In our history, for how long have oligarchs and countries owned competing teams? Winning the majority of trophies. We're playing by different rules now.
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ENIC
- Thread starter mattls
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In our history, for how long have oligarchs and countries owned competing teams? Winning the majority of trophies. We're playing by different rules now.
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
Hasn’t stopped the likes of Swansea, Wigan, Leicester and Portsmouth winning a trophy. And yes I know those teams have all gone down since but I was responding to a comment someone said it “beggars belief” that people would criticise ENIC but it really isn’t that deluded or harsh especially when we were going backwards for the most part for a few years after Poch left.
Erm it didn't stop us winning a trophy either.
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
Yes one trophy since 2008.
jrh
Steed Malbranque
How many have Swansea, Wigan, Leicester or Pompy won since 2008 chief?
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
The same amount as us. Leicester have won one more than us. We’re a much bigger club than all of them. We like to think of ourselves as a big club (apparently miles bigger than the likes of Villa). We should be considered a big club but not held to the same standards as the rest of the big six who win trophies regularly?
You can’t really fault the club when it comes to commercial matters and off the pitch activities in general. It’s more on the pitch where i.e. the football side, you know the bit we actually support the club for where ENIC have left a lot to be desired. I’ve said more than once I would twist if it came to the possibility of new ownership, I realise that probably won’t happen anytime soon. I’m happy Ange and the club appears to be heading in the right direction. The hierarchy of the club seem to be finally cottoning on to the fact that you need a squad to win trophies. Levy appears to be taking more of a backseat when it comes to football operations which is quite welcome I must say. Let the people who actually know about football get on with the football side of things so Levy can focus other things. Seems like he’s put people in place who know what they’re doing.
I've never thought we were a massive club. I thought we were a fairly big club. That chose to invest in the stadium and infrastructure while spending almost nothing on players (net) for years. Yet still did well on the pitch. We changed once the stadium was complete and brought in mourinho and conte to win trophies and backed them. That's when we went backwards.
Now we seem to have reverted to a model where we buy young hungry players and we seem to be improving again.
I've said i'd like a change in ownership. Lewis out but would like levy to stay. Mostly to clear off some of the debt.
Yes one trophy is disappointing. But i've been to the san siro, bernabau, camp nou... watched on tv us get to a cl final. We've hardly been brick.
ricky2tricky4city
Tom Huddlestone
So funny.
jrh
Steed Malbranque
Like we've never had a deep squad before, ridiculous notion
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
jrh
Steed Malbranque
That was unforunate timing due to many injuries though, don't try and skew the narrative. They were options, they might not have worked out to be the players we wanted but the club clearly tried to invest and build a squad. There was one bad window, I'll give you that. But to say needing 'a squad' is something we're only just realising is laughable.
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
Any thoughts on the rest of the post? Just wondering why the need to cut it down to one particular sentence when there is was a lot more content in there?
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
The overall point is it’s not ridiculous to believe ENIC have done many good things but also made some missteps, particularly in the last 4-5 years. Looks like things are going in the right direction now. Just the overall tone on here sometimes is almost like how dare anyone criticise them which is why I was responding to. Contrary to what you may think I am actually quite reasonable and measured, I’m not demanding they sell up or attend marches to try and get them out. But the last time I checked this was a message board and their reign is worth debating just like any other person or group at the club.
May be true but like a lot of these reflections, it doesn't stand scrutiny, we lost the PL to a Ranieri Leicester side, are we going to pretend they had more depth than us? better manager? better striker?
You can and should criticise ENIC but it isn't as simple as people like to make it
- It was depth of squad, it was big players not showing up in the right games, it was mentality (how many Spurs sides would have won that game yesterday in it's circumstance 4-0?), it was poor manager decisions/tactics, it was weird distractions (Harry with England, Poch with his "if I win this" brick, Jose meltdown) it was playing in a league of cheaters, it's not one of those things, it's all of those things why we haven't won brick in 17 years ...
Edit .. I'm going to change my opinion/last conclusion
ricky2tricky4city
Tom Huddlestone
Probably the same reason you cut down all the work the people running the club have done to facilitate having a bigger and better squad to compete to simply 'cottoning on'
Finney Is Back
Luka Modric
We had a deep squad for a while uunder Redknapp but not really since then until now.
IMO there were two big issues.
1. The fact that our first team recruitment structure went to brick (Hitchen was a disaster)
2. Our youth scouting/structure also went to brick, both in terms of considering progression but also in terms of budget.
Paratici was superb in fixing both in a relatively short space of time.
alekaras
The ITK of IDK
The misstep that Levy made in the past 4-5 years is that the CL final led him to believe he had a squad good enough to challenge for a trophy and the only thing missing was a "proven winner" manager. Which was partly a knee-jerk reaction to the fans cries for a trophy and partly his inability to properly assess where we were and what we needed from a footballing perspective. People use these last 4-5 years as a stick to beat him with, but at least he realized the mistakes and sought to correct them. Contrast this with United, who are still bumbling 11 years after SAF and not only have not corrected their mistakes, but have actually made things worse.
So yeah, is Levy infallible? Of course not. But at least he makes amends and that's good enough for me.
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
Right. But if you actually bothered to read the rest of what I wrote instead of selectively picking one particular sentence I don’t think what I said was that unreasonable. Obviously there’s many reasons why we haven’t got over the line; players not turning up in crunch games, poor team selections, bad luck, injuries. But the lack of a deep squad definitely hurt Poch, again he didn’t always help himself with his substitutions taking so long before making any changes but in hindsight maybe that was partly down to a lack of options on the bench.
Jurgen the German
Tommy Harmer
Yeah I actually agree with a lot of what you’ve said. It’s a cliche but we win as a club and lose as a club, meaning everyone is accountable when we win and when we lose but the sentiment on here sometimes is that ENIC don’t have any say in team selections or go out on the pitch so they’re essentially blameless when it comes to results which I don’t agree with. No problem with giving them credit where it’s due for when they get things resoundingly correct like with the stadium, the training ground, NFL tie ins etc. there’s plenty of things they have done very well. It’s more the football side where things have come undone at times.