Is he a ‘Trembler’ though?

I’m not judging those two, at all. We’ve made no signings, we’ve played no games, so how can I judge them? Of course JDT will know we are short, half the Portugal camp was academy lads! I’m judging the higher echelons of the club, the actual power brokers, who, in my opinion, haven’t changed one iota, and the same old problems will soon rear their heads. But of course, hope springs eternal, and let’s see if GB is empowered to make the changes this club desperately needs.

I don’t particularly need to hear anything either way. ‘We aim to win as many games as we can, let’s see where it takes us’ would do for me. As that is a truism, you can only win as many games as the players and manager you have are capable of, if that means mid table, then fair enough. I don’t need to have my intelligence insulted when I hear ‘Premier League!’ and I’m looking at a squad of promoted academy lads, loans and signings from Crewe and Lincoln. I get the model that people think we have, or will have, but considering a load of talent has just walked out the door for nowt and we saw precious little of the AA money re-invested, I’ll take all this Brentford talk with a pinch of salt. My issue with all these models is that the club never truly commits to it. We have constantly changing personnel and structures, I hear a lot of talk from fans about how we are going to do ‘x, y and z’, ‘pathways’, ‘foreign markets’, the season then comes along and in come a load of loans and fairly average third division players at the last minute, that doesn’t scream a coherent ‘model’ to me. I see re-arranging of deck chairs on the Titanic, I.e. new people, new job titles, but the same mess further up the chain where actual decisions are made, and more wishful thinking and projection from fans assuming the club is far more strategic and functional than it is in reality, than any actual structural change at the club.

Maybe it is, we’ll soon find out. It’s the owners’ club, they can pursue what they want. But then need to stop all this silly talk about being a ‘sustainable Premier League club’, as that ain’t happening with a team of young lads.

What I would say is, TM was happy enough to have a steady Championship job, just rolling with it in the bizarre world of Venky’s, the convoluted structure, the middle men, whilst telling all and sundry how great the owners were - all just a buttering up exercise, as we saw when the toys, and truth, came out at the end. I don’t see a young, ambitious manager like JDT having the patience for it. So the club has to have actually changed, not just window dressing. I’ve seen 12 years of this, so I’ve seen these re-sets, new dawns, supposed new structures before, and I’m not convinced that fundamentally anything has, or indeed can, change with these owners. I hope I’m wrong as boy does this club need a rocket up it, and I’d love JDT to be the man to ignite it all, but my doubts still remain that the football people at the club will be given the tools to succede in a highly competitive division, if that’s ‘negative’, then so be it!

Aye I was there, remember talking to some Charlton fans after the game saying ‘he’d taken them as far as he can’… well, they weren’t wrong.

Indeed. TM was obviously happy enough to operate on VenkyTime, where such a convoluted sign off structure leads to inevitable delays and targets going begging. I doubt JDT will have the patience for it.

Oh I see, it’s a reciprocation thing. Yeah easy enough for Swag to agree to when Reading bring one man and his dog up here.

Possibly, maybe even probably they came up with the initial idea. But you don’t get all the way to planning permission, architect blueprints, marketing brochures and a PR campaign to flog off one out of only two pieces of a fairly small business’ real estate without the bloody owners knowing!

Only second bit of live music for me since Covid coming up on Friday. The Strokes, Fontaines DC and those Isle of Wight lasses, Wet Leg. Two week long Lytham Festival, it has come a long way since a few brass bands on the green!

I don’t believe that for a second, but even if it was true what does that say about the owners of a business if its key infrastructure could be flogged off to developers without them even knowing?

Well they did try.

Wow, it’s no wonder the fan engagement is as bad as it is, when folk like him above have the ear of the CEO. ‘Can’t afford Darragh Lenihan because of our shit fans’ is obviously the line trotted out to the nodding dogs over custard creams.

Fair enough. I just thought fair play to you son! Stick it to all your plastic pals!

I read that differently. I thought he meant supporting your local club, and the unique connection you get, especially as an Asian lad, where I bet he gets fecked off with all the glory fans he knows.

Yes, spotted that. No chance here though, a yearly third kit has been quietly sneaked in, nevermind keeping a home or away for two seasons.

Well it’s only a one year sponsorship, so it gives me hope it’s just a holding deal whilst they scope the market, yep, I’m that naive, obviously! But hopefully there’s some other company within the club’s seeming BwD only network. I’ll use my club cash for other things until they do.

Pogba is a top player, as proven with France and Juventus. However, when you have such a rotten club culture you will very quickly see many footballers swinging the lead, true at every level. And PP was the prime example.

Well of course once they have decided they are going, but as usual in your new role as Swag’s messenger boy you are disingenuously missing the point (or more worryingly you actually don’t understand) - you do everything you can to ensure you sign players up before they decide to go, as if they spend a year in negotiations there was obviously a time in which they were open to stay. How? By offering market value wages. If you do that but they still want a new challenge? Fine. If you can’t do that, because of wage caps, fair enough, but then you will continue to see decent Championship players leave and rabbits will have to be consistently pulled out the hat on recruitment. If these rabbits don’t come, as every signing is a gamble at this level, then the club only goes one way.

Keep a shirt for two seasons? You should’ve put that on the nostalgia thread!

So like I said to 1864 last week, they don’t match up to last season (yep, very negative of me) It’s strange they put two absolute cracking away shirts out together last season with a lovely home kit, which is obviously going to cannibalise sales, as folk only have so much brass at £60 a pop. Without doubt either the yellow or red/black should’ve been the main away strip this time.

Then the outrageous disallowed Sherwood header in the return fixture. I can still remember my dad saying ‘they won’t let us win this title’…

He’s got top level Championship players there. Strange appointment to make when parachute payments will soon run out and you need a swift return.

Probably, bit shit though, ain’t it.

Which is what they want, constantly belittle it, move it around, bunch too many fixtures together, don’t release England players, so make it irrelevant… whilst they push the wholly ECB owned H*ndred in high summer and a clear schedule- and more fool the non Test ground counties for falling for it.