The reason for mentioning Sartori is that he is often used as a comparator to DE. The fact is that it is easy to make promises, and much harder to deliver on them. DE has delivered roughly what he set out to do. He has made mistakes and the last year has not been great, but equally in contrast to recent times it has been far from bad.
The learn direct situation is interesting but is not comparable to Oxford in my view. The player sales have given DE some money back, but the kind of returns he would want if he saw us as a cash cow. He could have cashed in on Ledson and Eastwood, kept Pep drifting through his contract and spent nothing on Brannagan and Dickie. But he has put his hand in his pocket or sought the funding support of others. Either way, we as a club benefit.
Eh? There are differences of interpretation and then there is just delusion/lying (depending on intent).
There is no doubt that Ensco backed Ashton's vision until Ashton left. Over two years, 4.5 million was 'invested' over and above the 4 million spent buying the club.
Since Ashton left, the clear financials have been very, very different. Net, around 4 million has left the club.
Bringing in a chap who can't make the Reading squad is not 'putting his hand in his pocket' or not in any meaningful way. The total paid for Brannegan and Dickie was about 70k. 4 million goes out and 70k comes in and you call that 'sticking his hand in his pocket' ? Words fail me.
Even before Johnson got flogged (after a two month auction, by the way) the club had net receivables of well over 2 million. The hand certainly went to the pocket but never re-emerged!
This is all fine. Why should someone who put 4 million in not get 4 million back?
But please not let anyone pretend simultaneously that an effort was being made to improve the squad to make a real effort for the championship.
On the point about my supposed bitterness, maybe I am a little bitter. Not because I wanted to own or run the club. I couldn't afford to do either! But just imagine, for a moment, that you found someone with 20 million quid to invest in a League 1 club and brought him to OUFC. Might you feel just a little disappointed if, a week before the deal was due to close, it was stopped?
Frankly, if Tiger has 20 million to stick in then I will be upset if he is prevented from spending it on us!!
Stewart vetted Juan with all the care you would expect of someone who loves OUFC and ensured that the money was real and that he had proper football people around him.
So, Yes, disappointing that - at a stage when OUFC had positive momentum - it was deemed not in the interests of the club for Juan and Stewart to direct their considerable resources and energy to complete the job that WPL and Ensco had started. And all the more frustrating, once that decision had been made, to see things needlessly disintegrate 'in the interests of the club'.
Any fan who is not frustrated right now puzzles me deeply. People talk about this being 'consolidation'. It is not consolidation to have your worst ever result.its not consolidation to sack a manager after six months, but be left with his useless players. It's not consolidation to be humiliated in all three cup competitions.
If MK Dons win one game in hand then we are 5 points off the relegation places. We then have 11 of the 12 best sides in the division to play over the course of the next 17 games (We have already played a bunch of bottom end teams twice). So we need to start getting points against teams in the top 10. Perhaps someone can tell me when we last did that. There is a lot of sleepwalking going on.....
With Pep going I was kind of expecting we may hear about a take-over, a new manager with some signings lined up but it seems it wasn't THE sign. Feels like DE is finding it rather more difficult to sell a club than buy one and especially one where recent performances have been awful and the feel-good is in decline - it's a different feel to 2 or 3 games into the season when we were playing with purpose. I am now thinking we will take Faz until year end, probably lose Lego and Roth and hold on to Eastwood - I don't think we will spend though or bring anyone in. We have some youngsters like Carol, Napa etc and I think they might all be thrown in at the deep end in the hope they perform alongside those returning from injury. There are a lot of players with a lot to prove although under Pep they were being asked to play a different role each week and not all of them are very good out of position. There are enough bad teams in the league luckily that we ought to stay up, although right now I cannot see where we might get our next point, but DE might now be seeing it as a prelude to a fire sale and will just aim to keep the ship afloat (unless the fans really P**s him off) and sell it ASAP and cut his losses. We have to be careful who comes in. We do not want to be a discarded toy of a billionaire after 3m (although without one we are condemned to 2nd or 3rd tier mediocrity) so I understand DE wanting to protect the long term interests, but it may be that we don't see ANY new players coming in or a new manager until season end/the club is sold. Just a gut feeling. Hold on to your hats. After the U21 show though I hope that it has brought things into perspective. We were slaughtered - they caught us at a good time but slaughtered - when there is such a huge gulf in ability like that, it had me scratching my head about whether it really mattered whether we bought exciting players we perceived as being essential, other than to have created a more appealing aesthetic and with it false hope. I asked myself what the point would be, if I were DE, of throwing £10m at getting us up. He would have to spend £20m next year just to keep us there. That isn't reasonable for us to expect him to do and not what he bought into. He has achieved what he set out to do and he knows it is a rich mans game from here onward. We clearly have a long way to go to be able to compete with Championship clubs and £10m probably doesn't cut it - we would either have to sign people on a one year contract or players who could play Championship and above. The current model dissolves. We now know that we are miles behind even the academies of the Premiership. I think for many football supporters us losing 3-0 to Chelsea was equally as depressing as it was for us and brought home the sheer hopelessness of expectation of any small club hoping to one day box big. We might get promoted in the next 3 or 4 years, probably via the playoffs, and with that comes more TV money etc but does anyone really think we then go up to the Premiership any time soon? It is unfortunately going to be a long slog just to tread water and as we do so the money and talent gap ever widens. We will never ever see a full strength Premiership team fielded to play a minnow in a cup tie. Giant killing is a thing of the past. The name of the game for DE is consolidation and keeping the fans interested when things aren't running smoothly on the pitch, which may be for most of the time for a bit. As a chairman surely DE will balance the books and look to cash out at any opportunity. If attendances go down he will be forced to sell players so we need him as much as he needs us. Fans calls for a cash injection and rapid transfer activity will I fear fall upon deaf ears. Football is not losing out from seeing an otherwise world beating Oxford United side who have just been crying out to sign a decent striker!!. Lets be patient. 2 fwd, 4 sideways 1 back ....and repeat......shambles? everyone is doing it
