Paul Douglas to speak to press next week.

[MillerBill]

I think there are some quite interesting admissions made in the interview with Douglas that are also quite worrying.
Firstly that if things work before under Warne, now we've gone back to that we expect things to get better, which I think is quite naive. Instead of taking the learnings from what happened then and constantly trying to improve upon them we're taking steps backwards instead.
Equally in terms of the reluctance to claim the training facilities is frustrating, there feels like a sort of suggestion that we've been catching up to other league one teams in terms of facilities, now that we're there we're happy with it, and equally with the idea that filling the front areas of the stadium isn't a concern, there's no creativity or ideas on how we can push the club forwards in alternate ways.
I know we might not be at quite the same size as these clubs, but look at Brightons scouting network and how using that has propelled them up the ladder, or Luton using their academy. We literally play at the "New York" stadium, was it never even considered using that as a marketing ploy to get yanks invested in the club, I feel like pinning a story on massive underdogs trying to gain success would sell well as a TV show, you only have to look at Ted Lasso.

Then there's the statements about hamshaw. I actually agree with Douglas that we looked reasonably good when the majority of the squad was fit. But at the moment they aren't, and our manager is seemingly unwilling to change his philosophy to fit the tools he has available. If you can only judge a player on when his signings are available then why did we ever sack Taylor, and why did we sack Richardson given he never even had a summer transfer to work with, it stinks of Hypocrisy.

Which leads to my biggest gripe with the interview. In the admission about the Taylor regime and signing experienced championship players (who we couldn't really afford and know should get injured) was probably the wrong idea. I think 90% of the Madsters predicted that outcome. This was then followed by Evans signing a lot of players, a large amount of which were cleared out in the summer gone because again there was another change in footballing philosophy. How is any manager ever meant to succeed when the club has no clear vision at all, amplified by the fact that the question about what the 5 year plan for the club is was completely dodged.

In the end all the interview did was reaffirm my view that the club are happy to stand still and carry on doing everything as they have been doing rather than innovating and actually trying to progress forwards, just like the town of Rotherham itself to be honest.

Douglas has to go.

An excellent run down Sdn, on how this club is operating.There has never been a plan ,long term or short term.At first it seemed so impressive with the promise of various retail outlets in the NYS units,a state of the art training set up,plans to develop the G&C site,acess across the river to benefit an exit strategy and many other promises.None of these missed opportunies have been delivered.The top management at this club is woeful,there are non league clubs more professionally run than us and this latest disastrous Douglas interview offers no hope for the future under the present ownership.

[mellowmiller]

UlleyMiller said:

"Chansiri comparison is interesting to me, because I feel he's always been singled out as the sole villain over there. Clearly the man is an absolute, top tier weapon... but nobody will ever convince me that others at the club were all doing the right things. TS, likewise, isn't everyone's cup of tea, but there are others who take a wage/cash out of the club who can influence the way things work."

Ordinarily I would agree but the problem is autocrats rarely tolerate any interference in the way they run things and people in senior positions either leave or just get on with the basics of their roles.
Those who stay don't make waves, effectively become "yes men" and the whole organisation flounders.
Sound familiar?

[UlleyMiller]

Ordinarily I would agree but the problem is autocrats rarely tolerate any interference in the way they run things and people in senior positions either leave or just get on with the basics of their roles.
Those who stay don't make waves, effectively become "yes men" and the whole organisation flounders.
Sound familiar?

Without evidence of people jumping ship in large numbers, spot firings, leaked stories all over the place, I'd take a hell of a lot more convincing than that. TS (and Chansiri) both have their flaws (seemingly, from the outside perspective) but there is definitely a whiff of scapegoating around their clubs. I've been on the 'we can do a lot better' side of the fence for years, but at no point do I think the buck stops with single people, however big their persona is.

[caytonmiller]

Time doesn't stand still. Street lighting doesn't need replacing every year. Contracts run out. Business practices change. Competition grows. People get older. Top staff move on.

Any number of reasons.

ASD didn't make money last year either. I did note that Tony Stewart and I think his brother were paid something like ?1.6m in consultancy fees and they paid ?1million of sponsorship to RUFC. So the results could look better.

Still represents a downturn however whichever way you look at it.

Yeah I get that but 7.6 million on adminstration cost. Doesn't cover most of what you mentioned. That's a lot of cash to get shuffled around the company on specific expenses though I guess most will be on executive wages.. is this a loop hole how money can be shipped to TS other companies legally?

Talking of other company's. Doesn't TS have around 4 company's. 5 with Rufc?

[SdnMiller]

My statement about Chansiri was meant to be provocative, they are obviously not the same, mainly in the way that Stewart clearly cares about the future of the town and club, which I don't think Chansiri ever did.

I'm not operational expert but the Chairman of the club constantly having the final say on signings, suggests that Stewart himself is effectively running day to day operations of the club, equally the statements regarding the front areas suggesting the renting of those is within Stewart's remit as well. To me both of these things are the jobs of the CEO of a football club, if Douglas isn't in control of these then what is he doing. His admission that he has no idea why the Stadium is owned by the club and is owned by the owner instead as he doesn't work often with business and financial advisors and just assumes that Stewart blindly knows what he's doing. Is it not the job of the CEO (maybe more than the owner himself) to think of ways to secure the future of the club.

Let's pose the example that (God forbid) Stewart does and his kids assume control of the club. If they decide they don't want to be constantly throwing their inheritance away and sell the club, they can decide to keep the stadium for themselves and overcharge rent on the new owners. This just lends itself to what happened with the Booth's 20 years ago.

Maybe I'm too sceptical of people but the operational situation at Rotherham at the moment certainly scares me

[Brin]

Yeah I get that but 7.6 million on adminstration cost. Doesn't cover most of what you mentioned. That's a lot of cash to get shuffled around the company on specific expenses though I guess most will be on executive wages.. is this a loop hole how money can be shipped to TS other companies legally?

Talking of other company's. Doesn't TS have around 4 company's. 5 with Rufc?

Cayton, here you go pal.

ASD Lighting PLC: This is his primary commercial business, a successful lighting manufacturer.
Rotherham United Football Club (RUFC) Limited: Stewart has owned the football club since he rescued it from administration in 2008.
ASD Lighting Holdings Limited: A holding company for his lighting interests.
Stewart Developments Limited: An active development company.
TRS Management Limited: An active management company.
R U Estates Limited: A company owned by the Stewart family, which owns the AESSEAL New York Stadium and rents it to the club.

[howdydoo]

Yeah I get that but 7.6 million on adminstration cost. Doesn't cover most of what you mentioned. That's a lot of cash to get shuffled around the company on specific expenses though I guess most will be on executive wages.. is this a loop hole how money can be shipped to TS other companies legally?

Talking of other company's. Doesn't TS have around 4 company's. 5 with Rufc?

There's more income made through interest and other areas such as FX (Foreign Exchange) trading. In the plus column if you like, the amount is well over 8m GBP.

Administration costs in the context of financial accounts includes wages, depreciation (machinery, buildings etc). Wages alone for ASD are over 7m GBP. They had a monthly average of 159 employees accounting for 6.6m GBP in wages and social security. Then another 510k GBP paid to 4 directors.

Gross profit was 6.4m GBP and they report that's on the back of strong profit margin which was 36%.


Losses were 1.6m GBP before interest. Due to the company having net value of over 30m GBP.



...... and people are on here demanding he buys more players. He ain't making the big numbers he was 15 years ago.


He does have other businesses related to RUFC. The main one being RU Estates which is the one that owns the stadium. The net value of that business nets out the losses the club have run up over the last few years. Problem is, the losses have been getting bigger as the pot gets smaller. Taylor was a disaster. To be fair to Stewart I think he genuinely pushed the boat out. Should have made sure it was seaworthy before he did.


He should have bailed out a few years ago. He should be actively looking now to do so. Even if only to cut his losses and protect his legacy.


So in a nutshell, administrative costs include everything.

[Heliosphan78]

Which leads to my biggest gripe with the interview. In the admission about the Taylor regime and signing experienced championship players (who we couldn't really afford and know should get injured) was probably the wrong idea. I think 90% of the Madsters predicted that outcome. This was then followed by Evans signing a lot of players, a large amount of which were cleared out in the summer gone because again there was another change in footballing philosophy. How is any manager ever meant to succeed when the club has no clear vision at all, amplified by the fact that the question about what the 5 year plan for the club is was completely dodged.

That's not how I recall the sequence of events.

The only way you can berate the club for the approach we made under Matt Taylor is with the benefit of hindsight. You have to remember that we'd been relegated more than once under Warne but you moan about a change in philosophy in order to try and rectify this.

Signing experienced Championship level players was an absolutely sound strategy at the time for this football club in order to gain a foothold in the Championship. It didn't work out but at least the club tried a different approach to the one which had failed previously.

And I definitely cannot recall anyone on here moaning about the signings we were making. That came afterwards when the season went bad and we were picking up injuries.

As for a plan, we've got one. Why say we haven't got a clear vision when we have? Certainly on the pitch we have. We buy young players, develop them, sell them on and create a sustainable football club that improves incrementally. That's it. However, despite being told time and time again, people want to throw that in the bin and start again because we've had a poor run of results.

[caytonmiller]

There's more income made through interest and other areas such as FX (Foreign Exchange) trading. In the plus column if you like, the amount is well over 8m GBP.

Administration costs in the context of financial accounts includes wages, depreciation (machinery, buildings etc). Wages alone for ASD are over 7m GBP. They had a monthly average of 159 employees accounting for 6.6m GBP in wages and social security. Then another 510k GBP paid to 4 directors.

Gross profit was 6.4m GBP and they report that's on the back of strong profit margin which was 36%.


Losses were 1.6m GBP before interest. Due to the company having net value of over 30m GBP.



...... and people are on here demanding he buys more players. He ain't making the big numbers he was 15 years ago.


He does have other businesses related to RUFC. The main one being RU Estates which is the one that owns the stadium. The net value of that business nets out the losses the club have run up over the last few years. Problem is, the losses have been getting bigger as the pot gets smaller. Taylor was a disaster. To be fair to Stewart I think he genuinely pushed the boat out. Should have made sure it was seaworthy before he did.


He should have bailed out a few years ago. He should be actively looking now to do so. Even if only to cut his losses and protect his legacy.


So in a nutshell, administrative costs include everything.

My mistake then Howdy. As I understand administrator cost. It doesn't Inc the salary of the production employees. That is Inc in the costs.
I understood it to be for executive wages. (TS ect) And admin/hr ect.

[howdydoo]

Not a mistake Clayton. I believe that is the case if a company actually manufactures something.

Our company doesn't produce any goods but it does process them. Our wages are broken down between directors and general staff but they all go in the accounts after cost of sales.

Looking at the ASD Lighting accounts it looks like a similar scenario.

An out and accountant could clarify but the accounts for ASD are full accounts that have been submitted on companies house. The numbers add up.

[SdnMiller]

In our retained list post of that season under tailor there's 2 Madsters who both mention that our centre backs have injury concerns, followed up by a thread called defence a month later where 3 other Madsters suggest caution regarding the availability of our defence.

While not from everyone there was certainly a level of foresight at the time that we could end up with injury problems at the back, yes Humphreys and Blackett's injuries were unexpected but I still believe the approach to only sign experienced championship players was naive.

Also regarding Warne, it's not like he was completely avert to experienced signings, potter, billy Jones, Shaun Macdonald, Shane Ferguson to name a few.

But this point about a change in philosophy answers the question about long term planning. If we change our ideas every transfer window to fit whatever manager we have at the time wants how can the be a long term solution. Warne wanted mainly young unproven players in the hope they would come good and could be sold on, Taylor wanted championship experience players to help us stay up. Evans wanted all his mates to come as free agents, and now hamshaw again wants young unproven players to sell on. 4 transfer strategies in 4 years, there's nothing long term planning about that at all.

I'm not trying to suggest we throw away hamshaw's idea of signing young players, helping them progress and then selling them on for profit, far from it actually I think it's the best strategy a club of our stature can employ, but having a completely different strategy for the past 2 years purely based on what the manager wants I find somewhat farcical. The club is desperately missing a director of football to take the business minded people out of the footballing decisions at the club

Edit after posting:
Just to add on to the lack of long term planning. Remember how Rob Scott was promoted to director of football under Richardson for 6 months because he advised it, only for us to remove the role as soon as Evans arrived. Doesn't sound much like long term planning to me

[Ericsladkilnhurst]

SdnMiller
Quite a few of us posters on this MM site, have been calling for someone on the board with football knowledge for years.

[Brin]

SdnMiller
Quite a few of us posters on this MM site, have been calling for someone on the board with football knowledge for years.

ELK, at this moment in time, would you swap a COO of the club for a Director of football who knows the game inside out?

[Derbymiller]

ELK, at this moment in time, would you swap a COO of the club for a Director of football who knows the game inside out?

I would swap the COO for a full time physiotherapy team that can address the awful list of injuries. Specialist contractors in most industry cost more than FTEs it would be interesting to know how financially it stacks up for us to be using contractors in that area.

[Brin]

I would swap the COO for a full time physiotherapy team that can address the awful list of injuries. Specialist contractors in most industry cost more than FTEs it would be interesting to know how financially it stacks up for us to be using contractors in that area.

Derbs, only got to look at the NHS. Nurse calls in sick so to cover that they bring in an agency nurse that costs almost a third more.