Eddie Hitler

In a fairly bizarre philosophical leap some of the more demented posters on their forum are now spinning this signing of a violent convicted criminal as an altruistic act by St Joey of Barton who has actually signed him with the primary purpose of reforming and redeeming him, and is in a position to do this as he understands him given that his own charge sheet is as long as his arm. They have gone so far beyond the pale now that even Lee Power-era Swindon fans will be appalled. And as we all know, a fish rots from the head. Not such a nice man after all.

This is so unlike Rovers. Here they were celebrating a multiple woman murderer in 2017. And then the usual suspects finding some way of justifying it. https://gasheads.org/thread/6925/fred-west https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-rovers-fan-accused-taking-790420

Spot on. I don't pick people up on forums for errors as they are not acting in a professional capacity but I frequently see absolute howlers in online press stories; including within headlines. There is no excuse for not proof reading such stories, one recent headline spoke of "causalities" after an accident. This was presumably proffered by the autocorrect spelling after a mistyping, we all do it, but to not realise that it is a different word is shocking.

Steve Lansdown however let himself be drawn into the hype surrounding Gary Johnson's promotion push and kept throwing money at it, culminating in losing to Hull in the play off final. He admitted in interview to feeling "a bit silly" because he had blown £50m on this and it hadn't worked out. Sometimes owners lose the sense they were born with when they have a very persuasive manager of chief executive telling them that promotion's in the bag if they just spend "another few million". And another few million. And another few million. The amount of money that Wael's shovelling towards Barton for players and employing his mates as staff (former taxi driver Peter Johnson should have been our "you're joking" moment) shows that Joey Barton seems to be Wael's cause for being "a bit silly". I know that Wael is wealthy but I don't think that he's that wealthy, and promotion to the Championship just means that the annual loss jumps up rather than suddenly leaping into profit I can them being up for sale again within five years. Though I'm not saying that we won't be as well if the ITK people are correct.

I think like Michael Owen, Vardy was all about his blistering acceleration and now that he has lost that extra yard which made him special he's no longer a star striker. He can still do a job as he has the eye for goal and a good shot on him but without that burst of speed the big money he will want will not be worth paying, even if we could. Which we can't.

And of course there was Zach Clough. Or rather his dad. A month into the 2015–16 season, Clough dislocated his other shoulder and ruled him out for 3 months. In January 2016, a number of clubs including Everton [13] and Bristol City were interested in signing Clough. Bristol City had a £3,000,000 bid accepted however, Clough said that he wished to stay at Bolton so turned down his contract offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Clough

Yes, my point was that there is no reason for them to do so. It is an easy and obvious course to take as long as your consumers will continue to swallow the increase. I worked somehwere in the 2000s where the standard contract was for an RPI increase in pay every year. After five years I was on over £10k more than my equivalent at a similar company despite the jobs having started at the same point. The RPI increase was ceased. Despite the RPI increase being dropped I continued to work there for several years and also did most others. When a company notes that they have increased their prices by inflation you should question whether it was reasonable for them to have done so rather than assuming that that is the norm and continuing to buy their product.

If annual inflation was negative, as it was in 2009, would you expect the club to reduce the price accordingly? Probably not. The current high inflation is mostly on energy and food. The main costs for Robins TV will be salaries which haven't gone up by 10%, NMW being an obvious exception. They can, of course, put the price up by as much as they wish but the aim will be to maximize revenue which comes from hitting the sweet spot on the demand curve. I would hope that the club are more sophisticated in their sales analysis than to routinely apply general inflation to prices. I recently dealt with setting rates on the hire.of a big meeting space which were last set five years ago. In that time competition has increased for hourly hire but decreased for full day hire so we cut the hourly hire rate and increased the daily. We will then monitor outcomes to see if those decisions were correct and change them if not.

Please stop starting new threads @shahanshahan as I have to keep ignoring them. Just have one women's England team thread as you do one women's Bristol City team thread and put them all on that one. I wouldn't say that you are the only one interested in this but it often seems like it. Don't bother to reply as I am just about to Ignore this thread as I have to do for all of your threads and AFAIK there is no Unignore function so I won't see it.

Why then do most of the Rovers' new signings look like someone is pointing a gun at them off camera to make them hold up the shirt?

It's an expensive hobby owning a football club. At least FFP stops the sums thrown away annually from being utterly mental and destroying the club. Bradford City have never recovered from Geoffrey Richmond's reckless spending to buy their way into the Premier League. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_A.F.C.

Yes, I fail to see the relevance of the internal affairs of Nantes to a player transfer for which Cardiff agreed the fee. Given the dubious nature of the ownership of Nantes possibly Cardiff should have paid into an escrow account for the benefit of Nantes FC once these matters have been resolved as this would safeguard those funds it doesn't however mean that they shouldn't pay them over given that they lost the judgement. I didn't see the Sala transfer saga as being as balck and white as others did and thought that Cardiff were simply doing what any company would do to protect its position; though there is a whole thread on this where I have stated similar. This statement is however clutching at straws. Today, FIFA ordered Cardiff City FC to pay the 2nd and 3rd instalments of the transfer fee for Emiliano Sala to FC Nantes as expected. Yesterday the CEO of FC Nantes, Franck Kita, was placed into police custody alongside Bakari Sanogo and Joaquim Batica by the JIRS, French prosecutors specialised in organised crime and financial crime. A judicial investigation was opened in June 2022 on the counts of "illegal exercise of sports agent activity, forgery and use of forgery, misuse of corporate assets, laundering of aggravated tax evasion and organised money laundering". The Club's negligence claim in France against FC Nantes exhibits direct exchanges showing Mr Kita was informing Mr Sanogo of the proposed transfer fee for Emiliano Sala. It is not clear why. In the circumstances, the Club considers that it would have been fairer if the requirement to pay FC Nantes had been deferred until the conclusion of the French police investigations and the club's claim against FC Nantes in the French courts. https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/news/club-statement-300623

Tickets aren't however priced from cost but from estimating market price. As long as they cover the direct costs of the ticket them that is all that is required. I only flag this as I had just this discussion at work recently where someone wanted to put the price of a service we provide up by £50 because that's how much our costs had gone up. I noted that, to the buyer, what happens to our costs is an irrelevance; they will make their purchase decision on the price they have to pay. I asked them what competitors were charging and it turned out to be typically £150 more so I suggested that they instead add £100. And does nobody else keep old tickets and want to continue to add to them? Some digital file on a phone isn't quite the same.

At root politicians know that there are no votes to be gained in taking the side of football fans against the police because the great majority of those with no personal knowledge of a particular incident will assume that it was the police dealing with hooliganism and the fans deserved what they got. I cannot ever see that changing tbh. If you're a football fan then you are generally assumed to be in the wrong. The successful overturning of prosecutions by football supporters' groups receive very little publicity outside of football forums.

Laudable but there isn't a homogeneous "we oldies" group, of the older people I know the division between computer literate and non-literate is primarily related to attitude rather than intelligence. A lot of people who grew up without it don't like tech generally and don't have smartphones let alone computers or tablets. I thought tech, or more particularly system software, a real boon at work but I don't want anything bar the bare minimum outside of work though am semi-retired these days in my fifties. I almost always pay cash, have never used contactless or paid by phone, refuse to adopt anything I see as unnecessary like WhatsApp and only started online banking because my local branch had closed and I wanted to change a standing order without having a long journey to do it. As with council car parks now requiring an App to pay, meaning that I will not now use them, the old adage of "the customer is always right" seems to have gone by the by, replaced by "the customer will do what they are told". And then you lose customers.

Just look at Barton, multiple assaults, jail time. However the live cases since he has been employed by Rovers have both ended in acquital. It is, I agree, a very odd balancing attack that Wael is undertaking here in order to retain his jailbird manager and sign players which other clubs wouldn't touch. I noted Lee Power era Swindon as plumbing the depths with their player signings, made cheaply and on low wages because no other club wanted them, and Rovers are now emulating that model - low morals mean low prices. It does genuinely surprise me that they are doing this. The "nice guy" owner is clearly not a nice guy and I would also suggest that he remove his very nice watch before shaking hands with either his staff or players.

Season tickets for their new south stand have sold out already.

If they really want to go the full amoral Swindon, Lee Power era, then Nile Ranger is still only 32 and Marlon King might be tempted into doing some coaching.

Fair enough but times change and you will find that the club you always supported will return in the future. You're just pressing pause on your supporting, and I, as a City fan, have done the same in the past.

Indeed. And let's be fair here, I expect that the majority of Rovers' playing and coaching staff have never been in court for assault. The Evening Post should be highlighting the good guys that they have on their books instead of repeatedly focusing upon the many criminals in their employ. I suspect that the BEP sports department is staffed by City fans given how often they keep printing stories about Rovers' players and staff being arrested.

Oh come on Phantom, it's not like Joey Barton to get drunk and start a fight now is it?

@JulieH I'd say that her being in here was a useful conduit for issues to be resolved amicably so the police should put up someone else for a similar role. It's not as though she was spending all day on here chatting, she dealt with relevant matters.

Missed the first interest payment on the Nationwide Finance loan maybe? Given that they were advertising for an unpaid intern to do their accounting I wouldn't be surprised. I don't see Wael running out of money any time soon as he's loaded but yes I can well see an administrative error being made when you're running your finance team on a shoestring. Though tbf I considered applying for the Financial Controller job at City maybe a dozen years ago but the salary level was so far below market wages that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Football clubs tend to run their back offices on an absolute shoestring despite throwing money about left right and centre. And as the saying goes: "If you pay peanuts then you get monkeys."