doubledeckerderek

There’s a piece about our demise coming up on the main 6 o’clock news. Good that the Aiyawatt is getting all this unwelcome bad publicity. Won’t be going down well with the family in Bangkok

As a team/squad, no…the 2005 - 2008 group of players just about take that indictment and the 1977-78 group were heading that way before Big Jock turned things around quickly. But as a club, for me (supporting us since 1964), it is the worst and we’ve not yet reached rock bottom. Each generation of board members/owners had its fair share of ****wits and grifters, but there was always one or two (Martin George, Tom Smeaton, John Elson, even Terry Shipman [learning from his Dad who was the real deal as an astute football operator]) who knew how running a football club in this country works, even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t provide any serious personal financial support, so there was hope that the right pick for the next right manager would see an upturn in our fortunes. But the current ownership and operational management have shown consistently for at least the last 5 years that they are incompetent, ethically dubious, tin-eared and indifferent to their most important stakeholders (the fans) and unfit to be trusted with running a club in which literally hundreds of thousands of people (ok..low hundreds of thousands) are so emotionally invested. I don’t even give Aiyawatt credit for the financial support; it’s his Dad’s money and the conversions of debt to equity were simply re-arranging numbers on the Balance Sheet, rather than a sign of tangible personal support and commitment, because the debt was never recoverable this side of a sale of the club, and if it is now sold still as a going concern, he will be paid for his shares, rather than having the debt repaid. Sadly, I too can’t see things improving before the club goes into Administration, at which point Aiyawatt and his cronies will have to **** off and we then have the chance to start again, from the bottom of the pyramid if needs be. If the ground and Seagrave are owned by separate entities, so be it. That particular poison pill has been tried many times before by various delinquent football owners but it’s rarely ended well for them, and it has not stopped clubs emerging from Administration with a viable infrastructure - albeit sometimes after a period of transition. And if that is what the cretins who currently own and run the club have in mind, good luck with the negotiations with the egg-chasers who would be the only same use potential purchaser, or the Council who would have riots on their hands if they granted planning permission for a change of use to allow commercial development or some other non-sporting use. Hopefully the rising tide of anger amongst the fans will eventually get through to our absentee owner in his Bangkok penthouse or wherever he hangs out these days, and he’ll decide its just not worth the hassle, and will cut his losses and sell up. Any new owners would be an unknown quantity, and might turn out to be bad as this lot, but they might not, whereas it’s a cast-iron certainty that if the owners don’t change, neither will our downwards trajectory.

Sweepstake on how long it’ll take them to pay out on re-sales of season ticket seats? Sold mine for the Ipswich game, and a week later no sign of the money. On the few occasions I’ve done it previously (last time being Spurs - 19 August 2024) the payment has always been in my account within 2-3 working days. I’m not holding my breath.

Putting aside for the moment the almost unanimous and justifiable disappointment/distain/contempt (choose your level) with/of KP and their sycophants, MattFox has hit on a great new acronym for Aiyawatt (I refuse to say T** because there’s nothing top about him). Can we please just say PPT. Polo Playing Twat… perfect! 👍

Not a crazy stat at all when you think about what’s going on at our club at the moment, but just let this sink in (it’s quite a stat)… In 136 years of football league history since 1888 (12 teams for 4 years, 28 teams for 23 years, 66 teams for 24 years, and 92 teams for 74 years - not including this season which is all but finished, [when it is it’ll add another 92 teams to the equation] - and after adjusting for WW1 and WW2) 9084 teams have played in the EFL/EPL. Until now, none have lost 8 consecutive home games without scoring. 😡😡😡

It’s over 60 years since I went to my first game, and this is definitely the worst.

Walked out when Bilal was hooked against Fulham, and won’t be going again until Rudkin and co leave the club. Will renew my ticket in the summer (which will be my 36th consecutive year as a STH, and my 50th season ticket since my first game in September 1964) but the seat will remain empty as a silent protest. This is every bit as bad as the McLintock season, and the Hamilton/Pleat years. I’m still open-minded about RVN, because he’s walked into a 5hit-storm with no resources to change it, and I’ll reserve final judgment and see what he can do with a close season, some fresh blood, and a new coaching team around him. In any case, no point changing the manager when the absolute melt Rudkin is still involved in the recruitment. Have been in the careful-watch-you-wish-for camp as regards the owners, though I think I’m about ready to welcome a throw of the dice. If the family don’t sell, at a minimum Top needs to clear the decks at Board and senior management level and recruit competent replacements in all key roles, and step away from any operational influence (because he appears to know **** all about how to run a football club). Traditionally, football club owners had 2 main jobs (a) to provide a solid financial base (Top and the family still need to do that) and (b) pick good managers. In the EPL that now means having the best people infrastructure, with experts in the various roles rather than simply those who’ve hung around for years, headed by a DoF who knows what they’re doing. We’ve never had one.

PL prize money is worth 1.7m a place. Would another manager who we could realistically attract get us 5 places higher than Cooper? I think they would. That’s gives us £8.5m to sack him and his coaches which should be enough, unless their contracts are all Rudkin-specials. Trouble is, those contracts probably are ☹️

Spot on. I cba to re-post it here but I said something similar in the “How do you feel about Cooper” thread

Yes; on that scenario the blame should fall on those above him running the club because but for them, he would have achieved his main objective. You’d like to think that in that situation Top would finally give Rudkin the boot, if only because he’d want to make him a scapegoat rather than taking any personal responsibility for continuing to pi55 his Dad’s legacy up the wall.

24 hours on from the news breaking, I’m over my initial underwhelmed feeling and I’m ready to get behind the manager and give him a fair chance to prove himself. SC will be the 30th permanent manager we’ve had since I’ve been supporting us. Other than the outliers who were either really good and transformed us when we most needed them (Bloomfield, Jock, Little, MON, NFP) or were really bad and seriously set us back (McLintoch, Taylor, Holloway) I’ve always thought managers get too much abuse when things go badly and too much credit when they go well. This will probably be no different. He’s got a good reputation as a man-manager, and team-builder, and his coaching and tactical skills were good enough for LFC and the FA (where he succeeded in both jobs) so comparisons with his stats at Forest are pretty meaningless. Different context, different time, different players. As for the concern that his appointment doesn’t fit with the Chairman’s view of how he wants us to play, we all think the Chairman is an idiot and out of his depth, so what’s wrong with that?

https://football-italia.net/italian-newspaper-blames-leicester-city-for-collapsed-sensi-transfer/ This is an interesting take on why the Sensi deal didn’t go through. If, in addition to the probable incompetence, there was any dragging of our heels because Rudkin and others weren’t convinced with Maresca’s choice, we must enjoy him while we can because he’ll be off to bigger and better (particularly better-well-run) things in the Summer.