How do we compete?

Yes absolutely.

 

Here's a little snippet about Bournemouth

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/ne..._night_that_saved_the_Cherries__20_years_ago/

This is how mad football has become.

They were weeping and wailing about owing the tax man £300k and how it was going to finish them, yet they see being £55 million pounds in debt to their major shareholder as success.

Would I want BFC to be owing that much money to someone? I don't think so.

 

Would you care if we owed 55million quid to our foreign owners?

 

Not if we were collecting 100 million a year from the PL . I forgot to mention Huddersfield, that's who we should be trying to emulate never mind Milwall . I must say though that I think Brentford have done brilliantly because they are maximising their potential and their manager along with Alex Neil are my managers of the season .

 

Wait for the investment in the summer, nothing much they can do mid-season.

 

The Play off final will be the £200 million game this summer.

 

Just out of interest. What is Brentfords "potential" ?

All I see is a club that's played most of its history out in leagues one and two and currently attracts crowds smaller than its capacity, which is very low.

They sell the odd player here and there, but doesn't everyone?

They are millions of pounds in debt to their shareholders.

To me that's just chucking good money after bad at a small club. Buying position and success isn't maximising potential.

Agree about Huddersfield and Burnley though. Neither are bigger clubs than us and have similar support.

 

I think Brentford are a brilliant club at the moment who have sold players for the right price ie Hogan and Jota and re-invested correctly and with a push could make the play offs . Compare them to us who have 35 players on the books but we can't pick a decent starting 11 and are plummeting towards L1 . Well at least relegation will please some fans .

 

Firstly... it comes down to the owners and what their intentions and objectives are. You can probably look through half the league now (all 4 divisions) and see billionaires and millionaires whos net outcome of owning a club has made them directly poorer. Come the summer, I'd like guidance as to what they plan. I don't want them making goals of the premiership to which they can be beaten with if we don't, but I'd like to hear progressively what they are going to do and how.

If we're going to compete firstly in the championship... we need to take the plan as it stands... the spreadsheet and pretend it doesn't exist. Because to date, aside from one outstanding crop of players we signed quite closely together, we've not done great. We've over recruited a lot, we've under recruited a lot, and we've burned a lot of money on poor loanees.

So firstly, i'd be looking at how we take our budget and make it work better. We've too many players. And if we want huge backup for every position, what are the kids there for? And if we have no faith in the kids ever breaking through, why do we have a youth set up costing millions each year?

I'd like to keep it, but play them. Is Mottley Henry so much worse than Mahoney? Could Josh Kay or Jared Bird have broken through in place of the 300 number 10s we couldn't fit into the rigid system? In the past youth was given a chance. So blood them. Some kids rise to it, some don't. But if you don't try you'll never know.

One thing we did under the last ownership was veer from one way to another and not take the good. There is zero reason why we couldn't blend some mid pros into a team. Some experienced 30 somethings.

It's about the team. Yes have youth, yes expect some to be sold and make profit to reinvest, but the first be all is the first team and having a team that can compete.

That we didn't try and keep 1-2 of the players by pushing the boat out ever so slightly is just silly. Stick Josh Scowen in our midfield right now and we'd improve hugely. How could we afford it? By not having as many as McGeehan, Mowatt, Knasmullner, Moncur, Mallan wih their associated transfers, agent fees and general wages and costs.

That's where the first improvement has to be. Not following something blindly that once conjured 4 players in the same team that were Premiership to Championship class before they were all sold lock stock.

If we can improve commercial streams (we've got lots of piddly sponsors, we very much need some bigger ones) and try and harness our rights in overseas streams, we could do better.

But til we can turn out a solid team that can be a foundation, we'll struggle. That's the product. All season and half of last the football has been dreadful to watch. I hope a change of system and some bravery from the coach, players and fans can turn this around to give us a higher starting point next year. What aids us is the worst quality in this league for a good while.

 

I I think If we had Alex Ferguson managing us it would still have been an unmitigated disaster. People don’t swap a team of good Championship players and replace it with cheap punts with little or no experience for a reason.

 

Of the players we have I’d say Lindsay and Yiadom are good enough Pannillos and Pinnock probably are. McBurnie and Williams it’s irrelevant s their development won’t benefit us. I can’t see anyone else in our team that would get in another championship team other than an in form Davies. Mallan is an unknown either way. The rest you mention are a way off.

 

Yes, they're brilliant compared to us, which is the reason for my original post about how do we catch these teams up.

They're up to their eyes in debt though.

 

Please refer to my original answer to your original post . We catch these teams up by either not selling all our best players or at least get proper value for them and then re-invest in quality and not quantity and not using the good old scattergun approach ,if you wang enough arrows one will hit bullseye .

 

Maybe we will do that in future. Who knows?

We certainly have to muscle to do better business.