saintant

So the obvious question is whether it's sensible to do it now in terms of a financial decision? Sounds like it will cots the club a huge amount of money at a time when fans are not confident about the direction the club is travelling in. What we don't want is a 'white elephant' in the form of a bigger capacity stadium that ends up being half empty. I'm not against expanding but I don't think now is the time.

How much would a stadium expansion cost? (sorry, I know I promised to try to do better but this is very relevant to your point)

I bow to your superior knowledge in everything and apologise profusely for questioning anything you posted. I will try to do better in future as, only a fool, would attempt to cross examine you and expect to come out on top. I'll slink away and lick my wounds oh great one and thank you for putting me right.

Succinct and to the point 🙂

I gave an answer - it may not be to your liking but it's an answer all the same. Ankersen has no experience at elite level football other than what he's gained at Southampton and we've all seen how well he's done for the club. Cart before horse syndrome - available money needs to be spent on players but not much point when SR are doing the spending.

Which begs the question and partially backs up my point - why the fuck was he put in charge of negotiating the sale of our football club?

You need to learn more about due diligence because one of the important rules is that you don't always sell to the highest bidder. I'm sure you'll find a way of disputing this but it's a common mantra in negotiations. Ankersen has no real track record in running football clubs and has always lived off the success of Brentford - he wasn't the brains that was Phil Giles and Ankersen has continued to prove he is clueless in this field. I think we need to develop the football team before we consider the stadium and surrounding area.

Well, I'm not sure I do believe or trust these player valuations if I'm honest otherwise we should be doing better. Either we've wasted money that inflated our squad value or you believe values of players who are not performing have substantially risen. Which do you think it is?

Clearly the checks conducted should have centred around financial stability of buyer, track record of leading personnel including and importantly knowledge of running an elite football club, ambitions and plans for the future development of the football club. I believe if these aspects had been covered off in a due and diligent way SR would not have passed the required levels. That has subsequently been proved unless you feel they have made a good job of running the club. Gao wouldn't care beyond getting the best price but Semmens had duties other than merely selling to the highest bidder (and we don't even know whether SR was the highest bidder).

Just goes to show how much we wasted in the summer transfer window.

To your point 1 I've given my answer but if you think all the relevant due diligence checks and balances were done in full then you crack on - the evidence of how the football club has been run by SR tells me things were missed and not just small things. As to Gao wanting as much money as possible - of course he did but Semmens had a duty not jut to sell to the highest bidder.

Yeah I agree about decent scouts but I think their job is to recommend players and the DoF will have the final say so he acts as a guard rail against signing random rubbish which we've been doing on a regular basis.

Gao didn't handle the sale of the club it was done by Mark Semmens. The clue that he didn't carry out proper checks and balances on those fronting SR is the total and utter mess they have made of running the club from pretty well day one.

I guess if those currently running SR are the ones deciding who to spend money on and how much it matters not a jot whether that is done in January or the summer - the result will be the same and more money will be poured down the drain. This club needs a good Director of Football to preside over a reset not some watered down version in the shape of Mark fucking Bitcon.

I agree with your comments about VAR. The decisions that go against us always seem more impactful because we score so few goals so any perceived VAR mistakes will always cost us points - it mightn't seem so harsh if we were banging in goals meaning we could sometimes absorb the odd VAR cock-up.

I guess I was being slightly facetious and the comment about another financial disaster not making a lot of difference was made with tongue in cheek. So yes you are right and my remarks were borne out of sheer frustration at the way our football club is being run by what can only be described as a bunch of charlatans.

We need a competent Director of Football which Bitcon isn't. He may have a role to play but his expertise, as you point out, is in performance which has little to do with being a Director of Football. As in many things SR made a total balls up of replacing Jason Wilcox and I would like to see Dragan take a firm hand and involve himself, with outside advice, to appoint a DoF who knows what he's doing. The person appointed should be given extended powers and Bitcon and Rasmus should be told in no uncertain terms to keep their beaks out. Perhaps then the football club might be eased off the rocks and into calmer waters to give us the chance to reset and rebuild in a sensible manner. The current shit storm cannot be allowed to continue.

How long before football clubs are managed by AI? I think ours already is because any intelligence is almost certainly artificial.

Which bit is nonsense and why?

SR are used to presiding over financial disasters, mostly of their own making, so one more won't make a lot of difference.

The penny seems to be taking an awfully long time to drop. You'd think such a successful businessman would have wised up by now but Rasmus continues to pull the wool over Dragan's eyes.

Might stir Dragan into appointing a decent Director of Football to take charge of some of the important stuff because Rasmus and his crew clearly have no idea.

Good post with many excellent points.

Would Dragan continue to employ people in key positions at his telecom company if they showed the same levels of incompetence we've seen from those at SR? The answer is quite obviously he wouldn't so I don't understand why he isn't insisting a competent Director of Football is appointed and, if I was him, I'd be taking a hands on approach plus advice from someone outside of SR to get the right person.

A nice Freudian slip 🙂