A few things left me hopefull. We have often talked where the fault lay in blowing the boom, while many laid the blame at the door of managers and Dof, they were symptom of the overall problem. That being the lack of skill and competency in the governance of the club. We’re talking Elestones, Woods and the rest of the faceless men who ran the club with zero accountability of culbility. Tonight illustrated to me that since the last GM there has been a cull/revolution. What we have now is dedicated board members taking ownership of specialisms with divisions of the club. If the stadium goes belly up we know who is accountable, if the finance is to big of a bite we know who is accountable, football etc. For any organization to work you need proper corporate goverence, delegation, skill sets with in accontability and culpability. Did you notice Bill has been relegated to pretty much a cheer leader. I thought Denise energiec, dynamic and very enthusiastic she came across really well. I know the proof of the above change in governance will be in results. But I spent all last season, banging on about our lack of governance and impact on the club and the wastefulllness, so seeing this identified and attempts to rectify have me hopefull.
Secondly this is the first time Moshiri has been realistic. You may win good will from supporters by saying unrealistic things “I’ll give you everything we have got” or setting unrealistic expectations. The reality is though, his investment is limited, he’s more or less confirmed it tonight and I think he’s reluctant to put any more into the football side of it. This was always going to be the case, he was never going to compete with the CIty and Chelsea by just throwing money at it, that lesson has cost him the guts of 250 mill. The club currently is operating way beyond its means, unless there are creative outs before May we are posting a loss of 40 odd million. That is unsustainable. All that was more or less acknowledged.
What I took from tonight was a change of model and approach, instead of following the route of finance the City & Chelsea and a quick easy win, the brawn approach. We look like structurally, financially and philospecically going to build on a more self sustaining approach like Spurs and Arsenal, one that requires skill and philosopher rather then 100s of millions. If I’m honest if he had come out again and said I’ll give you 100s if millions I would be massively concerned.
So to sum up really, I am hopefull, because of the recognition of poor corporate governance and its impact on the club, the fact that structures have been put in place to attempt to rectify this . An acknowledgment by the owner that his approach this far has been fool hearty and wasteful and that a different philosophey in how we want to develop and progress the football club is required.
I’m left with a sense of realism and acknowledgement of limits, with a strategy to attempt to counter these and progress in a realistic way this year as opposed to the that I’ve been spinned as in previous years around false expectations and easy wins.