When he said “he doesn’t fear relegation”, did he mean he doesn’t think we will go down, or isn’t too worried if we do? Guess you could read it either way. Both of which are crackers, by the way…
My initial instinct is telling me to be worried about having this guy as CEO. His initial words and actions aren't good. But i'll wait and see the transcript later to form a better opinion.
Must admit he has got off to a spectacularly bad start - at least from a fans point of view, no idea how the owners view his performance
I've sadly spent far too much of my working career seeing people who haven't got a clue in very senior positions. There are generally some tell tale signs and you suss them very quickly. He's displaying many of those signs already.
I can't help but refer back to his opening gambit on how he judges success. I can't see what being happy at home has to do with how well you run a football club.
He certainly doesn’t stand up to comparison with Dane, who quietly getting on with the revival at Forest. Me thinks they will be involved in the play offs, so that would be two in two seasons for him. Just a coincidence? I don’t think so.
It was hard to judge Murphy because he was so absent for so long. But then he got into the swing of things and I thought he started to gain confidence and find his feet. We might look back and judge that in his short tenure he pushed back against owner sentiment to encourage a more diverse level of recruiting that had the best impact of any under this ownership and had more of a view of building a competitive team, rather than just more young hopefuls. Commercially, I don't think we have done a great deal at all. Locally, I think we could do much more with local suppliers and businesses. But Murphy was more about recruitment, so in that aspect, he did very well generally. Obviously he had a hand in some of the dreadful statements that came out, but I don't think they were his words, but from on high. I'm always more an advocate of work horses over show ponies.
I was just going to say, I think football wise, Dane was a good fit for the club. Commercially I imagine that with COVID-19, no fans etc, expectations dropped about the club making any money. I do think the new CEO's main job will be to get us back on an even keel financially and to progress the long standing issues the football club has such as stadium maintenance, catering, stewarding, all of which were allowed to be put on the back burner by Dane last season as there was no massive rush to get them complete and we were focusing time and money on a play off push.
We have to remember that this isn't a typical CEO job. A lot of the work that goes in might be things we don't see or aren't made aware of - extending scouting networks, linking in with other clubs within 'the group' on commercial benefits, putting processes in place for the Academy that might not see fruition for 4/5 years. It's a very different role, and is probably more akin to a Sporting Director with some commercial responsibility thrown in. There's not much of a team at Oakwell in terms of numbers, but there's other people that will do the day to day of what the CEO speaks out about publicly e.g. Finance/Operations Director, Head of Marketing, etc.
before we start the love-in for Dane Murphy, let's not forget his last interview. that's how I'll remember him.
You're probably right, but as CEO of a smallish professional football club, I would expect him to be ultimately responsible for the performances on the pitch, but also all decisions that relate to that. Including transfers, recruitment and matchday revenue. The fact that he is able to unilaterally take a very unpopular decision to shut the West Stand implies to me that he has more or less free rein from the owners to run it how he sees fit. Obviously he will be ultimately answerable to the board of directors, but he does seem to have very far reaching responsibilities.
The way he put it forward, is, he believes in positivity. And preaches positivity to try instil confidence. (Not everyone would accede to that point.) But it's no different a thought process. to those who preach negativity some even hell bent on it. TBH I know which I prefer. Although it can be wearing lol.
100% they're responsible. That goes for any walk of life if you're at the top of the tree, the buck ultimately stops with you. Wasn't saying responsibilities aren't vast, more that interactions, responsibilities, objectives and expectations of the role might be different to the typical business CEO, or might be different to what our expectations of it are. That's why a former player like Dane, or a former agent like Mansford, can step in at such a senior level so quickly.
This is essentially what BoJo does in his role as PM, in preference to any actual acknowledgement of a problem or any effort to improve things. Essentially, this is Khaled's version of "Get Brexit Done", "Build Back Better" or whatever meaningless slogan is currently flavour of the week. Alarmingly, just like Boris, it comes across to me as him ignoring the very obvious problems staring him in the face, especially as there seems to be no sign of any tangible attempt to address the on-field issues. Taken with MS' press conferences, we can now determine that the action plan for us being the worst on-field performing team in the Championship is for Markus to believe that the players will get better as they develop, and for others to get healthy, and Khaled denying that relegation is a possibility or a problem. Awesome. That's me converted. Move along, nothing to see here.