by andrew1957 »
09 Jan 2011 17:16
I do find the attitude of some of you on here to be frustrating. Some have called me a WUM and nothing could be further for the truth.
As Victor said earlier I was one of the most supportive posters about the club for a long time. I supported the club for many years prior to the PL years and saw the club being built brick by brick and in general I agreed with that approach. I am all for developing the Academy and bringing through young players and for buying talent from the lower divisions and developing players etc etc.
BUT what disturbs me is that the promotion to the PL, two seasons there, two years parachute payments and a profit on player sales of some £20M, let alone the additional PL ticket sales (home and away) and merchandising brought the club is at least an ADDITIONAL £140,000,000 as compared to the income we would have generated if we had never been promoted. As not one penny of this money was invested in the squad (the cost of putting together the 2005-6 squad was all but identical to the cost of putting together the 2010-11 squad) the only items I am aware of that were paid for out of the £140M were the training ground and the new press box. The pitch was rebuilt - but that would have had to have been done anyway.
Assuming all the rest (say £130M) went on higher wages, I think it is a scandal if we wasted that much. In reality I suspect that some loans at least have been repaid - I have no problem with that but just wish the club would be honest.
What bugs me is that we were told there was a shortfall of £4M last June and even though we raised £8M in player sales, little of the surplus has been reinvested. Most of you seem to see no inconsistency in all this and I suppose the Chairman is right. If the fans don't care why bother to invest?
As for Bradley W-P. I have no problem with him. Have not seen him play enough to make a sensible comment and he is probably at least Championship standard, so on one level it might turn out to be a good buy - BUT what virtually everyone who has commented on what we "need" has said in past months that we need a target man type striker who can change a game. I think Long is superb, but if he gets injured who will lead the line. Even if W-P does sign we will only have three small strikers to take his place.
Anyway clearly from these pages I am in a minority - although it would appear a growing one - most of you are happy to be told one story one minute by the club and a different story the next.
I still hope we succeed. No one wants promotion more than me and I do think the Chairman would like promotion but only if it can be obtained without any risk whatsoever. He might get lucky again, just as we were incredibly lucky in 2005-6 as Victor also said earlier. It was a fluke season that year. We only had 10 senior pros at the end of 2004-5 and the Chairman showed some ambition (signed Lita with his own money) plus sanctioned the signings of Doyle, Long, Oster, Gunnar, Makin and others - who all gelled into an amazing team/squad. You can argue that was good management - good coaching etc, but it is what virtually every team tries to do every season and it hardly ever works.
This season we have the potential of another excellent squad - overall better than we had at the end of 2004/5 and just a little ambition could take us to even higher heights, but that ambition seems to be missing this time.
Fortunately for us McD is defying the odds at the moment and long may that continue.
