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Our Fans are the problem, not Mark Ashton or Steve Lansdown


AshtonYate

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3 hours ago, AshtonYate said:

I agree that the recruitment of DH was a complete cock-up,

Correct...

And did 'we receive even an ounce of honesty??

A glimmer of contrition??

A touch of humility??

Not a chance.

Just bullshit & lies for us,the fans, without whom this club doesn't exist.. we're the heartbeat,,the honesty-not the problem.

Not SL,,,not JL,,,not MA....

Us.

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6 hours ago, GrahamC said:

Me too.

I know Steve Lansdown has made mistakes & he infuriates me at times, but I’ll never question his love for the club, incredible sums of his own money that he has invested or his determination to improve us, let’s face in, despite no help whatsoever from those in power in the city, who see South Bristol as a foreign country.

Ashton on the other hand is just a snake, only interested in himself & his little group of hangers on & despite the Covid restrictions I’d drive him to Suffolk right now.

I agree with you and I'd drive him there myself as well. However, I'd make him sit in the back as he'd drive I potts with all his lines that he spouts. It's a long old poke up to Suffolk from the Westcountry!

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9 minutes ago, castle red said:

Agree Ashtonyate, on some of your points especially sl, look how far we've come from ,would not swap with Swindon 

Works both ways though doesn’t it? Would you swap with Swansea? Or Cardiff? Or Norwich? Or Burnley? Or Watford? Or swap Pompey’s last 20 year history for ours? Or Wigan’s? The list of clubs punching at a similar weight to us but far exceeding our ‘achievements’ is amazing. But yet again so many choose to focus on what’s below as opposed to what’s above and are thankful for relative mediocrity. 

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4 hours ago, Red Exile said:

About to have to duck out to do some work but my recollection of Keith Burt is shaking him by the hand and thanking him for the single best summer of transfers I can recall! What a side he and Cotts assembled.

I’m pretty sure that we signed Wade Elliott permanently (had been on loan), Mark Little, Korey Smith & Luke Freeman all in the same week & then we brought in Luke Ayling the week after.

Aaron Wilbraham also joined two weeks after that.

When you consider all their contributions to our first title winning side since the 1950s it is hard to argue.

 

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8 hours ago, AshtonYate said:

What has shocked me though over resent years it the complete entitlement of our fans, especially at the moment.

If there's one thing I can't stand on any forum it's the "I'm a better fan than you" opening to a post. 

If your intention is to change people's opinions with the strength of your argument, why feel the need to start with this approach?

Also, to lay any blame for City's lack of on field progress at the door of supporters is utterly ridiculous.

If you rang your broadband supplier to complain about the quality of service would you be happy if they responded "we do apologise Sir, only it's down to the enormous sense of entitlement to a decent service from our customers, that means we are unable to provide the quality you want. So blame your fellow users and not us, OK?"

Praising Mark Ashton for selling decent players for a good fee is as daft as praising an art dealer for getting a good deal on selling a Picasso. It's his job.

In other areas of the business, we continue to make significant financial losses, our wage bill is still too high and our recruitment strategy has departed increasingly from the owners model and vision for the club.

All the while, pre Covid, we, the supporters continue to click through the turnstiles in numbers not seen since the late 70's

As for entitlement, Since it's creation, 49 clubs have played at least one season in the Premier League. There aren't too many clubs outside of that group with the wealthy ownership, facilities and supporter base that we have and yet one play off defeat is all we have to show for what must be hundreds of millions of pounds of investment.

No, it's not that we are entitled to anything but with all of these things in place we have a right to expect better than what we have seen so far.

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@JonDolman out of interest if you’re CEO, do you let the head-coach (as the chooser of which players he wants) buy / recruit so many players and not play them at all / very much?  Do yo allow him to buy / recruit someone and then a season later (sometimes quicker) want to get someone else in that position because it hasn’t worked out?

That is my criticism.  Where is the control of the “on a whim recruitment”, where is the critical challenge, e.g. how does x fit in, why doesn’t y fit in anymore, why did we sign z if you’re never gonna play him, why don’t you do better with them on the training ground etc.

Where the player hasn’t worked out, do you go back and analyse why you recruited them in the first place, under what requirement, has anything changed, etc, etc.  Where is the continuous improvement of the process.  Or is every signing a little ego boost?

Like you, I don’t think MA id’s players, but he allowed LJ in particular to recruit without a plan (a plan he should be helping to build and then implement and stick to), allow him to show little patience with players.  He’s allowed the head-coach to solve problems by recruiting, rather than on the training ground, or through man-management.  That’s one big area where the CEO has let us down.  It’s left us with no succession planning, a squad of out of contract 28+ year olds, and u22s in the main.  I don’t think that’s acceptable.

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Starting with Flint / Ayling / Williams / Baker

through

Magnússon, T.Moore, Ekstrand, Wright, Hegeler

tnrough

Baker (perm - season gap), Webster, Kalas

through

Kalas (perm), Cundy, Williams, Benkovic

through

Mawson, Mariappa

 

 

 

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I think the OP raises some interesting points and i do often find myself wondering whether we will ever make the promised land of The Premier League.

I've been following City since the late 80's and can only really count about half a dozen magical moments in that time and two of those were football league trophy wins against Carlisle and Walsall!

There's a sad part of me that actually likes us failing sometimes... i remember being excited when we faced West Ham on a Tuesday night in the early 90's only to get stuffed 5-1 and when a brilliant Forest team with Stan Collymore up front ripped us 4-1 at The Gate.

Anyway, i'm digressing a bit here but yes Mark Ashton is a Nob

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I’ve suggested on here before that if for each club, you compared some sort of standardised measure of their “achievement” with some sort of standardised measure of their  “potential”, then Bristol City would probably have the lowest ratio of all league clubs i.e. we are the biggest underachievers relatively speaking.

In effect this means that Bristol City fans are entitled to be the most pissed off in the country.

 

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Reading through this thread, one common theme that comes out of it to me is that most on here would agree that it is now a good time for a fresh pair/maybe several fresh pairs of eyes to come in and take the football club to the next level. If you remove all the emotion, ultimately we all want the same thing - a successful football team. Personally my view is and always has been, that the Bristol Sport brand dilutes the focus around the football club. 

Whether it is potentially new American or Chinese investors, hopefully it will be a positive. But somehow the reconnection of us football fans to the club needs to happen, with potential new investors, new manager and new CEO.

Personally I really hope SL stays involved, but with a better team of senior management personnel around him. Which IMO has been the weak link for us.

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26 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

@JonDolman out of interest if you’re CEO, do you let the head-coach (as the chooser of which players he wants) buy / recruit so many players and not play them at all / very much?  Do yo allow him to buy / recruit someone and then a season later (sometimes quicker) want to get someone else in that position because it hasn’t worked out?

That is my criticism.  Where is the control of the “on a whim recruitment”, where is the critical challenge, e.g. how does x fit in, why doesn’t y fit in anymore, why did we sign z if you’re never gonna play him, why don’t you do better with them on the training ground etc.

Where the player hasn’t worked out, do you go back and analyse why you recruited them in the first place, under what requirement, has anything changed, etc, etc.  Where is the continuous improvement of the process.  Or is every signing a little ego boost?

Like you, I don’t think MA id’s players, but he allowed LJ in particular to recruit without a plan (a plan he should be helping to build and then implement and stick to), allow him to show little patience with players.  He’s allowed the head-coach to solve problems by recruiting, rather than on the training ground, or through man-management.  That’s one big area where the CEO has let us down.  It’s left us with no succession planning, a squad of out of contract 28+ year olds, and u22s in the main.  I don’t think that’s acceptable.

By their nature, a manager needs just 2 or 3 players to finish the team, they always want those extra few players. Where the Lansdown/Ashton axis fell down was letting Johnson have every new fancy he had set his eyes on. 

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34 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

Yeah not saying he's even done a great job. But my point is that people who say Ashton chooses who we go after and sign are wrong. If he is a bad CEO then I'm sure there's real things he can be criticised on.

I expect what you say is one of the reasons LJ was sacked. Lansdown said it was more than just bad results on the pitch.

The recruitment was very poor back in the days when we had Kelly as our head scout imo. It improved after he left imo. Improved enough? Probably not.

I don't expect every signing to be a success though. There's always going to be bad ones. Especially when signing young punts that they hope will become good enough.

In the end last season it got a bit silly when we bring in Benkovic and Henriksen and they hardly played. 

I think there's been quite a lot of good signings too. But when some other clubs overachieve in their recruitment with (I assume)  a lesser budget than ours, it shows we could do better.

It's interesting that LJ changed things in the clubs recruitment. It suggests that maybe Pearson (if here next season) will be allowed to bring in his own guy, and have some kind of Leicester set up of the past.

If that's what was to happen then Ashton would probably be doing the same job as he's done under LJ. But hopefully with a better manager and recruitment team agreeing who to tell Ashton who they want.

 

Don’t think we are a million miles apart, ta for replying.

Yep, not every signing will work out.

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37 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

Yeah not saying he's even done a great job. But my point is that people who say Ashton chooses who we go after and sign are wrong. If he is a bad CEO then I'm sure there's real things he can be criticised on.

I expect what you say is one of the reasons LJ was sacked. Lansdown said it was more than just bad results on the pitch.

The recruitment was very poor back in the days when we had Kelly as our head scout imo. It improved after he left imo. Improved enough? Probably not.

I don't expect every signing to be a success though. There's always going to be bad ones. Especially when signing young punts that they hope will become good enough.

In the end last season it got a bit silly when we bring in Benkovic and Henriksen and they hardly played. 

I think there's been quite a lot of good signings too. But when some other clubs overachieve in their recruitment with (I assume)  a lesser budget than ours, it shows we could do better.

It's interesting that LJ changed things in the clubs recruitment. It suggests that maybe Pearson (if here next season) will be allowed to bring in his own guy, and have some kind of Leicester set up of the past.

If that's what was to happen then Ashton would probably be doing the same job as he's done under LJ. But hopefully with a better manager and recruitment team agreeing who to tell Ashton who they want.

 

I don't think he chooses who we go after and sign, but that doesn't mean he has no responsibility there either.

In my opinion a big part of his job is creating and implementing the strategy of the club, and part of that is making sure that the head coach (who should also help create it) is staying on the right path. That means if we have signings who don't fit in with our overall strategy, Ashton should be probing and questioning to ensure they're appropriate. That's not saying he should veto them, or sign his own... but if someone wants to sign a player who is outside what we've decided our plan is there better be a bloody good reason.

The signings who do work, and the ones who don't work he should be analysing and understanding why, and tweaking the strategy to reflect that. Can you see much of that?

My issue is that it seems to me we have no real strategy. Compare the recruitment from the start of Lee's tenure to the end, and then Holden last summer. If the strategy isn't clear then I'm afraid for me the culprit is the man who is creating and responsibe for implementing it... and that's Ashton. Young, old, experienced... didn't we sign like 4 wide players one summer, and now we don't even use them so they're all gone? Who's overseeing this?

A lot was made of the plan that we could swap head coaches but the ethos running through the club would remain. Holden signed incredibly different players from Lee, and now Pearson appears to be wanting to do something else again. So... where's the strategy, and who is implementing it?

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4 minutes ago, IAmNick said:

I don't think he chooses who we go after and sign, but that doesn't mean he has no responsibility there either.

In my opinion a big part of his job is creating and implementing the strategy of the club, and part of that is making sure that the head coach (who should also help create it) is staying on the right path. That means if we have signings who don't fit in with our overall strategy, Ashton should be probing and questioning to ensure they're appropriate. That's not saying he should veto them, or sign his own... but if someone wants to sign a player who is outside what we've decided our plan is there better be a bloody good reason.

The signings who do work, and the ones who don't work he should be analysing and understanding why, and tweaking the strategy to reflect that. Can you see much of that?

My issue is that it seems to me we have no real strategy. Compare the recruitment from the start of Lee's tenure to the end, and then Holden last summer. If the strategy isn't clear then I'm afraid for me the culprit is the man who is creating and responsibe for implementing it... and that's Ashton. Young, old, experienced... didn't we sign like 4 wide players one summer, and now we don't even use them so they're all gone? Who's overseeing this?

A lot was made of the plan that we could swap head coaches but the ethos running through the club would remain. Holden signed incredibly different players from Lee, and now Pearson appears to be wanting to do something else again. So... where's the strategy, and who is implementing it?

Put more eloquently than my post.

Basically Ashton let LJ get away with murder.

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10 hours ago, AshtonYate said:

I've been reading this forum from afar, and I've now finally had enough and signed up. 

I've been supporting Bristol City for 30 years now, followed home and away, so I'm not a new fan by any means.  What has shocked me though over resent years it the complete entitlement of our fans, especially at the moment.   

Mark Ashton

For me, the man has a done a decent job at the football club.  He is a fantastic negotiator and for the first time that I can remember we have been a force to reckon with when it comes to negotiation etc.  We've already heard from several employees within the club that Mark is a decent guy and works extremely really hard behind the scenes.  David Lloyd also said as much on OSIB this week.  He's obviously highly regarded within footballing circles as he's been giving a role on the EFL board!  So, because some of our fanbase wouldn't have a pint with him, wears a suit, he's suddenly slimy and a snake.  Honestly, who cares?  He's overseen one of the most successful periods in Bristol City's history.  He is an articulate and intelligent CEO, but lets hound him out with an absolute pipe dream of getting Scudamore in.  Are you having a laugh?  

Lets be honest, most people who have jumped on this witch hunt, as that is what it is, haven't got a clue what his role actually is. Fans just see a well groomed man in a suit and have just made their minds up that they don't like him because he, funnily enough, talks like a CEO. Lets be clear for the fans that can't compute this...... MARK ASHTON DOES IDENFIFTY PLAYERS TO SIGN. Mark Ashton overseas the recruitment team who finds the players.  They send lists of players to the manager, who then says YES or No. The manager will also suggest players for the recruitment team to analyse.  Where people have got the idea Mark Ashton identifies players, is beyond me and blows my mind.  But that doesn't fit in with the narrative does it. 

Why do our fans expect so much? I don't know another CEO in the football league that is expected to come out on radio and talk all of the time, its madness.    

Steve Lansdown 

It beggars belief how anyone would have a bad word to say about one of our own, who has ploughed over £200m into this club.  He has built a premier league standard stadium, a premier league quality training ground and has moved this club forward beyond recognition over the past 18 years. But yet all people want to do is abuse the guy!! Are you serious? Its like people think that running a successful football club is easy.  Simply black and white.  Could you imagine where we would be without the mans help? I'm not saying that he's always got it right, but he's sure got more right than wrong over the years and he is still ploughing money in.  You can tell that SL and JL are both at the end of the road with it, ploughing millions upon millions trying to elevate this club with nothing put abuse.  I'd have pulled the plug years ago.  The club would have been in great hands moving forward under JL, but SL has also said this week he isn't interested.  Are you surprised? Again, the abuse he gets on here is horrendous.  

10 clubs in the championship are now on a transfer ban!  We aren't one of them.  Can you guess why? Yeah, thats it, the CEO and the Owner have done a fantastic job to make sure that didn't happen during a worldwide pandemic.  We have a financially stable club when others all over the football league are crumbling.  

So if the fans got their way, we'd hound out an experienced CEO and a billionaire Bristol City supporting owner.  But where do you go from there once they leave in this little fantasy land ours? Maybe we can get in some Asian investment from owners that could barely point to Bristol on the map and have Ashton Gate sponsored by a betting company, as that's what it sounds like supporters want.  I'd hate to think what out fans would be like if we ACTUALLY had something bad to moan about. 

I love this club, I always will, but why do we as fans always have this need to press the self destruct button? We do we feel so entitled? We do we always need someone to blame? 

Every club go through ups and downs, but just think back and see how far we have come and tell me we haven't progressed in every department of this football club. 

 

I'm sorry if you don't agree, and I'm expecting a lot of abuse instead of constructive debate.  But is everything that bad?  

Are parody accounts allowed here? 

 

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10 hours ago, AshtonYate said:

I've been reading this forum from afar, and I've now finally had enough and signed up. 

I've been supporting Bristol City for 30 years now, followed home and away, so I'm not a new fan by any means.  What has shocked me though over resent years it the complete entitlement of our fans, especially at the moment.   

Mark Ashton

For me, the man has a done a decent job at the football club.  He is a fantastic negotiator and for the first time that I can remember we have been a force to reckon with when it comes to negotiation etc.  We've already heard from several employees within the club that Mark is a decent guy and works extremely really hard behind the scenes.  David Lloyd also said as much on OSIB this week.  He's obviously highly regarded within footballing circles as he's been giving a role on the EFL board!  So, because some of our fanbase wouldn't have a pint with him, wears a suit, he's suddenly slimy and a snake.  Honestly, who cares?  He's overseen one of the most successful periods in Bristol City's history.  He is an articulate and intelligent CEO, but lets hound him out with an absolute pipe dream of getting Scudamore in.  Are you having a laugh?  

Lets be honest, most people who have jumped on this witch hunt, as that is what it is, haven't got a clue what his role actually is. Fans just see a well groomed man in a suit and have just made their minds up that they don't like him because he, funnily enough, talks like a CEO. Lets be clear for the fans that can't compute this...... MARK ASHTON DOES IDENFIFTY PLAYERS TO SIGN. Mark Ashton overseas the recruitment team who finds the players.  They send lists of players to the manager, who then says YES or No. The manager will also suggest players for the recruitment team to analyse.  Where people have got the idea Mark Ashton identifies players, is beyond me and blows my mind.  But that doesn't fit in with the narrative does it. 

Why do our fans expect so much? I don't know another CEO in the football league that is expected to come out on radio and talk all of the time, its madness.    

Steve Lansdown 

It beggars belief how anyone would have a bad word to say about one of our own, who has ploughed over £200m into this club.  He has built a premier league standard stadium, a premier league quality training ground and has moved this club forward beyond recognition over the past 18 years. But yet all people want to do is abuse the guy!! Are you serious? Its like people think that running a successful football club is easy.  Simply black and white.  Could you imagine where we would be without the mans help? I'm not saying that he's always got it right, but he's sure got more right than wrong over the years and he is still ploughing money in.  You can tell that SL and JL are both at the end of the road with it, ploughing millions upon millions trying to elevate this club with nothing put abuse.  I'd have pulled the plug years ago.  The club would have been in great hands moving forward under JL, but SL has also said this week he isn't interested.  Are you surprised? Again, the abuse he gets on here is horrendous.  

10 clubs in the championship are now on a transfer ban!  We aren't one of them.  Can you guess why? Yeah, thats it, the CEO and the Owner have done a fantastic job to make sure that didn't happen during a worldwide pandemic.  We have a financially stable club when others all over the football league are crumbling.  

So if the fans got their way, we'd hound out an experienced CEO and a billionaire Bristol City supporting owner.  But where do you go from there once they leave in this little fantasy land ours? Maybe we can get in some Asian investment from owners that could barely point to Bristol on the map and have Ashton Gate sponsored by a betting company, as that's what it sounds like supporters want.  I'd hate to think what out fans would be like if we ACTUALLY had something bad to moan about. 

I love this club, I always will, but why do we as fans always have this need to press the self destruct button? We do we feel so entitled? We do we always need someone to blame? 

Every club go through ups and downs, but just think back and see how far we have come and tell me we haven't progressed in every department of this football club. 

 

I'm sorry if you don't agree, and I'm expecting a lot of abuse instead of constructive debate.  But is everything that bad?  

We will see what Lansdown is made of and what his real ambitions are for Bristol City if he signs Pearson up or not. Yes he has built a great stadium and training ground but had consistently failed when it has come to picking Managers. Well let's see what happens this time.

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So if I've understood correctly:

  • when Mark Ashton sells players (that he mostly didn't bring to the club) for a lot of money, it's all down to him FACT (despite none of us knowing the terms of those sales, the role of respective agents, the level of counter bidding from other clubs to force up the price, or even if those were the right prices anyway given the prevailing market forces of the time)
  • when Mark Ashton buys players, spending a large majority of that money he's brought in, on a very long list of players, some of which appear to have been sold at a loss, others of whom certainly don't appear to have retained their value let alone increased it, and with results and performances appearing to bear out that failure, any link to Ashton is SPECULATION

Glad that's cleared up. I have a feeling this is what happens in Mark Ashton's annual salary review.

For what it's worth, on a serious note I genuinely believe the secret to Ashton's position and salary is the role he plays with the EFL and among EFL chairman (and SL has more or less said as much last year).

I'm happy to accept that carries value, but am also well aware of the old sales conference trick played by this exact sort of self promoter - tell the boss gossip and make your networking sound indispensable.

One other point, the idea people dislike him because he wears a suit and talks business is very odd. I"d say the opposite, my problem is  it's painfully obvious most is bluffing. He sounds nothing like real CEOs.

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10 hours ago, CheddarReds said:

You've said it yourself - Ashton overseas the recruitment team. If there is no philosophy for us to recruit with, the recruitment will be more scattergun (which is what we've seen). The result of that, amongst other things, is no coherent style on the pitch and an unbalanced squad both of which have really come to a head this season, but it's been a problem that's developed over multiple seasons.

I know recruitment hasn’t been great recently but deporting them seems a bit harsh! 

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32 minutes ago, RalphMilnesLeftFoot said:

Wow

Tin foil much? 

At least the 'hate' all finally spills out.

Gaslit by others to the point of accusing posters of being dupes is a damning indictment of 'powerplay' for the club, or this board. 

It's pretty sad that posters who are considered to be 'respectable' resort to this after trying all sorts elsewhere. 

Fans tend to be passionate, the clue is in the name, derived from fanatic. 

However, posts like this continue to show up fragility and need for autonomy and obedience. 

Sad all around if that's the strength of argument. 

 

You what?

I literally have no idea what you’re trying to insinuate?  DM me if you like.

What hate?

Strength of what argument?

 

 

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33 minutes ago, RalphMilnesLeftFoot said:

Wow

Tin foil much? 

At least the 'hate' all finally spills out.

Gaslit by others to the point of accusing posters of being dupes is a damning indictment of 'powerplay' for the club, or this board. 

It's pretty sad that posters who are considered to be 'respectable' resort to this after trying all sorts elsewhere. 

Fans tend to be passionate, the clue is in the name, derived from fanatic. 

However, posts like this continue to show up fragility and need for autonomy and obedience. 

Sad all around if that's the strength of argument. 

 

I'm not sure if this made a scintilla of sense to you when you were typing it, but it comes over pretty batshit crazy tbh.

It's pretty ironic for somebody randomly ranting about powerplays, autonomy and obedience on a football forum to be accusing others of wearing a tin foil hat.

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4 hours ago, Olé said:

I'm happy to accept that carries value, but am also well aware of the old sales conference trick played by this exact sort of self promoter - tell the boss gossip and make your networking sound indispensable.

So,,Steve's 'backing this bloke who's currency is gossip???........

I'm unsure whether I'm more concerned if he is,,or isn't aware of this!!

Personally I'd keep anyone who trades in this fashion at the end of an exceptionally long 'barge pole.

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2 hours ago, Son of Fred said:

So,,Steve's 'backing this bloke who's currency is gossip???........

I'm unsure whether I'm more concerned if he is,,or isn't aware of this!!

Personally I'd keep anyone who trades in this fashion at the end of an exceptionally long 'barge pole.

SL made a comment last year, wish I could dig it out, that I found quite jarring, defending Mark Ashton on the strength almost exclusively of what he is privy to at EFL level and giving us a voice at the table.

It was clear SL was hugely enamored by that access more than perhaps anything, and I thought it was an odd qualification for a CEO, like putting your paid lobbyist in charge of running your whole business. 

It put me in mind of MA holding court at the EFL get togethers, with everyone crowded round him, waiting on his every word and direction. Not the democratic meeting of club executives it's reported as.

It occurred to me there's an age old trick (any salesperson knows it) to come back from a sales conference and show off to the boss all the influence/gossip you've secured - the boss will never know better!

I find it a bit odd we measure performance on what MA says he's done/heard at the EFL conferences - unless I'm missing some EFL rules changes or penalties for others that we've secured in our favour?

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15 hours ago, billywedlock said:

OP is rather confused about our shirt sponsor methinks. We are already sponsored by a betting company, so you might want to delete that error on your post. 

Anyway, appreciate the opinion. I don't agree with your acceptance of mediocrity for the level of investment or the notion that any owner who is not Bristol born would be a negative. Get used to it, the owner is selling out, and the new people will not be local. 

Our historical position in the football pyramid is what 34 th ? Where are we now ? Mark Ashton, Steve Lansdown, bottom line is , nice buildings, but nothing notable to show on the pitch. For the money spent it is a terrible under achievement . Could we have done worse, yes of course, but why look below, look above. That is what winners do. Could we have done better. Without any doubt. 

The losers mentality around Bristol City and the inability to strive for the best, and your comments for me are exactly why we are also rans or no runners, is why we are going nowhere fast until we strive for excellence and stop accepting second best.

Ashton, here I could not agree with anything you have said. He is an unmitigated disaster. The highest wage bill in history and transfer spend, and look at the squad we have at the end of this season and the residual value of that squad. It is the worst transfer management possible, and has left the club in a terrible mess , close to relegation, and with no semblance of any playing identity. The only thing Ashton deserves is to be fired. On any level he has been a catastrophic failure as head of all things football. His words. 

The fans are far from the problem, far far from the problem. Show them some respect, and appreciate they are not as stupid as you think, and primarily put together a semblance of a professional football strategy to match the investment and create a club that has pride. City fans will be there with any of them. It is insulting you suggest otherwise considering the dross , BS and nonsense that has been served over the last 3 years. If you lie continually to your fanbase, tell them something is great when it is not, give yourself platitudes that only you can see, then yes, the fanbase might feel bemused and slightly incredulous. 

Bristol City needs to stop being an also ran, 49 clubs have played in the Prem league , we are not one of them. If Ashton and SL are so amazing, how come clubs like Blackpool have got the Prem (during SL ownership) and we only got close once ? 

The losers mentality is what is wrong with some fans. They are the type of fan holding the club back. 

 

There you go.

What more do you want to know?

Excellent post

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