egg

No Slattery, Vokins or L'undulu.

A poster and a newspaper article, so rumours.

Hmmm. Would you also dispute that the groundwork/drains went down then a change of heart? Regardless, there was c. £14m approved and c. £39m spent. That project finished him at the club.

Turkish will no doubt answer if he wants to, but cortese was a nightmare, and some of it has been documented on here. Yes he was at the helm during what was possibly the most exciting era in the club's history, and we all enjoyed our clubs resurrection and return to the PL. However, cortese as a character made us unpopular in football circles, he was divisive in the club, and ultimately treated the club as if it were his trainset with masses of financial waste including and overspend by about £25m on the (leased) training ground without approval. There were other issues too. Don't get me a wrong, I'd have a cortese with cash to burn over the current idiots every day of the week, but let's not kid ourselves that cortese was perfect.

Pain

So the suggestion that we're getting a DOF in and revamping our coaching structure flows from paper talk, and a bloke on here claiming to be ITK? That killed any excitement I had.

Dance

Yep, he was one that we released that made no sense at the time. Made the game look very easy, clearly a very good player. Glad he's done well.

Up.

Bill

Bang on. Anybody can see that playing one player out of position is preferable to playing two out of position. His full / wing back selections for much of the season have been plain stupid. Sure, he hasn't got the best squad to choose from but it's better than it was last year but he's doing a worse job with it.

Cave

One of Ralph's issues is playing people out of position. You're advocating playing Stephens out of position as a midfielder, ditto Ings. We need round pegs in round holes.

This. A much needed dose of reality.

Spot on.

No they don't but it's bizarre to single Davis out as the poor coach. For all we know he could be the best of the lot.

He could be right, but nobody knows, that's the point. What is this evidence that he's not much of a coach? He could be brilliant

That's a long winded way of saying that you're just guessing that Davis is a poor coach, and that you'd like Gao to leave cos he can't / won't spend money.

That's an odd question. I have no idea if we're being used as a money moving / laundering vehicle, and speculation about it isn't necessary. Hypothetically speaking though, if that's happening, of course its not right. I have no idea what his motivation is and I don't speculate - what's the point, we cabt influence him. However, you and I both want our club to succeed and compete. The fundamental difference between us is simply that you feel that we should expect an owner to throw money at the club, whereas I'd like them to but can't see that we should expect it and/or that there's anything in it for him if he did.

Liebherr bought us when we were on our knees in league 1. His cash input was an investment for sure. That's very different to throwing vast sums at us now.

What other owners do is irrelevant to what Gao chooses to do / would be sensible for him to do, but it is course different to what as a fan we'd all like him to do or we need to be competitive. I think we'll leave it there cos we're going around in circles, and at the end of the day it won't change a thing.

What other club owners choose to do is irrelevant to what Gao should do - they don't set a precedent that Gao is obliged to follow. Gao is a business man and in his shoes if I was told that £100m would get me a fresh batch of players I'd look at what £100m spent on the likes of Hoedt, Mo, Carillo, Vest etc would yield by way of return I'd deem that a risk / waste of money and keep my cash in my pocket. Any sensible person would imo. You think differently, I get that. On your last point, I want my club to compete. It's going the wrong way and I fear for our future. However, there is no entitlement to an owner who'll chuck millions at the club, especially when that owner has seen a small fortune wasted on dross. Re your patronising comment, take a look at your own posting style. I have an opinion that differs from yours, don't whine when I push back against your opinion.

Jeez, you went off on a bit of a tangent there mate, but I'll stick to the point which is none of us have an idea what he's like as a coach. If there's any report to his coaching ability, post a link please because I've not seen anything at all. All I'm saying is I don't know if he's good, bad or indifferent whereas others are assuming he's bad based on nothing. As for Gao, I'm not defending him. Have a crack at reading all the words and understanding them. As you seem hard of thinking though, all I've said is he's under no obligation to throw money at the club (if he has it) and from a business / investment perspective I can understand why he'd be reluctant. I hope that's clear enough for you.

Do I understand sport, what a daft question. I want my team to compete and it saddens me to see the direction we're heading. Of course I'd prefer us to have an owner with money than sense, but the fact is that we have an owner with more sense than money. The point though is that whilst we'd like a cash throwing owner, there's no entitlement to one, and anyone with investment / business acumen can see that investment in our club will never lead to a return.

Ah, the old "entitlement" cos other owners seem to do it line. The bottom line is that throwing money at a club like ours in the hope that it leads to a return for the "investor" is not attractive. There is little or no chance of a positive return so no prudent business man would do it. I want our club to be successful but this sense of entitlement is ridiculous. In any event, the truth is that spending on players over the last few years has been there, the issue has been ****e recruitment but the owner is the easy scapegoat.