People don't make millions in business by either "winging it" or "chucking" money around ..several shareholders have even been involved in football at management level before but whether they trust KR's instincts too much to be good is another point. Though atm am sure he has pressure from many sides and if another club came with an offer can't blame him to be tempted.
I didn't mean to imply the or the board were winging it in terms of being successful businessmen - that would be silly! I agree that you don't make money by chucking it around willy-nilly.
But football is no ordinary business and virtually nobody expects it to be a profitable venture. The latest deloitte report on football details that only FOUR clubs in the Premiership recorded a pre-tax profit last year (Man City, Leeds, Sheff Utd and Wolves...who knew!) and that overall debt in the richest league in the world increased from £3.9bn to £4.1bn. And it included this nugget for L1: "The negative impact of the pandemic also meant average League One clubs’ wage costs of £5.5m surpassed revenue for the first time, with a wages-revenue ratio of 103%"
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...e-leads-european-footballs-financial-recovery. I very much suspect the revenue to wages ratio for OUFC may well be quite a bit above that, given the noises we hear on size of budget and contracts offered. The owners/investors know that there is no opportunity to grow the business as things stand to redress that imbalance and so they and the club will just take the hit until it can be put on a more sustainable footing....or that proves unachievable and they cut their losses.....(which is exponentially more scary than facing the rest of this season with the current squad!)
And whilst we may have directors who have been involved in football management in the past, it really doesn't look or feel like they are at this particular time with this particular club. Things are starting to get interesting on the SB front and maybe they have just hoped that KR would deliver again, with more money thrown in to hopefully shorten the odds on a top 6/top 2 finish. It does very much feel like "in Karl we trust" has been the mantra when it comes to footballing decisions because he's been a safe and relatively successful pair of hands (ie play off finishes, plus turning a profit on transfers through developing prospects etc etc), so maybe they haven't had to focus on it too much before now.
However, this season especially, the model seems to have gone wrong somewhat - missed targets, poor gambles on injury risks/young prospects and maybe the odd signing in desperation and even a lack of clarity on the best style/formation to play and recruit to, but we have never looked so thin or imbalanced as we do now in quite some time (and yes that imbalance has been building for multiple seasons now).
I do genuinely appreciate what KR has done, but I think he needs some help and some of the pressure taken off by getting more support with decision making on footballing matters...or maybe the club needs a fresh start......whether either of those things happen any time soon, or at all, is anyone's guess!
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