I’d agree with that.
Pros- Has built our support with good pricing and marketing of the club.
Has helped develop the stadium with our lovely DESSO pitch.
Has brought Saudi investment to the club.
Developed the academy.
Has finally landed on a good manager.
Cons
Awful, awful decision making when it comes to the hiring and firing of managers for a pretty much uninterrupted 10 year period.
Fell for the Nigerian prince, Jacob Esan and used it as a comforter as he gave Stephen Quinn away.
Awful PR at times in terms of “Beattie flu”, “no longer have to sell our young stars” “fans don’t know what to look for in a manager”- This from the bloke who appointed Bryan Fucking Robson!!!!
Interesting interview with Simon Jordan on talksport this morning. I didn't catch all of it as I was torn between dicking around on here, listening to it and trying to do some work but I did here him talking about 'strange managerial appointments'. He was discussing the clubs in trouble with incompetent owners like Orient and Blackburn.
His view is that a competent owner should be getting at least half his managerial appointments right and that many of the poor owners make appointments that are 'odd'. That is to say, appointments which just can't really be justified before or after. I took that to mean an appointment like Steve Keen or the French bloke that Forest sacked a few weeks ago.
Some managers just don't work out. Like us with Adkins; on paper it should have been fine but in reality it was a bit of a disaster. But you can't 'blame' McCabe for that, it's just how it panned out. But some appointments, I suppose in our case I'd say Blackwell, Weir and Wilson, were asking for trouble. In Blackwell and Weir's case, not experienced enough to do the job and appointed at a time when we just didn't have the time for them to learn by their mistakes, and in Wilson's case, a cv that demonstrated he was average at best when a good manager would have taken us straight back up, irrespective of the Evans business.
And all this stems from the appointment of Robson, the ultimate in misguided decision making. That mistake cascades downwards to cause future problems, which are then compounded by more poor appointments.
He then went on to talk about communication and how poor communication or a lack of communication makes them look even worse in the eyes of the supporters and causes further deterioration in the relationship between the supporters and the owners.
The last thing I picked up on was how important it is for everyone at the club to be united in achieving one goal, from the chairman down to the players.
We've gone from the first two paragraphs to the third. KM has made some horrendous errors but, unlike some of the owners, has put his hands up and taken the cost of them on the chin. Maybe he's got a bit lucky with CW but his previous two appointments have been OK on paper too. No one raised their eyebrows at the appointment of Clough or Adkins (I mean in the game, I know someone will have criticised them on here but you could appoint Mourinho or Conte and someone on here would say it's shit) and if you keep appointing people who should be able to do the job, you will eventually get someone who can.
So I don't think appointing CW was down to luck as much as it was down to improving our recruitment process. Getting someone as 'special' as Wilder may turn out to be, is a bit fortunate. But as we've all stood together (more or less, with the odd disagreement and rant); the supporters have continued to turn out in numbers, the owners have continued to lose money trying to take us forward, then we probably deserve a bit of good fortune. We've not had much in the last ten years.
