[Hull Baggie]

Nothing to do with Pulis then?? Unbelievable. I blame him more than Pardew. He (Pulis) didn't have to take over from Pulis… If you get my drift 

For me they are both equally to blame.
 The board needs to take some of the blame by not sacking Pulis at the end of the previous season when we hardly won a game after February and threw away the chance to get to 50 points for the first time in our Pl history. Also the players need to take a portion of the blame for just not trying hard enough for managers they'd either lost faith in (Pulis) or didn't believe in (Pardew).

Anyway back to the topic. I'm glad we are a well run club; sure I'd like us to be more successful but spending outside of your means doesn't necessarily bring that.

[TheJacko2000]

Nothing to do with Pulis then?? Unbelievable. I blame him more than Pardew. He (Pulis) didn't have to take over from Pulis… If you get my drift

Without going over old ground, in a word, no.


Pulis had us outside the bottom 3, Moore had us in the top 6. What happened in between relegated us. If blame were to be spread further it would be whoever didn't sack Pardew and the cab 4 as soon as the plane landed.

[geoff]

Pulis was completely spent well before the season started. No way would he have kept us up.

The decision to give him a new fat contract when he clearly didn't want to be here along with his **** poor record and the biggest transfer kitty yet despite his previous poor records when given permission to splurge at his other clubs condemned us in one swoop.

Pulis did a GREAT job keeping us up & did the job that he was brought in to do. it was the clubs fault for offering him another contract.

[gazberg]

That's what i was saying. His work and time here was done. The error was giving him the new contract.

[zippyandbungle]

This really is an old argument, our players are in the entertainment industry & that's what they get paid.
Along with golfers, tennis players, formula 1 drivers etc.

When the economy goes belly up as a consequence of the Coronavirus crisis, entertainers earnings will reduce dramatically.

My counter to that argument would be that ordinarily in entertainment the people would be paid for doing the job...in football they are paid for being available to do a job.

If Pogba was on a basic of 20k and got 180k if he plays for more than 60 mins...I’d suggest he wouldn’t miss as many games ?
If you bring it back to our club...forgetting emotion, players like Barry, brunt Zohore Austin should all be on NFMW (national football minimum wage) 😄 and then getting 30k for each segment of 60 mins

I’d imagine training would be quite a bit more intense too

[paulosull]

Why haven't players in the top two league's taken pay cuts? All I can say is greedy so and so's.

[BalisPen]

Pulis lost interest and wanted the sack and the ensuing pay off so he could go elsewhere and get a signing on bonus because he had that massive £5m plus judgement against him from the Palace case.

Pardew, well I cannot write on here what I think of him other than to say it was one of the worst days of my life when he joined us and that I have always hated the self obsessed nobody.

[The Tank]

Well we did, at least, beat VAR assisted Liverpool away.
Not many teams have done that in since.

[SmethDan]

.......Pardew, well I cannot write on here what I think of him other than to say it was one of the worst days of my life when he joined us and that I have always hated the self obsessed nobody.

I was less than impressed with Pardew's appointment too, but if it was one of the worst days of your life you've definitely led a more charmed one than I have.

[overseas baggie]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8195795/Why-Premier-League-finances-dire-state-teams-risk-going-BUST.html

I’m glad we are prudently run

[Standaman]

Another article from the Mail on the state of Championship finances

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8197663/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Championship-owners-considering-group-administration-solve-wages-dilemma.html

In essence all of the 24 championship clubs are considering a joint administration. This is extremely unlikely to happen because collectively the 24 clubs seldom agree on anything and this course of action would only require one dissenting voice to scupper it.

Yet even to mention this as an option tells you how utterly desperate the situation is for most clubs. It does not matter how wealthy your owners are it does not matter how many fans you took to wherever on a Tuesday night. It does not matter how much your star player is worth if football finances collapse he ain't worth tuppence anyway.

None of this matters because if clubs are teetering on the brink of insolvency it never takes much to push them over the edge the current crisis is way beyond a gentle shove in the wrong direction. 

[LiamTheBaggie]

https://twitter.com/mjmarr_star/status/1245278903519924224?s=19

Post-balance sheet notes reveal #wba made a profit of nearly £18m in player sales last summer (Dawson, Rondon, Rodriguez). Strategic report confirms aim of "radically reducing" average age of squad+Darren Moore sacked due to genuine fears they would miss out on the play-offs.


Masi later stated the above and wage bill halved as revenue fell by over 50m

https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/west-bromwich-albion/2020/04/01/west-brom-accounts-reveal-7m-losses/

There’s a line in here that I find infuriating. Sacking Moore because there were genuine fears of not making the play-offs, yet they presided over one of the most embarrassing ill thought managerial recruitments in the history of this football club, before giving the reigns to a glorified PE teacher.

Jenkins and Downing threw promotion into the river last season and we should not lose sight of that

[Standaman]

There’s a line in here that I find infuriating. Sacking Moore because there were genuine fears of not making the play-offs, yet they presided over one of the most embarrassing ill thought managerial recruitments in the history of this football club, before giving the reigns to a glorified PE teacher.

Jenkins and Downing threw promotion into the river last season and we should not lose sight of that

This is the eternal coach swap narrative. It is unprovable in either direction. At the point of Moore's departure we didn't have much if any shout at the automatics. In truth we probably weren't going to miss the play-offs although our form was pretty dire.

The problem always one of timing with just 10 games left what the hell is anyone expecting? For the coach switch to make rational sense it had to happen literally months earlier and even delaying to the point when one prize was lost and the fear of losing the conciliation prize took over then a replacement had to be lined up. Whether it was out of misplaced fairness to the incumbent (well don't fire them then) or incompetence it was plain that was not the case.

At the time it made no rational sense it still doesn't. Obviously a favourable outcome can always be used as post hoc rationale. 

[gazberg]

They went for the cheap option and screwed it up big time. Any half decent coach would have walked the Champo with the team we had last year.

[alex1]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8197663/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Championship-owners-considering-group-administration-solve-wages-dilemma.html

Don't know how close this article is to the reality. If it is, all Championship clubs have got some very hard decisions to make, and that includes 'well-run' clubs such as WBA. Jenkins taking a 100% salary cut for the time being is not just the right thing to do, it looks crucial to setting the right example to the players. I assume the club's wages bill is way over 50% of the club's budget.

If the club loses gate receipts and TV for the rest of the season, that's a massive hole in the budget. This looks like being a massive wakeup call to the football industry in general. Alot of clubs will not be able to re-coup losses from the transfer market if the value of players nose dives. The whole food chain of banks lending money to finance debts may hit the buffers.   Then you are looking at clubs of our size either radically downsizing, or going out of business. Hope I'm not being too alarmist.

[Standaman]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-8197663/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Championship-owners-considering-group-administration-solve-wages-dilemma.html

Don't know how close this article is to the reality. If it is, all Championship clubs have got some very hard decisions to make, and that includes 'well-run' clubs such as WBA. Jenkins taking a 100% salary cut for the time being is not just the right thing to do, it looks crucial to setting the right example to the players. I assume the club's wages bill is way over 50% of the club's budget.

If the club loses gate receipts and TV for the rest of the season, that's a massive hole in the budget. This looks like being a massive wakeup call to the football industry in general. Alot of clubs will not be able to re-coup losses from the transfer market if the value of players nose dives. The whole food chain of banks lending money to finance debts may hit the buffers.   Then you are looking at clubs of our size either radically downsizing, or going out of business. Hope I'm not being too alarmist.

As I said earlier I doubt the clubs will opt for a collective administration but be in absolutely no doubt that this is a real financial crunch. Most Championship club owners would be better off just walking away and letting the clubs fold and writing off their investment.

They went for the cheap option and screwed it up big time. Any half decent coach would have walked the Champo with the team we had last year.

I would take issue with exactly how good the team was but I would accept we had one of the better squads and one that was certainly capable of getting promoted.

You can legitimately criticise the board for

1. Not a appointing a Director of Football in the Summer
2 Appointing Moore (popular decision as it was at the time)
3. Firing Moore too late or at all
4. Not having a replacement in place when they fired Moore

However Moore was not a cheap option. I do not know for certain but I am fairly confident that Moore was paid better than most managers in the Championship. Why? Because we were able to hire Graeme Jones and as assistant head coaches go in the Championship he would not have been cheap far from it.

My guess is that Moore was paid more than Chris Wilder who lead Sheffield United to promotion. In any event of those Managers who I believe would have been better paid. Bruce and Rowett didn't make it to the end of the season Pulis failed. Belisa and Lampard had similar outcomes to our own. We could easily have spent more money on a Head Coach and got a worse outcome or even less and got a better one.

[gazberg]

Maybe i should have said unambitious rather than cheap as it's true i don't know what Moore was paid. It was obvious we always wanted a Bilic type who is manyt times more expensive than Moore types i'm sure it's fair to say.


I certainly agree with your 4 points.

[Standaman]

Maybe i should have said unambitious rather than cheap as it's true i don't know what Moore was paid. It was obvious we always wanted a Bilic type who is manyt times more expensive than Moore types i'm sure it's fair to say.


I certainly agree with your 4 points.

I am not sure Bilic is earning vastly more than Moore was being paid which makes his presence at the club a bit more puzzling. Bilic was available the previous summer but I don't think at the time would have been interested in a Championship job.

The other names that were linked with us last summer was Chris Hughton and  Bruno Labbadia. Hughton has yet to return to the game after having a break whereas Labbadia has recently joined Hertha Berlin taking over the reigns from Jurgen Klinsmann and as such continued to his role as the go to fire fighter coach in the Bundesliga. I am not even sure they were realistic targets. Had we not appointed Bilic I am not sure who we would have appointed and in general Bilic is a bit of an outlier in terms of experience and stature when you look across the Championship

Aside from Cocu the only other real heavy weight coach appointed by any Championship club in the last two seasons is Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds who was appointed around the same time we appointed Moore. Yet despite being hugely influential among a generation of Spanish and Latin American coaches there is still a bit of the air of the mad professor surrounding him. Had we appointed him instead of Moore (not that it was ever a realistic possibility) I would have been as worried as I would have been excited.

[gazberg]

If Bilic isn't worth much more than Darren Moore then that makes the boards decision to hire DM even more ridiculous in my eyes.

[Standaman]

If Bilic isn't worth much more than Darren Moore then that makes the boards decision to hire DM even more ridiculous in my eyes.

Slaven Bilic can command a much higher wage than Darren Moore but not at a Championship Club. While no doubt he earns more than Darren did there is still a limit to what the club can pay and it isn't a multiple of what Darren Moore was earning. If Bilic was solely interested in maximising his earnings he would not be a realistic appointment for the club he would have gone elsewhere.

The choice the previous summer was not Moore or Bilic. It was Moore or Potter or Smith. personally I would have gone with one of the alternatives and I have no way of knowing how that would have turned out. 

[gazberg]

Yes none of us could have known for sure if we had gone for the others. It was just a regrettable choice to go with DM which a fair amount of us thought at time of his appointment.

[baggiejohn]

If Bilic isn't worth much more than Darren Moore then that makes the boards decision to hire DM even more ridiculous in my eyes.

I'm still of the opinion that DM was a figurehead, Jones was the real target. In the event, Jones went & DM followed soon after.
I think it's a bit degrading to call Jimmy Shan a glorified PE teacher, allegedly he was the brains behind the DM tenure at the end of the previous season, & took us to within a penalty shoot-out of a play-off final.

[Hunnington Baggie]

I'm still of the opinion that DM was a figurehead, Jones was the real target. In the event, Jones went & DM followed soon after.
I think it's a bit degrading to call Jimmy Shan a glorified PE teacher, allegedly he was the brains behind the DM tenure at the end of the previous season, & took us to within a penalty shoot-out of a play-off final.

you say that but Dave was doing a decent job at Doncaster before the world ended, and that’s without Jones or Shan. I don’t think he’s as useless a manager as some are making him out to be.

[gazberg]

He just wasn't ready for us. That was more the boards fault than his. Like the bloke but dont rate the manager. I'm sure with a few more years experenced under his belt he will be fine.


The less said about Jones the better!

[geoff]

Big Dave didn't seem to have a plan B &
Was slow in making changes when called for. Loved the bloke then & still do. I'm sure we'll meet again another day.