So, from what you are saying, Wilder has in place a system which is adaptable to various playing surfaces. It's evident, because we are doing better away than last season. I don't need to sit in the South Stand (or wherever) to ascertain that. Last season, we didn't have that, but we had the super-Desso, but still played shit. Do the maths and some cancelling, why don't you?
The Desso is a bauble, a luxury and a folly which has had no discernible effect on our game. Wilder and his current team (which thankfully he has managed to retain intact) has been the effect.
Whichever way you look at it and sew in the 'accounts', etc, selling a player of absolute value to the club (11 goals in the previous season and a new contract) whilst finding the cash for a new playing surface in the same twelve months stinks of shit management, especially when the outcome was a dismal 11th.
pommpey
Nobody is claiming that a Desso pitch can turn a poor side into a good one. Merely that it provides us with a better platform to play now that we have assembled a team capable compared to playing on boggy marshes.
At this stage of the season, pitches deteriorate and it makes it harder to play good football. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for us to win or that we are infallible at home on a good pitch. Just that playing on a good pitch is preferable given the way we want to play. That said, at the time, if you’d given me the choice of keep Murphy or get a Desso pitch, I would have taken the former. But none of us know to what extent hat was the case. I suspect that Desso or no Desso, Muphy would have been gone as when a player expresses a desire to move to a higher placed club, we don’t tend to dig our heels in and make them stay. We’ve done the same with countless players without having the money earmarked for a Desso pitch. I think we lost something like £5 or £6 million last year so we can’t pin it all on the Desso. We could maybe argue that we’d have had an extra million or so one the playing budget but that would be a drop in the ocean when you looked at our wage bill and what Clough had spunked on paying people like McEveley, Higdon, JCR, Flynn, Porter, Alcock, K. Wallace, Davies etc.
Whether it is a good investment or not is a matter of opinion. We don’t seem to be seeing home games rearranged and ending up with fixture congestion since we had it which is advantageous.
So on balance, I cannot agree with your assertions that
a) We sold Murphy to pay for the Desso or
b) the Desso was a terrible investment (especially compared to the value for money we were getting for players at the time).
(I think these are your assertions).
However, I can entirely agree with you that
Top Cat aka Geetarman is a bellend of the highest order who offers nothing constructive to the forum just as he did on Blades Mad.