Inheritance Tax

[And Its Smith]

33 minutes ago, One Team said:

Great post Fevs which highlights very well our situation. The Mark Ashton era continues to blight our club even now. 

I don’t believe that we’ve a top 6 or even top half squad, just ask yourself how many of our players were better than West Brom’s or would get in their starting 11. One or two at most? 

If Pearson goes whoever comes in (or most likely gets promoted) has these constraints and issues to deal with. Maybe they would do a better job, maybe they wouldn’t. 

To points elsewhere as much as I appreciate what SL has done in terms of infrastructure I’ve no faith he will make a good decision in terms of replacement, if that happens. 

Top half budget and top half transfer cost apparently.  Pearson isn’t getting close to the max from this squad. One home win since August.  

[Redtrojan]

Interesting financial comments above.

Clearly recruitment has been poor ,however just checked on transfermarkt,not sure how accurate it is ,but suggests when slagging LJ ‘s transfer activity (on a financial basis-there is no doubt a lot of rubbish was bought),may not be fair.

We look like we made 19m profit in 18/19 and 15m profit in 19/20 and 4m profit in 20/21-purely based on transfer ins and outs .

 

[Alessandro]

I think the club will be looking to avoid sacking Nige at all costs.

As I said before - I think we're currently hanging on for Jan, where selling will fund some buying to sure things up.

I think that's our only play right now as our options are so limited financially. Survival is the only target and we've lost the luxury of holding on to our best players.

 

FWIW - however there are some 'but's' with all that:

- I think the squad is still underachieving at present. Questions over tactics/set ups.

- Performances are on a continued downward curve - bottom 5 form.

- We're starting to see more cracks in NP's facade which is usually not a good sign. Does he have the fight if all the blame/anger turns on him? Will he be a SL scapegoat?

- Questions for me over the team around NP. We know previous success for NP were built with coaches he no longer has around him. 

 

So although I don't think they want to pull the trigger, things are not good at all and relegation simply isn't an option.

But they'll be looking at the league table and luckily for NP there are currently 6 teams below us and 4 are in worse form, for now. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Alessandro

[firstdivision]

‘So the excuse of poor inheritance is being used too often to given NP an excuse.’

Bingo. 

[Merrick's Marvels]

12 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Dave, you continue to portray a terrible situation. Pretty much EVERY other club in the division is in a similar situation...

We are close to FFP failure due to covid. Lots of other clubs in the same situation....

We should be doing better.

I agree we should be doing better - mid table, perhaps.

And, whilst it's true every club has been affected by covid, not every club was as perilously close to a breach as we were. Which has hamstrung us in a way unlike many of our rivals.

We can't do what, say, Forest did when they were staring at relegation - spend so much money they got promoted.

Not every club has been financially mis-managed for years the way we have - our ratio of wages to income has been dangerously out of control for years and far more so than most other clubs in this division. So not every club has had such drastic problems off the pitch to address.

Not every club has had such drastic problems to address on it either. The trajectory of our results on the pitch has been on a downward spiral for years too.

Not every club has had a basically spineless team for the last several seasons - ie. we've had long term injuries to cornerstone players at centre back, central midfield and striker. On taking the job, Pearson had every right to be enthused about building a side around Bentley-Kalas-Baker-Williams-James-Weimann. He's discovered the keeper and his deputy are flaky and the rest of that spine has been decimated by injury. We've been spineless for years, literally and metaphorically. Pearson's managed to fashion alternatives up front from within the squad but has had no meaningful money to re-inforce the other areas - to the point every other team in the division can spend more than us at present.

Not every other club has a squad as unbalanced as ours - over reliant on naive youngsters and old pros.

Not every other club has had to blood so many kids because they've no other option. Thank goodness one or two are half tidy.

Not every other club has had so few players in the right age range - 25 year olds with games under their belt, under contract, happy to be here and motivated.

Not every other club had a medical department unfit for purpose that needed sorting. 

In fact, not every other club had a whole culture that needed sorting - comfortable, lazy, life on easy street at BCFC. From top to bottom the mentality is wrong (which is how minnows out do us - you know them, Luton, Millwall, Brentford on and on). This perhaps is Pearson's greatest challenge - changing mentality and behaviours. 

I could go on but you get the point.

Fact is, Pearson is having to tackle a quite unique - and awful - set of circumstances.

To say everyone else is in the same boat as us is nonsense. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Merrick's Marvels

[Mr Popodopolous]

It's a valid point though because if as we have to do, you have to implement strong cuts and you are already struggling with a wage bill of £35m NP is or has been asked out of necessity to do more with less.

It is difficult. Failure to do it adequately combined with the associated points deductions relegated two clubs. It can put a club into a bit of a downward spiral, Reading came close to the drop too last year post cutbacks and deduction and they were top 6 contenders in 2020-21!

Otoh I think we are better than the last two home games and in particular the 2nd half of these two games- I watched the highlights v Stoke last night we actually had some good chances and spells of pressure, nice build-up at times but the two goals we conceded were dreadful.

We had to work significantly harder for our goal than Stoke did for either of theirs.

@Merrick's Marvels

Glad you mentioned Nottingham Forest. They were in a worse position than us FFP wise coming into last season yet the expenditure was night and day- I am puzzled as to how they had room to sack a manager and pay compensation for Cooper, sign some of those they did, no major sales and remain within FFP. Unless Carvalho to Olympiakos was their major sale.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Mr Popodopolous

[Davefevs]

13 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Dave, you continue to portray a terrible situation. Pretty much EVERY other club in the division is in a similar situation. 

Gould claims we have a top 10 wage budget. We have paid fees for a few players.

We are close to FFP failure due to covid. Lots of other clubs in the same situation. 

IMO, and also in the view of Swiss Ramble etc, LJ had a lower wage bill but achieved top half twice. 

Mark Robins at Coventry. Gary Rowett at Millwall. Blackburn, QPR, Preston... 

We should be doing better.

I don’t agree that pretty much every club is in a similar situation.

Gould said we can afford to pay top 10 wages to the right players, e.g. a free transfer for a senior player…not the whole squad.

Most clubs aren’t in FFP danger, they have Cashflow issues.  Stoke, Reading and us are the main FFP ones.

Re LJ, and I don’t want to get into a huge debate in in, as it’s been said and done, but his wage bill grew from £15m to £30m (Football Club Ltd not AG) in his tenure.  I’d definitely agree he got decent value through some of that time, but his £30m squad achieved 12th by the time he left.  As he replaced the promotion squad with higher paid players, the performance levels tailed off.

 @Merrick's Marvelssaves me a lot of typing, ta.

2 hours ago, REDOXO said:

I agree. He shouldn’t have said it if he didn’t think it was true, maybe he did though, who knows! Europa League in five years was LJs downfall, a far more idiotic statement, that lead directly to the spreadsheet at the top of the page!

I don’t agree with the statement pretty much every club is in this situation! Pretty much every club has financial issues unless they are getting/still getting parachute payments that’s for sure. However how many are unable to spend money due to being so close to FFP, having spent the above, that comparatively small amounts count?

The above is 100% the responsibility of the bloke who said my money my choice (what is clear is it really wasn’t his money, it was the clubs money as the club would suffer from it being flushed down the shitter, to paraphrase the OP), with LJ, MA, JL AND the idiot bunch of **** yes men board members all sucking from the idiots tit! 

This in itself has created the situation where, we are told with some evidence, that we must bring through our own to a much greater extent and sell to buy. Now I’m not an expert in a lot of things, but changing the strategy so massively is a major difference to many other clubs. 
 

You can point to many who have maintained a long term strategy of buy and build and then sell to ***** like Bristol City, Luton and Brentford among others immediately spring to mind. Their long term strategies are clear, ours was akin to Derby, Birmingham and others which was throw money at it and pray the **** we have in charge is up to the challenge. ******* Laughable. You now also add in to the situation the more laughable resignation of stop gap Gould (I don’t care who you are and what you think, was crap the first time) and the employment of yet to be defined (let me know if I have missed an appointment) new CEO to overlook this utter shitshow. 
 

However here we are actually implementing a pillar policy having thrown our advantages away due to the hubris, greed and sheer bloody incompetence of those mentioned. Kind of an 82 situation with money!

The question is can Pearson produce again what he has before and get the Lansdown family and the supporters out of the same crapper. I’m no longer sure! I want it to work with Pearson, but we are watching shit shows, with players that are unable to perform as a unit and are frightened that their place is gone once the inevitable sales of Scott Semenyo and now on the grapevine Conway have been completed.

Who is out there that would take this on? Answer loads of people, either externally or internally as staying up is the only aim! But are they better equipped with the man we have? I’m not sure either way BUT the greater issue is getting a new CEO who is able to operate unfettered and is not the sham schiester that is the hated Ashton and can hold it together coming after what ever **** wittery Gould comes up with in the next few weeks!
 

 

 

 

 

Thought provoking. the reference to 1982 too!

2 hours ago, And Its Smith said:

Top half budget and top half transfer cost apparently.  Pearson isn’t getting close to the max from this squad. One home win since August.  

We overpaid.  We got ahead of ourselves.  I do agree he should be getting a bit more from them, but not much more.  Yesterday was v.poor, but imho we’ve not been like that very often this season.

1 hour ago, Merrick's Marvels said:

I agree we should be doing better - mid table, perhaps.

And, whilst it's true every club has been affected by covid, not every club was as perilously close to a breach as we were. Which has hamstrung us in a way unlike many of our rivals.

We can't do what, say, Forest did when they were staring at relegation - spend so much money they got promoted.

Not every club has been financially mis-managed for years the way we have - our ratio of wages to income has been dangerously out of control for years and far more so than most other clubs in this division. So not every club has had such drastic problems off the pitch to address.

Not every club has had such drastic problems to address on it either. The trajectory of our results on the pitch has been on a downward spiral for years too.

Not every club has had a basically spineless team for the last several seasons - ie. we've had long term injuries to cornerstone players at centre back, central midfield and striker. On taking the job, Pearson had every right to be enthused about building a side around Bentley-Kalas-Baker-Williams-James-Weimann. He's discovered the keeper and his deputy are flaky and the rest of that spine has been decimated by injury. We've been spineless for years, literally and metaphorically. Pearson's managed to fashion alternatives up front from within the squad but has had no meaningful money to re-inforce the other areas - to the point every other team in the division can spend more than us at present.

Not every other club has a squad as unbalanced as ours - over reliant on naive youngsters and old pros.

Not every other club has had to blood so many kids because they've no other option. Thank goodness one or two are half tidy.

Not every other club has had so few players in the right age range - 25 year olds with games under their belt, under contract, happy to be here and motivated.

Not every other club had a medical department unfit for purpose that needed sorting. 

In fact, not every other club had a whole culture that needed sorting - comfortable, lazy, life on easy street at BCFC. From top to bottom the mentality is wrong (which is how minnows out do us - you know them, Luton, Millwall, Brentford on and on). This perhaps is Pearson's greatest challenge - changing mentality and behaviours. 

I could go on but you get the point.

Fact is, Pearson is having to tackle a quite unique - and awful - set of circumstances.

To say everyone else is in the same boat as us is nonsense. 

Thanks for summing up pretty much all my thoughts.

I’m quite sad this is “my” club being referred to.

[robin_unreliant]

15 hours ago, cidered abroad said:

I don't know if the players are following instructions or doing it of their own volition, but we are playing so many passes sideways across the back three and so many passes backwards by the midfield. 

We are not putting pressure on the opposition and allowing opponents to press us and make breakaways. Our forwards are now relying on long, aerial passes and it isn't how we were doing it early in the season.

Continue like this will bring only one end to the season.

This was where I am losing patience. Yesterday it was so predictable. Long ball over the top out wide. Most of which we got nowhere near winning. Early in the season our attacking play was pretty fluid and good to watch. Now we seem to have lost the benefit of Weimann's running up front and become easy to defend against. Maybe it is confidence but certainly appearing to have gone backwards.

[Midlands Robin]

The challenge that Pearson faced on arrival and continues to face is obviously a big one. He's been tasked with transforming a low value, high wage squad into a high value, low wage squad while improving the performance of the team on the pitch. You can't say he wasn't aware of the size of the task on arrival especially as he had a short-term contract to begin with that either side could have ended.

I think one of my biggest problems with Pearson's approach is his absolute stubborn refusal to use the loan market. We've seen loans improve squads on many occasions. We ourselves only have to think back to Tammy and Lee Tomlin. It's all very noble to say that it's about building the club up from within and that loan players don't always come with the right attitudes, and they aren't long term options etc, etc but the right loan will improve on field performances and buy time to help develop other players around them. I honestly can't see the difference in bringing in an out of contract player such as Klose and a similar player on a loan. Klose used his short-term contract to put himself back in the shop window and, when offered a new City deal, spent part of the summer seeing if he could get better terms anywhere else before eventually signing the one we offered him. That hardly shouts, "commitment to the cause".

There are some similarities with the situation that Terry Cooper was handed in 1982 all be it nowhere near as severe. Though I wasn't around at the time, I wouldn't see my first match at the Gate for another 10 years, it seems that the way Cooper built a team spirit in that side from scratch, was key to the gradual turn around in performances. Nige seems like quite an abrasive character around the dressing room. He definitely needs to praise in public and bollock in private. Teams with deep squads can afford to unsettle a few players, stick them in the under 23's and let them run out their contracts, again, we don't have that luxury. Players work alongside each other and talk to each other outside of work. Who's to say that someone like HNM isn't a popular lad in the squad and his current situation is causing a few players to question the managers approach?

I agree with the sentiment raised in other threads, if not Pearson then who? Talk of the Coventry or Plymouth managers is hilarious and if coming from the other side of Bristol would rightly be condemned as fantasy. Currently successful managers in other teams are in no way going to be tempted out of those roles and into the basket case that is ourselves at the moment.

If the on field and football related areas (coaching, physio, recruitment etc) have had to be overhauled mostly under the guidance of Pearson, the flip side of this coin is the absolute omnishambles that is the leadership structure at the top of the club. While Richard Gould was day and night better than Swiss Tony, the reason we have a CEO in charge is because the owner has taken a huge step back and the so-called Chairman seems to have absolutely no interest in the day to day grind of being the boss of a football club. The direction and vision of club should stem from the very top and be felt all the way down to the lowest grade member of staff. This has been mentioned in a number of threads, but we have no off-field leadership structure at all. We have an owner, a chairman, a group financial officer and a CEO. I've had a look at Norwich's board, they have a boardroom of about 11 directors, a main board of directors who are joined by a sporting director, financial director, programmes director etc. There isn't a one person trying to do everything role and certainly not one vaguely interested chairman not doing a lot role.

We've got one transfer window and 5 months to turn this current shambles around and maintain our position as a championship club. We all know the definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. During the remainder of the season, we need to do as Fev's suggests and park the long-term strategy. Things aren't going to improve on that front until the summer for all the reasons shown in the original post. We need to start playing players in their normal positions, dip in to the loan market as well as seeing what funds can be scraped together for signing or two and hope we can hold on until May.

We also need our owner to become self-aware, while it's fantastic how he continues to back this club with his hand in his pocket, creating the type of facilities we could only dream of 30 years ago and writing off debts by converting debt to shares and so on, he needs to realise the current club structure is not working. As an example, a strong and well-staffed board of directors would have hopefully questioned Swiss Tony a long time before the finances became so critical. There is no off field accountability. This must end. I know it’s a case of be careful what you wish for but outside investment with a co-owner would provide a foil for Lansdown and hopefully create a greater sense of direction and improved decision making. Having a single owner means it’s his money and his train set. When someone else’s cash is involved, both have to think a lot more clearly about the decisions they make.

[t_b]

19 hours ago, Davefevs said:

 This is what the new manager inherits if you want Nige out.  Fine if you do.

We signed players for too big a fee and for too high wages.  Until virtually all of those players are off the books or on current climate contracts we are in a mess.

Quite disingenuous to point out the squad based on pre-Pearson signings. 
 

Have his signings improved the squad? We might not have spent big fees like we used to, but you’d argue that through Pearson’s man management and approach to playing them all have seen their market value decrease. 

[Davefevs]

7 minutes ago, tommy_b said:

Quite disingenuous to point out the squad based on pre-Pearson signings. 
 

Have his signings improved the squad? We might not have spent big fees like we used to, but you’d argue that through Pearson’s man management and approach to playing them all have seen their market value decrease. 

I’ve already posted the whole squad in other threads, this thread was about what he took over in Feb 2021….not the current squad….hence the title, so not disingenuous at all. Although thread titles not my strongpoint today .

The value of those players is gonna be tiny come the summer.  No arguments from me that Nige may have contributed to some of that lost value.  But I’m trying to point out how tens of millions can lost and therefore takes a while to recover.

And on the flipside of those players losing value under Nige, there are a number who’ve gained value that allow us to hopefully exit this mess in the summer.  Whether Nige is wholly responsible for the development of someone like Scott, or it’s just the kid doing it all himself is gonna be one opinion over another, just like it might be for a player who’s lost value.

Have his signings improved the squad?  Depends on the expectations on those players.  Not all signings are the same.  Klose v Atkinson for example.  That debate is on another thread.

 

[Fuber]

18 hours ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Dave, you continue to portray a terrible situation. Pretty much EVERY other club in the division is in a similar situation. 

Gould claims we have a top 10 wage budget. We have paid fees for a few players.

We are close to FFP failure due to covid. Lots of other clubs in the same situation. 

IMO, and also in the view of Swiss Ramble etc, LJ had a lower wage bill but achieved top half twice. 

Mark Robins at Coventry. Gary Rowett at Millwall. Blackburn, QPR, Preston... 

We should be doing better.

When did LJ have a lower wage budget?