Last 5 Seasons

We wouldn’t get out of there…

1 Like

In terms of continuing that shameful run I think we might just halt the decline in terms of league position. However, I suspect we shan’t get more points than last year. We need another three points to match last year so four more to beat last year. Which from the three games we have left would require an upturn. Our hope in that regard is that Swindon have well and truly blown it by the time they arrive on the last day.

And just on the board. I think they care and I think the ones who work day to day genuinely put a shift in. I think they really want the club to move forward. The problem is that they don’t know how to do it. They have the will but not the skill. And one without the other doesn’t work. In many ways when it is skill rather than will missing, making change is harder because you see people pulling their tripe out and your instinct is to back them. But to succeed you can’t walk past continued failure. If you do, then you firstly become part of and ultimately completely the problem.

5 Likes

This needs bringing up at the next WPM to see how what ideas Pomlett has to stop this decline. He needs to work harder at getting investors in.

Good post but if an organisation doesn’t have the skills at the top it is incumbent on those at the top to bring in people with the skills which are lacking.
The programme contains a list of the various departments and their heads. It is these people who should be able to provide the missing skills. As far as the football side is concerned we now seem to have the right people in post in the Manager and the guy in charge of the Academy.
As far as other parts of the business are concerned we know the restaurant is in good shape and provides excellent meals.
As for the rest then I think we all agree that things could be much better and the Board should be looking at how to do that.
Back to the football the last 5 years have been awful but continuing decline is not inevitable and perhaps in Flynn we have a man who is capable of changing that.

3 Likes

No need to panic, the last five seasons took place before the brand new, shiny Five Year Plan kicks in. As soon as Dame Omelette remembers what he did with the fag packet he scribbled it on, the plan can be implemented and everything in the garden will be rosy. Just watch us go!

2 Likes

So 12 months after what was supposed to be the start of a root and branch sea change in the football side of the club, with the result that going forward we had a progressive philosophy that was successful from the academy through to the first team, with the stated aim of not simply pinning our hopes on an individual manager being the source of success/progress. We’ve arrived at “fingers crossed and Michael Flynn”.

10 Likes

I also wonder how longer Flynn will stay at the Landlords Stadium. Could see him doing a Darrel when he realises he isn’t backed by the club & the old fashioned, unprofessional approach our club has to virtually everything.

Budget will be being cut as we speak, costs going up, rent going up, ST sales not as good, sponsors pulling out, etc…… Appreciate I have no evidence of this other than history of our board btw.

Change needed in the boardroom. It really is that simple & how a failing ‘business’ has not changed its board in decades, this would not happen in any other ‘business’.

5 Likes

You reap what you sow, and while we still have the Grace brothers mentality within our boardroom, then we will never see any progression

5 Likes

We’ve all done very well!!

4 Likes

If only we could replicate their lift announcements of “going up”!

3 Likes

The 5 year plan is upside down!

Exactly as I feel. Flynn has a nice bit of reputational credit in the bank (as DC did) in respect of being a decent 4th division manager. That hasn’t been eaten into by the fact that he took us over plummetting towards relegation and has lead us to safety quite comfortably.

I strongly suspect that over the summer and the early part of next season he will come to realise (as DC did) that an extended stay here isn’t going to enhance his career prospects. I don’t think we will be relegation fodder with Flynn at the helm, but if we’re mid-table or even top half his reputation will remain sufficiently intact to jump at any of the several jobs that will likely become available at this level next year, Mark Hughes at Bradford doesn’t seem to be working for example, and the likes of Fleetwood and Salford could well be looking for someone if they’re at this level and stagnated.

Hope to be proved completely wrong however. :crossed_fingers: :pinching_hand:

Well we always ask if our targets in the transfer market are free😀

1 Like

This made me think about the longest current runs in the league without a promotion season (not counting Prem teams who don’t know what a promotion season is). We’re obviously now 15 years since our last in 2007, equal with Derby and Sunderland, with only Carlisle 2006, Colchester 2006, Ipswich 2000 and Oldham 1991(!!!) in longer dry spells.

1 Like

Someone mentioned on R5Live over the weekend that Oldham had only been promoted once since 1974, which didn’t seem likely, but they were fairly static for a good while in Div 2 for the second half of the 70s and whole of the 80s and then in the third tier for 11 or 12 seasons until 2018.
They apparently haven’t finished in the top half of a division since 2009. :astonished:

1 Like

Let’s be honest we didn’t need that tweet to highlight the clubs decline, that’s just one aspect of decline

The physical condition of the stadium has accelerated.

The level of customer service has declined

The “football plan” since Smith hasn’t existed, Lee alone declined.

The club shop continues to be a joke

The match day experience has got worse (cashless debacle)

Show me any other organisation where the Board are not held to account after 5 successive years of decline

2 Likes

According to the weekend press, Homeserve are the subject of a take over bid from a bunch of Canadian financiers. As a result their shares rose by 15% which values the company at over £3 billion!
Maybe the uncertainty about their future has led to the alleged reduction in sponsorship? Whatever the case I am absolutely gobsmacked to learn that the company is valued that high on that Stock Exchange.
In 2021 the owner, Richard Harpin was worth an estimated £627 million! I wonder if he wants to give something back to the town that’s made him so wealthy? :soccer::pound::pound::pound:

1 Like

They were surely promoted from the old third division in the eighties when they had the plastic pitch and Frankie Bunn smashed a few goals past us they would then of had to be promoted to what became the prem they were there in the nineties

1 Like

It is correct we must of played them in the old second division

1 Like

I had to look it up when I heard it because I was sure it couldn’t be correct.
We played them for a couple of seasons when I first started following Walsall then they disappeared for over 20 years, apart from that one season in 88-89.
I think they must have been promoted the season after.