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Interesting article - NY Times
at 07:21 21 Nov 2024

Indeed. Weak owners allowed Jenkins to waste money.

The Bradley appointment was a monumental catastrophe more for what it did off the pitch than on it. That momentary flexing of their muscles went so badly it frightened them off from interfering for several years and gave Jenkins free reign to piss away capital that was no longer his.

It's probably not an exaggeration to suggest that played a large part in where we are now. Not a complete part, maybe not even the primary one, but it was a significant "sliding doors" moment.

I hesitate to say it's the major reason because as everyone knows of course, we'd started making horrendously bad decisions as a club years before Kaplan and Co arrived with the promotion of Monk from chief snitch to manager.
[Post edited 21 Nov 7:23]
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All this Budget Speculation
at 07:01 19 Nov 2024

Thus far barely, if any mention on the "Right Wing" BBC about Reeves' alleged embellishment of her CV.
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Energy prices
at 06:59 19 Nov 2024

It would be something of a miracle if Milliband's drive towards "Net Zero" doesn't result in massive price hikes and people shivering around a candle on Winter Nights because wind turbines aren't as good as gas or nuclear at generating electricity.
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 22:19 17 Nov 2024

No there wasn't.

I'm not voicing an opinion based on what was reported at the time like most people. I know what kind of sh*t the club was in and just how deep. I know how close we came to being officially considered no longer a going concern and that it took a year or two (ultimately the sale of Rodon) to stave the likelihood off completely. How I know I'm not prepared to say.

It was extremely risky financial management to allow Potter to spend anything, never mind £7m.
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 19:45 17 Nov 2024

It was a hell of a lot more than we could afford to spend.
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 13:19 16 Nov 2024

I don't claim to be an expert on everything, but when I tell you that the club was facing an existential crisis that it would not have survived without a serious cutting of costs, I'm stating a fact. Believe it or not that's up to you, but it doesn't make it any less true. Cutting costs also meant that continuing to spend £3m a year on the Academy became highly unlikely.

Personally I'd have kept that going and just offered lower contracts to certain players, but as we've seen this season, cutting our cloth accordingly does little more than provoke whines of protest from the stands.

The squad Martin had available to him in both seasons was the equal to Cooper's first season, unless, for example, you think Tom Carroll, Yan Dhanda or George Byers would be an upgrade on Ntcham or Paterson?

Andre Ayew mostly carried Cooper's team for two seasons. Martin certainly didn't lack for quality in comparison.
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The Donald
at 10:42 16 Nov 2024

That's not Isaac's real accent.
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Tyson v the you tube bloke
at 09:49 16 Nov 2024

I am quite amused by the outrage from people who got up at silly AM to watch a freak show that turned out to be, well, a freak show.
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 09:05 16 Nov 2024

If there had been no "Firesale" and subsequent financial rebalancing, then today there would be no club. Such was the scale of the mismanagement on their behalf. The club was "Haemorrhaging money" is how it was put to me by someone who saw everything.

Huge amounts of future income already committed on transfer fees and salaries with no relegation clauses. We could have racked up a nine figure debt very, very quickly if action had not been taken. All on Jenkins, although as I said earlier, ultimately their fault for not supervising him properly. It's quite ironic to think that if Jenkins had been subject to the same scrutiny as his successors, things might have worked out differently.

Anyway, despite all that they still provided Cooper and Martin with squads good enough to make the playoffs, even if only one of them was competent enough to do so.
[Post edited 16 Nov 9:47]
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The Donald
at 12:49 15 Nov 2024

Great film, and Isaacs is great in it.
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 12:43 15 Nov 2024

Ultimately they have to bear responsibility for our fall out of the Prem, but for the most part the decisions that led us to that point were made by Huw Jenkins.

He was the one who initiated our downfall by appointing himself de facto director of football, replaced Laudrup with Monk and allowed him to tear down everything that had been built up until then. Kaplan and Levien mostly let him get on with it and just signed the cheques, and they signed a lot of them. We broke our transfer record numerous times, so a lack of backing wasn't the issue then or now.

The mistake they made was trusting him too much, especially after the Bradley debacle. In hindsight he should have been replaced after the takeover.
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2 weeks for a call back from my Doc
at 22:55 14 Nov 2024

For the most part they're the type crowing about this decision and making references to "normal" people's IHT allowances.

Y'know. Morons.
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Tyler Morse looks set to take on a more prominent role
at 22:53 14 Nov 2024

Realistically we've never been looking down.

As miserable and doom laden as some of our supporters get in the pre-season we've never been serious relegation contenders, apart from a brief period during Russy's second season when his ego came very close to out ranking our survival.

We've underpeformed loads, especially between 2021 and 2023, but never been really close to making the drop.
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2 weeks for a call back from my Doc
at 22:24 14 Nov 2024

I won't claim to know much about the situation. Some Canadian and Australian pension schemes have gone this way. To what success I don't know.

Seems like she wants them to front up and pay for infrastructure expenditure on her behalf. Good luck with that.
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Tyler Morse looks set to take on a more prominent role
at 22:18 14 Nov 2024

Interest and motivation is key.

I will reiterate that perhaps the best thing that they can do if they want to spend is upgrade the Academy again. That will enable us to exploit clubs who aren't at the top level and protect ourselves against the predators.
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2 weeks for a call back from my Doc
at 22:17 14 Nov 2024

Whether or not Labour serve a second term will probably depend on how well Badenoch deals with the Reform situation.

Clearly Labour's election win was based in large part on Tory voters either not bothering to turn out or swapping to Reform. If she can re-energise the ones who didn't vote and claim some back then Labour will lose.

They have badly misread the mandate they were given IMO. People don't want a high tax and spend Labour Govt. They were mostly tired of the Tories, but again and again hard Left policies have been rejected by the UK electorate.
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2 weeks for a call back from my Doc
at 21:59 14 Nov 2024

You can also add in the likely job losses as a result of the increase in NI.

You could almost assume that Reeves had set out to screw things up deliberately.
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Tyler Morse looks set to take on a more prominent role
at 21:46 14 Nov 2024

Exactly.
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2 weeks for a call back from my Doc
at 21:46 14 Nov 2024

You can easily identify the idiot Socialists by how little they understand the farming situation.

There's no way on Earth that small farmers having to sell their land to larger concerns in order to pay death duties when the parents die could end badly is there?
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Russell Martin court case settled
at 19:17 14 Nov 2024

I understand why over the last eighteen months or so budgets have been cut. We couldn't keep going in the long term needing £10m+ per season pumped in just to maintain what we had.

We're in a weird position at present. Some players are being paid too little, others are being paid too much. Ideally as I've said previously we'd take about 10/15 grand a week combined from Grimes and Pedersen and give it to Cabango and Darling.

A bit of a reset in how we build and maintain a squad is overdue, and we've probably gotten into the position we are due to a lack of a clear vision from the top as to exactly what we're trying to achieve. The biggest single mistake we've made in recent seasons was trying to replace Martin with Duff, and then Duff with Williams. Millions spent changing the way we do things only to bottle it and switch right back. We can't keep doing stupid things like that, and hopefully new management will prevent it.
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