lets look at lansdowns record

[Merrick's Marvels]

3 hours ago, GrahamC said:

You should be ashamed of the vitriol poured out on our then visionary leader.

If we only but knew, Mr.H.....

Mea culpa!

[RT's Vaseline Tub]

11 hours ago, phantom said:

Like who ?

If he didn't bankroll his continual losses we would have done!

No we did that already in 1982 so I hope not again!

[shelts]

Wow we have some ungrateful bastards supporting our club. Questioning SL and his commitment to the club. Fffs u can't make it up only in Brizzle. 

[City1970]

13 hours ago, Red-Robbo said:

We haven't gone bust. Like lots of other clubs have.

What do Bristol City Football Club actually own?

[leadman]

just glad hes here tbh.

[Daniro]

Six managers (or seven if you include whoever gets the job now) in six years is a shocking record by anyone's standard and SL has to take responsibility for that.   GJ got us to within a hair's breadth of the top flight.   SC worked wonders until this season and McInnes has been hugely successful at Aberdeen.  The problem has been the failure at board level to provide adequate resources to achieve the so-called "strategy" of reaching the premier league.

SL made his money selling financial services and his actual strategy has been to ensure that all investment in his footballing hobby builds him a nice asset base.  He owns the new stadium - if the club should go bust he will have a nice shiney stadium for his other hobby, rugby, and the lucrative activities of a big conferencing / events / concert venue.   If we get relegated next season, he knows another manager will deliver another successful, lucrative promotion season from the third league soon enough.    

There's nothing the real fans can actually do about him - he owns the stadium and the club.   He may have an ace up his sleeve and be able to appoint a top flight manager and provide him with funds to buy players good enough to keep us from relegation in the few weeks that remain of the transfer window.  But in our heart of hearts we all know that the chances now of any decent player signing for a managerless club in the bottom three are zero and that we are owned by someone who is not prepared to make the necessary investment in the footballing skills to get us to the premiership.

[Antman]

I've always been sceptical of SL's approach to owning this club. Over a very long period he took advantage of the state of affairs, and utilised his growing wealth to manipulate the entire package into his control. He devalued existing share ownership by flooding the club with new shares of which he owned. We are now in a position where we have a seemingly benevolent billionaire dictator. The rather large and growing debt is wiped clean, no doubt through canny accountancy between his companies, but that debt is very largely down to him. As finance director prior to chairman and now de facto chairman, he oversaw all the shambolic loss making transfers and appointments, he was across the wages and bonuses, and he is the man who controls the strategy, and yes, football seems to attract a disproportionate amount of megalomaniacs, crooks and nutters, so for us to have SL, relative to that, is good news.

But he seems to be unable to build a team around him that is anything other than 'yes men' which is fundamentally unhealthy for a football club.

he also seems unable to hold his nerve and the strategic see-sawing when things look a bit sticky has more than once set us back as a club.

we don't have a good board, we have a great ground, we had a great team for L1. I'm pleased to be able to have a rational debate about SL, but I can't say I have ultimate faith in him

[Bris Red]

23 hours ago, reddoc said:

Of course, thus the wild guess, but all I'm suggesting is that Lansdown should be accountable for the lack of success this club has achieved as a football club since he took over. The doomsday, where would we be without his money argument doesn't hold up and in terms of where we are currently the answer could as easily be higher rather than lower.

Totally agree. It really grinds my gears when people jump and clamber to defend Lansdown at any slight hint of criticism.. Lets be brutally honest he has never gone for it or ever shown any REAL ambition to get us into the top flight has he, come on?

All this talk about wanting us to get there is utter bollox and as you said if SL had never taken over the reigns at this club there is every chance we could have had a lot more successful recent history.

[City Chuds]

Here's a new idea for this forum, I'm going to take a bit of a 'balanced view'! 

What do the lansdowns bring? A lot more than most owners would in my opinion. Steve Lansdown doesn't make money from our club, I remember him saying his season ticket is more expensive than anyone else's, but don't knock an owner who is a fan.

They have made mistakes but what grinds my gears is that most of the fans have supported most of their decisions until they turned out to be wrong. Let's look at managers Mccinnes, Coppell, O'Driscoll were all supporters choices we were all happy, weren't we? I didn't see anyone on here saying 'don't sign David James' 'Don't increase the wage bill' 'don't write off 35 million of debt'. I did however see many people object to the appointment of Cotts but not too many complaining a year later.

They are damned if they do damned if they don't, or so it seems. We are about to find out if the board are in the middle of another mistake, which if they are it may take up to 3 years to recover from. Im certainly not happy about what I think is about to happen. But we have a brilliant new ground, a chairman who is a fan and wants to invest, and we are no worse off in league position than when Lansdown bought in. The club in my view with mistakes included is a better run place than when the Mr Lansdown arrived. And in my view he will take us to the Prem eventually.