Hootnow sums up my feelings on Levy and Enic. I can accept they have done a brilliant job but ultimately I support the club because of family connections and because I want the club to win trophies. I don’t support them and get overjoyed when I see balance sheets or the training ground so in that sense I do find the level of fandom towards them rather baffling. I fully accept they don’t go out on the pitch so in many ways they cannot directly impact how the team performs on the pitch but the other “big 6” clubs have won trophies plural over the last decade which is the main reason why I support a football club, to see them win things.
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@Hootnow miss the point
- No one is fanboying our balance sheet, what people are appreciating is the club has been managed in a way that has allowed us to overcome a massive financial disparity that ENIC/Levy inherited, get good results and close that gap to where we have now passed the Scum and Chelsea fiscally for the first time in multiple decades. This is very important as a future indicator of our ability to meet those ambitions that you talk about (winning things).
- The other clubs had not only in year advantage in revenue, but cumulative advantage (e.g. Scum earned CL revenue for over 16+ seasons in a row), that plus the draw of "guaranteed" CL participation was a massive disadvantage as a starting point
- Poch is irrelevant (I'm sorry and yes people will get angry because people fanboy him more than Levy), he is just another manager in a line of managers that so far have each improved on the predecessor's results, while I am glad for what he achieved and the feeling he created around the club, the fact that it is almost a linear improvement of results in 19 years means it's not "only" the manager, add in, BMJ, Harry, AVB and Poch (so far) have had the best managerial results of their careers here, tends to indicate it's the platform they are given
Again, do we want to win trophies = yes
Do we want to be flavor of the week = no, Wolves, Everton, Leicester (yes, even with this season), whoever, all have one off seasons where they challenge, maybe even win something but it is not a sustainable platform.
Manchester United is the biggest threat in this league, because this summer they could go hire a decent coach and spend 500M on players and still not be at risk financially, and they could do it again the following year until they get it right, thank fudge they don't have Levy or a board capable of sensible decisions.
Levy is trying to make us that incapable of being irrelevant because the revenue will always allow us to buy ourselves out of any interim challenge. It is a long game (19+ years, 10+ just for the stadium) and it's working, and that's what people admire, when last did you see a 5 year "project" actually play out? you are watching a 25 year project now.
