Stewart Donald anyone.....

Enjoyed both series but funny how Oxford seemed to hardly exist. No coverage of our match up there last season. Didn't show the goals (just the score) from the match at our place. To cap it all we were referred to as Charlie's "hometown club" when they were discussing the Trophy final and what they might make. Deliberate or not?
 
Ricky Otto said:
Charlie when trying to hit the crowd number record. He spoke poorly to that marketing lady and I’m sure he’d retract it if he could. It was emotional, in the moment, but very wrong.
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You know, I don't want to set myself up as #1 Charlie defender on here - but I don't even think that scene was completely out of order.
They'd been working on fan marketing for an entire month to break the League One attendance record - they'd succeeded and in five minutes he was going to go out in front of a packed Stadium of Light to announce that, and needs a rough attendance figure, and she's "If we get it, we get it.....". OK, he could have done without the swearing, but she absolutely deserved an earful for that!

I thought the worst part was when he made her go and fetch him a beer. Come on, man - she's your Marketing and Communications Manager, not your frickin' butler!!
 
outsidethebox said:
Enjoyed both series but funny how Oxford seemed to hardly exist. No coverage of our match up there last season. Didn't show the goals (just the score) from the match at our place. To cap it all we were referred to as Charlie's "hometown club" when they were discussing the Trophy final and what they might make. Deliberate or not?
Click to expand...

To be fair it is called Sunderland Till I Die not Oxford Till I Die. It would be a bit weird if they heavily focused on our games over anyone else’s. Especially when we weren't even one of their promotion rivals.
 
Ricky Otto said:
Stewart with the last minute purchase but having said that if they got promoted the editorial is all different and he’s a genius. He has clearly, as he stated , built his businesses using his gut a little bit and this was a roll of the dice that failed.
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And while I'm at it....

.....I guess when it comes down to it, I can't stand bosses that micro-manage and/or won't delegate authority.

He employed two experienced football men in Richard Hill and Jack Ross, and then ignored and went over the top of both of them - despite having no football league experience himself other than watching from the stands.

If your gut tells you to ignore the counsel of the people you've hired who know a great deal more about the game than you do - well, I think a good owner comes to his senses and ignores that.
 
tonyw said:
And while I'm at it....

.....I guess when it comes down to it, I can't stand bosses that micro-manage and/or won't delegate authority.

He employed two experienced football men in Richard Hill and Jack Ross, and then ignored and went over the top of both of them - despite having no football league experience himself other than watching from the stands.

If your gut tells you to ignore the counsel of the people you've hired who know a great deal more about the game than you do - well, I think a good owner comes to his senses and ignores that.
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Like Tiger listening to KR about Chris Cadden and the silly money that Columbus Crew wanted.
 
Just finished S2 - some absolutely delicious scenes of high-profile failure in there, particularly at Wembley. Great viewing. What really strikes me is how intensely unlikeable everything about the club seems to be, despite the emotional attachment you would have thought two years of 'access all areas' series would give you as a viewer. The fans, the people, even the players - you're never really rooting for them at all.
 
This was an interesting read. 11 pages that I wouldn’t have got through if it weren’t for quarantine appetite to find time fillers.

‘Methven til I die’...

Just binge watched his last series, he played a blinder do our Charlie!
www.readytogo.net www.readytogo.net

Generally speaking Methven appears to have the majority of the Mackems backing him and in favor of what he was doing to resolve the financial disaster and breathe some life in to a morbid back office crew. They also acknowledge he comes across as a dick at times but it appears to have changed their view on him to an extent. This thread is actually quite credible to see the “year 2 of our conference journey” kind of recognition and humility of who they have become particularly in the latter pages.

Its certainly an enjoyable series. I thinkmany fans recognized they wanted to make some money but genuinely wanted to do this through success on the field and taking a sinking set of assets, making them leaner and more productive , then shipping the asset on when time was right. Their passion was pretty genuine in my opinion. For Charlie it’s what drives his interest and gung ho aggression.For Stewart it made him vulnerable to his emotions, desire to be liked, desire to please (pretty much the sole reason for the Griggs disaster in my opinion) and his over reactions to criticism on Twitter (I use that term loosely as I think I’d react similar but I recall him being a bit emotionally defensive on here a few times when he felt an injustice of the truth or his intent)
 
tonyw said:
And while I'm at it....

.....I guess when it comes down to it, I can't stand bosses that micro-manage and/or won't delegate authority.

He employed two experienced football men in Richard Hill and Jack Ross, and then ignored and went over the top of both of them - despite having no football league experience himself other than watching from the stands.

If your gut tells you to ignore the counsel of the people you've hired who know a great deal more about the game than you do - well, I think a good owner comes to his senses and ignores that.
Click to expand...

i agree although I wouldn’t call it micro management or failure to delegate in the classic sense. Just the inability to not want to then re-engage when he needed to permit space, maybe thats semantics but it didn’t feel like a suffocating management just an over enthusiasm
 
tonyw said:
You know, I don't want to set myself up as #1 Charlie defender on here - but I don't even think that scene was completely out of order.
They'd been working on fan marketing for an entire month to break the League One attendance record - they'd succeeded and in five minutes he was going to go out in front of a packed Stadium of Light to announce that, and needs a rough attendance figure, and she's "If we get it, we get it.....". OK, he could have done without the swearing, but she absolutely deserved an earful for that!

I thought the worst part was when he made her go and fetch him a beer. Come on, man - she's your Marketing and Communications Manager, not your frickin' butler!!
Click to expand...

did we ever actually see him ask for a beer? It’s pretty small fry stuff really but it just seemed like she was grumbling about it. I may have missed it but he may have just said where can I get a beer round here and she volunteered. Who knows.

with regard the half time incident your opinion is widely echoed by the Mackems. All I’d say is I’m not quite sure he’d set clear expectations in advance of the goal and her indifference was frustrating as hell but he’s doing it in front of everyone rather than behind closed doors. Which humiliates her. So regardless of the fact she’s pretty much useless (from Netflix editing) it’s poor tone from the top.
 
outsidethebox said:
Enjoyed both series but funny how Oxford seemed to hardly exist. No coverage of our match up there last season. Didn't show the goals (just the score) from the match at our place. To cap it all we were referred to as Charlie's "hometown club" when they were discussing the Trophy final and what they might make. Deliberate or not?
Click to expand...

Did you see the snippets of historic footage when SD was talking about us? Our home game against them was also covered with equal attention to the other games played by Sunderland that season. So really, other than Portsmouth (because they played them so many times that season) we got the most coverage really...

I'm not sure what you were expecting? An episode solely reserved for Oxford United? We did nothing of interest that season so the coverage we did get was more than generous enough, really.
 
Marked Ox said:
Head of Recruitment/Scouting I think.
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Not a particularly great head of recruitment if your only option is to go big on an aging player in the final minutes of the window. How they found themselves in that situation is madness - considering they knew pretty early Maja's agent was in all likelihood trying to move Maja abroad.
 
Agreed . The sale of Maja seemed inevitable. That wasn’t the mistake as they risked a free transfer in the summer. The mistake was not having multiple appropriate options available to plug the gap and making a choice based on fear and emotion to fix it.


Easy for all of us with hindsight and a Netflix series though. I’m pretty good at Championship Manager 1998 version for the record
 
Ricky Otto said:
Agreed . The sale of Maja seemed inevitable. That wasn’t the mistake as they risked a free transfer in the summer. The mistake was not having multiple appropriate options available to plug the gap and making a choice based on fear and emotion to fix it.


Easy for all of us with hindsight and a Netflix series though. I’m pretty good at Championship Manager 1998 version for the record
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Or to simply accept Maja was off, but knowing that the goals he was scoring would likely get them promoted and not add a significant debt to a club that has struggled with money for a long, long time.
 
From watching STID it appears that Stew and Charlie went in with the idea of stopping Sunderland being a place where players took the P**s - e.g. Rodwell as the most obvious example. I think that is why they wanted Maja out of the door for as much money as they could get as early in the 2019 winter window as possible once they knew he wouldn't sign a new contract and could walk away for nothing in the summer.
Ironically, for the right reasons they did themselves over by either not selling Maja and keeping his goals until the end of the season, or at least keeping him at the club and refusing to sell him until they already had a replacement signed on.
As Ricky said it's easy to be wise in hindsight and I'm sure they learnt a great deal from that deadline day.
 
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