Gavin Marshall (Bristol Sport CEO) interview

[Garland-sweden]

Thinking of how happy the board was when we lost in Cardiff so they could sack NP make me sick. Bad taste in my mouth, disgrace.

[Mike Hunt-Hertz]

3 hours ago, Spike said:

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:

 

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:

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

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:

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.

 

The puzzle? Hmm? I wonder what the common denominator is?

[Nugget]

To be fair put half of us on camera and let otib analyse you. Some are more comfortable than others, it wasn’t perfect, not seen the guy before but deffo not Ashton levels of cringe & I just hope they back up their words, I think that’s what people are concerned about with the new structure - is it Holden time again or do they genuinely want the Premiership, to keep reiterating promotion in an interview like that gives me a slight hope, but we’ve been here before. 

[GrahamC]

1 hour ago, Nugget said:

To be fair put half of us on camera and let otib analyse you. Some are more comfortable than others, it wasn’t perfect, not seen the guy before but deffo not Ashton levels of cringe & I just hope they back up their words, I think that’s what people are concerned about with the new structure - is it Holden time again or do they genuinely want the Premiership, to keep reiterating promotion in an interview like that gives me a slight hope, but we’ve been here before. 

That’s because it is his job & not ours.

I acknowledged he is a far more polished public performer than our chairman & Tinnion. Low bar but clearly the case & I tell you I definitely know I could speak better publicly than those two.

The message, as @Spike has outlined above is delusional, spend a fraction of what you bring in, but keep producing large numbers of Academy players of Championship standard & still finish above sides with parachute payments.

It is a flawed business model.

[CyderInACan]

4 minutes ago, GrahamC said:

It is a flawed business model.

It’s cloud bloody cuckoo land, that’s what it is. 

[eardun]

Having seen the various interviews this week, they obviously think someone can coach this squad to the premier league. Nige is more of a manager/leader - ‘observational’ as he put it himself - than a hands on coach. Hence - in their mind - the reason for the change. No doubt they think that a new coach might do better at unlocking stubborn defences at Ashton Gate etc. I remain to be convinced. I think they underestimate the value of the managerial and leadership skills that Nige brought to the club - what he built won’t just hang around in the air following his departure indefinitely. How easy will it be to attract a coach who is supposedly so much better than the coaches (and I include Rennie in that) who are or were already in the building? Is one new head coach really going to transform this squad? Time will tell of course but, as I say, I remain to be convinced. 

[CotswoldRed]

10 hours 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?

Zero communication to lots of polished presentation is not improvement. It’s carefully manufactured propaganda. 

Proper communication is ongoing, open dialogue. 

[redkev]

10 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Will watch later.  I’ve met Gavin a few times, he’s fine.

Is there no one you haven’t met Dave in the club’s hierarchy, perhaps your in line to be the new head coach

 

[Galley is our king]

3 minutes ago, redkev said:

Is there no one you haven’t met Dave in the club’s hierarchy, perhaps your in line to be the new head coach

 

Nah, Dave turned them down.....  

[redkev]

Totally agree a much better question & answer debate , from interviewer and the Bristol sport ceo but who the hell do they think they can get to get this team  (promoted ) ( his words ) I have said before I think we are competitive this year but as soon as we play someone at the top we are a fair way short , if they were that committed to getting promoted this year ( again his words ) why wasn’t a small proportion of the Scott money put aside for squad strengthening.

 

[italian dave]

9 hours ago, Stortz said:

Hi Dave, I'm sure Gavin is excellent in his field- and that's why he should stay in it, imo.

I do see your general point though!

As you’ve realised, my comment was about your first line, not about Gavin: I don’t really know anything about him.

But that first line did make me smile, after a day spent reading countless pages on here!!

[Banjo Red]

[italian dave]

1 hour ago, GrahamC said:

That’s because it is his job & not ours.

I acknowledged he is a far more polished public performer than our chairman & Tinnion. Low bar but clearly the case & I tell you I definitely know I could speak better publicly than those two.

The message, as @Spike has outlined above is delusional, spend a fraction of what you bring in, but keep producing large numbers of Academy players of Championship standard & still finish above sides with parachute payments.

It is a flawed business model.

Agree with all of that Graham. Mind you, it makes a pleasant change to watch someone who appears at least half comfortable/competent speaking for the club for once recently!

You’d have thought anyone would realise the risks though, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t that long ago that we fell into the trap of believing that just because we’d bought Kodjia and Brownhill for peanuts and sold them at a huge profit that we could carry of doing that at will. Now we seem to have fallen into a similar trap off believing that there’s a Scott and a Semenyo coming out of the academy every year. 

The only club to ever make that model work was Crewe - but their ambitions didn’t stretch much beyond league 1. 

[Frenchay Red]

10 hours ago, David Brent said:

Just another puppet in a suit. 
 

indeed. Delusional waffle

[Tim Monaghan]

An excellent interview, and at last, an interviewer asking insightful questions.

It appears that we’ll be reinvesting the funds from AS and Semenyo’s departure, but they wisely chose not to rush into it when there was the potential for unfavorable deals. I dare say we’ve been quite shrewd in our approach.

Perhaps I’m a bit of an old romantic, but I’m eagerly anticipating this next chapter without getting carried away by the anti-Lansdown sentiment that initially ensnared me. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time for us to use our intellect rather than being led solely by our emotions.

[The Dolman Pragmatist]

2 minutes ago, Frenchay Red said:

indeed. Delusional waffle

OTIB poster complains about delusional waffle!  

[italian dave]

9 hours ago, W-S-M Seagull said:

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.

Yes, don’t disagree. My original comment was a bit tongue in cheek. The reality is that all these things are connected. And whether it’s the comms, the customer service, the catering, whatever, the improvement is only going to come from the top.

Which is why the timing feels so wrong right now. We’ve been rudderless at CEO (‘off the pitch’) level and now we’ve dismantled the leadership on the football side. 

[Davefevs]

38 minutes ago, redkev said:

Is there no one you haven’t met Dave in the club’s hierarchy, perhaps your in line to be the new head coach

 

I’ve never met SL, never met Tins.  

[robin_unreliant]

9 hours ago, Spike said:

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:

 

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:

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

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:

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.

 

It is meaningless to quote transfer fees v spend without taking account of the wages. Fact is we have been spending more than we earn every season for years and we all know it. Maybe Lansdown doesn't want to go straight back to the FFP limit. I can't blame him for getting fed up with bankrolling the club when he gets very little excitement and a lot of stick. If he can find a willing buyer then best for everyone.

[S22]

27 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Agree with all of that Graham. Mind you, it makes a pleasant change to watch someone who appears at least half comfortable/competent speaking for the club for once recently!

You’d have thought anyone would realise the risks though, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t that long ago that we fell into the trap of believing that just because we’d bought Kodjia and Brownhill for peanuts and sold them at a huge profit that we could carry of doing that at will. Now we seem to have fallen into a similar trap off believing that there’s a Scott and a Semenyo coming out of the academy every year. 

The only club to ever make that model work was Crewe - but their ambitions didn’t stretch much beyond league 1. 

Going ahead it looks like the model for our academy is a puppy farm. Bang them out as quickly as possible and just take the money. 

[Red Exile]

32 minutes ago, Ghost Rider said:

it’s time for us to use our intellect rather than being led solely by our emotions.

...if we were led by our intellect and not our emotions I doubt many of us would have bothered supporting Bristol City for several decades!

With brief flourishes of excitement its been a fairly relentlessly disappointing experience...

 

[Frenchay Red]

40 minutes ago, The Dolman Pragmatist said:

OTIB poster complains about delusional waffle!  

More of an observation than a complaint.

Goes with the territory on here, but I guess the same can be said when someone from the club hierarchy speaks

Edited November 4, 2023 by Frenchay Red

[italian dave]

18 minutes ago, Red Exile said:

...if we were led by our intellect and not our emotions I doubt many of us would have bothered supporting Bristol City for several decades!

With brief flourishes of excitement its been a fairly relentlessly disappointing experience...

 

It’s all relative, I guess. You’ve only got to listen to radio phone in and fans of Arsenal moaning about how long it’s been since they won the league, or Man U fans moaning about being bottom half! There have been times when we’d have killed to be a mediocre mid table second tier side! 

[Daniro]

I had absolutely no idea who this guy was.    Never seen or heard his name before.  Faceless suit giving corporate style response.     

 

Tinnion, Lansdown and now an empty suit.   The new communication strategy is like watching the Woodentops.

[Davefevs]

39 minutes ago, robin_unreliant said:

It is meaningless to quote transfer fees v spend without taking account of the wages. Fact is we have been spending more than we earn every season for years and we all know it. Maybe Lansdown doesn't want to go straight back to the FFP limit. I can't blame him for getting fed up with bankrolling the club when he gets very little excitement and a lot of stick. If he can find a willing buyer then best for everyone.

I just wish he’d communicate that with us, so we can re-baseline expectations.

2 minutes ago, Daniro said:

I had absolutely no idea who this guy was.    Never seen or heard his name before.  Faceless suit giving corporate style response.     

 

Tinnion, Lansdown and now an empty suit.   The new communication strategy is like watching the Woodentops.

Was the Group’s Chief Financial Officer, then Pula CFO recently, before becoming BS CEO even more recently.  Then of course BCFC CEO in recent months.

[Red Exile]

7 minutes ago, italian dave said:

It’s all relative, I guess. You’ve only got to listen to radio phone in and fans of Arsenal moaning about how long it’s been since they won the league, or Man U fans moaning about being bottom half! There have been times when we’d have killed to be a mediocre mid table second tier side! 

I'm afraid that 'mediocre' sums the current situation up rather neatly, indeed much of the Lansdown tenure. That besuited chap I'd never previously heard of...I've never seen him before and I doubt I'd recall him if I bumped into him in the street. In other areas of life I don't generally bother to engage with mediocrity. At City I feel I've invested a lot of hope in things that are going nowhere...and as many have said before me - its the hope that kills.

[Merrick's Marvels]

11 hours ago, REDOXO said:

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! 

Still got mine too.

It's meaningless but he'll never own my little bit of BCFC nor anyone else for that matter.

[chinapig]

50 minutes ago, robin_unreliant said:

It is meaningless to quote transfer fees v spend without taking account of the wages. Fact is we have been spending more than we earn every season for years and we all know it. Maybe Lansdown doesn't want to go straight back to the FFP limit. I can't blame him for getting fed up with bankrolling the club when he gets very little excitement and a lot of stick. If he can find a willing buyer then best for everyone.

Remind me, who allowed Ashton and Johnson to double the wage bill? And who came in and cut it substantially?

When Rishi Sunak claimed he was going to fix the mistakes of the last 30 years people joked that he would be furious when he found out who has been in power for the last 13.

Steve is going to be equally angry when he finds out who put the club in a perilous position.

[Merrick's Marvels]

2 hours ago, CyderInACan said:

It’s cloud bloody cuckoo land, that’s what it is. 

What's the next level up from that? And the one after that?

[italian dave]

1 minute ago, Red Exile said:

I'm afraid that 'mediocre' sums the current situation up rather neatly, indeed much of the Lansdown tenure. That besuited chap I'd never previously heard of...I've never seen him before and I doubt I'd recall him if I bumped into him in the street. In other areas of life I don't generally bother to engage with mediocrity. At City I feel I've invested a lot of hope in things that are going nowhere...and as many have said before me - its the hope that kills.

I have to give credit to @Numero Uno for that word! They didn’t copyright it, but I feel I should acknowledge it!!