Is that the same shell of a club that finished 8th in league one our highest position for years? Wasn't Les Taylor academy manager until recently and we're now advertising for another. Commercial managers have always come and gone - I imagine once they realise they have very limited scope to achieve anything with the stadium situation they think I've done all I can. I'm not sure what our previous MD did really so I don't see that as a great loss especially if Eales is taking on more of that role.Myles Francis wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2017 11:55 amHmm, really?
We have/had a manager who has stated that he wants to prove himself as a manager at the highest level. Over the past two seasons he has won promotion and then gone on to finish within touching distance of the play-offs despite not receiving the backing in January which, by all accounts, he had been pledged. He then makes a statement about how he intends to stay at the club provided the club's ambition continues to meet his own, i.e. a serious tilt at promotion to the Championship. We then have Eales making a statement about how he hopes to provide a top-six budget, but this is dependent on a player sale or sales (although a significant number of fans are of the opinion that this was a "promise" of a top-six budget.
In the background, we also now have a club with no effective Commercial Director since Christmas, no Academy Manager since February, no MD since (in reality) February/March - in essence, as oufc4eva has said, a shell of a club.
So, Appleton sees this, sees the budget he's being given, and realises he's being set up to fail here. If we end up plodding along in 10th-ish place he would be seen by the outside world as failing as he's not taken the club forward despite his chairman's public pronouncements about increasing the budget. That reputation he has rebuilt over the past couple of years gets trashed again.
As a result, he's now been given a way out. It's certainly not a good move for career progression as he's effectively going back to what he was doing at West Brom nearly 10 years ago. But that move is almost certainly less harmful than being expected to deliver more with less in his current position.
But of course, none of this can be laid at Eales' door....
Out of interest from Blackburn, Wigan, Pompy, Bradford, Mk Dons and Pboro do you expect us to have a bigger budget then? If being set up to fail at Oxford United is being able to spend £450,000 on one player last year and £300,000 this year then wow we have moved on a very long way haven't we? Are you expecting more than this? Mapp, as he has before, has gone at the first sign of a much improved offer. He was lucky to get a job with us and the difference between the reaction of him jumping ship and Wilder is remarkable. With Wilder the club was up for sale, he wasn't getting his contract renewed and budget cuts were being made. He took us from the bottom half of the conference and left us in the play offs of league 2. Mapp took us from just outside the play offs to 8th in the league above. Wilder continues to be pilloried by a large section of our fan base despite being proven to have made the right decision for him. Will be very interesting to see where Mapp is in three years time - I will not be surprised if he is an assistant somewhere of back in league 1 or 2. This is not sour grapes, I wish him well, but we are left with some very good players, we are one of the favourites for promotion and the new manager will have all of pre season to make the improvements that need to be made. If he didn't think he could build on last season I would suggest he lacked ambition and confidence in himself.
It's a shame to lose him but the club is bigger than him and Eales is sticking around having invested significantly in the club. He could have sold up, taken the money, but he didn't to so why don't we cut him a bit of slack and see how next season goes - he got the manager appointment right last time why not think he can do it again.
COYY.