S-Clarke

Of course he's not ill now, but he's got a knock to the knee. Honestly can we just sack this guy off.

I thought we were changing that in the summer with Downs and Quarshie, some even Quarshie whilst tall is quite weak in one-on-one duals. But after adding some height with those first two, we didn't really continue in the same vein which was odd. I thought we were hitting the spine of the team with some physical presence.

I was of this view maybe 6 months - year ago, but he has to absorb some of the blame now. This has been 4 years of colossal mismanagement and no one is immune from criticism at this point, especially since Dragan has now put himself front and centre since last year. They've all played their part in the decline of this football club.

This is my view of him. He popped up with a great goal and looks really busy, but he's proper weak and will get dispossessed quite a lot. I can see why he hasn't been playing. He won't get the freedom he had in the lead up to his goal in many games. He looks a tidy player with energy, but he'd just add to the issue we already have - no steel, just lots of meek technical players who get knocked off the ball.

This has been my stance as well, but this guy is also in a position of authority now - he's appointed himself as Chairman of this club. Yet still it's chaos. This is now happening fully under his watch sad to say.

@trousers - you're usually all over the companies house stuff, do you know how it's split?

I think the most important position at any club is the overall ownership. If the top is bad/toxic, then it doesn't truly matter what you do lower down - it won't change long term. You might get a fleeting year here and there, but ultimately with bad ownership the club will just limp along and eventually implode.

We'd break him, IMO. No chance someone like him comes here and has success. The fans would be calling for blood after a couple of weeks. We need someone experienced who doesn't take any shit, shake the shit out of the squad, get us competitive and in a better place. The next appointment also won't be long term, it's going to have to be an ugly stop gap to make us competitive again - as that's the biggest issue, we have been an uncompetitive professional football club for over 18 months now. We need strong leadership at this point.

Our choice of managers would be solely limited to the currently unemployed former Champ managers and up and coming L1 manager bracket. No better than that. We're not shopping in the ballpark of the likes of Lampard, Cooper and dare I say it - Jones - anymore.

We probably won't go down this season, but the trajectory is without a doubt L1.

Rasmus is a significant shareholder of Sports Republic though, unless he's stripped of his shares his involvement isn't going anywhere.

In my eyes, this is why we go through DoF's every few months. They cannot work with Rasmus whose hands are seemingly all over this.

Just thought I'd bump this one. Lots of posts in the summer saying he's 'fine for the championship, and he's good around the club' - really? For a start he was the captain who oversaw the worst ever PL effort in recent times. He's still captain of the club unravelling in the Championship. He is a highlight for everything that is wrong with this club - mediocre, meek and rewarded for it. It's not all down to Jack, but that contract extension in the summer was the signal of intent for me. And it wasn't good intent.

I do see what you mean, but to counter that - we're in the same bat shit crazy world of ownership as the likes of Blackburn and Wednesday are in, so wishing we're not them isn't exactly a mile away from what we have today. We have hideous owners, there aren't any worse out there in my eyes. Yes, Dragan has put the money up, but he's put in place the biggest load of morons to use it. Supposedly he took more control over the last 12 months or so, and you can't say it's got any better. Intentions are all well and good, but if you're no good in the industry you're in then you're best just sodding off before you do even more damage. That's how I see Solak, he has no idea about elite sports management and never will.

Isn't he out with a long term serious injury? Should be right up our street.

There's no comparison with 23/04, quality wise we are light years behind that lot for starters. Secondly this is setting up to a bit of a morph between 05-06 and 08-09. We won't even get top half.

They recruited well and lifted the level of that team up hugely, they weren't focused on 'PL' experience for PL experience sake - they went out and got someone like Xacka for example, who has lifted that entire team as a leader and in quality. The success boils down to recruitment 99% of the time. The only question mark I'd have over Sunderland is that they've signed 60-70% of African Players who will be heading to Afcon in a couple of months. I think they'll drop off hugely during the Christmas/January period because of that, so it was always critical they got off to a good start.

At this stage, the problem is beyond coaches and players. It's a lot deeper than that. Although I will say that there are some toxic individuals within the playing side we need out of here ASAP. The only way you change our trajectory is changing our ownership, but I don't see how that's possible really. We have no say in it, they hold the keys, they sell up when they sell up. All we can do is put pressure on them to do so, but the next few years are going to be bleak. We're heading into 2008-2009 territory, no avoiding it I don't think. Another relegation may force their hand.

On this note, at what point can we just sack off Downes? If I had as many sick days as he did in my job, I'd have been out of the door last week. The guy is a big, big, big part of the toxic rot in this club.

He's just got a job in Belgium.

I think he's a bit of a weakling if I'm honest, good technically but whenever I saw him he was brushed off the ball too easily. We don't really have the structure through the spine to accommodate players like him from what I've seen. Apparently that's also a criticism 'the club' have with Jelert - which begs the question, again, why the fuck recruitment thought they'd be good additions.

How many apps is Aribo on for us out of interest? Just something that cropped into my head, maybe the next appearance triggers an extra year on his deal or something at crazy money? That's the only reason I can think for his lack of visibility.

I don't think the club is currently in a place to allow anyone to build anything, until this ownership is removed we'll lurch from manager to manager, DoF to DoF and relegation to relegation. It's a poisoned chalice.

I do get where you're coming from, and it's another huge financial pay-out we'll have to handle as well. There's no positives to this because we'll end up with another left field choice, and the same bloated utter horrendous mess of a squad. I think his position is untenable and the atmosphere will mean he can't turn this around now, but the problems are so so far deeper than Will Still. And we'll see that when the next guy comes in and it's groundhog day.

For someone who has made a fortune in media, you'd assume he'd be quite savy - but fuck me, he is an absolute dinlo. They have no idea how to run elite sports teams and they should give up. Sport Republic is an embarrassment and he has been a complete and utter fool to fall for it all. Now he needs to have some dignity and fold it all up, pull the funds, sell the clubs as part of the group. He has the power to do that, and that's the only thing I want to see him do now.