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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 11:01:48 GMT
There’s nobody holding the club to account. Jason pretty much takes commissions from the club; ‘season ticket sales not going well? Put in an order for a series of articles reminding fans ‘Why We Love City’. The Supporters Trust are inept and have lost all credibility with City fans. Of the rest most seem to be more concerned with their own standing and the perception fellow fans have of them as some sort of figurehead or totem than putting any form of pressure on the club. The whole ethos seems to be formulated around the notion that supporters support, no matter what. It’s #jgbtlffs sold as a product. There’s no pressure to perform because the feedback is filtered through people already on the books or people who so enjoy having the club tickle their balls they’re terrified of losing their standing. Not only that, but these same people will jump to attention and circle the wagons when anyone does start holding the club’s feet to the flames. They’re acting as agents for the club and have successfully steered the narrative for years now. We’re not supposed to be here. There’s nobody asking difficult questions of the club or its hierarchy and it creates an atmosphere of ‘it’ll do’ when it comes to formulating strategy. The only barometer of the popularity of their leadership left is season ticket sales and that’s skewed by the price. Maybe the whole reason for the cheap tickets is to give people who don’t want to be under any form of pressure something to hide behind. Season ticket sales are the thread by which all this hangs now and another couple of seasons of the dross we’ve suffered for too long now and that thread snaps. The club should recognise this and start demonstrating something to the fans that would show some form of long term direction that would at least buy them time. Instead we’ve got ‘Stuart’s iPad and more of the same to look forward to. You need a night out with Banrobantam princess
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Post by Hobhead on Aug 7, 2020 11:03:55 GMT
Nobody needs that. Nobody.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 11:05:46 GMT
Nobody needs that. Nobody. He reminds me of that guy Bradford Jesus. Always fucking smiling and waving.
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Post by Fat Ade on Aug 7, 2020 11:19:17 GMT
The fans need to force change and the club will have to listen if they aren’t happy with the potential of lower ticket sales. I am not saying that this is easy by any stretch of the imagination but even with a small amount of a demonstrable plan in place then people will back it....I would. Do you think we're in a better or worse position in general that when we went down in 2007? I reckon we're about the same, except now we have a Twitter account and an owner who has no interest in the club other that what interest he has on the loan we need to pay him... When we were relegated in 2019 we were like that chav lottery winner who blew everything - we had nothing to show for it. Now we're 13 long years from that original relegation and we have nothing. You can just see the next 5, 10, 15 years mirroring the efforts from 2007 - same approach to signings, training, scouting, development... Throw in a promotion and good seasons here and there but the foundations are weak as piss and the plan seems to be survive one season at a time. Putting up with nothing between 2007-2012, we we get promoted and start doing things the right way for 4-5 years, but all the while it was built on absolutely nothing - then it got found out at great cost. That's what hurts the fans the most, IMO. Nothing to show and back where we started. I’d arguably say that we are in a worse position now than back then. I never had the feeling that the Club were happy to just tread water back then but I definitely have that feeling now. My biggest gripe is that there is no plan (communicated at least) to improve things. I am not asking for bespoke training facilities, £10m players etc. we are unfortunately where we are but if things are going to improve than surely a plan should be mapped out on how we can improve. You are bang on about foundations being made of sand and I suspect that is why there are so many rumours about Rupp’s asking price being overinflated....if you were going into a meeting to make a purchase of several million pounds, then you’d surely want to see some sort of tangible asset other than some plastic seats and a diminishing customer book.
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Post by mikehunt on Aug 7, 2020 12:27:10 GMT
I think I know who I’d sooner trust, the guy that’s sat in the meetings rather than an anonymous Twitter account. This was all so fucking predictable. Straight off the bat it was obvious that penalising clubs for signings made before the rules came into force wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny and sure enough it turns out that any signings made before the cap would go through at the league average. This means that choosing to preemptively abide by the cap was to disadvantage ourselves by not being able to use our larger than average possible budget. This despite the club complaining that the implementation of the cap would disadvantage us as we wouldn’t be able to use our larger than average budget. So, we’re against the cap and will try to vote it down because it’s harmful to us as a club but we’ll choose to abide by an apparently harmful policy before it comes into effect because we fear the consequences of not doing so could be damaging. Then, to no one’s surprise, it turns out there can’t be detrimental consequences for breaking the cap before it exists but in the meantime we’ve allowed ourselves to be governed by it anyway despite the club openly saying it’s harmful to us. By following the path we did we ensured that no matter what happened the club was going to suffer. Now we find out that not only are the particulars flimsy and open to obvious challenge but the whole thing has been implemented without consulting the PFA which, in turn, gives grounds for legally declaring the entire policy null and void. How fucking shrewd were we? Getting our house in order before the cap came into effect was presented as the pragmatic approach when in reality we’ve put ourselves at a disadvantage to clubs that were quick to see and predict the loopholes and take advantage of them. Mansfield, for example, are riding roughshod over any future financial constraints while publicly saying they’ll vote for the salary cap. They appear to have been relying for a while now on a) any preemptive signings not being subject to the same financial limitations and b) other clubs being dumb enough to hold back and operate a wait and see policy. They seem to be gambling on two or three seasons of themselves and a handful of others outspending the rest of the league who are paralysed by the threat of future sanctions. It’s a form of short term, league-sanctioned and enforced financial doping. Shrewd? If they go up in the next two or three season it is but it’s definitely shrewder than sitting on their hands and following regulations that aren’t in place and that you, as a club, are apparently steadfastly against. This is the result of a club with a disinterested chairman seeing the cap as an opportunity to tighten the purse strings even further while laying the blame at the feet of the EFL and all the clubs voting for the cap. It’s also shortsighted in that our first reaction was to supinely follow regulations that aren’t in force when we ought to be motivated to look for ways to circumvent them by the fact that we are apparently so dead set against the regulations. It doesn’t look good. It looks to lack balls. What we’re effectively saying here is, we’re against the very idea of a cap and we’ll vote against it but, in the meantime, we’ll abide by it just in case it does come into force despite the fact that there’s glaring loopholes that even an ‘anonymous internet forum’ can spot inside the first five minutes of scrutiny. Whichever way you slice it this has been an embarrassing episode for the club and it’s exposed our lack of motivation. Our first instinct should have been to look for ways around the cap, instead we followed the rules just in case. It’s weak. The thing is, isn’t what you have just written be something that McKeown should have written at the time we started to hear about it. If he isn’t just a propaganda machine for the club, then surely you’d expect that he would be alerting the fans that the club at best have misunderstood or at worst are having the wool pulled over their eyes. For me, it’s more evidence he is part of the communication arm of the club and is another reason why we never seem to move forward. It’s the constant dumbing down of any opinion that doesn’t tow the party line when it is obvious that the current situation is damaging the club. The fans need to force change and the club will have to listen if they aren’t happy with the potential of lower ticket sales. I am not saying that this is easy by any stretch of the imagination but even with a small amount of a demonstrable plan in place then people will back it....I would. I’m not sure WOAP or McKeown are agents of the club, I think if you had say Sparks or Rhodes feeding him information for propaganda it would be even more amateur than I believe we are. I think it’s more along the lines of being popular with the club and fans. WOAP is critical of city, albeit not often enough IMO, and it’s often trying too hard to be balanced and offer excuses rather than an opinion what they should be doing. In my opinion it’s a lack of a questioning mindset. Any well run business needs to know and understand the rules of the field in which it operates. Once you understand the rules you can find a way to interpret them and find a way around them, or employ someone to do so for you. To me that City don’t seem to have done this, or got together with other clubs to do this, they should have been capable of knocking together the PFA document and presenting it to the EFL. Imagine if say 15 clubs in L1 and L2 said put this salary cap through and we’ll resign from the league, Ferrari do it in F1, the EFL would have had to backdown if a quarter of their membership told them they would leave. Or put more effort in to add to the PFA document and say we’ll sue you/get an injunction to delay it? Do you want to delay it or spend millions fighting us? It shows the same acceptance of the status quo that I think WOAP may have. I think there is a naivety or perhaps a fear of the EFL at City, forgetting that they are members of the league and should be a part of shaping its future. WOAP and especially Parker are seemingly incapable of putting together a coherent well argued criticism of the club. Where was the forensic dissection of the Rahic era before the wheels truly came off? To my opinion WOAP weighed in once it was clear Rahic was truly in trouble, I might be wrong I’m not looking back at dates. Without this they seem happy to drift along, chairman isn’t interested, CEO doesn’t want to be there, Sparks is trying. Stuart comes across an old football man, not a modern day man in to computer analysis and so on. Look at Bielsa and multiple page dossiers on an opposition’s third choice keeper. Success. Knowing who your replacements for each player and member of coaching staff are so you don’t end up with Guthrie. Things like that, that’s the difference between success and failure. There’s is nobody apart from TCA shouting about it.
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Aaron
Sparks is a cunt Bantam
Posts: 164
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Post by Aaron on Aug 7, 2020 12:32:15 GMT
...and it's official
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Post by mikehunt on Aug 7, 2020 12:48:00 GMT
And contracts signed before today count as an average. Who’d have thought it eh?
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Post by Fat Ade on Aug 7, 2020 12:48:22 GMT
The thing is, isn’t what you have just written be something that McKeown should have written at the time we started to hear about it. If he isn’t just a propaganda machine for the club, then surely you’d expect that he would be alerting the fans that the club at best have misunderstood or at worst are having the wool pulled over their eyes. For me, it’s more evidence he is part of the communication arm of the club and is another reason why we never seem to move forward. It’s the constant dumbing down of any opinion that doesn’t tow the party line when it is obvious that the current situation is damaging the club. The fans need to force change and the club will have to listen if they aren’t happy with the potential of lower ticket sales. I am not saying that this is easy by any stretch of the imagination but even with a small amount of a demonstrable plan in place then people will back it....I would. I’m not sure WOAP or McKeown are agents of the club, I think if you had say Sparks or Rhodes feeding him information for propaganda it would be even more amateur than I believe we are. I think it’s more along the lines of being popular with the club and fans. WOAP is critical of city, albeit not often enough IMO, and it’s often trying too hard to be balanced and offer excuses rather than an opinion what they should be doing. In my opinion it’s a lack of a questioning mindset. Any well run business needs to know and understand the rules of the field in which it operates. Once you understand the rules you can find a way to interpret them and find a way around them, or employ someone to do so for you. To me that City don’t seem to have done this, or got together with other clubs to do this, they should have been capable of knocking together the PFA document and presenting it to the EFL. Imagine if say 15 clubs in L1 and L2 said put this salary cap through and we’ll resign from the league, Ferrari do it in F1, the EFL would have had to backdown if a quarter of their membership told them they would leave. Or put more effort in to add to the PFA document and say we’ll sue you/get an injunction to delay it? Do you want to delay it or spend millions fighting us? It shows the same acceptance of the status quo that I think WOAP may have. I think there is a naivety or perhaps a fear of the EFL at City, forgetting that they are members of the league and should be a part of shaping its future. WOAP and especially Parker are seemingly incapable of putting together a coherent well argued criticism of the club. Where was the forensic dissection of the Rahic era before the wheels truly came off? To my opinion WOAP weighed in once it was clear Rahic was truly in trouble, I might be wrong I’m not looking back at dates. Without this they seem happy to drift along, chairman isn’t interested, CEO doesn’t want to be there, Sparks is trying. Stuart comes across an old football man, not a modern day man in to computer analysis and so on. Look at Bielsa and multiple page dossiers on an opposition’s third choice keeper. Success. Knowing who your replacements for each player and member of coaching staff are so you don’t end up with Guthrie. Things like that, that’s the difference between success and failure. There’s is nobody apart from TCA shouting about it. You make a fair point and I agree there is a lack of a questioning mindset. That’s quite remarkable since I’ve seen him claim to be the more considered voice of the fans and I’d expect that questioning would be part of that. I also agree that there seems to be an effort not to rock the boat as to keep him in the good books with the Club. If we are suggesting that then, in my words, is WOAP just an ego trip/vanity project for McKeown? That his claims to being a “more considered voice of the fans” are hollow when the intention is just to pat himself on the back or to hoover up likes?
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Post by moshimoshi on Aug 7, 2020 13:11:51 GMT
And contracts signed before today count as an average. Who’d have thought it eh? If only someone, somewhere could have foreseen this scenario.
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Post by tetchyarse on Aug 7, 2020 13:30:32 GMT
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53696424Contracts signed before the vote are based on divisional average. Clubs that are relegated have contracts based on their new divisional average. Who'd have seen that one coming, eh? Certainly not Bolton, who got their expensive business done early. Course it means that the three teams coming down from the Championship now have a huge head-start and it makes getting promoted to the Championship all the more difficult. Not that that effects us as it'll be years before we're that high in League One again.
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Post by Dick on Aug 7, 2020 14:13:11 GMT
Ryan, now, to himself - 'FFS lads, we need to that away shirt online this afternoon, ASAP... Hurry the fuck up with that promo vid and the Twitter graphics - we need to deflect from the Salary Cap story..."
I bet in the various positions he holds he talk to himself like Smeagol and Gollem from Lord of the Rings.
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Aaron
Sparks is a cunt Bantam
Posts: 164
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Post by Aaron on Aug 7, 2020 15:31:20 GMT
Has the potential to end up becoming a messy one at this rate
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Post by Dick on Aug 7, 2020 15:38:20 GMT
I've wondered if this is the Championship trying to break away from L1/L2/EFL by stealth. Like the PL in 1992, they know the value of their product and potential riches of the promised land. Also, is it really practical so have so many professional clubs, even outside the top 4 divisions, and other strong semi-pro clubs as well?
Isn't it something like the 5-6th most popular league in Europe? That's very marketable...
I know it was the clubs themselves that voted this way, but with other suggestions and decisions in recent years - B Teams, U23 teams, fees for young players etc - it wouldn't surprise me if they had a hand in this somehow, with their potential vested interest.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 16:05:37 GMT
Has the potential to end up becoming a messy one at this rate Good old PFA all over stuff like this but when some of their members stuff cigars out on players faces or kill folk drink driving they are nowhere to be seen.
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Post by Hobhead on Aug 7, 2020 16:19:06 GMT
Has the potential to end up becoming a messy one at this rate At the very least this could delay things for a long time. Let’s all be grateful we acted as early and decisively as well did.
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Post by benitocarbone on Aug 7, 2020 21:01:07 GMT
It’ll be even more ridiculous if/when we let Vaughan go now. We’ll be able to spend less on his replacement which will be compounded by us subsidising his wages at Tranmere. This would be the ultimate way for us to “out city” ourselves once and for all.
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Post by Dick on Aug 7, 2020 21:10:56 GMT
Let's say Vaughan goes, and as like in the past we pay a chunk of his wage because we're desperate to get rid
Does that count towards our salary cap or theirs? You would think theirs, but we are Bradford City after all.
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Post by Hoochy on Aug 7, 2020 21:37:58 GMT
Let's say Vaughan goes, and as like in the past we pay a chunk of his wage because we're desperate to get rid Does that count towards our salary cap or theirs? You would think theirs, but we are Bradford City after all. Both?
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Post by rahicscissorbudget on Aug 8, 2020 10:57:54 GMT
I’m not convinced this workaround is actually workable. If you have a big squad all on contracts above the divisional average signed before this comes in, you are automatically in breach. So almost all relegated champ clubs will be in breach. They can’t just cancel players contracts, because then they’ll get sued by the players. This is such a mess.
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Post by Hobhead on Aug 8, 2020 16:17:59 GMT
Is it right this cap includes player bonuses? If so how do you budget for things like goal, win and clean sheet bonuses? How are you supposed to predict how many you’ll be paying out? Also, assuming this is true, it’s no wonder the PFA want to get involved.
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