The way to the stars

Any talk of removing the majority shareholders is fanciful. The board made clear the terms on which a transfer of control can take place, with this season's increase in debt that cost is now around ?40 million. It seems clear that there are no buyers on those terms, presumably anyone who is interested will hold their fire until administration and then try to get the club on the cheap.

This does not mean would should refrain from criticising the board, or making suggestions as to changes in policy. Judge them on their record: under the current ownership debt has trebled; the current squad is the weakest we have had in my 40 years of watching City (I suspect it is the weakest since 1956); we face the likelihood of third division football for the first time in 49 years. This is a record of failure. In any other organisation such an abject record would place the Chief Executive under scrutiny, yet the highly-paid Mr Doncaster seems unassailable.

From comments made by Mr Wynn-Jones, Mr Doncaster, and the Turners it appears that the board taken a hands off approach to the running of the club, with managers left to get on with it, and not called to account for their failures. This approach works well if someone is good at their job - like Andy Cullen;but it is a recipe for the current disaster if the likes of Messrs Wood, Morgan, Martin, Worthington, Grant, Roeder and so on are left failing in their posts for too long.

We need an infrastructure at the club that enables the manager to put a decent team onto the field. Since promotion no-one has emerged from the Academy to become a regular first-teamer - the last was Shackell. We need to know why this is, sort it out, or shut the thing down. During that same 5-year period we have signed 80 or so players, and since the squad now is no bigger we must have got rid of roughly the same number, This mind-boggling turnover of players demonstrates that most of our signings have not been good enough. We need a good scouting set-up. The board must ensure that Dixie provides it.

There are things that must be done now: if the board respond with their normal indolence we will fall even further.

Posted By: Bryan Salad Surgery on April 19th 2009 at 23:00:00

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