Best Of

It'd certainly be interesting to find the thread where there were a lot of raving comments about Rice early on, especially having heard him speak a couple of times and compare the comments then to now!

Thanks to Jason a real servant to the club. Surprised he didn’t carry on playing but maybe he will drop down the levels at a club near Brighton for the odd game?

How much of that is people talking with authority on a subject they know well from the inside, and how much is tired football stereotype that’s trotted out every time a new owner of a football club comes in. Because that sounds very much the latter to me tbh.

An Incumbent manager who has a new boss is always not “the owners man” unless and until they give him a contract. Same can and is said for players after a new manager comes in.

I’m not saying MB wasn’t regarded as the new Ownerships “man” - he probably wasn’t- but they could have done what Everton’s new owners did and get rid of the manager almost as soon as they came in.

I rather suspect Rice et al also didn’t pull any punches in that respect and gave MB the courtesy of telling him the truth that the whole structure of the football club will change and that included the position of Manager towards a head coach role.

That scenario both explains Matt not “being their man” and him “not having them” as everyone internally knew what direction it was going in and it was different to what Matt wanted.

And certainly with a bit more hindsight, the interview Dan and Jeremy gave about the academy and saying that positions will be filled with people with similar goals and aspirations were clearly talking about the first team manager and staff.

I think it’s from the:

Family first, Plucky underdogs, struggling to survive, upsetting the odds and hoping to break even

to:

to ruthless business first approach with a plan to get to the holy grail of breaking even or making a profit (however unlikely in the business of professional football) using both experience in the sector and the backing with financial clout to for fill those plans off the pitch while restructuring the club to a more modern approach that really can take the humanity of of it.

but other than that. Basically nothing. Right?

The way the Couhigs handled GA going to QPR vs the way MB has gone to Luton. There is a massive difference and it’s not a good one.

The Scott Mitchell removal.

ML being pretty much invisible vs Rob Couhig.

Genuinely curious to hear what it is that has changed to make some of you feel that the culture / ethos of the club is being eradicated?

What has changed but from a few staff? I appreciate MB was part of the furniture at WW, but we don't even know what life after MB is like yet, so how can you suggest things have got worse all of a sudden? There must be something you have experienced in the past 12 months which makes you feel that way.

Players, managers and other non-playing staff come and go - it is far more than that which creates a club's ethos.

JJ says he told Bloomfield "You had to take this opportunity" as Luton are a Championship club. Nothing very cagey about that.

And lastly - I hope Luton get relegated.

I wanted them to get relegated before Matt B went there.

I want them to get relegated now Matt has gone there.

Was the same with Col U.

I would love to see us get promoted.

After everything that gone on in the last week, nothing has changed in those respects.

Oh, and one last thing if we trying to pick a good side or bad side between old management and new owner - there’s one thing that can’t be said of the new ownership. Whoever was picking and scouting players etc - be it Rice and his software package, Matt B himself or Scott Mitchell, when you look at the signings we had over the summer and into the new season - including Fred who I suspect isn’t on a bad wage - the new owners sanctioned a lot of players Matt did want. Matt’s talked about them in his interviews.

They could have veto’d any/all of them if they really wanted to play hard ball. Instead they gave him a decent number of players signed and as the season has gone on, up until this window, things have gradually changed to a point that MB has found an opportunity that fits more like what he thought he was going to have here. But it changed on him.

Sometimes that happens without bad guys on one side of it and good guys on the other. It’s just change.

He’ll lose his shine on here if he is.