Pearson and Tanner Pre Hull.

[TDarwall]

Fwiw (not a lot!), I didn't think he came across as tetchy. Maybe not the jolliest he's been (low bar) but not the most terse either.

I do think unleas we have a really good season (top 10?) then there will be a conscious decoupling next summer.

[steviestevieneville]

20 minutes ago, Bris Red said:

Thats your opinion. Nobody knows anything as a fact, how do you know what I’m saying is complete rubbish? Do you know Nigel Pearson personally?  I said i ‘feel’ this could be the beginning of the end, it’s a personal feeling an opinion that I’m entitled too. I may be wrong and i hope i am as i want Pearson here for the long term. To come out with such a strong ‘its complete rubbish’ statement is laughable actually. I’d imagine you know **** all about what is actually going on inside of the football club just like the rest of us.

As for your last point on the contract situation - as another poster wrote, Lansdown has form of lurching from one philosophy to another. God knows what is going through Lansdown’s head at the moment, if his last interview is anything to go by then i would be worried.

Random ramblings about trying to copy other clubs that have no similarities to our club worries me, the man is seriously deluded and i genuinely feel that he could once again lurch to a complete different way of thinking which doesn’t include Pearson as being a part of it. We shall see what happens in the coming months, certainly no bedwetting from me. Im a realist and nothing would surprise me with Lansdown and Junior at the helm.

 

 

No disrespect but I stopped reading after your first sentence. It’s not just my opinion . You wrote that he was unhappy or words to that effect. He wasn’t . He was the same as always . You along with others have looked for something that isn’t there. If you start watching the interview expecting him to be unhappy then you’ll twist it to how you want . If you go in just watching it without a perspective then you’ll see it for what it is. As usual on here , mountain out of a molehill 

[Out of his pie crust]

11 hours ago, ChippenhamRed said:

Man I hate the fact I was born into supporting this club. It’s given me so little. All it ever does is disappoint.

It’s given you resilience. This is what I tell the kids 

[firstdivision]

9 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Firstly didn’t delete the rest of your post by way of ignoring it, just thought this bit was the pertinent bit for me.

I certainly don’t want us throwing money at it, nor am I one that works on a basis of - we’ve raised £20-25m, Nige can expect to spend x% of it on transfer fees.

You’ll know from my posts that I know it doesn’t work like that, in fact Nige says exactly that earlier today.

What has come as a surprise is that it appears from what Nige has said is that the wage budget is constrained around the current cost of the squad wage bill, ie we are at / near the max.

Based on the kind of slashes we’ve seen over the last 2.5 years and again this summer (Kalas, Moore, Massengo, Dasilva, etc), it seems like the imposed (and I assumed accepted by Nige) budget, and Nige talks wage budget specifically, has been set pretty low for where we are aiming.

Thats the bit I’m struggling to square off.  However…

…if you’re saying that this is Nige “boxing clever” to avoid Alex-tax, and budget has been increased (by however much, it doesn’t matter the amount) then it doesn’t feel that way.  Maybe Nige has a tremendous Poker Face.  I get that he’s smart.

If so, great.  Fingers crossed.

Re Luton, a correction / addition - SL actually said our players were far more talented bunch than theirs.  That is one helluva statement to make.  1) I disagree, 2) it shows poor recognition of the talent in their team and 3) seems incredibly outcome orientated and ignorant of the process / journey Luton went on to get there.

At least in your final anecdote the owner / chairman gave you some credit for what you do!

 

 

I listened to the whole press conference, Dave, because a lot of people said he was tetchy etc and there’s something up with him and Uncle Steve. I didn’t necessarily think so. I’ve heard him do much tetchier ones.

He must have agreed the wage restraint - after all, he criticised our mad spending during previous regimes.
 

He must have been frustrated by the sale of AS because, like all of us, he knows we have a better chance with him than without him. But he also must have known he wouldn’t get stacks of the AS cash - that’s why made the comment about AS’ wages before he was sold. 

What I do know is that the biggest metric for success is spending on wages. And we’re doing it much cheaper now it would seem. Not sure how it compares with other Championship clubs. More than some but less than others? 

[Davefevs]

56 minutes ago, wtf said:

Were there not posts and no doubt comments from fans and the club that we "dont need to sell AS for anything less than 25m" yet now it seems we were in fact desperate for the income and the coffers are empty even after that considerable income

We have also off loaded quite a few high earners and taken others on/back on reduced wages,

YET despite our money earning new stad we are still up to our limit and cant afford NO MORE well we really are stuffed then, boringly boring way to go, prem here we come......in about another 100yrs.

I guess this is the big difference between needing the money to:

• stay within FFP and 
• stay signing club-imposed budgets

Its actually the opposite to what you stay, we don’t need £25m because it appears that the wage budget is almost maxed out, and Alex not being a high-earner, doesn’t free up much when he was sold.

The overall coffers aren’t empty, but the budget is.  We are probably looking at making a profit this season as a result of the sale!!!

Most of us relatively sane posters on here didn’t expect us to start spending £5m on two or three players, but carry on the types of signing made over the summer.

To some extent we’ve done that with TGH.  I think those same sane posters thought the money might allow us to improve the “first team depth” too, with perhaps a CB or GK.  Some other somewhat sane posters () thought we might get a forward too.

We are running a small senior squad.  By choice.  But some of the depth isn’t there, CB and GK especially.  Getting the right player in isn’t easy.  Nige alluded to that with a CB when he said sonething to the effect that it’s not easy to bring a CB in who expects to start every week, because Vyner and Dickie are first choice.  So I would’ve taken a bit more of a project.  Yesterday I got the impression that despite JKL and RA doing well in their development Nige doesn’t want to expose them in the first team, although he also said it can make as well as break a player.  CB is definitely not a position to “try a few things”.

So, overall, apologies for rambling, I just think we perhaps thought there’d be more use of the Scott money than there has been.

However, I’ll still wait to see where we are when the window shuts, Nige might be playing a blinder.

20 minutes ago, mozo said:

I agree that it's normal for owner and manager to disagree behind closed doors, but to publicly state it (when teed up to praise NP) is telling, I think. Absolutely fine for you to think it's normal that SL is unable to say anything positive about NP. Maybe SL is just really bad at expressing himself, but he was very capable of praising Mark Ashton.

Exactly.

19 minutes ago, spudski said:

I've said for a while now, I'm surprised no one has come up with a programme of analysis on coaches and managers. 

We have analysis and scouts for players, but as far as I'm aware, there is nothing on the market that details coaches and managers. 

I believe City had some “capability” in this area under Ashton, because he talked about having a list of managers for succession planning.  Of course, that sounds like BS, when he didn’t use it and appointed Holden!

4 minutes ago, TDarwall said:

Fwiw (not a lot!), I didn't think he came across as tetchy. Maybe not the jolliest he's been (low bar) but not the most terse either.

I do think unleas we have a really good season (top 10?) then there will be a conscious decoupling next summer.

I watched it again this morning.

Think some of tetchiness (I used that word yesterday) was from Qs about his two least favourite subjects:

- injuries

- transfers

and there was quite a bit of dialogue on those two.  He did lighten up a bit later, but I don’t think it was the Nige that we’ve seen of late.

[Nogbad the Bad]

42 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

Firstly, is that true? He's been responsible for appointing the two managers who've achieved our two highest finishes in decades. He appointed the man who got us a League and Cup double in 2014/15, and he appointed the incumbent, a man who some have declared to be the best manager we've had for a very long time, and who many believe should receive a contract extension as reward for the great job he's done.

 

Cotts wasn't appointed by SL, he was very much a Keith Dawe appointment.

 

[BS3rich]

There must be some wages still available as up until a few weeks back we offered Kalas a new deal(granted on reduced terms)! 

[Mr Popodopolous]

38 minutes ago, CyderInACan said:

Great pundit on RobinsTV though. Six and half of twelve, eh . . . 

I googled Gilmartin to see what he was up to.

Funnily enough Ipswich keeper praised his GK coaching this week. Could he have had a positive impact on O'Leary from a coaching aspect or timelines not really fitting?

[Davefevs]

9 minutes ago, firstdivision said:

I listened to the whole press conference, Dave, because a lot of people said he was tetchy etc and there’s something up with him and Uncle Steve. I didn’t necessarily think so. I’ve heard him do much tetchier ones.

He must have agreed the wage restraint - after all, he criticised our mad spending during previous regimes.
 

He must have been frustrated by the sale of AS because, like all of us, he knows we have a better chance with him than without him. But he also must have known he wouldn’t get stacks of the AS cash - that’s why made the comment about AS’ wages before he was sold. 

What I do know is that the biggest metric for success is spending on wages. And we’re doing it much cheaper now it would seem. Not sure how it compares with other Championship clubs. More than some but less than others? 

Cheers.  See my reply to Tony D above.

Re the financial side / wage budget.  None of us know the figures, but as you’ll know a few of us have have good “stabs” at where we think the costs have been cut in recent seasons, and it’s a pretty good effort on the football side of things.

Purely from the published accounts we saw a wage reduction of £6.4m in Nige’s first season.  Not all of that will be Football Squad wages, but I bet 75% of it was.  Amortisation dropped, saving us £4.8m as we didn’t invest money into players by paying fees.

Last season, accounts not put, we will have made further wage savings, and amortisation dropped another £2m.

This season, as it stands, the wage bill will be lower again, and amortisation savings another £2.5m down.

Nige has cut football costs by circa massively since he was here.  I haven’t even mentioned the £35m incoming  from player sales either!

It feels like they’ve set the wage budget too low.  Unnecessarily so.

 

[exAtyeoMax]

1 hour ago, ExiledAjax said:

Firstly, is that true? He's been responsible for appointing the two managers who've achieved our two highest finishes in decades. He appointed the man who got us a League and Cup double in 2014/15, and he appointed the incumbent, a man who some have declared to be the best manager we've had for a very long time, and who many believe should receive a contract extension as reward for the great job he's done.

Secondly, if we assume that your statement is true, then perhaps the answer is to conduct a search during a calm period of handover, rather than a hurried appointment made in the aftermath of a sacking. Sackings normally come after a bad run of results. There is stress, pressure, noise, and distraction. Why not conduct the search for the successor in a world where those factors are lessened? It might yield a different result?

He didn't, it was the other bloke…Keith Dawe?

[Davefevs]

22 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

I googled Gilmartin to see what he was up to.

Funnily enough Ipswich keeper praised his GK coaching this week. Could he have had a positive impact on O'Leary from a coaching aspect or timelines not really fitting?

I think you are trying to find angles MrP.

I’m sure all goalkeepers praise their goalkeeping coach.

The earlier posts about Gilmartin was more to do with padding the squad with another senior keeper, not his coaching need.  Gilmartin fwiw spent more time coaching the u21s (u23s) than first team per se.

Pat Mountain was appointed as first team GK coach the same summer as Gilmartin arrived.  We had Bentley, Maenpaa, Gilmartin as senior keepers, and O’Leary and Wollacott as the younger keepers.  Compare that to what we have now.

 

Gilmartin was a ex-Watford boy and undoubtedly brought in on the recommendation of Ashton.  He sat on the bench once.  Don’t get me wrong, his wages wouldn’t have been much in the grand scheme of things, but you could easily see it was unnecessary cost to the playing side.

FWIW I met him once, and what a lovely guy he was.

 

(oh yeah, and Max was at Shrewsbury all 19-20 season and JoJo was at Forest Green, recalled and then to Swindon)

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Davefevs

[exAtyeoMax]

Just now, Davefevs said:

I think you are trying to find angles MrP.

I’m sure all goalkeepers praise their goalkeeping coach.

The earlier posts about Gilmartin was more to do with padding the squad with another senior keeper, not his coaching need.  Gilmartin fwiw spent more time coaching the u21s (u23s) than first team per se.

Pat Mountain was appointed as first team GK coach the same summer as Gilmartin arrived.  We had Bentley, Maenpaa, Gilmartin as senior keepers, and O’Leary and Wollacott as the younger keepers.  Compare that to what we have now.

 

Gilmartin was a ex-Watford boy and undoubtedly brought in on the recommendation of Ashton.  He sat on the bench once.  Don’t get me wrong, his wages wouldn’t have been much in the grand scheme of things, but you could easily see it was unnecessary cost to the playing side.

FWIW I met him once, and what a lovely guy he was.

 

in the final turd 

[ExiledAjax]

35 minutes ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

Cotts wasn't appointed by SL, he was very much a Keith Dawe appointment.

 

 

17 minutes ago, exAtyeoMax said:

He didn't, it was the other bloke…Keith Dawe?

If you're taking the job title of "Chairman" to mean the guy who does the appointments. In that case Jon gets the credit for appointing Pearson doesn't he? Dawe appointed Lee Johnson then? LJ was during Dawe's tenure as "Chairman".

What's the criteria for attribution here?

Steve's been majority shareholder during all of those appointments, I thought that was the problem people had with this? That the shareholder was appointing the manager?

Edited August 24, 2023 by ExiledAjax

[Nogbad the Bad]

3 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

 

If you're taking the job title of "Chairman" to mean the guy who does the appointments. In that case Jon gets the credit for appointing Pearson doesn't he? Dawe appointed Lee Johnson then? LJ was during Dawe's tenure as "Chairman".

What's the criteria for attribution here?

Steve's been majority shareholder during all of those appointments, I thought that was the problem people had with this? That the shareholder was appointing the manager?

Cotts' appointment was a one off, it was made quite clear at the time that SL had taken a back seat and the appointment was entirely down to Keith Dawe.

[Mr Popodopolous]

20 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

I think you are trying to find angles MrP.

I’m sure all goalkeepers praise their goalkeeping coach.

The earlier posts about Gilmartin was more to do with padding the squad with another senior keeper, not his coaching need.  Gilmartin fwiw spent more time coaching the u21s (u23s) than first team per se.

Pat Mountain was appointed as first team GK coach the same summer as Gilmartin arrived.  We had Bentley, Maenpaa, Gilmartin as senior keepers, and O’Leary and Wollacott as the younger keepers.  Compare that to what we have now.

 

Gilmartin was a ex-Watford boy and undoubtedly brought in on the recommendation of Ashton.  He sat on the bench once.  Don’t get me wrong, his wages wouldn’t have been much in the grand scheme of things, but you could easily see it was unnecessary cost to the playing side.

FWIW I met him once, and what a lovely guy he was.

 

(oh yeah, and Max was at Shrewsbury all 19-20 season and JoJo was at Forest Green, recalled and then to Swindon)

 

Definite unnecessary duplication for sure Dave. Something for all the problems with the current set-up right now, excessive caution we seem not to be doing that anymore thankfully.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Mr Popodopolous

[Davefevs]

Just now, ExiledAjax said:

 

Of you're taking the job title of "Chairman" to mean the guy who does the appointments. In that case Jon gets the credit for appointing Pearson doesn't he? Dawe appointed Lee Johnson then? LJ was during Dawe's tenure as "Chairman".

What's the criteria for attribution here?

Steve's been majority shareholder during all of those appointments, I thought that was the problem people had with this? That the shareholder was appointing the manager?

No, he’s saying that Keith Dawe was the man behind the identifying and appointing of Cotts.  Plenty of stuff written about that at the time too.  Dawe of course was skilled in Recruitment, that was his “bag”.

We do know Holden was left to MA and JL to run the recruitment.

It seems pretty clear LJ was SL himself.  The stories are that he wasn’t the rest of the Board’s choice from the recruitment process, and that Appleton was.

And Nige we don’t know, other than SL picking up the phone to him in his PJs on a Sunday morning.  Could’ve been Ashton, could’ve been others that identified him.

I don’t have the history before that.

[maxjak]

21 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Cheers.  See my reply to Tony D above.

Re the financial side / wage budget.  None of us know the figures, but as you’ll know a few of us have have good “stabs” at where we think the costs have been cut in recent seasons, and it’s a pretty good effort on the football side of things.

Purely from the published accounts we saw a wage reduction of £6.4m in Nige’s first season.  Not all of that will be Football Squad wages, but I bet 75% of it was.  Amortisation dropped, saving us £4.8m as we didn’t invest money into players by paying fees.

Last season, accounts not put, we will have made further wage savings, and amortisation dropped another £2m.

This season, as it stands, the wage bill will be lower again, and amortisation savings another £2.5m down.

Nige has cut football costs by circa massively since he was here.  I haven’t even mentioned the £35m incoming  from player sales either!

It feels like they’ve set the wage budget too low.  Unnecessarily so.

 

Considering we have lost two of the best game changing players of the last ten years or so.....is it too much to ask that the loyal fan base is given some hope and entertainment for the future?   While totally aware of wage restraint and budget concerns, we surely could invest a reasonable sum in a player- either a forward or midfielder - to excite and reward what i consider to be a very patient and tolerant fan base

Apart from Tommy, who is, as we know injured and Ayman too, I don't see one player in our squad who could be considered a game changer?   20-22K regular supporters need to be entertained or it soon becomes  15-16K? 

[Spike]

17 hours ago, ORANGE500 said:

Including the 4 already signed earlier that's 6 this transfer window you can't just keep on signing players unless you think there should be 70 players in the 1st team squad.

Whilst I agree fans are going to keep expecting signings if we don't see quality where we need it. 

Maybe this lad is the creativity we need in the middle, if not then the fans will continue to expect another as we're blatantly light of creativity and flair in this team right now. 

[Mr Popodopolous]

Naismith can certainly help to create when fully fit but a) He's not necessarily a combination of creative and exciting, he's technically strong but Scott had both and more besides.

Could Knight as he settles in with Naismith as part of a CM 3 go up a gear? Maybe. Mehmeti was when he joined supposed to be one.

I'm open minded but is definitely hard to identify that spark atm.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Mr Popodopolous

[ExiledAjax]

16 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

No, he’s saying that Keith Dawe was the man behind the identifying and appointing of Cotts.  Plenty of stuff written about that at the time too.  Dawe of course was skilled in Recruitment, that was his “bag”.

We do know Holden was left to MA and JL to run the recruitment.

It seems pretty clear LJ was SL himself.  The stories are that he wasn’t the rest of the Board’s choice from the recruitment process, and that Appleton was.

And Nige we don’t know, other than SL picking up the phone to him in his PJs on a Sunday morning.  Could’ve been Ashton, could’ve been others that identified him.

I don’t have the history before that.

It's all still stories, hearsay, press talk and ITK.

But either way, a blanket statement that SL doesn't know a good football manger is incorrect.

We also don't seem to have consistent method of identifying and appointing managers. Good, that's just great. An ad hoc approach to that minor position, excellent governance everyone. Carry on.

[Davefevs]

9 minutes ago, maxjak said:

Considering we have lost two of the best game changing players of the last ten years or so.....is it too much to ask that the loyal fan base is given some hope and entertainment for the future?   While totally aware of wage restraint and budget concerns, we surely could invest a reasonable sum in a player- either a forward or midfielder - to excite and reward what i consider to be a very patient and tolerant fan base

Apart from Tommy, who is, as we know injured and Ayman too, I don't see one player in our squad who could be considered a game changer?   20-22K regular supporters need to be entertained or it soon becomes  15-16K? 

Personally I don’t really care how exciting we are.  I want us to be strong and win games…and achieve promotion.  The style matters little to me.  I could quite happily watch a defensive style that got results.

Others want excitement.

Others want excitement and results.

I do agree we want some hope.  I still have plenty.  But that’s because I don’t necessarily link excitement and hope together.  I’ll have a better idea of whether my pre-season hope has gone up or down after 6,8,10 games.

I’m not sure we are patient and tolerant, I think we are a fickle and whining fan base.  But I think most fan bases are!  Just look at the mood swings from Preston to Millwall, and then Millwall to Brum.  Hardly an objective bunch are we?

[Bristol Oil Services]

13 hours ago, cidered abroad said:

I agree. We appear not to be thinking that he is the best but one of the best in a collection of three or four since Pat Beasley. Certainly, for me the best in the last twenty five years I don't say that because of winning titles but the way he has promoted the Academy products and his honesty rather than trying to gloss over the bad performances.

I've always understood that Lansdown was the accountant and Hargreaves was the investor. Accountants are those who forecast what the future will be based on historic results. Thus they never "gamble" or take a chance like the investors. Thus he has hardly ever gambled since he took over and look who he chose to gamble for him! No, it's not Pearson. We all know who it was.

What Bristol City needed, we now can say WTBoH, was Lansdown and Hargreaves, like the Beatles needed Lennon (Hargreaves: he is The Walrus, ker ker ker-ching) and McCartney (Lansdown: Frog Chorus). Or Steve needed Pete here, I think we can safely say.

[Davefevs]

1 minute ago, ExiledAjax said:

It's all still stories, hearsay, press talk and ITK.

But either way, a blanket statement that SL doesn't know a good football manger is incorrect.

We also don't seem to have consistent method of identifying and appointing managers. Good, that's just great. An ad hoc approach to that minor position, excellent governance everyone. Carry on.

Yeah, I think I’d prefer to say Lansdown doesn’t understand football, he’s an outsider.  Therefore without the right people to help him, he isn’t going to be able to make consistently good decisions for the pure football side…and that includes identifying and find the right manager.

[Super]

Hugely disappointing if we can't bring in anybody else. 

[Davefevs]

5 minutes ago, Bristol Oil Services said:

What Bristol City needed, we now can say WTBoH, was Lansdown and Hargreaves, like the Beatles needed Lennon (Hargreaves: he is The Walrus, ker ker ker-ching) and McCartney (Lansdown: Frog Chorus). Or Steve needed Pete here, I think we can safely say.

I think Steve needed a good football person.  Now, that might’ve been PH telling SL that’s what he needed.

 

(on an aside, did you watch the Beatles: Get Back documentary on Apple TV?  It’s worth a watch to see the dynamics of the 4 of them as they put together a number of songs at Twickenham Studios)

[Spike]

6 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Personally I don’t really care how exciting we are.  I want us to be strong and win games…and achieve promotion.  The style matters little to me.  I could quite happily watch a defensive style that got results.

Others want excitement.

Others want excitement and results.

I'll be honest, if we won 1-0 every week I don't think anyone would complain, evergreen if it were "boring defensive play", the issue is we're neither exciting or winning, if anything we're boring and looking very wobbly at best and that's what bothers me. 

We need some creativity if we're going to win, our home games have shown that. 

I'd be happy with boring wins but let's face it, we don't have wins in us right now, we can barely get a shot on target. 

[Nogbad the Bad]

2 minutes ago, maxjak said:

Considering we have lost two of the best game changing players of the last ten years or so.....is it too much to ask that the loyal fan base is given some hope and entertainment for the future?   While totally aware of wage restraint and budget concerns, we surely could invest a reasonable sum in a player- either a forward or midfielder - to excite and reward what i consider to be a very patient and tolerant fan base

Apart from Tommy, who is, as we know injured and Ayman too, I don't see one player in our squad who could be considered a game changer?   20-22K regular supporters need to be entertained or it soon becomes  15-16K? 

That's right, if we're going to be mid table that's actually fine for me for now but in that case there must be some entertainment, at home at least.

I think Nige knows that and is in fact really keen to provide a team that entertains, but he's clearly not being given the tools to do so.

Still have high hopes for Anis in the slightly longer term, but it looks like we might have to be patient there.

Basically we're just a workmanlike team lacking any real spark who probably won't go down but fans have very little to look forward to as they trudge towards the Gate.

[spudski]

Regarding whether SL knows what a good manager is...imo, he knows full well.

Knowing and appointing one is the difference.

We don't know how many have applied in the past, who's been approached and who's turned us down...just the ones reported on.

Imo...he appoints people he likes and feels he can work with, and feels he can still have influence on. 

You only have to see his input is still there, when he did the Scott deal...because of the amounts involved. Even though he pays an experienced CEO to do that. 

NP and SoD are similar appointments, where the Club needed ' treatment'...they buck the trend a little...and as Cotts found out, cross the line regarding finance and go against the ' party line' and you're out on your ear. 

When NP eventually departs I can see another 'LJ type' coming in. 

SL doesn't like giving total control away imo. And doesn't trust people fully. 

 

[Alessandro]

4 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Yeah, I think I’d prefer to say Lansdown doesn’t understand football, he’s an outsider.  Therefore without the right people to help him, he isn’t going to be able to make consistently good decisions for the pure football side…and that includes identifying and find the right manager.

His record tells the truth. Very little touched has turned to gold unfortunately - which is why I don't understand why he's taken so long to get the right people in the right positions behind the scenes:

As well as all the usual coaches and physio's and board of directors etc...where is the:

Director of football?

Technical director?

Head of data/analysis?

Head of performance?

Director of recruitment?

Individual people in the right roles, focusing on excelling in those roles. Some of these are only just coming into place.

For far too long, one or two people have been doing the work of what 10 people do at top premier league clubs.

 

[bcfc01]

4 minutes ago, spudski said:

SL doesn't like giving total control away imo. And doesn't trust people fully. 

Mark Ashton.