The Chairman speaks out

[mygiddypant]

I can't find fault with Stewart's statement. It's a summary of a disappointing season with the intent to review the reasons for it.

Some may believe that they know the answers to the questions. I don't. I have to trust the people with responsibility for the parts that make the whole.

Stewart's responsibility is to oversee the whole, within the constraint of a budget, presumably determined by the performance of his main business.

Would I wish it to be better? Obviously, who wouldn't. A far richer benefactor, or benefactors, would be an improvement. The problems are bleeding obvious.

Finding solutions is less so.

I don't know why I've written this. I don't feel any better for having done so.

[Timbertop]

Amazed by the number of people on here willing to accept Stewart’s latest platitudes. I am done putting money into this club until we have new owners and l know,just from my own contacts, of at least 30 people who will not be renewing season tickets. If Phil Smith is fronting new ownership he needs to be going public pretty quickly.

[Tigerish]

His mistake was giving Hamshaw a three year contract rather than a one year one. Why did this happen? After doing this (when he didn't have to) he then had to hope Hamshaw would turn a corner and the club (ie Stewart) wouldn't end up having to pay his remaining years off. Ditto for previous managers. That's Stewart's personal lesson to be learned

[UlleyMiller]

Does TS need to say anything? No.
Do people have to trust him? No.
Will the club survive if he leaves? Probably.
Will it survive if he stays. Most likely.
Is the business model working? Not optimally.
Is the football model working? No.
Are season tickets too high? Yes and no*.

* In a world where premium stuff costs more, better placed seats should cost more than those with a shi* view. It's absurd that this is continually overlooked... much like the nonsense approach to safe standing.

[Old_time_miller]

Does TS need to say anything? No.
Do people have to trust him? No.
Will the club survive if he leaves? Probably.
Will it survive if he stays. Most likely.
Is the business model working? Not optimally.
Is the football model working? No.
Are season tickets too high? Yes and no*.

* In a world where premium stuff costs more, better placed seats should cost more than those with a shi* view. It's absurd that this is continually overlooked... much like the nonsense approach to safe standing.

Hang on a minute. With this board they would likely RAISE the price of so called premium seats, not lower the ones high up a corner.
Currently, i’d say we all have a bad view!

[UlleyMiller]

Hang on a minute. With this board they would likely RAISE the price of so called premium seats, not lower the ones high up a corner.
Currently, i’d say we all have a bad view!

Any view has been a bad view the past two and a bit seasons.

To be fair, if a seat is central and in a side stand, it's likely had a season ticket held by the same person for over a decade. There should be little complaint about that being the highest price, or going up a few quid annually. By the same token, the seats in the far corners which sit empty for 23 fixtures should be cheap as chips... what do the club actually lose? The whole thing just seems ridiculous, and is most likely one of the reasons we'll never see an expansion.

[Old_time_miller]

TS says "a full post-mortem of the season will be required". Very true, but who will be appointed as the independent coroner?
I am not confident that an in-house investigation will end up with any significant reforms.

Of course it won?t.
The statement contradicts itself. Twice saying injuries being not the sole issue, copping out on anything else. If they don?t know at this stage what the other reasons are, then that is real trouble. You may say they or he doesn?t want to say. Fair enough.

We all know a tight reign is kept on money, but debt to his company is still there and mounting. How in recent years that has risen whilst wasting money on poor performing high wage earning players is quite obviously key.

The football side affected by bad decisions for too long is where we are at, and whilst I don?t expect him to admit it most of us understand the link and can see it.

And what has he done? Bring Smith in for admin cost cutting, organising. Changing ways which won?t make much difference, but good PR. Well, not actually as it won?t right what has been misspent, where it counts. On the field.

[Old_time_miller]

I’ll go further. He does not know what really counts. It is written all over it……he did not even start in the right way.
Abrupt. Millers Supporters.
Fellow supporters, Dear supporters…..nah. Lack of approach and throughout shows

[KerrAvon]

A few random thoughts:

1. I am glad that the club issued a statement, irrespective of when it was written (the writing has been on the wall for a while and it would be surprising if thought had not been given to its content in recent weeks).

2. Stewart is criticised when he speaks and is criticised when he does not. I don’t recall him ever being particularly visible and am not surprised by that. He is self-evidently not the most eloquent of individuals and is not a natural public speaker. That isn’t a criticism – we all have different skills.

3. The current business set up and personnel were in place when the club was punching above its natural weight in the Championship and so, on the face of that history, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them. I agree with Ulley that a degree of complacency may have set in and a freshen up is overdue, which may explain Smith’s arrival.

4. If supporters don’t wish to buy season tickets for the next campaign, then that is matter for them. They are, of course, entitled to make their own judgements about how their money is used. Spare a thought for Tony Stewart in that regard, however. The accounts speak to the amount of money he has put into the club with it being very far from certain that he will ever see it again.

5. Warne built teams of honest hard-working players who gave their all – so call ‘good people’. He did so within the financial reality in which Rotherham United operates and probably took the club as far as it can realistically go without an unlikely injection of a significant amount of cash.

6. Taylor either did not understand, or chose not to follow, the Warne philosophy. That was very visibly demonstrated by the dropping of Wood. Taylor was backed financially and failed.

7. Richardson didn’t stand a chance and, more importantly, wasn’t given a real chance. Of all the decisions made by Stewart, his sacking was the one that I would question the most. Football is rarely an instant success game and Richardson was not given the opportunity to build a team.

8. Stewart appointed Evans to try to bring a degree of success back to the club. I can understand that motive even though I was always sceptical about the prospect of it succeeding. Evans bought players with a track record of promotion from the third tier. My view was that he bought players, but didn’t buy a team. I also don’t think the team bought into him.

9. Hamshaw sought to follow the Warne philosophy, but there were some crucial differences between the conditions in which they were required to work. My understanding is that the player budget for Rotherham this season was a very modest 15th largest in League 1 (which may reflect the choppy financial waters that ASD has found itself in, as highlighted by Howdy). To add to that, a good deal of that budget is used upon a small number of players who were signed on relatively generous terms under earlier regimes. In other words, the real terms budget that Hamshaw was required to work under was significantly smaller than the notional 15th largest in the league.

10. Hamshaw’s response to the financial reality in which he was required to operate was to try to sign younger players that he believed that he could develop. That was not an unreasonable response – that he is a person who is perceived to have the ability to develop talent is probably demonstrated by the willingness of Manchester United and Leeds United to trust highly promising younger players with him.

11. It didn’t work out for Hamshaw and I am saddened by that. I would have preferred for him to have been given by another summer to recruit without the constraints imposed upon him by presence within the squad of expensive players from previous regimes. I appreciate that I am in a very small minority in holding that view, which is fair enough. It would be a boring world if we all agreed.

12. I hope that Stewart will stick with Clark even though he has not been able to get a tune out of the squad to date (although I wouldn’t be supposed if he gets some wins now that the pressure of a relegation has passed and we go into a number of ‘dead rubber’ games). The club needs someone in place for more than half a season who gets the opportunity to build and mould a team. In that regard, I would argue that Stewrat’s decision to keep Warne in place despite relegations bore fruit.

13. This coming summer is a crucial one – several members of the current squad will move on and the club will be in the unusual position of being seen as ‘bigger’ club in League 2 and so potentially an attractive destination for players

I am sorry for how wordy this post is. Writing it was a bit of therapy for me.

[Jocksgloves1]

I wouldn't argue with anything that Kerr wrote. Especially point number 11.
There's a concept that half a dozen shouty people on here represent the core feelings of the whole fan base. The guys I go to matches with and the people I sit round have all indicated that they will be there next season.
I've heard of a call for people to boycott the last match. Fair enough if you're of that mind-set. Losing is not pleasant. But, I take three grandkids, am I supposed to tell them to quit when life doesn't go perfectly?
League 4 is a opportunity to visit new venues and places. Hey, we may even have a decent season. God knows we're due one.