Home Match Day Thread +++ 01/02/2020 L1 OUFC V Blackpool FC +++

That the Fos/Bap decision wasn't financial

Unable to answer question regarding Buy out clause

A lot of waffle and non committal generalisation about how the club is being managed.

Vocabulary.com defines drival as boring, nonsensical or useless information.

So I'd say my description was on the money.

It’s spelt ‘drivel’. Thought the Vice Chairman spoke well enough actually. Jerome Sale raised an interesting point though surrounding non enforceability of release clauses in the days leading up to transfer deadline though. To which the VC was non commital .

To which the earthy response is if Fosu wanted to go he was going to go. And I bet he did.
 
I thought he spoke well and sounded straightforward. He said that the players were sold to cover costs for things like the training ground. I appreciated his honesty though I was disappointed at his low key attitude to promotion.

Which was more low key than previous occasions, in my opinion.

I appreciate folks would have heard the interview in different ways. My views on the board will be on their actions going forward, not what they say.
 
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Which was more low key than previous occasions, in my opinion.

I appreciate folks would have heard the interview in different ways. My views on the board will be on their actions going forward, not what they say.
It’s clear to me the board didn’t expect/want promotion this season as they aren’t financially capable of sustaining lChampionship football yet. Our recent success has taken them by surprise and now it’s slightly embarrassing for them. Perhaps the aim was for a big effort next year. What many supporters feel, of course, is that it will be a missed opportunity. Hanging onto our best players will be very difficult if we don’t get promotion this season unfortunately.
 
I really don't get the "don't want/can't afford promotion" idea. From as early as August, Tiger, Zaki and KR were all saying the target was promotion. After last season, most of us would have settled for a good, solid, upper mid-table season. So why talk of promotion if it wasn't a real target?

As for being able to support us financially in the Championship, it depends on how much they would want to compete. Rotherham have bounced up and down for the last few years without spending large amounts. In fact they have used the additional revenue from the Championship to build a decent squad that looks likely to run away with league 1.

The gap between the leagues is pretty big with most relegated teams being strong enough to go straight up, but then struggle in the Championship. So going up and immediately being successful, and competing financially, wouldn't need to be the plan.

Yes, the message coming from the club has been different in recent weeks but that can just be about managing expectations. It doesn't mean that anyone has given up or targets have changed. It's just the old "take one game at a time" scenario, which isn't such a bad thing.
 
Long and Sykes were very good and have both come on leaps and bounds (well done them and coaching staff)
Gorrin to me was outstanding. He does so much work and limits the other teams chances.
And Browne of course. He was very good last season ( I remember at their place Sunderland players chopping him down at every opportunity as they couldn't cope with him). So far this season, from what I have seen, he seems an even better player. Over the past few seasons we have been privileged to see some excellent young players.
We are lucky to have KR.
Players like Fosu and Browne seem to really trust him and his methods.

Sykes’s improvement isn’t going unnoticed atm!
 
I really don't get the "don't want/can't afford promotion" idea. From as early as August, Tiger, Zaki and KR were all saying the target was promotion. After last season, most of us would have settled for a good, solid, upper mid-table season. So why talk of promotion if it wasn't a real target?

As for being able to support us financially in the Championship, it depends on how much they would want to compete. Rotherham have bounced up and down for the last few years without spending large amounts. In fact they have used the additional revenue from the Championship to build a decent squad that looks likely to run away with league 1.

The gap between the leagues is pretty big with most relegated teams being strong enough to go straight up, but then struggle in the Championship. So going up and immediately being successful, and competing financially, wouldn't need to be the plan.

Yes, the message coming from the club has been different in recent weeks but that can just be about managing expectations. It doesn't mean that anyone has given up or targets have changed. It's just the old "take one game at a time" scenario, which isn't such a bad thing.

Whenever I hear comments from the board they don’t tend to mention the word promotion. In fact, they seem to insinuate they’ll be happy if we’re in and around the play offs. Not sure if this is to takeaway the expectation/pressure off the team/management or their true want, but the latter would seem more likely based on the last couple of weeks.

My personal opinion is, I don’t think all the ducks are in a row (go ahead for new stadium so that the real money men e.g. not Tiger on his own) for them to want to get truly involved financially, hence we fleet in and around the play offs/have good cup runs to maximise our income, but ultimately will just fall short. Hope I’m wrong though.

And if I had to guess a bit further, Karl is/was disappointed with the board’s lack of support/ambition in the latter weeks of the transfer window, but is determined to still want to get promotion with the squad he has, hence comments before Saturday’s game along the lines of “the team are going to give it their all, more than ever to win the game”, and his reaction after the game.

We all know Karl is very emotive, but Saturday he went up another notch or two as if to stick up two fingers which if I had to guess was directed at the board.

He’ll move on (emotionally) because that’s what he does, but he was and probably still is mightily pissed off.
 
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Karl is quoted as saying to the squad “it’s us against the world!”
I wonder what drives him to say that other than just cold motivation?
There is more to that than meets the eye I am sure.
 
Whenever I hear comments from the board they don’t tend to mention the word promotion. In fact, they seem to insinuate they’ll be happy if we’re in and around the play offs. Not sure if this is to takeaway the expectation/pressure off the team/management or their true want, but the latter would seem more likely based on the last couple of weeks.

My personal opinion is, I don’t think all the ducks are in a row (go ahead for new stadium so that the real money men e.g. not Tiger on his own) for them to want to get truly involved financially, hence we fleet in and around the play offs/have good cup runs to maximise our income, but ultimately will just fall short. Hope I’m wrong though.

And if I had to guess a bit further, Karl is/was disappointed with the board’s lack of support/ambition in the latter weeks of the transfer window, but is determined to still want to get promotion with the squad he has, hence comments before Saturday’s game along the lines of “the team are going to give it their all, more than ever to win the game”, and his reaction after the game.

We all know Karl is very emotive, but Saturday he went up another notch or two as if to stick up two fingers which if I had to guess was directed at the board.

He’ll move on (emotionally) because that’s what he does, but he was and probably still is mightily pissed off.
Yes, to me Zaki did NOT sound excited by the idea of promotion this season. His rhetoric was more a ‘shrug of the shoulders’.
 
It’s spelt ‘drivel’. Thought the Vice Chairman spoke well enough actually. Jerome Sale raised an interesting point though surrounding non enforceability of release clauses in the days leading up to transfer deadline though. To which the VC was non commital .

To which the earthy response is if Fosu wanted to go he was going to go. And I bet he did.
There was a post on here that suggested Fosu had accidentally made it known he wanted to leave via WhatsApp a couple of months back. So, if he wanted to go, he wanted to go and his play recently has been ok to good, but lacked the fizz it had earlier on.

It's sadly rather simple when players have a release clause in the contract, someone meets it and they want to go.
 
You don't play in goal for Warrenpoint Town do you Bazzer?
Joking aside @Marked Ox ibe called for KR to go in the past and tiger has the patience of a saint as 95% of the chairman would have got rid, am I glad tiger has the patience of a saint? Off course i am am I i patient? Yes I am. Why am I? It’s because I want to along with 1000,s of other OUFC fans see our club in the Championship.
Can we afford it? Probably not. Tiger has to be bold take risks by going for promotion, promotion has its drawbacks for small clubs like ours, but there is another small club who seemed to have coped...Reading. I would have thought tiger would look at what they’ve done Seen the possibilities with promotion and seen how to get round the pitfalls with the debt that could be accrued being in the championship, surely tiger and the board would have looked at the sponsorship and investment we would have got if we were promoted.

As for the t**t gobbing off at KR bet he hasn’t seen the championship or the old Div 2 as he wasn’t probably born, I think he has to count himself lucky if he doesn’t get banned, the little gobshite.

I moan and groan but I will still be there come hell or high water!
 
As a hypothetical, if we WERE to go up, and in the summer the board were to say, we’re literally not in a position as a club (lack of stadium ownership, delayed rewards of an improved youth setup etc) to sustain in that division and so we’re not going to break the bank with signings and we fully expect to come straight back down, would people be happy with that / accept it?

I think as disappointing as it would be I would be. We have to be realistic. But I suspect the board would be reluctant to make that kind of statement, and many on here would be livid if they did so. So while I don’t buy into this idea that ‘The board don’t want us to succeed’, you can see why they’re perhaps trying to temper expectations a bit (if indeed that is what is happening).
 
As a hypothetical, if we WERE to go up, and in the summer the board were to say, we’re literally not in a position as a club (lack of stadium ownership, delayed rewards of an improved youth setup etc) to sustain in that division and so we’re not going to break the bank with signings and we fully expect to come straight back down, would people be happy with that / accept it?

I think as disappointing as it would be I would be. We have to be realistic. But I suspect the board would be reluctant to make that kind of statement, and many on here would be livid if they did so. So while I don’t buy into this idea that ‘The board don’t want us to succeed’, you can see why they’re perhaps trying to temper expectations a bit (if indeed that is what is happening).

The main issue *appears* to be a contradiction in statements. At the start of the window and prior we were being told we had lots of targets for each position, KR was urging us to ‘act big’ and we didn’t have to sell. That’s all wonderful, until the last 72hrs on January.

If we are limited in what we can do, then fine...probably best not to make big optimistic statements. Especially when it’s transpired that realistically, with operating losses of 3mill a year, we do need to sell...which once again is ok and a perfectly sensible way to run the club...just don’t say we don’t have to sell. It’s comes across a bit incompetent and an element of just saying what they think the fan base want to hear.

Whilst the Zaki interview didn’t contain what we wanted (iemoney to spend etc) at least he is being straight up with the reality of the situation...which I think is what the fans want. It was a stick or twist window, we have appeared to have chosen to stick whilst giving the impression we were going to twist.
 
Well done mate give yourself a pat on the back and keep wallowing in your negative sanctimonious bubble.
The club is in the greatest position it’s been in in decades and all you want to do it undermine it.
b****r off

Yes, b****r off, how dare you give an opinion on a forum, this is 2005 you know. This forum wasn't set up simply for you to give an honest assessment of whats going on at the moment. These true supporters, who do they think they are?????
 
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