Having good owners is far more important than having a good manager for the obvious reasons
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It’s an interesting thread and touches on a few things I’ve said for years.
Ultimately our downfall has been down to corrupt or inadequate owners, but I do feel us as fans have also contributed at times.
I think many of us believed after Munto that we would be Man City by now and have been angry ever since.
At our best since Munto we’ve been at the top of league one, and even then we still had such a vocal section of our fans that were unhappy with virtually everything.
We sacked Curle when we were 5 points outside the playoffs in league 1 because fans didn’t like the way we played at home. It was crazy to me at the time and it’s a damn site even more crazy when we now sit two leagues lower.
Every club has these fans but we seem to have a lot, and with social media they want to be heard.
In many fans eyes Neil Ardley will never be good enough. If we lose today I will guarantee some will be calling for his head. If we get promoted, that would be a phenomenal achievement and it’s absolutely a possibility. Yet we would have done it with quite a number of vocal fans calling for the managers head for most of the season. If we then have an average start in league two, the process will continue etc...
We are where we are because inadequate owners have sacked manager after manager. And virtually every time it’s happened, many fans were calling for it.
There’s a saying ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got.’
Our new owners are a breath of fresh air. They’re staying under the radar and giving stability a chance.
We now need to do the same, be positive, support the team, the manager and the club.
If that happens I’m absolutely positive our trend will be a slow and steady upwards one!
If we'd gone up in 2018 and it had all worked out, nobody would be lamenting the sacking of managers who didn't actually achieve anything other than a place high up in the "shortest reign" table. Almost every manager we've had in the last 20 years has been rubbish because the owners have been rubbish. Under better owners, some of them might have been half decent, but what have the likes of Short and Curle done since?
We are where we are now and we are who we are now, in the stadium that we're in, because of the past, but there's nothing we can do about any of that today. We have a match this afternoon with a decent shout of making the play offs.
2nd or 7th, nobody else who makes it to the 5th tier play offs will fancy playing us. We should be able to raise it big time with our numbers at this level.
Let's just keep going as we've gone on since Christmas and we'll be alright.
Brentford similar sized club with bigger clubs next doors are whom we could emanate
Brentford have a very wealthy owner who has poured a lot of money into the club, plus a unique business model that appears to be working very well for them. Looking at their squad, they seem to have signed a hell of a lot of overseas players. Of course, when we tried that with Ricardo, it did not end well. It will be fascinating to see how the Reedtz brothers approach recruitment in the summer and see if we’re going for a different method this time.
I blame Bosman for our demise - we’ve had a crazy turnover of players over the last 20-odd years, operating a revolving door policy at the end of every season in which we swap one average journeyman for another. in the lower leagues you also need to bring in shrewd loan signings, and we’ve also been very poor in that department (with a few glorious exceptions - and no, I’m not referring to Nathan Thomas).