Salford City and all that

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Kernow Yellow
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Salford City and all that

Post by Kernow Yellow »

So I watched the documentary about the 'Class of 92' (a much overused nomenclature this weekend), and came away with a fair bit of respect for players I absolutely hated when they played for Man United. They seem to understand what makes a club like theirs tick, how to be owners but not interfere too much, and what fans enjoy about a club like Salford City as opposed to a Prem club. Gary Neville came across as particularly likeable and passionate about his latest project. I also watched some of their game on Friday night and was amazed at how they played Notts County off the park. A genuinely great non-league performance, albeit with overly matey and sycophantic BBC 'pundits' in attendance.

The one thing that left a slightly odd taste in the story though was the fact that these five very rich ex-players, with only a 7th tier team to look after, brought in foreign investment at an early stage in proceedings. I don't know anything about Peter Lim except that he's tried to buy various clubs including Liverpool in the past. But if the Famous Five aspire for Salford to be big enough to need a Lim-type chairman, surely they will have lost everything that their fans now enjoy about watching their team? It's one thing to climb towards the league with a bit of money and organic growth, but to remain community-rooted and enjoy the journey on the way - quite another to already be planning mega-bucks investment, a new (presumably all-seater) ground and Championship football as a stated goal. It seems to fly in the face of what they've clearly learnt on their journey so far.

Anyway, I then heard that Phil Neville missed Friday's game because he's assistant manager of Valencia. That seemed an odd job for him, so I googled Valencia to see who he knew there who might have offered him the gig. Answer - Peter Lim is the owner, employing his business partner as coach! Nice work if you can get it...

(Apologies for non-OUFC-related content, but I wondered what others' reactions were to the programme)
Radley Rambler
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Radley Rambler »

I didn't see the class of 92 programme but I did watch the match. Well done to the ref for letting the robust challenges go and credit to both sets of players for the competitive nature of the tackling. Even the (usually Premiership-loving) commentators suggested that this was more pleasurable to watch than some of the Premiership antics when they're lightly touched and fall around writhing.
Snake
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Snake »

Loved the two part documentary, and it made watching the game on the box even more satisfying.

Compare and contrast with what TAG is doing at Oxford City.
slappy
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by slappy »

I don't understand why people keep wanting to take village teams "on a journey". Histon, Rushden etc. Apart from Milton Keynes which has no history as a town, you can't just magic up an enduring fanbase, when the grandparents and parents will have grown up supporting league teams and pass that on to their own kids. When the owners get bored of their plaything or run out of money, the infrastructure of the club is too big to be able to downsize back to where they were originally.

Why don't they take on an established club which has fallen on hard times?
Myles Francis
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Myles Francis »

Snake wrote:Compare and contrast with what TAG is doing at Oxford City.
It would be nice to know just WHAT he is doing at Oxford City. Certainly the annual accounts for OCFC Inc (lodged a couple of weeks back) makes for very worrying reading - and also appear to contradict statements made by the football club.
theox
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by theox »

Perhaps it is my anti-Man Utd bias but I think Salford City are the 1 non-league club that I cheered against this weekend (edit - plus Braintree, obviously! :oops: ). The whole Class-of-92 thing seemed very patronising to me and as KY correctly put it, the "overly matey and sycophantic" pundits made the whole thing even worse. Reminded me of when BT Sport ganged up against Us when we played Wrexham with Dean Saunders' hilarious co-commentary being the icing on the cake!

Salford would be a nice 'small team done good' story if that's what it was. But it isn't. It's millionaire playboys getting in some foreign investment so they can play Championship Manager for real and get a bit more TV exposure for it.

Does it really show that I hate the Mancs?!
Radley Rambler
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Radley Rambler »

Myles Francis wrote:
Snake wrote:Compare and contrast with what TAG is doing at Oxford City.
It would be nice to know just WHAT he is doing at Oxford City. Certainly the annual accounts for OCFC Inc (lodged a couple of weeks back) makes for very worrying reading - and also appear to contradict statements made by the football club.
Myles - can you elaborate without libelling yourself? Are OCFC and the TAG creation separate entities, are the real OCFC at any danger from the other side of the business?
GodalmingYellow
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by GodalmingYellow »

slappy wrote:I don't understand why people keep wanting to take village teams "on a journey".
Like Headington United?
Hog
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Hog »

Snake wrote: Compare and contrast with what TAG is doing at Oxford City.
This is the thing - what is he doing with the real Oxford City? Does he have any influence on the real City or is he just trading on their name in the US?

I've only seen the first part of the Salford documentary but will watch the rest as soon as I can. I found it absolutely fascinating and could feel a real empathy with the old school members who did all the day-to-day jobs as volunteers and are afraid of losing their club. I was in their situation as a teenaged (and thus unworldly and naive) committee member at City when I was convinced by experienced businessmen to vote for the club to become a limited company which was then bought by an ex-United chairman with the intention of reaching the Vauxhall Opel League (or whatever the Conference was called back then) and beyond.

Initially I was starstruck with the introduction of Bobby Moore, Harry Redknap, Phil Beal, John Frazer (75 FA cup final for Fulham), Keiran Baker etc. In my previous 4 years at the club I only remember us stopping once for a pre-match meal (at a Little Chef in Bishops Waltham before an FA cup tie at Fareham as it happens!) but for Moore's first Saturday away game (I think it was at Barking but stand to be corrected) we went to the Grosvenor House hotel in Park Lane! I wasn't sure who was picking up the tab so being a poorly paid college servant at the time I stuck with the cheapest item on the menu which was two poached eggs on toast with a glass of orange juice for £6.50 in the late 70's - I wouldn't pay that even now!

Of course it was unsustainable and the whole 'club' was at risk and I ended up having a bitter and quite public (I still have the Ox Mail clippings somewhere!) falling out with the new regime and shortly afterwards I left for pastures new in Hampshire, never to return.

Of course the money soon ran out and the White House ground was lost because because of a breach of the lease and they played with only a youth team for a couple of seasons to keep the club name alive while the old-school stalwarts and supporters battled to pull things together. And a bloody fine job they did too!
Mooro
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Mooro »

It is such an English thing, that one of the big English clubs successfully manages to bring a whole bunch English(/Welsh) players through their academy, into the first team and onto being the backbone of the England national team and yet all we can do is to castigate that club, those players and everything they choose to do, while others with foreign managers and academies full of foreign teenagers are somehow considered less hateable.

And Now, when a bunch of those players have actually taken a decision to invest some of their ill-gotten gains back into the game at a club local to them as youngsters, all we seem to do as a nation is raise another tide of contempt to send in their direction.
GodalmingYellow
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by GodalmingYellow »

Mooro wrote:It is such an English thing, that one of the big English clubs successfully manages to bring a whole bunch English(/Welsh) players through their academy, into the first team and onto being the backbone of the England national team and yet all we can do is to castigate that club, those players and everything they choose to do, while others with foreign managers and academies full of foreign teenagers are somehow considered less hateable.

And Now, when a bunch of those players have actually taken a decision to invest some of their ill-gotten gains back into the game at a club local to them as youngsters, all we seem to do as a nation is raise another tide of contempt to send in their direction.
Hmm, weren't half of the so called class of '92 actually pinched from the youth systems of other clubs? And therein lies the problem with ManUre (just like many other "big clubs") for me. They use their massive marketing might and footballing power to cream off the talent from everywhere else, keeping a few, and ditching the many, then claiming the credit for how wonderful they are.

I don't hate ManUre, but I hate how they, and others, operate, using pound notes and false promises of glamour, to get their way.

How much these ex-players are subsidising Salford is not known to me, nor probably anyone else on here, but there are rumours aplenty of foreign investment buying the club's rise, which might indicate that it is the names and high profile status that these ex-players are offering, rather than the loose change they find in their collective back pockets. If so that would be significantly less the fairy story the media would have us believe.
Kernow Yellow
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by Kernow Yellow »

Mooro wrote:It is such an English thing, that one of the big English clubs successfully manages to bring a whole bunch English(/Welsh) players through their academy, into the first team and onto being the backbone of the England national team and yet all we can do is to castigate that club, those players and everything they choose to do, while others with foreign managers and academies full of foreign teenagers are somehow considered less hateable.

And Now, when a bunch of those players have actually taken a decision to invest some of their ill-gotten gains back into the game at a club local to them as youngsters, all we seem to do as a nation is raise another tide of contempt to send in their direction.
Eh? Which other clubs had foreign managers and academies full of foreign teenagers in 1992?!

Man U were hated by many football fans throughout the 90s because they won everything and had a manager who did brilliantly for them but was extremely unlikeable and dismissive of other clubs. And they stuck their club shops on other towns' high streets and became a byword for armchair shit-fandom. I once went into HMV on Cornmarket in December and found them playing the Man U Xmas album to their shoppers. A memory which makes me shudder to this day! And they dropped out of the FA Cup to sell shirts in the Far East or something - my memory might have embellished that but they were certainly all about the shirt sales and naming rights long before any other British club was awash with foreign money. And they're just as awash with foreign money (and debt) now as any other club, and have been ever since they sold out to the Glazers. They're all as bad as each other these days, even Bournemouth's 'fairytale' is actually a story of Russian millions and financial fair play contraventions which is why I take no interest at all in the Premier League. Literally - haven't even watched MotD for a few years.

And who is "raising another tide of their contempt" in their direction anyway? Have you actually read any of the comments on this page? What a strange post.

In answer to GY's question, I believe the five ex-players each started with an equal 20% share in SCFC, but then brought in Peter Lim who owns 50%, leaving them with 10% each.
SWA
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by SWA »

Man Utd dropped out of the 2000 FA Cup as they took part in the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup in Brazil. Nothing to do with selling shirts!! :mrgreen:
It was a very controversial at the time, and maybe was the start of clubs devaluing the FA Cup and playing weaker sides in it.
slappy
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by slappy »

GodalmingYellow wrote:
slappy wrote:I don't understand why people keep wanting to take village teams "on a journey".
Like Headington United?
It's interesting to read Hog's post below about Oxford City. I'm sure someone can elaborate, but when did United (or even Headington) become the main club in Oxford rather than City? Also the stats section of Rageonline say we've only played them in the FA Cup, I'm surprised there hasn't been at least one season when we've been in the same non-league division.
GodalmingYellow
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Re: Salford City and all that

Post by GodalmingYellow »

slappy wrote:
GodalmingYellow wrote:
slappy wrote:I don't understand why people keep wanting to take village teams "on a journey".
Like Headington United?
It's interesting to read Hog's post below about Oxford City. I'm sure someone can elaborate, but when did United (or even Headington) become the main club in Oxford rather than City? Also the stats section of Rageonline say we've only played them in the FA Cup, I'm surprised there hasn't been at least one season when we've been in the same non-league division.
HUFC overtook OCFC during the 1950s after HUFC became professional and joined the Southern League. Prior to that OCFC had always been the bigger club playing at a higher level.
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