Dragan Solak interview w/ talkSPORT

[The Cat]

4 hours ago, SotonianWill said:

I believe there was a strong distinction between criticism for the owner, Solak, of which there was none, and Sport Republic, of which there was genuine questions asked. From the top of my head most of these posts were in the form of feeling bad for Solak having spent a lot with these lot in charge.

There's one quote directly referencing him, and others which state "owners" which must include him as that's what he is.

No doubt you are right about some of the posts, but for the others maybe people need to better articulate their thoughts rather than coming out with blanket, kneejerk, hyperbolic statements.

[hypochondriac]

33 minutes ago, The Cat said:

There's one quote directly referencing him, and others which state "owners" which must include him as that's what he is.

No doubt you are right about some of the posts, but for the others maybe people need to better articulate their thoughts rather than coming out with blanket, kneejerk, hyperbolic statements.

To be fair the people in charge absolutely shit the bed last year and were quite rightly complained about in the strongest terms. How they tried to navigate things with our managerial situation, the players we bought in and then how we panicked in January was just totally unacceptable. Fair play to them then that they listened and seemingly sorted things out this year. I wouldn't really blame anyone for expressing frustration this time last year, it was a natural reaction to failure at all levels. 

[east-stand-nic]

We'll try to spend to the maximum we can, but also we try to spend wisely. We'll try to continue developing young players, but also we also learned one thing. You cannot just have young players and focus on only player development. You need the leaders on the pitch.

Glad to here this bit.

[manji]

Greetings comrades 👍🏻 and please stop focussing on the stadium expansion that will be a few years off. Let’s get the team stabilised in the PL. The last week has shown the potential of our fanbase and once the initial Leeds brown nosing died off a lot of goodwill has come our way. 
looks like Adam Lallana will be joining us and a lot of the other links seem credible and sensible. 

[Miltonaggro]

21 hours ago, sfc4prem said:

I think that putting a roof on the Chapel end fanzone as per the artist's impression would be a serious error - you wouldn't be able to hear Saints brass, smell the delicious food on offer or take in the vista of the collapsed warehouse (though to be honest that's now got Dragan's dabs all over it).

[miserableoldgit]

22 hours ago, The Cat said:

Plenty of recent comments on the Sports Republic thread stating things like "fucking terrible owners", "worst owners in a generation", "I wonder what Dragan's next inevitable fuck up will be, probably extend Martin's contract", "woeful owners", "fucking pathetic owners" etc etc.

People making themselves look like bellends when they literally have no clue about running a club.

When has that ever stopped them?

Edited May 29 by miserableoldgit

[Saint Scott]

All sounds really promising. Dragan is no mug and has clearly learnt a lot since taking over.

The most important decision he has to make is appointing a new director of football as quickly as possible. Has there been any news on this since Wilcox left?

[The Cat]

4 hours ago, hypochondriac said:

To be fair the people in charge absolutely shit the bed last year and were quite rightly complained about in the strongest terms. How they tried to navigate things with our managerial situation, the players we bought in and then how we panicked in January was just totally unacceptable. Fair play to them then that they listened and seemingly sorted things out this year. I wouldn't really blame anyone for expressing frustration this time last year, it was a natural reaction to failure at all levels. 

Yes, I understand that. 

All the quotes I put were from within the last 2 months when we had, at worse, a nailed on play off spot.

[hypochondriac]

1 hour ago, The Cat said:

Yes, I understand that. 

All the quotes I put were from within the last 2 months when we had, at worse, a nailed on play off spot.

Yes I think that's a bit silly really but then we've all posted things after a bad loss that were knee jerk and that we probably regret with hindsight. Had we lost at Wembley I'd wager there'd be at least some validity to the argument that we had essentially failed. Glad to say I didn't slag off the board after the summer because to be honest the team did better than I expected even if we hadn't gone up. 

[SaintsLoyal]

2 hours ago, Saint Scott said:

All sounds really promising. Dragan is no mug and has clearly learnt a lot since taking over.

The most important decision he has to make is appointing a new director of football as quickly as possible. Has there been any news on this since Wilcox left?

The only news in past months is that Darren Mowbray and Mark Bitcon where involved and that a new DOF may or may not get appointed, if we got promoted.

Edited May 29 by SaintsLoyal

[S-Clarke]

Nice to hear from him, he seems a decent bloke and someone pretty trustworthy to me. Forget the stuff Rasmus has cocked up, I think Dragon has been fairly consistent in his approach and has funded a hell of a lot of his own fortune into us. He openly admitted to not knowing a great deal about football, so all he can do is provide the funds and hope others make the right calls. 

Regarding the stadium plans - it will be way down the line of the 10 year plan he speaks about, maybe one of the last things in that plan. This isn't something that's happening today, tomorrow or next year - we're talking years away and lots of established time in the PL to back that up. With clubs like ourselves we are only ever a single bad window away from relegation again, so we have to be careful - priority for the next good few years has to be squad building.