My thoughts on season

[ally_uk]

I hope Ankerson and Semmens hand in resignations end of this season....

What a absolute clown show of ownership and direction 

Go back to the start of the season when Sports Republic purchased us I was optimistic thought good times ahead finally. 

But we are now approaching the end of the maiden season of ownership and it has been like the flaming Chuckle Brothers have been steering us.

One stupid decision after the other 

Not sticking by and supporting Ralph with a creative player or Striker the Ings replacement we so desperately needed....

Not getting rid of Ralph Quickly enough....

Relying of Bazunu as 1st choice keeper

Selling Romeu 

Not recalling Tella 

Over reliance on signing youth players 

Hiring of Nathan Jones 

Panic buying in January window Alcaraz aside the rest look not up to it....

Appointing Selles who is just Ralph Mk 2
Picks the wrong players 

The whole saga has been comical I seriously can see us free falling into League 1 with these idiots at the helm....

We need Dragan to be ruthless and make massive changes from the board level.

Tell Ankerson for a start to take a backseat put the ego to the side and make him understand he has cost us massively with stupid decisions.

We have the chap coming from Man City 

We need new coaches and a Manager for the long term who can bed in a football philosophy and is actually capable of setting up a team and has tactical nous. 

Selles is not that guy....

As for players wise say goodbye to the likes of Lavia, Prowse, KWP, kotchap 

Bring in some experienced units with a bit of grit, steel and height/ physicality 

Look at Newcastle as a model no not the amount of money they spend but the type of players in team Burns, Schar big units who don't mess about that's what we need presence at the back and midfield.

Players who get stuck in and don't fold like deckchairs on the Titanic when under the cosh 

I'd also bed In the likes of Ballard but complement the team with experienced heads. 

Edited 5 April, 2023 by ally_uk
Spelling

[Saint_Jonny]

What a shit poem it doesn't even rhyme 🤨

[east-stand-nic]

Personally I expect Dragan will come over and shake the hell out of the place. He will not be happy that he is losing tens of millions in income streams next season. With any luck he will listen to sage advice and look to hire proper football people at the higher levels in the club. I have no idea who we could attract as we will not be such an attractive prospect for the big hitters. But it cannot be worse than what we have endured this season in terms of decision making.

Personally, I still think we would have stayed up had we hired a proper football manager with experience and not messed around with NJ and Selles. For me though there is clearly something wrong within the club. The players moods and efforts are up and down like a yo-yo. This is not just managerial. I think there are some kind of issues in the club behind the scenes. Perhaps those at the top are thoroughly dis-likable? Perhaps they have just had the skills coached out of them and are downbeat. No question almost every player should leave as they have had enough of SFC. Sometimes you just have to move on for the sake of your mental health in life and i feel a lot of our squad have that kind of issue.

Even without some of our so called big names, we have a good team for the championship and proven players at that level. With a broom to get rid of the crap and a decent manager in place, I for one am looking forward to nest season, though i will reserve judgement on that until i see what takes places in the summer.

[Saint86]

6 hours ago, ally_uk said:

I hope Ankerson and Semmens hand in resignations end of this season....

What a absolute clown show of ownership and direction 

Go back to the start of the season when Sports Republic purchased us I was optimistic thought good times ahead finally. 

But we are now approaching the end of the maiden season of ownership and it has been like the flaming Chuckle Brothers have been steering us.

What exactly has Semmens done?

The decision making this year has all been from Rasmus. Its clear he governed managerial sackings and appointments as he was the sole voice standing up to the fans to explain why HE was keeping Jones. Ditto he has been all over recruitment. He's also overseen significant turnover in academy and scouting staff, and largely eliminated the club scouting department. The guy has come in and performed like a Ted Boehly figure playing football manager - except it isn't even his own money. Blame starts and stops with Rasmus.

The only saving grace you can take from any of it, is that SR seem to be prepared to continue to back the club... because if they walked away now we'd be left servicing all the debt and the legacy of the transfers and contracts.

Semmens and ralph had the club surviving year on year with no owner investment and debts to cover. Rasmus comes in, spends over a hundred million, dismantles almost every aspect of the existing structure, and is almost certainly taking us down. All from the guy who didn't want to get too involved or change too much. And you're trying to share the blame out with Semmens? why? I'm sitting all of this squarely on Rasmus and SR - they are not nearly as clever as they thought they were!! We can only hope that they sort their stuff out by the summer...

Edited 5 April, 2023 by Saint86

[Mystic Force]

Football is replete with individuals who came from outside thinking they know better. The problem is that in a highly competitive situation with the amount of time it has been around, and ubiquitous nature of the game, there is very little that someone can find that hasn't already been looked at. Tactics have been played with for a hundred years and every advantage and disadvantage of each system is known and be countered. The only area which has really had movement is in sports science and human physiology where the knowledge has been improving, but any early mover advantage has probably been erased. 

Data science is now mostly mature too. With off the shelf systems and data brokers supplying the same inputs. People will pull out stats but you can just see some players can do it and others not. 

 

I think we bought in to our hype a few years back when really what it was down to was assembling a decent core of a squad at a lower level by out spending our opponents and being able to bring through a succession of good youth who had time to gel outside of the pressure of the premier league. Our problems started when that advantage dissipated and each time we sold off players for big money we had to replace them in the next window at a new inflated price where the finished products of one season were now the cost of an unproven prospect.

 

And then these jokers thought, you know what I can do what we thought we use to do, when it turned out we were probably just fortunate. We use to be the intermediate stop of on the way to a Liverpool or Man U, except now these clubs just took on the risk themselves, this started with the likes of Courtinio, he went straight their skipping that intermediate step. So now if we want prospects we are gambling on 18 year Olds who couldn't force themselves in at a big team and have no competitive play track record to look at, instead of picking up 21 year Olds who have shown moderate success at a lower quality team/league for a couple years. Then we can't play these teenagers because the stakes are too high.

 

We had the perfect chance to reset our season with the world cup break. And we wasted it. It was clear after a couple games things had regressed instead. I thought that in January we would have been better off cutting our losses and selling what we could and preparing for the inevitable. Instead we doubled down and for a brief moment it looked hopeful, but I don't think we spent wisely, and even if we do escape I can't see next year being much different until we eventually succumb to the inevitable, except loaded with the expense of a bunch of useless players.

 

 

[Thereisonlyonemickychannon]

Shite

[woodsaint1]

On 05/04/2023 at 09:59, ally_uk said:

I hope Ankerson and Semmens hand in resignations end of this season....

What a absolute clown show of ownership and direction 

Go back to the start of the season when Sports Republic purchased us I was optimistic thought good times ahead finally. 

But we are now approaching the end of the maiden season of ownership and it has been like the flaming Chuckle Brothers have been steering us.

One stupid decision after the other 

Not sticking by and supporting Ralph with a creative player or Striker the Ings replacement we so desperately needed....

Not getting rid of Ralph Quickly enough....

Relying of Bazunu as 1st choice keeper

Selling Romeu 

Not recalling Tella 

Over reliance on signing youth players 

Hiring of Nathan Jones 

Panic buying in January window Alcaraz aside the rest look not up to it....

Appointing Selles who is just Ralph Mk 2
Picks the wrong players 

The whole saga has been comical I seriously can see us free falling into League 1 with these idiots at the helm....

We need Dragan to be ruthless and make massive changes from the board level.

Tell Ankerson for a start to take a backseat put the ego to the side and make him understand he has cost us massively with stupid decisions.

We have the chap coming from Man City 

We need new coaches and a Manager for the long term who can bed in a football philosophy and is actually capable of setting up a team and has tactical nous. 

Selles is not that guy....

As for players wise say goodbye to the likes of Lavia, Prowse, KWP, kotchap 

Bring in some experienced units with a bit of grit, steel and height/ physicality 

Look at Newcastle as a model no not the amount of money they spend but the type of players in team Burns, Schar big units who don't mess about that's what we need presence at the back and midfield.

Players who get stuck in and don't fold like deckchairs on the Titanic when under the cosh 

I'd also bed In the likes of Ballard but complement the team with experienced heads. 

Romeu wanted to go back to Spain and even if we could have recalled him, Tella would have made zero difference. Apart from that everything else has been a disaster.

The two catastrophic mistakes were the management choices. Ralph should have went in the summer and Jones was a mind boggling appointment. If we had've went with somebody like De Zerbi or Lopetegui, then regardless of how bad the squad seems, we still would have likely stayed up

[Roo1976]

Whats been the point in our transfers thus far?.............none of them have given any hope they are capable of holding down a regular spot. I forgot we didn't play or bench Lyanco ,that Spanish guy ,Aribo, Edozie,Tall Paul (on bench) wheres Djenepo been? ABK, Salisu,these have all been bought into the squad and nothing there amongst any of them suggest wow got some players here where are they going to fit into the system(team)?

And will we be stuck with them next season? and how much more deadwood players with low mental thresholds do we need? or can we shift them and please no more FUCKING ELY......................whats the betting hes getting a new extended contract at the end of this,you just know it.

Would we miss JWP? where would he end up? top 6 bench warmer perhaps? the form hes showed thus far apart from the little chat before we equalised against Spuds what does he offer? set pieces my arse .How many corners have we scored this season or dead ball situations that prove worthwhile(apart from direct )? couldnt see him in atop team playing a bit part can you? well yes i can but is that what hell become?

As the fat lady starts to take up vocal lessons,as painful as its going to be we do seem to be sleep walking our way out of this league with such slow ponderous mindsets that im sure they dont realise were FUCKING loosing move it quicker lets give it a go...................................bollocks............rant over with for now. Why does it take 15 passes against Wet Spam  with 6-7 minutes left just to get the ball to the half way line when the opposition are regrouping in their own half? time and time again for the past 2-3 seasons this has happened and we are well and truly lumbered with the situation now arent we.

[Chewy]

We needed a striker and didn’t get one.

We needed a good manager and didn’t get one.

Both of these are on Rasmus.

You can go through all of the peripheral things as much as you want but I’d suggest the above two points, in that order, are why we are down.