Cogs/clappers/gino Backers Roll Call

I think it’s a bit early to say we don’t have to worry about ceasing to exist under Pozzo. Not going up this year will really put us under strain.

 

Being called ‘entitled’ or told to be ‘careful what you wish for’ is far more patronising given the way it’s constantly thrown around, constantly debunked, and yet thrown around some more.

 

but detrimental to the club is detrimental to him too ? The club is arguably his biggest asset.
Why prioritise a few £m to his mates when the value of the club, his asset, is £100m+ higher if we get promoted ?

 

Without doubt, but deliberately detrimental to the club, or just really poor decisions placing too much reliance on one agent as it's the easy option ?

 

It’s possible that he has realised he doesn’t have the finance nor the skill to compete anymore, so just leverages us up as much as possible to extract benefits for him and his mates while he can? Not suggesting anything illegitimate, just making sure everything in terms of fees/benefits only flows to associates and himself. Whether the club comes 10th or 18th doesn’t make much difference. And thus Edwards is sacked because he doesn’t want his mate Giaretta to stop being able to suckle on the teat.

 

That makes sense if you don't care what league we are in. And I fully agree that i don't want PL football at any cost.

Generally speaking there wasn't the same anti-Pozzo sentiment amongst fans prior to the cup final as there was in the years of decline afterwards which leads me to speculate that some of the people unhappy with Pozzo may be unconsciously influenced by on field success.

I do wonder who are they type of owners we aspire to as an alternative? Looking at our owners over the last 50 years Elton is the obvious pinnacle but that was something pretty unique and exceptional that we were really lucky to have. i can't off hand think of any of our other owners that are particularly laudable and something to aspire to as an alternative.

 

That's not really a true reflection of the exchange that occurred.

I speculated that "Maybe relative success leads to a sense of entitlement." My post was not a quote of what anyone else had said nor directed at a particular individual. The "sigh" I received back was clearly directed at me as it quoted my post. But it's not really worth arguing about so i respect your right to have a different perspective on what is or isn't patronising.

 

I was livid at Pozzo in the summer before the cup final season and everyone spent the next 18 months laughing at me

 

You were a visionary ahead of your time. But the fact that everyone laughed at you for 18 months, but doesn't now, proves my point that many peoples negativity is influenced by on field success.

 

It's hard to say if 12million in agents fees is over the top without knowing what we we spent on players in the same period. I agree that Kalu and Bayo look like poor signings but it's not exactly the first time we've been sold a pup, is it? (see Trevor Senior, Jamie Moralee, Nathan Ellington, Andre Grey etc etc etc.... the list of duff-buys is endless!)

 

Ha ha ha!

 

Think I was moaning about Britos/Prodl/Cathcart contract extensions or some such while everyone else was enjoying the cup semi final.

 

Well I’m not sure it takes a genius to work out, off the top of my head have we ever spent more than £50m in one window? Do you ever remember us spending £100m+ like Forest and Fulham? Even when we bought Sarr that was most of our budget.

So if we’ve never spent more than £50m, then yes, 25%+ of that figure on agent fees does seem very much over the top.

 

I think it's more a case of the on-field entertainment papering over the cracks. As the performances dropped people starting looking for reasons why, and the more you look beneath the surface, the more concerning things are

Now that many people have seen the other side, I don't think they'll flip back to pro-Pozzo without significant changes to the running of the club. I, personally, wasn't particularly excited that we got promoted last time because I saw that nothing had changed, I believe others will be similar even if we go up this year.

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No worries, my mistake. I just saw the word ‘entitlement’ and I admit freely, it’s like a red rag to a bull to me!

 

I agree. But I'd still want to know what percentage of our spend 12m represents before concluding that we've paid too much. Can anyone do the maths?

 

Not everyone….

I remember vividly when my discontent started in earnest…

I was in Reykjavik working, I was on a coach in the arse end of nowhere in the pitch black, surrounding by snow in sub-zero temperatures and about to pull an all-nighter in a remote recording studio somewhere…and all I could think about at that time was how Pozzo had let another window shut that evening without strengthening a faltering defence. It was February 2018.

We had bought Deulofeu however a week or so previous and beat Chelsea 4-1 a couple of days later. And yet I was still furious about it.

My issues with the owner and lack of investment in defence only grew exponentially since then.

 

Gino must surely know that we should not be top 6 for agents fees and that fees for Kalu and Bayo are very suspect. I wouldn't say he does anything deliberate to harm the club but you have to question some choices where we seem to repeat mistakes which stops making them mistakes

 

Unlikely I'd suggest. I think he urgently wants to get promoted to maximise value and sell. As we know there is speculation they were looking at that. The more he drains out, the more the value will drop unless he sells to an other idiot like Baz. There is clearly an issue between Gino and Scott. My guess is that Dux convinced him to go along a new route, Gino wasn't 100% convinced and now with performances as they are, he's reverted.

 

Of course, and I have done.

 

You inspired me to dig deep into the archives for my own response...



Deja vu, anyone?

 

Maybe. But I’d argue it is equally unlikely he has made 50 terrible decisions for our club in the last 3 years and they are all just errors of judgement. The guy isn’t an idiot, despite the evidence.

 

The lion tore savagely at my bronzed thighs as the coach soared into the air, turned, twisted and plunged down the treacherous ski slope that no man had ever survived......

 

Yeah but we redeveloped the East Stand (which has probably already paid for itself), so I'm not sure you're allowed to be upset about the dismantling of our club and its reputation.

 

I find my generally Pozzotive outlook has just ebbed away the last three years or so. We don’t have an identity beyond ruthlessness in firing managers any more. Is the club trying to play a certain way, or recruit a certain way, or do anything in a smart way, building towards the future?

Bilic is perhaps a decent appointment. But he is just the latest in a series of wild oscillations from strategy to strategy in the hope that we can scrape into the PL again. And the firing of Edwards isn’t backing him “come hell or high water” which is what the plan supposedly was.

We had two options when coming down: regroup and rebuild with a 2-3 year time scale seeking something more sustainable, or promotion or bust for a year. You can make an argument for either. But if it’s the latter then Edwards was obviously the wrong appointment. If it’s the former then why change tack because Edwards is struggling to adapt early on. Looks like we have just wasted the summer and pre-season and potentially the opportunity this season offered.

That said, our squad is clearly better than the mediocre WBA squad Bilic got promoted. Will be interesting to see what he can do with this lot.

 

Paging Kwasi Kwarteng...

 

As I've said in other threads previously, it was mostly fine and ticking along.

Tracing back, when we got promoted in 2015, the first thing they did was to significantly upgrade the defence. Then by 2018-ish it was clear they needed to do that again, but they didn't. While we had one of the best midfields outside of the top 6, we got away with it. Then when the injuries came and the transfers out, our attack wasn't properly fed and more pressure was put on to the poor defence. Since the summer of 2019 it's been one poor decision followed by another and they don't quite know how to arrest the slide and reset.

 

So why deliberately devalue his prime asset ? It makes no sense, if as you say he's not an idiot ?

 

Maybe it’s not costing him much in comparison to what he’s earning by making decisions that don’t ultimately benefit the football team but do benefit him and his pals?

I’m not saying that’s anything more than one alternative theory - but it baffles me how you want to continually discount it’s a distinct possibility.

Being late with contractual payments for players, continual court cases and issues with CAS etc…these are not just mistakes or errors of judgment.

 

It doesn’t have to be so binary, he’s squandered our ability to be an established premier league club now, so any buyer will be basing our value on that, not the past when we were more established, the best we can hope for is a one year injection of PL cash at a time now. He could simultaneously want promotion to get this, whilst at the same time siphon money off from the club on a day to day basis. Yes the club may well be worth more as a premier league club, but that will be transitory at best now and there is the small matter of finding an actual buyer. A bird in the hand (siphoning cash off in the here and now) may be seen as worth more than two in the bush. Take the cash you can now, rather than some theoretical moving target of an unknown and potentially non existent buyer.

 

I think they are likely to be errors of judgement.
Makes no sense to do anything to jeopardise the value of his #1 asset.

 

Disagree. To a potential affluent buyer, prem status comes with a massive premium. We've seen buyers pick up champ teams expecting to be able to just buy their way into the prem and have struggled. See how NF have finally been able to spend big in the prem but took years to get there as they couldn't spend excessively in the champ. Buying a newly promoted club quickly and then spending to stay there is very attractive. Finding a buyer then will be much easier than now unless he's prepared to write off any prospect of the prem premium.

 

Yes, but you yourself have said we have zero chance of maintaining our PL status now, so at best we are looking at one year stints with absolutely no guarantee of it actually happening at all. I think you’re looking at it as being too black and white, as Burnsy has more or less said, he could be doing what he thinks is enough for the club (but it isn’t) whilst simultaneously feathering his own nest, it doesn’t have to be binary.

 

Well they are ‘errors of judgment’ that no other club owner makes on such a repeated basis. And they are basics of running a football club/business in many cases.

So I think the ‘honest mistake’ theory passes zero muster.