I have to say Aloysius I find that a very honest but deeply disappointing attitude.
Ainsworth has worked wonders to get us out of our "natural position" based on our financial resources which would be in the bottom six in league 2. amazingly he has got us into league 1 - not a fluke he was knocking on the door in the previous couple of seasons as well. Sooner or later he will hit a brick wall and will not be able to outperform - perhaps we will just get a run of injuries, maybe some key players will lose form , maybe at this higher level we will just find that the best players we can attract on the wages we can pay are simply not good enough.
Your reaction if we dare to be in danger of relegation this season from a league we have no right to be in is to jerk the old knee and fire the manager. After all he would have shown that he is league 2 standard at best and will undoubtedly have lost the dressing room.
I applaud your honesty. If we find ourselves in that position, I am sure you will not find yourself alone. I just find such superficiality deeply deeply depressing.
as per @micra. Let's at least revel in the position of strength and confidence we're in that we can actually offer a manager a 5 year deal!! How many lower league clubs could do that?
Let's not get into drone army idiotic kneejerk what ifs just yet eh?
The old ‘No Plan B’ argument is never far away is it? It’s now employed routinely against a manager when his team loses. I suspect he probably does have a Plan B but (shock, gasp, horrors) perhaps the other fella does too.
OK; somebody help me out here. @aloysius implies in his posts above that Andrew Howard, alone, decided to award Gareth Ainsworth a five year contract and that he may have done so with no concern for the future of the club, since he can just walk away if it goes wrong and leave the mess behind without caring. I personally very much doubt the bit about him not caring because he can walk away, but I am primarily questioning the assumption of Andrew Howard's ability to unilaterally award this contract.
Andrew Howard is Sporting Director of WWFC and I understand this means that he will be the key person making recommendations regarding who should be the Manager, what length of contract they should be tied to, their compensation and benefits, etc. I would have expected, however, that the agreement and signing of any contract between the Manager and WWFC would need to be approved by the Chair of WWFC, if not the entire board of directors.
Am I missing something? Is Andrew Howard all powerful and able to spend and commit WWFC finances in any which way he may wish to without scrutiny? Or was the awarding of Gareth Ainsworth's extended contract, as I would believe and contrary to the implications above, approved by the WWFC Chair and directors and not down to the actions of one man alone? Should I be worried that none of the board of directors are tied down to five year contracts, so they all could (and I think it quite possible) have left their directorial positions before Gareth's new contract comes to an end?
I deliberately let that one pass. it was the attitudes rather than the lack of knowledge that struck me more.
Aloysius plainly doesn't know how management of organisations works. That probably isn't his fault. I suspect he hasn't been exposed to it.
There is virtually no doubt that a significant employment contract of a key employee would have been agreed in advance by the whole board - probably at a formal board meeting but at the very least on a full board call around.
@Uncle_T you put your finger on what I'm a little concerned about. As it stands we have a sporting director who makes decisions like the length of contract for a manager. A club board that then, presumably, approves that decision and a trust board that scrutinises it and has ultimate ownership of the decision. That works in principle. But given our sporting director owns Beachdean, where our club chairman works - and that club chairman is also the chairman of the Trust - I for one get a little queasy. I'm not saying there's anything dodgy going on at all, let me make that clear. But I am saying this set up does not provide for many impartial checks and balances on the actions of the sporting director.
As for Dev, either you've misunderstood me or wilfully misunderstood me. I didn't suggest sacking the manager "if we dare to be in danger of relegation" - in fact I explicitly stated the opposite.
@DevC said:
Aloysius plainly doesn't know how management of organisations works. That probably isn't his fault. I suspect he hasn't been exposed to it.
More weird conspiracy theories from Aloysius, already it seems backtracking from his desire to sack the manager as soon as we have a bad run.
I suspect from the style that Aloysius and marlow chair are the same person pursuing some personal agenda unknown to the rest of us.
meanwhile we have succeeded in securing one of our most successful managers ever on a long term contract. contrary to the split personalities of our friend/(s) above, that strikes me as very good news indeed.
@aloysius Thank you for the clarification and I now understand the reason behind your expressed concerns.
I have seen it commented on this forum previously that Trevor Stroud is employed by Andrew Howard at Beechdean, but was not able to find evidence of this via web searches, LinkedIn, etc., although I did guess this is what @marlowchair was also trying to get at with the picture link posted yesterday.
@DevC said:
Aloysius plainly doesn't know how management of organisations works. That probably isn't his fault. I suspect he hasn't been exposed to it.
@DevC said:
I suspect from the style that Aloysius and marlow chair are the same person pursuing some personal agenda unknown to the rest of us.
Any similarity between @aloysius and @marlowchair (age, style, etc) is purely fictitious and/or a figment of @DevC’s currently fevered imagination. He cannot be serious.
I have reflected and realised you are right micra.
while I had initially thought giving our highly successful manager an extended contract was tremendous news for the club, I now realise that in fact it was a disastrous decision forced through as his final gesture at the club by an uncaring megalomaniac, who didn't mention it to any one else but even if he did has the chairman in his pocket and has anyway only ever been in it to secure discounted shirt sponsorship rates for his ice cream business to compensate it for the financial catastrophe of losing the Wycombe Swan contract.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude for alerting us to the public spirited heroic management consultants that are Aloysius and Marlow, (who apparently have never met).
What if all our players get injured and we're bottom by Christmas and Manchester United come in for Gareth? I want to know what the Board/Trust/Club/Vere Suite/Volunteers have put in place for such eventualities.
We may find this season in League 1 difficult (we may not).
We may flirt with/succumb to relegation (we may not).
Sacking a manager (with proven experience of getting promoted from League 2) in such eventualities may not be the most prudent move, despite the increased moans of Richie/Trevor and their ilk.
GA has (in my view) earned the right to decide if he has 'lost the dressing room'.
I am a romantic at heart. I believe if GA feels that he has, he would walk away (with minimal compensation).
We may get promoted (we may not).
AH and Trevor Stroud are working in the best interests of the long-term sustainability of the club (although I agree it would be advisable to separate the two roles and more transparency wouldn't hurt).
@bookertease you speak truth to power. Pushing my rose-tinted bottle-bottom specs up my nose, I think if we spend the whole of the season in the bottom half, Gareth and this squad will keep us up and push on from there.
Looks like Tafari Moore might be signing for Plymouth. There's a hazy photo of someone in an Argyle shirt being interviewed at Home Park that looks a lot like him. In an ideal world I would have liked to get him back here, but we're not exactly poor in the RB department, so I can see why we may not have persued him. Seems a good kid and wish him well.
I reckon Tafari wanted a fair wedge to sign. I'm sure he will be a solid L1 player and probably higher, but we can't justify it when we've got Jombati and Harriman.
My view on the GA contract extension has been clear in the other topic in the same subject.if the paranoids who want to try and discredit an alternate view by claiming another poster and I are one and the same they best actually read our opinions and understand how different they are often.
I for one am not worried at all that extended contract for GA places any greater risk financially on the club because it doesn’t. I’ve already made the point elsewhere that the managers contracts are limited to a negotiated payout on severance period , something the tiresome Dev argued and contradicted me in saying I was wrong.thats fine of course and his perogative,but to conveniently disregard that when trying to win another argument with someone else is embarrassing even for Dev
Good news on JJ and GA, disappointed with the Bean news (considering Bloomfield signed as well), that's two who I wouldn't want near the first team in league 1 signed up
I have no desire to enter an argument with you. You and Aloysius have similar styles - you post conspiracy theories and then quickly back track when the fallacies are pointed out. I prefer Aloysius posting style however. I corrected a number of areas where you had your facts wrong.
You wish to show off your supposed insider knowledge, including now stating as fact on a public forum confidential discussions. If that's how you want to behave, that's fine with me. frankly I am far less interested in you than you seem to be.
Prufrock
There are all sorts of reasons why Tafari Moore has gone to Plymouth not us. They have room in their squad for a RB, we don't. They are a richer club than us and so more able to take punts on a raw talent. They are able to pay higher wages. The player may have seen them as a better longterm prospect. He may have compared the Hoe and the Rye and made the obvious choice. Ainsworth having seen him last season may just not fancy him. Ainsworth may be useless at his job. All apart from the last seem possible explanations. Wish him well (well not to well, argyle are a hard club to love) and move on.
@prufrock_91, maybe because they need a right back, and we have two already? Including a guy in Harriman who completely marginalised Moore when he returned, even when not up to full fitness?
Comments
I have to say Aloysius I find that a very honest but deeply disappointing attitude.
Ainsworth has worked wonders to get us out of our "natural position" based on our financial resources which would be in the bottom six in league 2. amazingly he has got us into league 1 - not a fluke he was knocking on the door in the previous couple of seasons as well. Sooner or later he will hit a brick wall and will not be able to outperform - perhaps we will just get a run of injuries, maybe some key players will lose form , maybe at this higher level we will just find that the best players we can attract on the wages we can pay are simply not good enough.
Your reaction if we dare to be in danger of relegation this season from a league we have no right to be in is to jerk the old knee and fire the manager. After all he would have shown that he is league 2 standard at best and will undoubtedly have lost the dressing room.
I applaud your honesty. If we find ourselves in that position, I am sure you will not find yourself alone. I just find such superficiality deeply deeply depressing.
as per @micra. Let's at least revel in the position of strength and confidence we're in that we can actually offer a manager a 5 year deal!! How many lower league clubs could do that?
Let's not get into drone army idiotic kneejerk what ifs just yet eh?
The old ‘No Plan B’ argument is never far away is it? It’s now employed routinely against a manager when his team loses. I suspect he probably does have a Plan B but (shock, gasp, horrors) perhaps the other fella does too.
“He’s got no Plan C”
OK; somebody help me out here. @aloysius implies in his posts above that Andrew Howard, alone, decided to award Gareth Ainsworth a five year contract and that he may have done so with no concern for the future of the club, since he can just walk away if it goes wrong and leave the mess behind without caring. I personally very much doubt the bit about him not caring because he can walk away, but I am primarily questioning the assumption of Andrew Howard's ability to unilaterally award this contract.
Andrew Howard is Sporting Director of WWFC and I understand this means that he will be the key person making recommendations regarding who should be the Manager, what length of contract they should be tied to, their compensation and benefits, etc. I would have expected, however, that the agreement and signing of any contract between the Manager and WWFC would need to be approved by the Chair of WWFC, if not the entire board of directors.
Am I missing something? Is Andrew Howard all powerful and able to spend and commit WWFC finances in any which way he may wish to without scrutiny? Or was the awarding of Gareth Ainsworth's extended contract, as I would believe and contrary to the implications above, approved by the WWFC Chair and directors and not down to the actions of one man alone? Should I be worried that none of the board of directors are tied down to five year contracts, so they all could (and I think it quite possible) have left their directorial positions before Gareth's new contract comes to an end?
I deliberately let that one pass. it was the attitudes rather than the lack of knowledge that struck me more.
Aloysius plainly doesn't know how management of organisations works. That probably isn't his fault. I suspect he hasn't been exposed to it.
There is virtually no doubt that a significant employment contract of a key employee would have been agreed in advance by the whole board - probably at a formal board meeting but at the very least on a full board call around.
@Uncle_T you put your finger on what I'm a little concerned about. As it stands we have a sporting director who makes decisions like the length of contract for a manager. A club board that then, presumably, approves that decision and a trust board that scrutinises it and has ultimate ownership of the decision. That works in principle. But given our sporting director owns Beachdean, where our club chairman works - and that club chairman is also the chairman of the Trust - I for one get a little queasy. I'm not saying there's anything dodgy going on at all, let me make that clear. But I am saying this set up does not provide for many impartial checks and balances on the actions of the sporting director.
As for Dev, either you've misunderstood me or wilfully misunderstood me. I didn't suggest sacking the manager "if we dare to be in danger of relegation" - in fact I explicitly stated the opposite.
Bizarre.
More weird conspiracy theories from Aloysius, already it seems backtracking from his desire to sack the manager as soon as we have a bad run.
I suspect from the style that Aloysius and marlow chair are the same person pursuing some personal agenda unknown to the rest of us.
meanwhile we have succeeded in securing one of our most successful managers ever on a long term contract. contrary to the split personalities of our friend/(s) above, that strikes me as very good news indeed.
@DevC are you suffering from heatstroke? I suggest a cold compress and a little lie down.
@aloysius Thank you for the clarification and I now understand the reason behind your expressed concerns.
I have seen it commented on this forum previously that Trevor Stroud is employed by Andrew Howard at Beechdean, but was not able to find evidence of this via web searches, LinkedIn, etc., although I did guess this is what @marlowchair was also trying to get at with the picture link posted yesterday.
Keep on trying to play the man not the ball, Aloysius/Marlow.
As per @Last_Quarter - bizarre and arrogant.
Any similarity between @aloysius and @marlowchair (age, style, etc) is purely fictitious and/or a figment of @DevC’s currently fevered imagination. He cannot be serious.
I have reflected and realised you are right micra.
while I had initially thought giving our highly successful manager an extended contract was tremendous news for the club, I now realise that in fact it was a disastrous decision forced through as his final gesture at the club by an uncaring megalomaniac, who didn't mention it to any one else but even if he did has the chairman in his pocket and has anyway only ever been in it to secure discounted shirt sponsorship rates for his ice cream business to compensate it for the financial catastrophe of losing the Wycombe Swan contract.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude for alerting us to the public spirited heroic management consultants that are Aloysius and Marlow, (who apparently have never met).
Beautifully put, if I may say so @DevC.
I don’t think they are the same poster.
What if all our players get injured and we're bottom by Christmas and Manchester United come in for Gareth? I want to know what the Board/Trust/Club/Vere Suite/Volunteers have put in place for such eventualities.
@Wendoverman We’re wycombising the cast of the Swan’s Christmas panto just in case.
No Beechdean ice cream though.
We may find this season in League 1 difficult (we may not).
We may flirt with/succumb to relegation (we may not).
Sacking a manager (with proven experience of getting promoted from League 2) in such eventualities may not be the most prudent move, despite the increased moans of Richie/Trevor and their ilk.
GA has (in my view) earned the right to decide if he has 'lost the dressing room'.
I am a romantic at heart. I believe if GA feels that he has, he would walk away (with minimal compensation).
We may get promoted (we may not).
AH and Trevor Stroud are working in the best interests of the long-term sustainability of the club (although I agree it would be advisable to separate the two roles and more transparency wouldn't hurt).
@aloysius & @marlowchair are not the same person (unless suffering from DID).
@Ned_Ludd is a genius (thanks Ned - I needed that laugh)
@bookertease you speak truth to power. Pushing my rose-tinted bottle-bottom specs up my nose, I think if we spend the whole of the season in the bottom half, Gareth and this squad will keep us up and push on from there.
Looks like Tafari Moore might be signing for Plymouth. There's a hazy photo of someone in an Argyle shirt being interviewed at Home Park that looks a lot like him. In an ideal world I would have liked to get him back here, but we're not exactly poor in the RB department, so I can see why we may not have persued him. Seems a good kid and wish him well.
I reckon Tafari wanted a fair wedge to sign. I'm sure he will be a solid L1 player and probably higher, but we can't justify it when we've got Jombati and Harriman.
My view on the GA contract extension has been clear in the other topic in the same subject.if the paranoids who want to try and discredit an alternate view by claiming another poster and I are one and the same they best actually read our opinions and understand how different they are often.
I for one am not worried at all that extended contract for GA places any greater risk financially on the club because it doesn’t. I’ve already made the point elsewhere that the managers contracts are limited to a negotiated payout on severance period , something the tiresome Dev argued and contradicted me in saying I was wrong.thats fine of course and his perogative,but to conveniently disregard that when trying to win another argument with someone else is embarrassing even for Dev
I should add that the extension of GA contract and all terms was fully supported and enthusiastically so,by the football club and full trust board.
It’s great business and can’t be open to any levels of criticism or concern on process or governance in my opinion .
Smithies from QPR looks set to go to Cardiff, which may finally give Ingram a shot at that Number 1 spot.
Also, I am BUMMED that Moore has gone to Plymouth. They're a League 1 club, and if they think he can do well - why haven't we.
Anyway, onwards.
Good news on JJ and GA, disappointed with the Bean news (considering Bloomfield signed as well), that's two who I wouldn't want near the first team in league 1 signed up
I would have loved to have signed Moore and don't care for Plymouth at all. Its just a 'shame' we are so rich in right back cover.
Marlow.
I have no desire to enter an argument with you. You and Aloysius have similar styles - you post conspiracy theories and then quickly back track when the fallacies are pointed out. I prefer Aloysius posting style however. I corrected a number of areas where you had your facts wrong.
You wish to show off your supposed insider knowledge, including now stating as fact on a public forum confidential discussions. If that's how you want to behave, that's fine with me. frankly I am far less interested in you than you seem to be.
Prufrock
There are all sorts of reasons why Tafari Moore has gone to Plymouth not us. They have room in their squad for a RB, we don't. They are a richer club than us and so more able to take punts on a raw talent. They are able to pay higher wages. The player may have seen them as a better longterm prospect. He may have compared the Hoe and the Rye and made the obvious choice. Ainsworth having seen him last season may just not fancy him. Ainsworth may be useless at his job. All apart from the last seem possible explanations. Wish him well (well not to well, argyle are a hard club to love) and move on.
So Moore's next club cold have been down to comparing the Hoe and the Rye? How long until the matches start and the @DevC takeover finishes?
@prufrock_91, maybe because they need a right back, and we have two already? Including a guy in Harriman who completely marginalised Moore when he returned, even when not up to full fitness?