Yeah. Pretty much.

He was always on a hiding to nothing taking this on. But he did it regardless, and that does take balls.

Overturning the River End move, at least for now, is directly overwriting a Zoe decision. So that’s a bit of a public slap in the face for her.

Didn’t get the strong sense that he fancies Knapper long term. Sounds like the data team he’s building will eventually take over anyway. But he’s clearly planning on assessing Knapper later in the season on the players he’s brought in. And he can see what we see, clearly.

He was never going to sack Manning live on air. And he is right, he’s done better than this wherever he’s been. So if you follow the stats, this is something of an anomaly and he should revert to mean. Sadly, if you follow your eyes, the team Manning built looks a f**king mess from top to bottom. So I think most of us will have just groaned when we heard that. Ditto this Hope that returning players will transform us. A nice theory, but we’ve been s**t all season regardless of having them available or not. But at least we further understand what kind of owner he’s going to be. Very data driven.

Hes basically put his two key execs on notice regarding plans to assess it all in the medium term. Based on what I heard, if drastic improvements haven’t happened they’ll both be gone. So both need to up their game substantially from here. If Knapper is given money to spend in Jan, he’d better make sure he spends it bloody well. And Webber can’t afford any more f**k ups either.

Most important thing from tonight, sounds like he plans to continue writing cheques, which is good, cos he’s gonna need to write a lot of them to get us anywhere other than League 1 from here.

Posted By: Under soil heating, Oct 29, 19:39:37