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Mark Ashton Leaving (Merged)


Harry

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2 hours ago, Bobbie said:

Jon Lansdown is the Managing Director of the club and the only thing you can think of that he’s ‘managed’ is the irrelevant logo.

To be fair to you I don't know if it was made clear, but Jon Lansdown ceased to be Managing Director long ago, probably when Mark Ashton became CEO. You don't generally have both roles in the same business. As such he has only occupied a formal vice chairman or chairman role, which is not full time, hands on, or tasked with running the business.

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23 minutes ago, Harry said:

That’s what’s in the official comms. 
Doesn’t match up with the fact that I been made aware of his appointment in December. Lansdown wanted Cotterill out but the board kept overruling him. Lansdown brought Ashton in to ‘verify’ the ‘problem’ that had occurred in the previous summer with recruitment. Ashton backed up Steve’s thinking and Cotterill was history. The announcement of Ashton post-sacking was designed to ensure Ashton took no responsibility for the sacking. 

I have long suspected that Cotts was very very badly treated by the club. 

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12 minutes ago, tin said:

The other scenario is Ashton might have been rumbled for facilitating the takeover of Ipswich while being on City's payroll. In some circles that could amount to gross misconduct, but I'm sure Ashton has managed his own PR. Good riddance to the slimy shit. 

Fairly sure that if that had happened he'd have been sacked on the spot.

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1 hour ago, Bobbie said:

His LinkedIn profile says he’s the MD. No major surprise he can’t get that right either then. 
 

I personally think he has very little contribution to anything at the club. He has a senior role to justify a high salary, for tax purposes. SL knows how to play that game that’s for sure 

We all lie a bit on LinkedIn don’t we?  Don’t we? ?

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14 minutes ago, RoystonFoote'snephew said:

I find myself fairly unfazed about the Mark Ashton situation. I never saw him as a pantomime villain and certainly didn't subscribe to the views of the many conspiracy theorists on here, some of whom no doubt believe everything written in a Dan Brown book, that he was responsible for all the ills befalling City. However I think his tenure as City's CEO could be described as patchy at best. On the plus side I think he has some organisational skills and he achieved some remarkable prices for the sales of Webster, Kelly etc. But on the negative side the recruitment could rank as 5/10 at best and while he seemed candid there was clearly a nagging doubt among the fanbase as to whether all he said was true. We move on just hoping for improvement. 

I'm not sure that he has either to be the pantomime villain or the victim of some conspiracy theory to be negatively assessed. He was the often voice of the club I support - a voice I found intensely patronising. I never believed for a moment that he gave two hoots about Bristol City. He was passing through. Perhaps that's an unfair assessment but I'm pleased he's gone.

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This is great news so happy he had gone at long last, he never did anything to move the club forward his recruitment was very poor, I think he showed that trying to run a football club like other big business just don't work, now his gone I will be renewing my season ticket, 

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29 minutes ago, CotswoldRed said:

Unless I missed it, he didn't mention the fans in his leaving statement. 

Says it all.

Ashton was only ever visible to the fans when things were going well; he couldn’t care less about the fans.....only in it for himself and he’s done very well out of BCFC.

Good riddance!

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1 hour ago, SecretSam said:

He's a regular employee, same as most people - he will have handed in his notice and walked away. No different to most other jobs.

Wait, what?

The £550k / year CEO is no different to most other jobs? I suppose he's on six weeks notice hence May 31st? Seriously? ?

I'm glad you mentioned this as there's actually something missing to the story here - because that makes no sense at all.

  • Either he's on six months notice (minimum realistic at that role/salary) and told us at Christmas and we've waited until now to go public, but he (and maybe others) have known throughout the January window and the Holden departure, that he's off 
  • OR he's on six months notice but only told us in the last week or two when the Ipswich deal completed, and May 31st is the result of us agreeing to an early departure and/or the result of an agreement with Ipswich so he can take up his new role
  • OR we simply have employees on half a million quid on nothing more than standard 1-3 month notice periods (haha)

My money is on somewhere between the first two - it was noted by everyone that it was unusual MA suddenly disappeared and SL was parachuted in to explain DH leaving and then NP being appointed, so no doubt was known then, but probably not much before then, as would be unusual to have known then and be no closer to having leadership in place for the next scramble for players at the end of the season.

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1 hour ago, Harry said:

Ashton would’ve absolutely loved the last year. 
No fans in the ground. It was almost as if he was being given his own private show. He would’ve loved the fact that HE was entitled to watch football whilst the rest of us missed out. He was happy that he could take his mate Werhun to games with him. He also had the arrogance to take his girlfriend along too (totally against Covid regs).
No one at the club liked him. That comes from many different sources within the club - players and staff (not high profile staff, but just regular folk employed in various parts of the organisation). 

True, and he didn't seem to care.

In which case he would have been better off going to Millwall.

"I'm Mr Love-Myself

 I'm Mr Love-Myself

 No-one likes me

  I don't care"

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1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

When do you think the decline started?

For me there is a strong correlation to us “generally” getting worse as more and more of the 14/15 squad left the club.  Some of those were upward moves, some weren’t.  Imho we failed to use the money wisely...and first performances tailed off over at least 2 1/2 years, eventually results caught up 18 months ago.  Financially it’s been on the cards for 3 seasons too, increased costs without the relative increase in squad ability.

Thats my view anyway.

Difficult to say really somewhere between the Cup Semi Final and the January of the following season in terms of style of football under Johnson where we lost that spark we had, that being said resuls and league positions stayed relatively stable even despite the general turnover in players due to sales / injuries.

I don't necesarily agree that its down to the 14/15 squad leaving, thats football in some respect not many clubs will have many of the same players that they had 6 years ago and in the most part they were replaced with better quality players. I think the departures of Webster and Brownhill (both bought after the 14/15 season) have probably been the deathknell in terms of maintaining a reasonable league position i.e. 10th and above and were better players than their respective double winners i.e. Flint or Pack / Smith and it is the failure to replace those two that has led to our current freefall.

I don't think all is lost and hopefully the right appointments can be made to bring the club back together again, establish a consistent way of playing (preferably including attractive football at home at least)and push us back up the league.

 

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10 minutes ago, Olé said:

Wait, what?

The £550k / year CEO is no different to most other jobs? I suppose he's on six weeks notice hence May 31st? Seriously? ?

I'm glad you mentioned this as there's actually something missing to the story here - because that makes no sense at all.

  • Either he's on six months notice (minimum realistic at that role/salary) and told us at Christmas and we've waited until now to go public, but he (and maybe others) have known throughout the January window and the Holden departure, that he's off.

This option would certainly go some way in explaining how we've ended up in a situation where there appears to have been almost zero discussion around out of contract players.

Could you imagine the uproar if any of them are signed by Ipswich? 

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Just now, Midlands Robin said:

This option would certainly go some way in explaining how we've ended up in a situation where there appears to have been almost zero discussion around out of contract players.

Could you imagine the uproar if any of them are signed by Ipswich? 

I know what you mean but most of them I would happily see go there!

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2 hours ago, Marina's Rolls Royce said:

And this is precisely what Ive said and really believe. MA is a fantastic scape goat for a much much wider failure across the club. His departure in isolation does not change the direction of travel.

I must say I have to agree with that. We know where the issue is and has been for a long time. Unfortunately the issue bankrolls the club. What we can "hope" for is a replacement who has enough balls and clout to be able to gently nudge the Owner in the right direction from time to time rather than just being a hatchet man for the Owner. If that doesn't happen then I agree with your general point (it doesn't even matter whether we both agree on the cause or not), expect more of the same.

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20 minutes ago, Red Exile said:

I'm not sure that he has either to be the pantomime villain or the victim of some conspiracy theory to be negatively assessed. He was the often voice of the club I support - a voice I found intensely patronising. I never believed for a moment that he gave two hoots about Bristol City. He was passing through. Perhaps that's an unfair assessment but I'm pleased he's gone.

Unfair?

Sounds generous to me.

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2 minutes ago, Bazooka Joe said:

Ecstatic about his departure.

Ashton leaving is the equivalent of Pearson signing Messi for us.

 

 

Reminds me of the old Frankie Fielding’s in the building chant:

”Nigel Pearson’s having a party! Mark Ashton has left the building!”!

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3 hours ago, MarcusX said:

 

Were you in the interviews? If not, you've no idea how everyone came across.

I'm sure many of us have conducted interviews where the best person "on paper" came across as completely the wrong fit, or arrogant etc and someone you weren't expecting much of said and did all the right things.

I think it's a shit stick to beat the club with because it's quite plausible that Holden said all the right things but couldn't transfer it into action.

I said at the time and I still maintain that I believe part of the reason it took so long is because they were so unsure about appointing Holden, but he interviewed that well and was so convincing that he knew the problems and could solve them that they took a chance - but covered themselves with the 1 year contract.

As for Ashton, careful what you wish for. If you think he's the root of all our problems I think some may be in for a surprise

I hope even Mark Ashton had the common sense to use other criteria than just the interview.  Like whether the candidate had any significant track record at the required level. 

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