davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Without a shadow of a doubt, for me this season has cratered us as a football organisation. We may be 9th and not far off a 7th spot but the feeling of frustration and anger, turning now to the bitter acceptance of our fate as also rans in the grand scheme of things, are the dominant emotions. For different reasons I'd liken it to the mood of sullen resentment at the club when we finished 17th in 2003/04 - another season that had followed on the back of a reasonably hopeful one.
2003/04: the football had turned to the dire semi-agricultural football that was to become Moyes' stamp (after a first season which promised a bit more when he got a lot of industry from the team and married it to some exciting counter attacking through Radzinski and, of course, we had Rooney to get us to the edge of our seats). We absolutely stunk the place out and finished just short of relegation and out of the cups at the first round of entering. Off the field we were in turmoil: the Kings Dock stadium had been kicked into touch by Kenwright and Carter and a boardroom battle was in full swing. What had promised to be a new dawn under the post-Johnson regime had turned to ashes.
2017/18: similarly we see a club onfield that lost all discipline - and that has been mirrored in the number of managers we've used. The football quite frankly is the worst in most people's living memory. We have lost all identity as a football club and have become a bit of a joke as our credibility has ebbed away by spending huge amounts of cash to somehow become worse. The image of the club is in the gutter. We have a manager who most dont want and a squad almost all of us have lost faith in. Off the field we also have a crisis, as underperforming officials from a previous era remain in their posts and we have an owner who goes from one public relations calamity to another. Worst of all is the (very) uncertain situation concerning the proposed BMD.
Of course, 2003/04 proved to be something of a turning point: yes the football thereafter was dull and safe, but we reached some sort of stability by abandoning all pretence to being able to compete at the top of the PL and by focussing instead on becoming a tough team to beat; and off the pitch a situation was accepted that they couldn't or wouldn't shift the dial and that a policy of sell to buy and settling debt would and could be carried out for the foreseeable and a plate kept spinning until something better, more ambitious, came along...either a new stadium scheme or a buy-out.
Will 2017/18 prove to be a turning point for us? We're obviously in a different position than back in the early part of the millennium in terms of cash to spend, but like then we still find ourselves very much on the outside of things looking in and in need of a severe shift in policy. In that respect, two things need to happen in quick succession for us to avoid having to make the sordid compromise described above in the early part of this century. First, this summer a new managerial team needs to be brought in capable of exciting the support and who are given a job of using available cash, but also utilising and building a team around the younger players of our squad like Davies, Kenny, Dowell and hopefully Lookman. Attractive football and winning football should be the new manager's objective and he should be allowed to build (slowly and haltingly if need be) for the next five years - as long as we're in no imminent danger. Second, away from team coaching we need to see a start made on the stadium. At a minimum, funding needs to be acquired and planning permission needs to be secured before the year is out, along with squaring off any sort of opposition that could arise from building this stadium by other agencies. Construction has to have a firm date to start in 2019. If we cant get to that point by the end of this calendar year, not only is BMD dead but so too is the Moshiri era at the club. There'll be no toleration for anyone who cant deliver after being three years into a job here. We need these two shots in the arm desperately.
More precisely, I suppose, the years following the disastrous 2003/04 campaign were a line drawn in the sand which provided the basis to become a more credible (though not a really competitive) force rather than a watershed; what we need now are the building blocks to be put in place to allow us not only to consolidate in the short term, but to provide us with the means to push into the top five of this league in the way that Spurs have done under Pochettino-Levy/Lewis. It's a massive 11 months in front of us.
TLDR etc....
2003/04: the football had turned to the dire semi-agricultural football that was to become Moyes' stamp (after a first season which promised a bit more when he got a lot of industry from the team and married it to some exciting counter attacking through Radzinski and, of course, we had Rooney to get us to the edge of our seats). We absolutely stunk the place out and finished just short of relegation and out of the cups at the first round of entering. Off the field we were in turmoil: the Kings Dock stadium had been kicked into touch by Kenwright and Carter and a boardroom battle was in full swing. What had promised to be a new dawn under the post-Johnson regime had turned to ashes.
2017/18: similarly we see a club onfield that lost all discipline - and that has been mirrored in the number of managers we've used. The football quite frankly is the worst in most people's living memory. We have lost all identity as a football club and have become a bit of a joke as our credibility has ebbed away by spending huge amounts of cash to somehow become worse. The image of the club is in the gutter. We have a manager who most dont want and a squad almost all of us have lost faith in. Off the field we also have a crisis, as underperforming officials from a previous era remain in their posts and we have an owner who goes from one public relations calamity to another. Worst of all is the (very) uncertain situation concerning the proposed BMD.
Of course, 2003/04 proved to be something of a turning point: yes the football thereafter was dull and safe, but we reached some sort of stability by abandoning all pretence to being able to compete at the top of the PL and by focussing instead on becoming a tough team to beat; and off the pitch a situation was accepted that they couldn't or wouldn't shift the dial and that a policy of sell to buy and settling debt would and could be carried out for the foreseeable and a plate kept spinning until something better, more ambitious, came along...either a new stadium scheme or a buy-out.
Will 2017/18 prove to be a turning point for us? We're obviously in a different position than back in the early part of the millennium in terms of cash to spend, but like then we still find ourselves very much on the outside of things looking in and in need of a severe shift in policy. In that respect, two things need to happen in quick succession for us to avoid having to make the sordid compromise described above in the early part of this century. First, this summer a new managerial team needs to be brought in capable of exciting the support and who are given a job of using available cash, but also utilising and building a team around the younger players of our squad like Davies, Kenny, Dowell and hopefully Lookman. Attractive football and winning football should be the new manager's objective and he should be allowed to build (slowly and haltingly if need be) for the next five years - as long as we're in no imminent danger. Second, away from team coaching we need to see a start made on the stadium. At a minimum, funding needs to be acquired and planning permission needs to be secured before the year is out, along with squaring off any sort of opposition that could arise from building this stadium by other agencies. Construction has to have a firm date to start in 2019. If we cant get to that point by the end of this calendar year, not only is BMD dead but so too is the Moshiri era at the club. There'll be no toleration for anyone who cant deliver after being three years into a job here. We need these two shots in the arm desperately.
More precisely, I suppose, the years following the disastrous 2003/04 campaign were a line drawn in the sand which provided the basis to become a more credible (though not a really competitive) force rather than a watershed; what we need now are the building blocks to be put in place to allow us not only to consolidate in the short term, but to provide us with the means to push into the top five of this league in the way that Spurs have done under Pochettino-Levy/Lewis. It's a massive 11 months in front of us.
TLDR etc....
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