nzlatic

We'll always be arguing or complaining over managers or players. But the thing that was a massive red flag for me was how they dealt with the closure of the Joe Royle Stand. It just showed the utter contempt they have for the fans. To score a petty point they were willing to turf fans out of their seats, then make very little (if any) attempt to resolve it. And while I understand people will always want to go as they just want to go and support the shirts on the pitch, anyone boycotting while this horror show of a regime is in place has my full support.

My problem isn’t that they (AL, ML, BO) make signings, it’s that none of our signings seemed to be joined up in any way leading to unbalanced squads and players the manager doesn’t want. So he either doesn’t play them or gets sacked/walks for not wanting to play them.

There's no credit for firing the guy you shouldn't have hired in the first place. There was little to suggest that Dino was going to be a success. Just as there is with Kewell. These are lower league managers with little or no credible record, and that's before they tied their hands behind their back on recruitment. Whether Dino was any good or not is irrelvent in my opinion. He was brought in as "their man" who they'd been chasing for a while, given a shit sandwich to work with then binned off after a few months of predictable poor form. As with Banide, and as will no doubt happen again with Kewell. And we'll hear the same things raised in that aussie interview... paying off old debts, moving forward, slowly slowly, stability, build for the future. The same old bullshit to try and cover up the running of the football club into the ground.

What's going on here? The club haven't officially announced anything yet, but he's giving interviews to Australian websites about him?!

Yep. There’s a total lack of strategy, recruitment is all over the place done by several people. We’re only heading in one direction until that changes.

Do they though? Not being funny, it’s a genuine question as I don’t pay much attention elsewhere. Just can’t imagine changing managers regularly, and therefore tactics/favoured players etc, would work that often.

I’d say this regime had turned the club into a laughing stock, if they hadn’t turned us into an irrelevance first. Leave. Now.

I was one of those saying that. Glad to be proved wrong and to finally see one of AL’s imports bringing some much needed transfer revenue in. 😬

Regarding the section about an offer for the club, I can’t understand why any offer isn’t being instantly accepted. If I ran a loss making business with no assets that required loads of my own money pumping in each month to keep it going and someone wanted to pay me for it I’d bite their hand off. Unless I’m missing something there must be zero chance of AL getting much/any of his money back as it stands?

Not sure if you missed it, but I said I would put a statue up "if he gets us to the Championship and we have a club to be proud of again". I added the second bit because I do care about how my club is run and how it represents the town and the fans, as well as the results. Those things are important to me. And to be honest, I'm not even asking for that much I don't think. I would just like the club to treat players and staff well (eg not have a multitude of ex players and staff be highly critical of the way the club is run). I would like the club to treat the fans well (eg not close a stand over a petty squabble). I would like it to employ qualified football people in key roles. I would like it to be open to challenge rather than defensive and vindictive toward anyone they see as uncooperative. Those are the 'positives' I'd like to see. And I believe if there was more of that, we'd start to see an improvement on the pitch as well.

There are a few simple things they could do that might start building bridges and get the fans onside but they either can't figure it out or just refuse to do it for some reason. So the season ticket sales will be poor, there will be no money for decent players and people like you will blame the fans for it.

Bollocks. This is ignoring some pretty serious off the pitch stuff. Which is massively affecting revenue and, in turn, things on the pitch.

Did Barry sign him as part of a coordinated recruitment strategy?

I wonder if they'll do limited capacity plus selling online match passes to try and make up the shortfall.

For anyone questioning whether keeping Wheater is the right thing to do or not, probably worth looking at the teams rumoured to be interested in him and what their ambitions are.