FoxCal

Actually think we’ll be quite good in terms of fitness come start of the season. Has annoyed me no end seeing us absolutely blowing after an hour and the opposition having a lot more to give in the early season the last few years. The videos the club have put out of pre-season training have made it look pretty gruelling, though they do have the ability to look however they want it to look, I concede. That said, I was at Seagrave for last week’s Northampton friendly and half time was a few minutes of team talk and the rest was spent having the players run the width of the pitch back and forth. Was pleased to see it.

Find the suggestion that we should pursue against Everton and Forest when we were brought up on charges relating to the same periods (unless I’m misremembering). Can’t imagine we really have a leg to stand on when we just broke the same rules with less success. A case against Man City and possibly Chelsea feels more realistic, particularly since those two 5th place finishes were bigger contributors to our downfall than the relegations, in my opinion. Gambling on making the CL and missing out to teams who continue to get away with their own PSR misgivings was infinitely more damaging than our breach was to Leeds, particularly as time goes on. I also acknowledge that clubs are only concerned with themselves but think it’s in extremely bad taste (particularly on the side of their fans frothing at the thought of us paying out to them) that a club that nearly went out of business not all that long ago would heap this onto another club that are clearly in trouble and already bordering on being financially unsustainable, if we aren’t already.

Have to praise this having seen it in person today. Was disappointed it wasn’t white on the shoulders as speculated but it really is a great effort. Inevitably walked away with one (sponsorless, though that should go without saying). First shirt I’ve bought in a good while and there’s a danger I buy a long sleeved version down the line. It’s going to go down a classic and I might as well prepare for the Castore shaped nuclear winter approaching in the distance by buying some stuff whilst it’s still wearable.

We’re such a funny football club, almost to the point of parody. They give me a chuckle, at least.

Honestly not sure why us (or another club) look to partner with a company like PepsiCo more widely. Makes sense for us to try with the history and locality of Walkers, but there seems an opportunity with a company like that to advertise any product at any given time. Barcelona (apples and oranges, I know) have been doing that with their Spotify deal, advertising particular releases/artists based on whatever criteria. I think that’s a good way for larger corporates like that to go with sponsorship. New product? Whack it on the shirt next week. Another new product? Well get that on next month etc etc. One sponsorship deal for all products under a banner as needed seems ideal from a commercial standpoint. Maybe there are rules around chopping and changing sponsors (even if under one company) here that I’m too lazy to look into, frankly, but wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that become the future of sponsorship, particularly at the top level of the game where there are more eyes for region specific products.

Can’t remember who it was, but one of the journos effectively said that we don’t have the luxury of telling players that anymore. We aren’t an attractive enough option as a team that will now be between divisions (if we’re lucky) and bigger picture-wise, it probably factors into why we handed out so many unnecessarily large contracts even when we were a more attractive option, we were still most players’ bridesmaid

Probably avoiding that because it would be incredibly on brand for them to announce it ‘subject to’ and then it not be cleared for some bizarre reason. Another jewel in the crown of We’re Useless at Literally Everything FC

You’d have to expect this is the case, but at the same time, you’d have to level a good portion of the blame at the way the club position and market themselves. The funny thing is that since the title win, we’ve spent a good number of years as one of the more recognisable clubs in the world (outside of your usual suspects). Another opportunity wasted. We don’t seem to care about merchandising ourselves which, like it or not, you need to do in modern football to increase profile and revenue streams. Pretty sure one of the reasons we resigned with Adidas was because the club felt the brand was more ‘prestigious’, which is the wrong idea. You’re just hoping to be cool by association when every other kit deal is Adidas. You aren’t special. Who cares? Should’ve taken the chance to go and be a face of one of the challenger brands (maybe not Castore). Not being able to get into Sports Direct, when you see some of the tat they stock that can’t be being bought by anybody, is farcical marketing.

It’s hilarious to me that they’ve suggested a possible financial incentive should they force people to move to expand the singing section. Generally supportive of UFS and what they do, but there was no regard for people who were pushed out of SK1in the first place (on the club, not UFS). When the section gets going it’s worth having for sure, so no issue with it specifically, but as somebody who moved as a result, the idea that they’d take a recommendation to financially incentivise in the future (especially after Season Card-Gate) is just laughable. The club couldn’t keep our group together (a 5 that they split into a 2 and 3), told us to get in touch to look at options when general relocation opened, which we did and given it was their doing we were moving at all, they then tried to charge each of us a relocation fee

Funnier still is that in all the club’s mention of BC . GAME and the (very limited) promotional images returned by a quick Google search, they don’t once use the stylised B (₿) in any logo, other than that on the shirt. Branding.

A series of unfortunate events

I’m not convinced by Enzo, personally, though I won’t play down his achievements last term. Even if I wouldn’t be gutted to see him move on, I don’t actively want him out. My biggest concern is not ‘look at what happened to Burnley’ but rather that we were so mistake laden last season that if the quality of championship strikers was even close to acceptable we’d have dropped a lot more points than we did. If those mistakes persist (and I’ve no reason to think that they won’t) we’ll be put to the sword regularly next season. That said, there’s too much uncertainty around us to wish for anymore. We’re so slow to react and so useless at contingency planning that we can’t be changing managers ahead of the season kicking off. We have to navigate this window with a hand tied behind our back as it is. We need to be clear and steadfast in whatever the strategy is, and taking Enzo and his vision out of the picture now would be damaging to that in the extreme.

Has to go. Has to. It was refusal to get rid of Rodgers when it was long clear he couldn’t turn it around and it saw us relegated. About to make the same mistake and cost ourselves (what was) a nailed on promotion.