Best Of

Bloomsgate is the Gasroom's Brexit, right down to being told "you lost, get over it" and people who've had enough of experts.

Why on earth would we sell him for £600K? Joe is a £1M+ player in my book.

Bradley is great, but surely we didn't break our transfer record (the first time) to have the lad polish the bench with his derrier?

It is going to be interesting to see what the pecking order is, because I agree Bradley has been fantastic so far.

Reams and reams of well-thought-out posts explaining concerns and yet strawmen arguments still being used while points made are completely ignored. Football is a funny place.

The extraordinary level of backing given to Matt Bloomfield in terms of squad recruitment and wages by Dan Rice etc led to unprecedented success and ultimately to him leaving. And Dan is painted as the bad guy by some. Football is a funny place.

I think the idea is that you sign someone to a fat extension and a higher release clause and make them feel wanted, not wait until you have to make a counter. See: Walsall with Mat Sadler.

Of course the club are within their rights to do whatever, but there is plenty they could have done if they cared about keeping Blooms around.

Why do you feel the owners needed to secure him?

They have come in with an idea and a plan on how the club will be structured going forward. I would bet my house that during one of the very first meetings with Matt they presented a scope or an idea of what the Org Chart for the club would look like under their management including where Matt would sit and what his role would be moving forward, who Matt would report to directly and who he will have reporting to him (which didn’t include Scott Mitchel anymore because that role falls within Dans responsibilities)

They could very well have been happy if Matt wanted to remain in that role.

Matt is/was also perfectly entitled to feel the floor is moving under neath him and he’s not happy or comfortable in what the role will become and so looked elsewhere as the realities of the new org start to kick in.

If it’s no secret in how the leadership want to run the company, and no secret that Matt isn’t happy, what use is it in either DR offering, or MB asking for a new contract?

Honestly, it’s like no one here has been involved in a merger or company acquisition before and not idea what can happen when new leaderships teams come in.

Put very very simply: some of us are questioning the wisdom of not valuing a manager who had us overachieving in the autos. It comes with a whiff of potential pig headedness on the part of the regime to not realize that they had one of the hottest young EFL managers on their hands. To put it in your corporate terms, if you came in after an acquisition and found that one of the high ranking managers from the old company was making obscene amounts of profit for the company, you would be well within your rights to not value him and make his role feel uncomfortable. That does not mean it is a wise decision, or above questioning.

The strawman arguments of them "being within their rights" and "things like this happen in the corporate world all the time" keep coming up despite no-one arguing against those points. My two points, again:

1. Undermining Blooms with the sackings around him and the passive-aggressive behaviour (even down to not saying his name in interviews) makes me question their character.
2. Not valuing Blooms despite him being one of the hottest managers currently, makes me question their judgment.

They might turn out to be fantastic owners, but there is nothing at all wrong with the logic behind the two questions above. It may turn out that Dan Rice rescues puppies and is a chess grandmaster, and it eventually becomes apparent he has the finest character and judgment that there is. In the meantime, there is literally nothing wrong in any trust needing to be earned, not given blindly.

While I agree that Matt has left for what he perceived to be a better job - which could be more money, more security, feels more wanted, feels it's a better stepping stone for the future, has responsibilities which he enjoys more - the apparent truth is WWFC didn't try and secure a very promising young manager who had been linked with a number of jobs (interviewed for 2 if we are to believe the reports) and who had won 2 MOTM awards.

Why was that?

What plans does the management hierarchy have to replace him?

Time will tell if it was the correct move - for both sides - but currently we've lost a very talented young manager who had taken us to the point where we have a chance of automatic promotion to the Championship.

If we don't at least make the play-offs this year that's on Dan Rice, he had it in his hands to secure Matt until at least the season end and he failed to ensure he stayed out manager (or head coach).

I've no idea what's gone on behind closed doors but our season has been derailed - let's hope we can sustain a challenge for a play-offs spot.

A little off topic, but Luton need to work on their interview lighting. They make Blooms look like a crime suspect.

Matt Bloomfield ahead of first match in charge of Luton!