Mladen Out

Which part of the football operation as in "football" is Flatman responsible for then?
I'm not here to defend flatman btw you are just barking up the wrong tree, majority of the negativity is driven by on field product and results, I gaurantee if we were top of the league hardly anybody would be giving a ***t about the rest.

 

Darrell Clarke is an issue it has to be said - but Sormaz is the cancer at the club from a footballing point of view.

He dictates the ‘style’ of play. Not that we play with any style…

He signs the players. He’s picked the manager.

He has failed to sign one actual centre forward in several attempts to do so.

He has been appointed into a role hugely beyond his skill set. Whatever he is paid it is far too much as my 12 year old nephew could do a better job for free using data from football manager and whatever they call fifa now.

Flatman has proven to be a shrewd business administrator for sports teams in the past. I’ve no reason to suggest he should go. Let him run the club for the owners.

But we need a football man running the football. They binned Hassell off from the role to bring in Sormaz. Bobby probably isn’t the answer but he can’t possibly be any worse.

Sormaz needs to go. Tonight. Look for someone else and get them in ready for the summer.

Clarke can go too; the season is over though so there’s no issue in letting him have a go without the shackles of having to play how it’s dictated to him - though I dont think he’s right for the club either realistically.

But it’s our ‘sporting director’ or whatever title he holds now who is the biggest problem.

 

Been saying it for weeks. It’s not particularly the owners at fault, it’s those put in charge of recruitment. Mladen has made an absolute arse of it, never seen a squad as unbalanced and gutless in my life. After Huddersfield’s first goal we just gave up. Unbelievable….

 

Okay thanks, but I think you might be surprised.

 

Who does he work for? Who appointed him?

The entire thing - imho - is a waste of resources for a club of our level. Complicates the entire thing.

 

James Cryne will have employed him. Think he’s an old uni mate.

 

I'm not saying he's perfect mate, but he hasn't implemented a playing philosophy that's seen a handful of home wins in 12 months and a collection of poor players.
Results have bred an awful toxicity no doubt, the matchday experience is poor which does come under his remit as its a commercial operation but if we were playing winning football the outlook might be different

 

Take a bow, brilliant post, sums up my exact thoughts

 

Clarke upwards have to go. People say Clarke is doing well with what he has I don't agree he picks wrong players, plays wrong formations and it has to be him that encourages them to defend a one goal lead for 3/4 sof a match. Just clearly out of his depth as for the sporting director, he is non existent

 

Think Chief of Staff is another position too far for this level too. In my opinion.

 

But the owners employed those people so the bucks stops at their door. It's just another in a long line of totally inept incompetent decisions taken by the board the rot at Oakwell goes right to the top from a poor unbalanced squad, inept coaches, a failing recruitment team living off the back of a few lucky punts 4 or 5 seasons ago, a DoF who clearly isn't up to the task a CEO who couldn't run a piss up in a brewery, and on to a set of absentee owners with less idea of how to run a professional football club successfully than I do about the origin of the universe.

 

Ok.
If we are talking on the grass. Mladenball is certainly the issue. A total pheck up of a strategy and (on the face of it) appointment.

On that I agree.

 

I agree, you can't blame the owners for employing more people to try and take the club forwards but unfortunately for them Sormaz's best quality's are his smooth talking.
We've all worked with people like this and seen things go rapidly downhill

 

This is what you get with absentee owners. Someone has to take day to day responsibility for the running of the Club and it's been farmed out to Sormaz and others because, by virtue of their other commitments, Neerev and JAQ are too remote. It didn't matter when John Dennis and Mick Haysleden were calling the shots because they lived and worked locally and backing them up they had Mick Spinks.

 

He works for the board of directors, they appointed him.

And the current-set up is not all that different to what we've always had.

Looking back to when we were successful - the John Dennis era (and this could apply to any era previous to that) - we had a chairman of the board and a club secretary. The chairman of the board approved the finances and the club secretary had an in-depth knowledge of all things football. Some of the board took on an understanding about all things football, John Dennis certainly did, but also Barry Taylor who was on several FA committees.

It all got a bit flaky during the admin period, but when we got out the other side it pretty much continued in that vein. The titles started to change but it was the same set-up.

Patrick Cryne changed it a little bit, but then sort of changed it back. At first Patrick claimed (and probably genuinely thought) that he didn't want to be part of the day-to-day running of the club, and he was the first to employ what he called a CEO that took on the responsibilities of both the chairman and the secretary. But he then found that he couldn't leave it to other people and took on a more hands on role, so we were back to a chairman and a secretary.

As his health deteriorated he took a step back and the two roles were combined again. That's how it continued into the takeover, with a single CEO, but it has since been separated out again into a Chairman (Flatman) and a Secretary (Sormaz).

That's over simplified, there are people in other roles, but it's not far off.

Also, within that time period, the influence of the team manager, now called a head coach, has been diluted. And the influence of the secretary/sporting director has been massively expanded.

I don't have a problem with us having a sporting director, or whatever you want to call that position, we just need a much better one. And probably one that doesn't have so much influence, giving back a bigger voice to the head coach. Maybe not the final say as we'll be back to someone like Bassett pretty much bankrupting us, but, you know, before we sign someone at least asking the first team coach what he thinks.

 

Started before he did though

 

It's absolutely is gonna get toxic.

I'm out in tarn and a few hudds fans chanting not far off bus station and a few lads didn't take it kindly. Fair to say the main culprit from Huddersfield was nearly crying to prevent a beating (don't condone violence)

I'm just stating that's the mood some fans are in and I'll add that it's never been as toxic on here either before. Theirs always some bright spark on here!

 

I get what your saying but the dreadful stuff being served up on the pitch simply hides Flatman's incompetancy for the appalling way in which the club is run off the pitch. That is 'on him'.

 

A big well done to James Cryne for fetching your mate Sormaz into the club. What a bolllock you have dropped young man.

 

All of these roles at the club are presumably quite well paid - I think it's about time we saw some of the value/return on investment that we're paying for.

For Mladen that's finding the talent we can bring in to improve us at an affordable cost, and moving on players for a significant profit without weakening the team's prospects.

For Flatman that's making the club operate professionally off the pitch and reducing the number of amateurish inadequacies and frustrations that embarrass the club and are of a detriment to the fan experience.