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Gavin Marshall (Bristol Sport CEO) interview

BCFC Rich

By BCFC Rich
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BCFC Rich

BCFC Rich

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Credit to @Pedrowe who posted this in another thread - just thought people might miss it there and it has a bit more detail + better overall messaging from the club. 

 

And full 12 min interview here thanks @Walshy for pointing it out - https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2023-11-03/we-want-promotion-this-year-bristol-city-board-on-sacking-nigel-pearson

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BCFC Rich

BCFC Rich

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10 minutes ago, Walshy said:

Full 12 min interview here:

https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2023-11-03/we-want-promotion-this-year-bristol-city-board-on-sacking-nigel-pearson

Thanks for that. Added it to the OP. I think overall it's a better interview than we've had. Still don't agree with what happened at all, but good to at least have a journalist ask some of the questions we've wanted answers too. 

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Fuber

Fuber

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17 minutes ago, FabledRobin said:

I have never heard of this man in my life.

The only thing I'll give Marshall credit for.

Apparently - at least according to my very minor understanding - he was the only one warning SL over MA/LJ's overspending - hence promoted to CFO.

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REDOXO

REDOXO

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2 minutes ago, Fuber said:

The only thing I'll give Marshall credit for.

Apparently - at least according to my very minor understanding - he was the only one warning SL over MA/LJ's overspending - hence promoted to CFO.

LJ was given millions to spend on clubs in a bag. 
 

Pearson worked with a fraction of that just like Cotterill. 
 

They better have Pep lined up! 
 

I’m so glad I kept my shares. I actually got shit here for it! 

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W-S-M Seagull

W-S-M Seagull

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49 minutes ago, italian dave said:

On the plus side, with the comms showing signs of improvement, maybe the rest of the cluster…. can turn it around too, in time?

Whilst two senior figures having interviews today is better than what we've had for a long time, it's going to take a long time for me to say there has been an improvement. 

It's welcome yes, but at the moment it's just a PR exercise unless sthey can show that communication is going to be a regular thing.

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Spike

Spike

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"We had a three year plan, with Nigel and the objective for us including Nigel was to be at the top end, challenging at the top end of the table"


23/24 - Spend - £5.41m / Sold - £23m
22/23 - Spend - £0 / Sold - £10.31m
21/22 - Spend - £1.875m / Sold - £0m

These are the figures for the last three seasons transfersleaving out the following due to no confirmed fees:

Out
Adam Nagy - Unknown
Tyreeq Bakinson - reported "five-figure sum"
Ryley Towler - reported "above 50k"
Kane Wilson - Unknown

In
Mehmeti £1m + future payments based on landmarks
Cornick - Undisclosed

Meaning, we've brought in a minimum of £33.31m and spent around £7.01m- £9m.

I fail to see how the club expects to be in a top-end, challenging position having spent less than £10m over the last three seasons but has seen 28 players leave the club in that time including Alex Scott, Antione Semenyo, Han-Noah Massengo, Daniel Bentley, Famara Diedhiou etc

To me it feels like Pearson was allowed to make changes but ultimately he was restricted a lot and the club seemed to be under the illusion that with that kind of spend, all whilst selling some of the top talents we were going to end up being a top-end team? I'm not surprised Pearson was frustrated.

When asked if he thinks will the new appointment be an exciting one for the fans he replies with:

 

Quote

"one hundred percent, we look to appoint someone who we're confident and they're confident that they can take this football club and solve the puzzle, if you like, that we haven't managed to solve so far."

This irked me a little, I mean one hundred percent confident that they'll solve the puzzle of getting us to their goal of us being a top-end team. I mean they had a man who was already doing that in many fans eyes had an injury crisis not hampered our good start. That aside, I still find it hard to believe they will "solve the puzzle" when he openly states that they're going through a process and that a lot of people have put their name forward. I feel like if they had the man who could solve the puzzle so to speak then they'd not be going through so many names and looking at people putting their name forward, I mean if you have the answer to a question, you don't keep looking at other answers.


He also goes on to re-affirm that we're looking to get to the Premier League this season, to me this is deluded and very short sighted. If this squad were to manage a promotion we all know that we'd have to spend to strengthen to have any chance of survival, but usually when a team get promoted to the Premier league and survive their first season it is because they were so much better in terms of quality of players that they began that building process on. Looking at our squad if we were to get promoted this season who would realistically be good enough to compete in the Premier League? I think we have a hand full at best and none of them would make a top half team which means we'd be going into that situation with an almost guaranteed return to the Championship.

I just do not believe this talk of the Premier League goal at all, the investment is less, the manager who took the club when it was an utter mess and made it capable of competing was let go against the fans wishes, the sale of Scott so close to the beginning of the season etc. I think this is damage control, they are talking up the want to do better to wash over the anger and frustration of the fans about letting Pearson go, to add to that they have no clear candidate lined up which they have made clear, which again does not sound like a board that let Nigel go with a man to replace him in mind. 

A further frustration:

Quote

"The game was the final straw, otherwise we would have parted with Nigel earlier"

I still think this makes the club look more inept, this doesn't reassure me, it does the opposite because any football-minded person who knew the status of our squad, the form of the opposition, the fact it's a derby game and every other factor would have expected us to lose it, some would suggest they'd have expected us to lose it in a much more damning fashion. I think considering the squad situation we looked a very competitive side, I mean we had multiple players playing out of position and a teenager making his debut just to be able to field a side and the game wasn't over by any means until it was almost full time and the second went in. Based on the past that performance was better than many we saw before Nigel when the squad only had a few injuries so essentially the board saying "win this game or you lose your job" in those circumstances is ludicrous, especially when the next game is bottom of the league at home, if Nigel lost that game then you could fully understand the decision as I think many of our fans would look at losing to the bottom of the league with less injuries as a far more worthy stackable offence.
I think the decision to terminate after Cardiff also seemed to lack the understanding of football fans for another reason, no fan of a club wants to see their manager sacked after a derby game, it gives the fans of the rival club a chance to gloat and to further upset the fanbase. Had we lost to a bottom-of-the-league team who aren't rivals I think a lot of fans would have accepted the decision and it wouldn't have been so frustrating but I feel that is this board through and through, they can talk a good game in a setting where they are prepared and can re-record their statements but the second they are under pressure and need to stand up and speak without that buffer they are nowhere to be seen.

Another double down was

Quote

"We did make significant investment this summer, we brought in five players who we belive have really improved our squad"

I found this to be the most insulting thing that Jon Lansdown said and is doubled down on here. He does mention Alex going out but when you mention one player going out and five coming in, it does make it sound like there was a good investment. That does, however, lose it's weight when you see that actually six players went out, including Alex, which included a very hefty signing in Tomas Kalas going out for free, another costly signing in Han-Noah Massengo going out for free as well as Kane Wilson who never got a chance and Dasilva going out too. Now I know at that point these players probably needed to go, but it's still a lot of big signings going out the door and arguably only Knight and McCrorie would be considered players who were likely to hit the ground running with us. Roberts is a gamble, Dickie was arguably not as good as he once was with many QPR fans not being bothered about him leaving. The saving grace is that I think Nigels signings have all been good this pre-season but I wouldn't look at this pre-season and see £5.41m spent on those players as a "significant investment", more of a shrewd-ish one, especially when you look at the players we let go for nothing.
 

When asked about what it will take to actually get this club to the Premier League:

Quote

"Well, I think that is a part of our frustration, we feel that we've got the pieces in place really and we look enviously at some other teams who have managed to get there who don't have what we have in terms of our facilities and our fanbase and our fantastic academy or our budget" 

I felt like this was another clever turn on the situation, I mean he's essentially saying "look at all this awesome stuff we have, ignore the fact we still can't do it when other clubs have managed it without all of this". Obviously he words it so that it sounds like it's just unfortunate but I think realistically it says is that whilst we may not be the biggest club in the league we have a lot more than other clubs in terms of resources and we've still not managed to achieve that goal. To me that is just an admission of failure, spun to make it sound like it's inevitable that we will succeed when the truth is there is no guarantee of that.

What I will see after seeing this interview is the professionalism is far superior to the Jon Lansdown interview and although there is a little more to this interview than that one I still think the club are putting a very strong spin on the whole situation and I still don't believe they are being honest with the fans in regards to their aim being to make the Premier League this season, I feel that was the constructed lie to give the sacking of Pearson "validation". When mentioned about the Lansdowns bearing the brunt of the blowback for sacking Pearson he also mentioned that they'd look into how they handled it with the fans but again, I think the reason it was such a big backlash was the timing and any fan of football would understand that before pulling the trigger. If they haven't learned how to handle the timing when firing and hiring by now then they simply just don't have it in their skill set because the timing was about as bad as it can get, after a derby match, with half the squad injured and despite all of that next to no fans asking for it to happen and the most frustrating part of it all is that they still don't seem to understand that.

My interest now lays with what the board will say if they bring in their puzzle solver and they end up no where near their goal, will they sack the new man at the end of the season if that happens, after all, they belive we have a squad capable of being up there, right?

I'm glad some people feel a little more comfortable after watching this but I just see better PR at a piss poor decision and even worse handling of the situation which has forced the extra damage control PR machine to be rolled out. I still don't believe their goals for this season that they have stated and I still think the decision was not about football but more about not having control of the narrative with person refusing to play the yes game to the board. Our next appointment certainly won't be bad talking the club and how it is run, I can be sure of that, so that will allow them to keep pulling the strings, controlling what the fans hear and what they don't which is what this change of management was really about.

 

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