Barney
Well-Known Member
Came across a brilliant post by GrayBlade on bladesmad. I couldn't have put it better myself, although I think he's a bit generous on Adkins. I hope something can gather pace in the near future with regards to a full campaign for McCabe out.
GrayBlade's post below:
"Now before anybody tells me that we’d look sick without him and how the club will fall apart if he left, bear with me. I’m not for one minute suggesting that he should walk away now, what I’m saying is that he needs to plan to let go of the reigns and in the interim, bring in somebody to run the football club top down with drive who knows the game and what’s needed for success. If he needs to sell his half stake to achieve this so be it, we can’t carry on declining like we have done for the past 8 years under his leadership. I think it’s also obvious now that his ‘sleeping partner’ over in Saudi has little interest or intention of financing the club beyond the basics. We’re not and never were going to get ‘game changing investment’ from him despite what spin Jim Phipps puts on it.
We desperately need somebody at the very top with a bit of football nouse and the desire to succeed and take us forward, not just to the next level but the top where our fantastic fan base has already shown it can match if not better all but the very top clubs in numbers, and continues to be one of the biggest outside the Premiership even after 8 years failure and decline and 5 seasons in the 3rd tier. How many clubs’ would still be getting our level of gates already facing the possibility of another season of disappointment? I can’t think of many, this club has got so much going for it, it just needs the leadership that we the fans deserve.
Steering a club of this size out of League One in under 5 seasons doesn’t take the good luck that McCabe often moans we that we lack, you make your own good fortune and over time you are where you deserve to be. It takes planning, no knee jerk reactions and most of all total commitment from the owner, and we've seen just what committed owners can do in our own back yard at Donny and Rotherham in recent years.
McCabe hasn't got what it takes to take this club forward and he never will have. He's great on the off-field side and he's given us a stadium to be proud of, but he's not got the long term will to win, strength of character and consistency in his approach to the playing side of things to take our club forward even our current lowly level. I also wonder about his self-appointed advisors. Everybody in the game must have known that this season's League One had no stand-out teams and surely he should have been firmly informed that with bit more ambition, we'd have our best ever chance yet of going up automatically. Was he told this (if he didn't already know) or are they too scared to tell it the way it is?
McCabe’s biggest flaw for me is that he and by default his team try to take us for fools. Murphy left the club in mid-August and I think it is obvious that (the currently hapless) Woolford was brought in a month earlier as his pre-planned replacement. Just like all our other 'stars' before him season after season, he was going to be on his bike ‘when the big clubs came a calling’, and yet again, our latest manager had to plan the season without his star player. It’s confusing then that clubs a fraction of our size often manage to resist offers from bigger clubs including United by simply putting up a ‘Not for Sale’ notice. The club didn’t have to sell Murphy, they INTENDED to sell Murphy whether he wanted to leave or not, just like all our other ‘star’ players, and with Done and Flynn out long term, the team was immediately lacking in an area that we’d excelled in the previous season.
Everybody at the club and fans alike soon realised that we needed 3 maybe 4 new players to give Adkins a fighting chance of getting off to the good start we desperately needed, but the end of August deadline came and went with the usual inference ‘we tried’ but the emergency loan system will kick in 7 days on. But this date also passed because of the 93 day maximum loan rule so no incomings until around October 1st then. It made sense, but again the ‘deadline’ passed and now we’re are told January will be a better time to do business. Better for who? For the fans? For the team? How far off pace will we be by then? It’s exactly what happened last season, teams often come with a late run into the play offs but it’s rare for a team to come from nowhere into the top two which HAS to be our minimum target this season.
But this is how McCabe does things. There never seems to be any real top down planning, urgency or an obvious intention that we’re really going for it. We always here talk of quality not quantity but do the opposite, followed by ‘let’s suck it and see’ usually followed by splashing the cash on a couple of players inevitably followed by tightening the reigns and a panic sale. He doesn’t stick to any one course and in the end, it’s all the manager’s fault. The Murphy cash was secured and since then all we’ve had is talk, Jim Phipps frequently telling fans to ‘Hang tight!’ and that ‘Mal’s working hard to get deals over the line’. It’s all PR bull in my opinion, with McCabe nodding in approval from a safe distance. We are being lied to and they are trying to take us for mugs.
Adkins has made mistakes, no doubt about that, but I’m sure he expected and deserves more support than he’s got so far. He’s told us that he is looking to strengthen, we even know some of the players that he wanted to sign after the season got underway, but not one has arrived. But don’t worry lads, our ranks will soon be boosted by one of the few leaders and genuine quality players at the club. That should give the team and fans alike a lift, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Brayford hits the ground running early enough, we will offload him in January and so it continues with Adams probably next summer.
Enough is enough with McCabe, he tried but where football is concerned, he is not ambitious enough or knowledgeable enough for a football club of our standing. We have been in a worse league position then when he took over for 6 years now, with no sign that he knows how to turn us around. He has been the one managerial constant throughout our decline and decline, nobody else is to blame, certainly not Lady Luck. He ultimately will sanction the top level hiring and the firing and agrees the club’s strategy and finances. The book stops with him although I suspect he thinks it’s everybody else’s fault, and that he has constantly been let down.
In the short term, he needs to bring in somebody in the mould of a younger Derek Dooley as Chairman, and step down from that role. I think he also needs to find somebody better than Brannigan who seems lightweight to me for his position. I think Adkins is definitely the man for the job but he desperately needs bodies in if we are to have a decent season. McCabe often tells us that he’s a proud Blade and he attends some games and no doubt watches the highlights like we all do. If so, he MUST see what we all can see, and that is we are not currently good enough in key areas, and he must also know like us that failure to sort it now will jeopardise our whole season.
I’ve written to the club about my concerns, and I know of others who have. I hope Mr McCabe is ready to move aside sooner rather than later but in the meantime, I hope that he will do all that he can to make sure our 5th season in League One ends in success and then hopefully, he will be able to go out on a high.
Sorry I went on guys, sometimes I just need to get things of my chest and put it out there.
UTB!"
GrayBlade's post below:
"Now before anybody tells me that we’d look sick without him and how the club will fall apart if he left, bear with me. I’m not for one minute suggesting that he should walk away now, what I’m saying is that he needs to plan to let go of the reigns and in the interim, bring in somebody to run the football club top down with drive who knows the game and what’s needed for success. If he needs to sell his half stake to achieve this so be it, we can’t carry on declining like we have done for the past 8 years under his leadership. I think it’s also obvious now that his ‘sleeping partner’ over in Saudi has little interest or intention of financing the club beyond the basics. We’re not and never were going to get ‘game changing investment’ from him despite what spin Jim Phipps puts on it.
We desperately need somebody at the very top with a bit of football nouse and the desire to succeed and take us forward, not just to the next level but the top where our fantastic fan base has already shown it can match if not better all but the very top clubs in numbers, and continues to be one of the biggest outside the Premiership even after 8 years failure and decline and 5 seasons in the 3rd tier. How many clubs’ would still be getting our level of gates already facing the possibility of another season of disappointment? I can’t think of many, this club has got so much going for it, it just needs the leadership that we the fans deserve.
Steering a club of this size out of League One in under 5 seasons doesn’t take the good luck that McCabe often moans we that we lack, you make your own good fortune and over time you are where you deserve to be. It takes planning, no knee jerk reactions and most of all total commitment from the owner, and we've seen just what committed owners can do in our own back yard at Donny and Rotherham in recent years.
McCabe hasn't got what it takes to take this club forward and he never will have. He's great on the off-field side and he's given us a stadium to be proud of, but he's not got the long term will to win, strength of character and consistency in his approach to the playing side of things to take our club forward even our current lowly level. I also wonder about his self-appointed advisors. Everybody in the game must have known that this season's League One had no stand-out teams and surely he should have been firmly informed that with bit more ambition, we'd have our best ever chance yet of going up automatically. Was he told this (if he didn't already know) or are they too scared to tell it the way it is?
McCabe’s biggest flaw for me is that he and by default his team try to take us for fools. Murphy left the club in mid-August and I think it is obvious that (the currently hapless) Woolford was brought in a month earlier as his pre-planned replacement. Just like all our other 'stars' before him season after season, he was going to be on his bike ‘when the big clubs came a calling’, and yet again, our latest manager had to plan the season without his star player. It’s confusing then that clubs a fraction of our size often manage to resist offers from bigger clubs including United by simply putting up a ‘Not for Sale’ notice. The club didn’t have to sell Murphy, they INTENDED to sell Murphy whether he wanted to leave or not, just like all our other ‘star’ players, and with Done and Flynn out long term, the team was immediately lacking in an area that we’d excelled in the previous season.
Everybody at the club and fans alike soon realised that we needed 3 maybe 4 new players to give Adkins a fighting chance of getting off to the good start we desperately needed, but the end of August deadline came and went with the usual inference ‘we tried’ but the emergency loan system will kick in 7 days on. But this date also passed because of the 93 day maximum loan rule so no incomings until around October 1st then. It made sense, but again the ‘deadline’ passed and now we’re are told January will be a better time to do business. Better for who? For the fans? For the team? How far off pace will we be by then? It’s exactly what happened last season, teams often come with a late run into the play offs but it’s rare for a team to come from nowhere into the top two which HAS to be our minimum target this season.
But this is how McCabe does things. There never seems to be any real top down planning, urgency or an obvious intention that we’re really going for it. We always here talk of quality not quantity but do the opposite, followed by ‘let’s suck it and see’ usually followed by splashing the cash on a couple of players inevitably followed by tightening the reigns and a panic sale. He doesn’t stick to any one course and in the end, it’s all the manager’s fault. The Murphy cash was secured and since then all we’ve had is talk, Jim Phipps frequently telling fans to ‘Hang tight!’ and that ‘Mal’s working hard to get deals over the line’. It’s all PR bull in my opinion, with McCabe nodding in approval from a safe distance. We are being lied to and they are trying to take us for mugs.
Adkins has made mistakes, no doubt about that, but I’m sure he expected and deserves more support than he’s got so far. He’s told us that he is looking to strengthen, we even know some of the players that he wanted to sign after the season got underway, but not one has arrived. But don’t worry lads, our ranks will soon be boosted by one of the few leaders and genuine quality players at the club. That should give the team and fans alike a lift, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Brayford hits the ground running early enough, we will offload him in January and so it continues with Adams probably next summer.
Enough is enough with McCabe, he tried but where football is concerned, he is not ambitious enough or knowledgeable enough for a football club of our standing. We have been in a worse league position then when he took over for 6 years now, with no sign that he knows how to turn us around. He has been the one managerial constant throughout our decline and decline, nobody else is to blame, certainly not Lady Luck. He ultimately will sanction the top level hiring and the firing and agrees the club’s strategy and finances. The book stops with him although I suspect he thinks it’s everybody else’s fault, and that he has constantly been let down.
In the short term, he needs to bring in somebody in the mould of a younger Derek Dooley as Chairman, and step down from that role. I think he also needs to find somebody better than Brannigan who seems lightweight to me for his position. I think Adkins is definitely the man for the job but he desperately needs bodies in if we are to have a decent season. McCabe often tells us that he’s a proud Blade and he attends some games and no doubt watches the highlights like we all do. If so, he MUST see what we all can see, and that is we are not currently good enough in key areas, and he must also know like us that failure to sort it now will jeopardise our whole season.
I’ve written to the club about my concerns, and I know of others who have. I hope Mr McCabe is ready to move aside sooner rather than later but in the meantime, I hope that he will do all that he can to make sure our 5th season in League One ends in success and then hopefully, he will be able to go out on a high.
Sorry I went on guys, sometimes I just need to get things of my chest and put it out there.
UTB!"
