively gave them a new deal despite performances illustrating that the results were unsustainable. I then sacked them before the season was out because I realised I'd made another mistake.

I then hired someone who was a successful manager at this level, but gave zero thoughts to his style of football or his personality and whether that would be compatible with our fans. Strangely enough the fans hated him and so I had to sack him mid season because I'd made yet another error. Oh and remember that recruitment lead I hired? Yeh, we got rid of him too because said manager wanted to run his own old boys club, so I got down on my knees and gave him what he wanted.

Then I really was up shit creek. But fear not, a former league winner with a reputation for the style of football that the fans want to see expressed his interest in the job and even attended some fixtures. But fortunately, I checked my junk box and found an email from the son of Premier League legend Mark Hughes saying his old man wanted the job. I couldn't say no to that could I? I mean imagine the PR. Forget if he was the best candidate or not, it's Mark Hughes. That's enough isn't it? Well he failed in his objective to my absolute amazement, despite having the league's golden boot winner at his disposal. And remember that previous league winner I mentioned? Yeh well he got a job at one of out rivals instead and guess what? He won the league again. Oh and I hired another head of recruitment to rectify the error of binning off the last one."

I mean come on, how anyone could defend Sparks or think he isn't culpable for this mess is beyond me.

 

It’s not every defeat it’s 18 month with Hughes of zero improvement and regression . We look hopeless after a transfer window we’re sparks said we were going to be leaner and meaner . We look nothing of the sort and are getting bullied by teams .

 

When you look at the investment Bolton made (when in league 2), during the January window, you’d have to say that’s what investment can do. We never appear to make the right investment or see what’s needed when it’s blatantly obvious. Spending that extra cash on one or two quality additions can get you over the line.

 

Say what one likes…Rupp saw the writing on the wall with this crypto ownership b/s. His actions helped the club dodge a bullet….for sure.

 

We narrowly beat the team who are sitting bottom of the EFL with zero points ,have let in six goals and scored three (league games) and have just been given a footballing lesson by the mighty Morecambe and you are calm about the situation? I am livid that we are sitting 18th in the league and look like a pub team who have just knocked some mates up to fill a starting 11.

 

Maybe he should move over and be commercial manager then ? Because he clearly has no idea on the football front

 

We've gone all out for Hughes clearly wanting a back three, signings based on it. He drops out fullbacks after the first game as he clearly doesn't want them as wing backs. We even sign a player for the left and right wing back roles. After.45 minutes of the fourth game we revert to a back four with the same full backs he dropped.
Utterly, Utterly clueless

 

These takeovers aren’t down to luck. Or at least, not solely down to luck. They happen as a construct of professional networking and promoting of a club. Do you believe our owner/CEO is out there doing such, when by their own admission i our managerial appointment came as a result of a nearly missed email in a spam folder? Maybe there are similar expressions of interest that sit in the same folder unread.

This club is a prime and perfect target for a takeover. The fact it hasn’t happened, is highly down to a lack of proactive action on the clubs part.

 

What footballing decisions are those ? OK, he appoints the manager, agrees the budget and having final sign off within that budget but how the latter two are applied are down to the manager.

In respect of managers, the majority of clubs in our league would (if needing a manager) have snapped off the hands of Derek Adams given his track record, and Mark Hughes given his profile.

Julian Rhodes appointed Stuart for the 3rd time, so the his first managerial decision was the sacking of Stuart, which was 100% correct as we would have ended up where Southend are if he had stayed. The second, the appointment of Trueman & Sellars, was to some extent, at least at the time they were given the full time jobs with people sniffing around them, the right one and he acted quickly to remove them when it went tits up.

The third was the appointment of a proven promotion winning manager in Deluded Derek, and his only fault there was fully check DD's sanity before putting pen to paper. The fourth was appointing Hughes and let be honest, he was lauded for that, and wasn't to know Hughes would be so negative.

The footballing decisions that have kept us where we are down to T&S for going cautious when we were unstoppable, Deluded Delboy for being a megalomaniac that recruited badly and Hughes for playing effectively a back six all last season.

Turning to recruitment and budget, we have had a healthy budget, one most managers in our league would be happy with, and one if spent correctly would result in an improved performance. We can't be, and shouldn't aspire to be given our track record with insolvency over the last 40 years, the club that throws money they don't have at promotion and later pays the price (Bury springs to mind here).

Other clubs in our league have lower budgets and have signed players that have lead to success on much lesser money. The reason for that is nothing to do with their CEO and everything to do with the manager making the most of what he has been given, potentially having contacts that he works harder to keep a good relationship with, and uses the assets he has properly by playing a formation that suits his players rather than dreaming up a formation and fitting squar pegs in round holes to make it work.

To succeed as a manager you need to do one of two things - decide on your tactics and recruit a full squad that can play around that (probably more PL & CC than L1 & L2) or set your tactics around the players you have in the squad and recruit to fill any gaps you have.

Football is a simple game, and success is a combination of the football management doing the simple things right, and the business management providing the money to enable him to do that. Ryan has massively improved our commercial activity and hence the income available to the manager, the two main stream managers he has appointed have messed up how they handle the playing budget, the tactics and the relationship with players.

The reason we are still in League 2 is much much more to do with Mark Trueman, Deluded Derek and Mark Hughes than it is to do with Ryan Sparks and/ or Stepan Rupp.

 

Is there a clear vision about how we achieve that or is it just wishful thinking? Is this the same Ryan who recently stated that since he has been CEO, Rupp has invested zero in city? It's all well and good having these lofty ambitions but they are meaningless without a coherent plan around how we go about pulling it off and right now, I don't see one.

 

The point is where is the person or people who are going to come in and gives us the investment we all want. I personally have been waiting for it for sixty years.
There will at some stage be a new owner or owners but the big probability is that things will be run in a similar way just as the majority of clubs are

 

Never had what, a wealthy football interested owner? Well, Rupp is wealthy, but doesn't appear to be interested. Richmond wasn't wealth by current football owner standards but was very interested and drove our most successful and enjoyable period as a club.

So you're probably right. But I still don't understand why smaller clubs with lesser fanbases and infrastructure attract the type of owner we can't.

 

The pressure comes from being successful ie earning money. We have 15,000 seasons ticket holder who think that with a very good budget should be able to buy good players and good manager and back room, that should see us make progress. It isn’t the fault of the fans. We have watched teams go up on a show string while we sit here.

 

When you have an owner that has no interest in the club then there's no accountability.

He doesn't know football, and he's appointed someone who doesn't know football either.

On the commercial side we look better, but all in all that makes this a sustainable asset for Rupp, and as long as we keep emptying our wallets then it makes no difference to him whether we are League 1/2/NL/NLN. Nothing is going to change.

 

Until he goes, this club will not succeed. It's like a record on my part but been saying it since 2018

 

I'm with you, i think if you added say £500K to our budget and 'went for it' I wouldn't trust the Hughes/Gent partnership to spend it well given the players we have brought in over the last few windows. I think we are waiting on cheaper PL/CH loans in the last week of the window to pad out the squad, but they wont be in the starting 11.

In the case of Gillingham, it's actually Kenny Jackett who is solely in charge of transfers. In Harris' own words, he gives Jacektt a list of areas they want improvement in, Jackett draws up a list of targets, they rank them 1,2,3,4 etc in terms of best fit and go out and try get their men. Jackett was hired as the Director of Football by the owners, they hired another guy to be the director of all the off the field type stuff.

 

Our recruitment belies our complete lack of strategy. 2 years for East, 3 for Young. Why offer relatively long term contracts to young players then hardly give them a chance? Its baffling. And 3 years for Oliver, a target man when we play the least direct football in the division? Ridiculous.

 

Probably echoing a lot of what's been said here but it's not the budget that's the issue. An owner and CEO with no prior interest or experience in football is a major issue - and when you look at the mess we've been in under his ownership it's no coincidence. It took a mere 2 seasons to scupper all the progress we had made throughout the 2010's, the cup runs, establishing ourselves at the top end of League One and just needing that extra push to get to the Championship.

We're relying on the same man who got us into this mess to somehow get us out of it. If he was smart enough to do that, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

We're trusting the same man who believed Rahic knew football, to appoint more people who need to know football. Maybe he'll offset that task to the CEO, but the CEO doesn't know football either.


Also, how sustainable are we? We don't own the ground, or the training ground. Our academy is decent and produces a decent prospect who we sell every few years.

The majority of our "sustainability" comes from 17000+ fans being repeatedly sold on a half-arsed promotion bid, and how much longer is that going to work after half a decade in the basement division? It's a castle built on sand. We're not self-sustainable as part of a noble goal, we're "self sustainable" at the owners convenience

 

Rupp will sell when the right buyer comes along and offers him a fee that covers his investment. And I believe on the back of the WAGMI offer he has some integrity and will not sell to anyone who he thinks will put the club (or his reputation in West Yorkshire) in jeopardy.

Any such sale is more likely to happen in L1 than L2; I do not believe he is in any rush but neither do I think he will hold out for a trillionaire with enough free cash to get us to the top of the championship and beyond. I think it more likely it will be like for like, as some have said on here before, and possibly offer little more owner investment than we have at present. But, we can all wish (and I do) that City will be the next name to be announcing said "sugar Daddy/ Mummy/ consortium" take-over.

The current debate on the transfer thread around fees for a potentially decent player in L1 highlights the issue, where we currently are and what is needed for us to even think about progression to the dizzy heights of upper L1, let alone the Championship.