Who do you want next?

Anything yellow and blue
Kernow Yellow
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kernow Yellow »

Kairdiff Exile wrote: Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:41 pm A new man (or woman!) is still likely to be in place before Oxford United FC kick a ball again competitively.
You were saying...
YF Dan
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by YF Dan »

Anyone else fear that our new owner just likes hanging out with famous ex-footballers?

We're down.
Kairdiff Exile
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kairdiff Exile »

Kernow Yellow wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:17 pm
Kairdiff Exile wrote: Fri Mar 02, 2018 4:41 pm A new man (or woman!) is still likely to be in place before Oxford United FC kick a ball again competitively.
You were saying...
Well, quite. The delay gets more worrying by the day. Saturday's game was one I had down as a banker - fully expecting three points to settle a few nerves. Now we really are in the shit.

I should probably also add that I was among the voices in January who called for Faz and Allen to be put in charge until the end of the season. Given recent results and performances, I now look like a bit of a plonker.
Kernow Yellow
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kernow Yellow »

Everything about our club is a shambles at the moment. Part-time owners seemingly without a vision or a clue, financing a takeover by saddling the club with debt. No manager, after we sacked the last one when we were a couple of points off the play-offs. The caretaker manager has presided over the most appalling run of form, but still he's in charge as we slide down towards the drop zone. The players (PL loanees) are slagging each other off in interviews.

This is exactly the kind of unholy mess that we look at with disbelief when it happens to clubs like Orient. But we're letting it happen under our own noses. Why aren't the fans more angry? Why is OxVox more interested in slagging fellow fans off than sounding loud alarm bells?

Forget relegation, which may or may not happen. I really fear for the future of our club with this takeover.
Myles Francis
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Myles Francis »

Kernow Yellow wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:39 am Why aren't the fans more angry? Why is OxVox more interested in slagging fellow fans off than sounding loud alarm bells?
Do you want the long or the short answer to that one?!
YF Dan
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by YF Dan »

Kernow Yellow wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:39 am Everything about our club is a shambles at the moment. Part-time owners seemingly without a vision or a clue, financing a takeover by saddling the club with debt. No manager, after we sacked the last one when we were a couple of points off the play-offs. The caretaker manager has presided over the most appalling run of form, but still he's in charge as we slide down towards the drop zone. The players (PL loanees) are slagging each other off in interviews.

This is exactly the kind of unholy mess that we look at with disbelief when it happens to clubs like Orient. But we're letting it happen under our own noses. Why aren't the fans more angry? Why is OxVox more interested in slagging fellow fans off than sounding loud alarm bells?

Forget relegation, which may or may not happen. I really fear for the future of our club with this takeover.
Bang on. And KY and I rarely agree on OUFC matters. It's hard to imagine that it was less than a year ago that I was looking at our team, our club, as a club on the rise. We had an amazing chairman, manager, squad and a fanbase who were revelling in our upward trajectory.

Now we're a total and utter shambles. I've never felt more distant from the club. I cannot see how this ends well. I have absolutely zero faith in the new owner to find a manager to suit our needs. I can see him appointing an ego manager, a name, so he can hang out with him. But that's the last thing we need.

I have no faith in this squad to show the necessary fight to stay up. We have a team of individuals, loanees and mercenaries, and the few remaining players from last season must be looking at the current state of the club and working out their escape route.

We are sleepwalking into a catastrophe. We are partly to blame. The idiots who harangued Eales for not spending more of the transfer fees we received ('I don't want your hotdogs, I want a new striker'). We were running at a loss FFS, we need to sell players to stay afloat. No wonder he had enough. Now we've got what they deserve. They wanted a moneyed owner. They've got one. Let's see how the supposed super-rich make their money. The only good news is we don't really have any assets to strip.

I'm not blaming Pep for the mess but I bet he's relieved that he got out when he did, and I presume with a nice pay-off. His hands were tied but this was a catastrophic squad, that was always going to be found out and then was going to sink like a stone. In all the important matches this year, when a bit of fight was required, we were found wanting. Cheltenham. Port Vale. Bury. Once teams worked out they just had to get in our faces and not let us play, we were doomed. Curtis Nelson's injury was a hammer blow too.

The exodus of board members worries me too. Is there anyone left who cares, or knows anything about the club and its history?

This can only end badly.
neilw
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by neilw »

Myles, go for it ... From what I’ve read, the necessary research is being lead by you, only to be shouted down. In times such as this, we need to be asking questions and demanding answers, ideally through a body such as OxVox. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that the current shambles and uncertainty feels like a route to extinction.

Dan, I think you are protraying Eales in a far more positive light than he warrants. He has presided over this collapse whilst ensuring he found a means to pull his money out. Somehow, he seems to have escaped questioning. Quite the opposite in fact, as OxVox and general opinion appear to have supported him, unchallenged in his quest. Eales protected his own position with little regard for what he’s left behind.
OtmoorYellow
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by OtmoorYellow »

I'm pretty much aligned with Dan on this.

The shambles isn't down to Eales. Eales had had enough of being slagged off for subsidising our football club and creating one of the most positive and progressive era of changes I have witnessed in our club. In some ways better than the mid-eighties, because this progress was not financed by Mirror Group pensioners.

So being slagged off left, right and centre, and perhaps coming to the limit of his financial contribution, having gone through a very expensive divorce, he decided to sell. Nothing wrong with that at all. We don't have a right to stop Eales selling up and like most people he will sell to the highest bidder.

I don't agree that Tiger is this mega rich kid that some describe:

At Reading, it is said that he sold up because he found it too expensive to run the club. Well reality check time, Oxford is going to be far more expensive to run, because we don't own our ground, or the land around it, or the ground capacity to pay for it.

At Oxford, he has had to borrow a very significant portion (at least £4.2m) of the funds to purchase the club. So unlike Eales who regularly turned lending into capital, Tiger is turning capital into lending. That's a worrying development.

And the opacity of Tiger's capital structure is very worrying indeed. With Eales it was all easily traceable. With Tiger, we have no idea whatsoever where the money has come from, or the ethics behind how that money was accrued.

And we have this extended period without a permanent manager, with a team of crocks, falling faster than the space shuttle on re-entry. What decent manager with knowledge of this level of football is going to want to take this on?

We are in a serious mess. Of the order of mess that saw us lose our league status. And Tiger has given not a single iota of clue as to how he intends to get us out of this mess, save using his brief visits to this country to claim we should be using the name of the city more in our foreign marketing, whilst putting off potential managers from taking the job.

I would love to know what Myles has found out so far. (Please pm me Myles if you read this).

It is a very inauspicious start from Tiger, and I'm not liking it one little bit.
Kairdiff Exile
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kairdiff Exile »

Well that's cleared that up then. At least another week to wait, presumably whilst a compensation deal is reached, with the promise of a "wow factor". I'm going to stick my neck out and say that it's probably not Brian McDermott.
Kernow Yellow
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kernow Yellow »

YF Dan wrote: Mon Mar 12, 2018 7:52 pm
We are sleepwalking into a catastrophe. We are partly to blame. The idiots who harangued Eales for not spending more of the transfer fees we received ('I don't want your hotdogs, I want a new striker'). We were running at a loss FFS, we need to sell players to stay afloat. No wonder he had enough. Now we've got what they deserve. They wanted a moneyed owner. They've got one. Let's see how the supposed super-rich make their money. The only good news is we don't really have any assets to strip.
Have we got a moneyed owner? That's not clear to me at all.

Also, I might add that in terms of on-field matters the fans are partly to blame too - those that wanted Clotet out when we were sitting more than comfortably upper-mid-table, giving him dog's abuse when we weren't even losing leading to his patience snapping, shush-gate, his sacking etc. Something for Dan and I to disagree on anyway!

But my main concern is Tiger - who is he, what does he want and how is he going to go about getting it? Whether or not Eales is to blame for the mess is immaterial now. He made the mistake of saying he only had the club's interests at heart when choosing a new owner, so he certainly invites some blame upon himself if it does all go tits up. And even if it doesn't, he's certainly taken his eye well off the ball while trying to sell up, spending weeks abroad after sacking a manager for reasons unknown.

As to the new manager, it looks like it's someone in a job at the moment. It can't be Karl Robinson can it? That wouldn't be any sort of 'wow' factor. I can't believe we've got to wait another week though, and that Tiger is still talking about 'moving into a higher division'. He needs to get real, and fast.
YF Dan
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by YF Dan »

If only I'd wagered my house on us going down in December, when it was obvious what a shower of shite we were, I'd have been able to buy the club and the ground in May.

Phew, KY, I was starting to worry that we agreed on too much.

There is simply no way that a man who signed a series of utter crocks and mercenaries and oversaw the heaviest home defeat in our history could possibly escape some of the blame for the mess we're in now.

How many of Pep's crocks do you want in the team in the run in? Who wouldn't you show the door to now if you could?

This has been coming. Our wheels were always going to come off. After Curtis Nelson got injured, there was no pace or fight anywhere in the team. I was alarmed at the lack of fight after Cheltenham.
YF Dan
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by YF Dan »

PS. I am terrified of this 'wow' factor. Oh for a Paul Cook, or a John Coleman, or Keith Hill right now. Give me someone who knows the league and will give us a bit of fight.

We're going to get a name, who'll demand a huge salary, take us down, leave in September with a big pay off, leave us screwed with a team of unfit losers.
OUFC4eva
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by OUFC4eva »

Agreed if we appoint Robinson next week I will laugh my arse off.

The whole thing with “ Tiger “ looks frightening to me right now. I’m sure
there’s much more confusion to come.

How has this happened?
Kernow Yellow
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Kernow Yellow »

YF Dan wrote: Tue Mar 13, 2018 8:09 pm If only I'd wagered my house on us going down in December, when it was obvious what a shower of shite we were, I'd have been able to buy the club and the ground in May.
Yeah right! You forget that the Wigan humbling came in the middle of a run of three home wins in four matches. We were never going down with Pep in charge. Even Eales has admitted that the sacking wasn't for footballing reasons, which makes it even more scandalous that he won't say why he got rid of him.

Of course Pep's squad wasn't ideal. He saw Marv and Lunny sold against his wishes, and then suffered awful luck with injuries, both to existing players (Nelson, Ribeiro, and to a lesser extent Thomas and Obika) and his star signing Pekalski. And of course the season wasn't going brilliantly, but it was by no means a disaster. I wish we'd shown some patience.

Our club has thrived recently when there has been stability at both owner and manager level. When we've floundered it's been when the owner has been trying to flog the club. People blamed Wilder when he wasn't being supported by Lenagan, and now Clotet when he was cast adrift by Eales. In both cases you need to look at board level for the root cause of the problems.

Whether Tiger makes a sensible appointment and sticks by him even in tough situations remains to be seen. Because that's what we desperately need...
Werthers Original
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Re: Who do you want next?

Post by Werthers Original »

Pep wanted us to play like Barcelona but signed some right old crocks and duffers. Agree that his sacking was premature but he certainly sowed the seeds of our crapness.

Oh god, it's going to be Sven, isn't it?
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