Relegation - What next.

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

It’ll be reet as Acido would say. Will force the board to properly assess the strategy and we have parachute payments.

Lot of good young players we can bring though.

[Billyni]

In reply to the thread title,
Oblivion.

[norfolk white]

League one I say.

[WTF11]

I think it's going to take more than one season in the Champ to fix this before we'll be competitive enough to look for promotion again, new manager and a considerable amount of squad rebuilding, it's not as though we can take comfort from going down with the makings of a squad that only needs a tinker here and there; the good ones (not that there are many) will go and what's left - Bamford, Ayling, Firpo, Kristensen, Llorente etc all need moving on. But I think the biggest drag anchor potentially is sorting out ownership - if Radz stays, ok it should be feasible to get in a new Director of Football and manager; but if he wants out (let's face it he's more interested in Sampdoria now) then surely the 49ers takeover will need to go through first before we appoint a DoF and manager and if that drags on we'll quickly be behind the curve of a new regime & squad to hit the new season running.

"If Radrizzani stays"......."a new DoF and manager". WTF? Radrizzani has presided over the recruitment of a DoF who has monumentally f00ked this club in a manner worse than ANY owner (Bates included), and allowed a phenomenal manager/coach to be hung out to dry in the interests of placating/satisfying the 49-ers ambition to have a W4nk side in the PL. He (Radrizzani) couldn't be trusted to open bag of crisps, never mind be part of any rebuilding of LUFC

Frankly, I'd prefer it if the w4nks scuttle off back to the west coast and never darken our doors again. It might make it harder to get back to where we want to be, finding a new owner with sufficient footballing intelligence to make a new start happen, and the funding to support it, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and by god do we need to be stronger. (and I'd rather we fall fast and rebound, than slide slowly into Vanarama oblivion)

[whitestomper45]

"If Radrizzani stays"......."a new DoF and manager". WTF? Radrizzani has presided over the recruitment of a DoF who has monumentally f00ked this club in a manner worse than ANY owner (Bates included), and allowed a phenomenal manager/coach to be hung out to dry in the interests of placating/satisfying the 49-ers ambition to have a W4nk side in the PL. He (Radrizzani) couldn't be trusted to open bag of crisps, never mind be part of any rebuilding of LUFC

Frankly, I'd prefer it if the w4nks scuttle off back to the west coast and never darken our doors again. It might make it harder to get back to where we want to be, finding a new owner with sufficient footballing intelligence to make a new start happen, and the funding to support it, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and by god do we need to be stronger. (and I'd rather we fall fast and rebound, than slide slowly into Vanarama oblivion)

It might seem like a choce between being Hung, Drawn or Quartered... But surely Ridsdale has caused single handedly the most damage to our club?

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

It might seem like a choce between being Hung, Drawn or Quartered... But surely Ridsdale has caused single handedly the most damage to our club?

Possibly - somewhere between him and Bates.

I think the frustration at the moment is for a while we could see the potential with sensible investment to become a solid PL club with a redeveloped stadium. It was also amazing to witness Bielsaball at its finest.

It seems Radz, Orta and Kinnear somehow convinced themselves they had reinvented football and had some genius plan that wrote new rules to become a power house without having to have improved players for radar rather than ones who would be good in 4 years and whose value had gone up.

They have publicly said a few times now that they had already decided at the start of the 21/22 season it was Bielsa’s last. Ergo they didn’t want to buy him the players he wanted to improve the squad.

They also messed up with how much they sold Phillips and Rapha for.

Brighton got 50m for White by Plato by hard ball with Arsenal and 65m for a left back who can’t cut it at Chelsea.

Rapha should have gone for Grealish Money and Phillips for much more than he did.

We just have people running the club who are naive when it comes to football business models.


That said they did achieve what many others failed - to get a sense of purpose and direction to get us out of the EFL - it’s just they then badly lost their way.

Get that Status Quo song lined up - Down down deeper and down.

[Rev72]

So while out and about in Rotherham yesterday we drove past the New York Stadium (Rotherham's ground) and my heart fell out of my anus and the realisation of yet another fall from grace had arrived.

Season starts 5th August for those of you who fancy the start of a whole new era of misery.

[WTF11]

It might seem like a choce between being Hung, Drawn or Quartered... But surely Ridsdale has caused single handedly the most damage to our club?

I stand by what I said about Radrizzani. Why? Because football now is a very different beast than it was in the Ridsdale era. There was time then and for quite some period afterwards (as we know to our cost), for clubs to drop, restructure, recover, and return. Our issue has always been that those who aspired to do so never had pockets deep enough to compete with many others, but pretended they did.

Now, for a club in such a dire state as LUFC falling out of the PL, even the prospect of parachute payments and the LUFC name don't immediately appear attractive (hence my comment about the lack of a white knight (of any sort) this time round). Once we start falling, something very special, and very hard to achieve will be necessary to stop us.

If Radrizzani genuinely expects £150m for LUFC as a Championship side, he is deluded and if the 49-ers (or anyone else) were actually willing to pay such a ludicrous sum I'd be doubtful of the business acumen. If Radrizzani can't sell (or wont for a sensible figure) we are stuck with an owner who is most definitely worse than Ridsdale (who despite the damage done to Leeds actually knows football in the UK). The only real hope I see is to find a potential owner who has a "reasonable" budget for what is most important, acquiring the club and then the refreshing of the playing squad and those DIRECTLY involved in making that squad competitive. Nothing but that matters, not ER, Thorp Arch, nothing but that which ensures that wherever we end up, the players can and will perform well enough to deserve the loyalty that LUFC supporters will give them.

[spaldy]

WTF,

hard to be positive right now... really hard.

However, the $150 million is great business if you are a professional sports organization (the 49's are) that makes money through investments. We are a good investment. Take out emotion and you have a potential huge return. Huge fan base, Single club city (they only one in the FA), storied history, world wide fan base, little or no marketing exposure the last 20 years and a very low cost basis. The team has some great youth and some senior players that could be persuaded to stay for the right money.

When clubs like Chelsea and Scum go for Billions of dollars, New Castle for 415 million (already worth a lot more than that) a 150 million along with another 100 million in player salaries is a bargain. They could triple their money in 5 years.

I think the "spanner" in the works is Radz not selling. Very worried about that.

[hopelesslyoptimistic]

WTF,

hard to be positive right now... really hard.

However, the $150 million is great business if you are a professional sports organization (the 49's are) that makes money through investments. We are a good investment. Take out emotion and you have a potential huge return. Huge fan base, Single club city (they only one in the FA), storied history, world wide fan base, little or no marketing exposure the last 20 years and a very low cost basis. The team has some great youth and some senior players that could be persuaded to stay for the right money.

When clubs like Chelsea and Scum go for Billions of dollars, New Castle for 415 million (already worth a lot more than that) a 150 million along with another 100 million in player salaries is a bargain. They could triple their money in 5 years.

I think the "spanner" in the works is Radz not selling. Very worried about that.

Bear in mind too that he has already sold about 46% of it which will have been for more than he bought the club in the first place.

The sale and/or shareholders agreement will almost certainly contain a mechanic for valuing the remaining shares and it seems from what is reported (but who knows how accurate that is) that this takes account (as you might expect) which division we are in.

Without Orta not sure he had the energy or someone to rely on to do it all again and it definitely feels like the spell has broken and he doesn’t look so chipper these days. If he just wants out then no brainier and he will recover in total far more than he put in.

There are some things he can take credit for.

We have a much better training ground facility
The pitch is decent (remember the quagmire)
The shop and merchandise is a lot better
The match day experience (bar the football) is also a lot better
He has raised expectations of where we should be

The negative points we know all too well.