Oh of course, I’m not for a minute suggesting that apathy isn’t justified.
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I think an Apathy movement is called for!
This. Absolutely, this.
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Can we start a thread on it? 
Think one’s already started
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WM colludes in this.
Reminds me of a cartoon in Private Eye a couple of months ago. Two people in an office, one saying," The motivational speaker’s called to cancel. He said he can’t be arsed."
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There’s a bandwagon rolling now.
Come and make non-committal grunt in its general direction.
The problem with the narrative is that when people in the media say “look at the job Keates has done on his budget” they are absolutely factually correct. Any manager has done well to keep Walsall in League One with the squad at the end of last season + the budget.
But that narrative is accurate only because the club self imposes this situation. They parrot that they are one of the few teams in the league to make a profit, yet that tells me everyone else is sustainably making loses in every effort to better the club. To make it to the next level and dwarf those losses with their earnings. We simply will not take that risk no matter how much money we pour into the club.
They say to do this “risks there being a club at all in the future”. Do people genuinely believe that? That 90% of the league is going to fold? That teams like Oxford United and Gillingham will not be there in a few years time and we are one of the few clubs that get it right? I don’t think so. It’s fear mongering for the sake of risking a pension pay out.
Then again, I could just go and support Bournemouth. Whatever happened to them?
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Agree - it’s all about playing it safe. The risk/reward approach they have at Peterborough is a million miles away from the way we are set-up. If we manage to stay up in League One and cobble together a side good enough to bother the top 8 once every five years, that’s viewed as acceptable.
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To be honest, I think their current policy is the bigger danger for the club. Okay we won’t spectacularly blow up and disappear like we might if we threw caution to the financial winds. However, our current policy is leading to a slow, painful and undeniable death.
Death by apathy will be the diagnosis.
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And, as other threads have outlined, it’s not just on the pitch. They seem uninterested in encouraging new fans through the gates. The attitude that comes over from whole the customer facing side is, " Take it or leave it." Of course that’s easier to get away with when the team’s having some success.
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Very good point.
There is definitely a sustainable middle ground between spraying money around like Rockefeller and death by a thousand pension payments but it increasingly feels like they won’t even risk the middle ground. They in fact seem almost happy with the latter.
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Which inevitably leads to once passionate fans like myself paying £35 a year to listen to it instead of £100’s a year to turn up and support it.
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but for every Bournemouth there is a Stockport (more in fact if you add up all the teams now in the Conference and below) and that is the risk you take. It probably would be more exciting for a time like when Terry Ramsden took over but where did that get us? To Bescot and Bonser that is where it got us. I have commented before on how we desperately need new leadership and ideas however and that is the key issue for me. I suspect that when JB does go it will be another local business person who will take over probably with the same sort of policies but at least they will bring new thinking to the Club.
There isn’t though. Burton Albion recently spent time in the Championship. Watford are in the top half of the Premier League. Brighton and Hove Albion are a solid mid table premier league club. Swansea City are a top half Championship team that spent a few years in the premier league. Brentford are a solid mid table Championship team. I could go on.
For every horror story, like Stockport, there is irresponsible spending. That’s not what I’m talking about. All of those clubs at one time or another were considered on or even below our level. They have all, sensibly, speculated to accumulate. Terry Ramsden was a fly by the night merchant who existed in a completely different time. It’s 2018. There isn’t another club in the world that has grown and prospered on the way we do business.
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I’m am always interested when Stockport is quoted a the example of the basket case we could become if we ever became reckless in matters financial.
Stockport attract more people to watch them than they did thirty years ago when they were mainstays of the league. We attract less despite playing at the same level.
In 1986/87 we attracted over twice the average numbers of Stockport. Whereas last season we averaged 4,700 versus Stockport’s 3,450. If you took the away fans out of those numbers I think it would be fair to say that despite playing three levels apart, our attendances are comparable.
So whilst Stockport look like an example of what could go wrong, I would argue that if they are the worst case scenario, then it actually isn’t that bad because they still fulfill their purpose for their community despite their on-field travails. And when they eventually get it right they will build a Lincoln-esque momentum that will see us looking at their crowds with envy(see also Doncaster, Shrewsbury, Tranmere).
Bonser did his infamous “go and support Bournemouth, Rotherham or Luton” thing at a specific moment through the single dimension of league position. All three are ahead of us via that and every other dimension now. It might take five or ten years but Stockport will get there too.
Unless we can somehow break our current shackles.
I hate that line of fear mongering that the club peddle.
90 percent of the football league clubs make losses year upon year. WE WILL NOT GO OUT OF BUSINESS BY REINVESTING WHAT THE CLUB MAKES SENSIBLY AND EVEN MAKING THE ODD LOSS
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Most clubs lose money. Most clubs are ok with losing money. Sporting endeavour is all about measured risk. The golfer who always lays up might make the cut but will never win the tournament. They will also be dull.
Our expectations have been managed to the point where most saw the 15/16 January window as us going for it. Not because we signed anyone. No it was because we didn’t sell anyone.
In a sporting sense our small profit each year is irrelevant. I buy a season ticket to watch a football team and not a balance sheet. It is only remarkable because it is a quirky exception to the accepted norm of football finances. We’re odd. Whoop.
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I just feel Mr Bonser doesn’t want to rock the boat and take any risk’s that may jeopardize the nice little earner he has got going on .
He’s guaranteed his rent with the amount of support going through the turnstile’s as it is now , so he doesn’t want to spend exuberantly , and buy expensive player’s with wage’s to match , and offer contract’s to make player’s want to stay , and attract more of the same … why not , because he doesn’t need to .
I don’t believe he has any ambition for the Football and he use’s it for a front for business . Let’s face it he owned a couple of local engineering firm’s until he got his hand’s on the club , and then he quickly sold them which tell’s me he realised where the real money making was to be made .
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