Groundhopping Owl

They’re both top blokes and we need Bannan now more than ever - but Hutchinson and Bannan sometimes undermined any notion of tactics by charging around the whole pitch and trying to do everything themselves. It made us too one-dimensional to ever trouble the automatic promotion spots. Steve Bruce was probably a good choice of manager on paper but I couldn’t stand him and I was very relieved to see him go so soon. Jeremy Helan could have been a top player if played at wing back.

Thanks very much for sharing this - came into this thread looking for any extra info as I wasn‘t initially sure which way to vote but this clears it up. A shame I had to wade through four and a half pages of Neil tediously shouting at people to get to this genuinely helpful post but there we are.

Well that was very, very enjoyable indeed particularly as our pub had Brugge on two screens and Grimsby-Manure on the third. Non-stop entertainment.

Yep, fully agree that’s the crux of it. The warped nature of English football in 2025 means if you’re not in the PL, you’re nowhere. So how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to get there (and once you’re there, how much more is required to stay there?)?. Much as I’m aware it’s a minority position, I’ve at the point of not being remotely interested in the PL. If Chansiri re-issued his daft loaded survey of ST holders asking if we’d prefer obscene ticket prices in exchange for a level of transfer spending necessary for promotion (well, unless you’re Huddersfield, or Brentford, or Ipswich etc…), or reasonable ticket prices and comparatively low spending, I’d happily tick the second box (as I did last time). Albeit I’d query whether that second, “sustainable” end of the spectrum would condemn us to League One, if we were run smartly I wouldn’t see that as inevitable. In fairness I’m also aware this is a completely hypothetical question - as you say we can’t go on as we are, we’re very much a beggar who isn’t in a position to be a chooser, but hey it’s a forum for discussion, including of hypothetical questions.

Best-case (and probably utopian) scenario for me is a Sheffield version of Steve Gibson. A locally anchored businessman who understands the club, keeps the fanbase onside and has sensible instincts. The guy who ended up saving Derby seems another reasonable model. Worst-case scenario would be some loud, brash chancer like Textor who wants to add us to their multi club network and spend someone else’s money like a drunk until it dries up and then expects someone else to clean it up while blaming anyone else in sight for his own failures. Tbh I fear any Yankee venture capitalist type would leave the club and its identity unrecognisable in a pretty short space of time, much as many may be swayed by the promise of mega million dollars being spent on a charge for the premier league. Actually the true best-case scenario would be a buyout by the supporters, like at Hearts, but fat chance of that ever happening. Even if we could pull together the required funding (almost certainly impossible) we’d never be organised enough to get it through, look at all the squabbling over something as simple as a boycott of a league cup game.

A quintessential display of internal squabbling from our fanbase tonight, while DC leans back in his evil mastermind chair and thinks his genius new strategy of putting in no money and playing the kids is working rather nicely. ”We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy?” ”THE JUDEAN PEOPLE’S FRONT!?!?”

Disabled enclosure opened maybe?

What else is he supposed to say? If he said “aye the fans can stay away, the sooner we’re rid of this owner the better” he’d be sacked within 5 minutes. And he knows he’s only in this job because of the position the club’s in.

Hear hear. Certainly as far as English football is concerned I’m also getting to that point of being finished with it. I find it increasingly difficult to take an interest in any goings-on outside of Wednesday, and this club is such a mess that I’ve had to take a degree of emotional distance from it to preserve my sanity. The whole thing just feels really bloody sad. The model underpinning English football is clearly unsustainable and destroying the game for any club barring those six with their poorly-hidden aspirations of forming an NFL-style Euro/world super league. And yet the Premier League is seen as a shining light which others strive to emulate, so we’re not just destroying our own football ecosystem, we’re dragging other countries down with us. Nation states and/or venture capital funds owning football clubs is not a natural state of affairs. It’s the very opposite. Yet the message we’re sending out into the world is that it’s the only way to go. So if a Saudi sugar daddy or American VC fund somehow manages to wrest the club out of Chansiri’s hands there’ll probably be as much celebration as there was when PIF bought Newcastle. But I won’t be joining in, I doubt I’ll even be relieved, because it will feel just as much like the beginning of the end, only with a different figurehead controlling the club for their own purposes.

Fair point - albeit I suspect the reason his name crops up repeatedly is because Textor is a total self-publicist in the best American tradition rather than having any relation to how advanced negotiations with Chansiri are. I’d suggest based on what we’ve seen from DC down the years that he’d prefer bidders who operate discretely over loudmouths.

And where did I say that? It’s blindingly obvious DC has hit the end of the road and the club’s finished if he’s not bought out ASAP. However, I still find it baffling that some folk actively want Textor to be the one to get us over any other bidders when with him in charge there’s every chance we land right back up in this situation within 5 years.

Wishing for Textor and his reverse Midas touch (which he seems to be able to gloss over by throwing out some vacuous soundbites on TalkSport)? Every European club that man touches has gone pear-shaped in barely any time at all. I’m fully aware we’re in no position to be choosy but actively wishing for Textor over any other prospective bidder genuinely baffles me, it’s like having all your money in a bank run by Fred Goodwin and hoping Bernie Madoff comes to buy it out.

Textor’s a total self-publicist, by gobbing off constantly in the media he ensures that the perceived probability of him being the one to get the club increases. That has no relation to who the brokers arranging the sale will actually go for, if they have any criteria around the buyer having demonstrated competence then they’ll steer a million miles clear of Textor.

I think Lyon fans would strongly dispute points 2, 3 and 4. He bought the club using other people’s money, they’ve been relegated so you can hardly say it’s working out yet the Eagle group has no intention of selling, and far from investing in the infrastructure he’s been selling off various wings of the club (including what was at the time Europe’s most successful women’s team) - rumours are the academy is next on the chopping block. Wednesday as we know it is obviously on the verge of oblivion while Chansiri is still here, but as far as I’m concerned selling out to Textor would only postpone that same fate for a few years.

I remember going bananas when she was appointed, I’d probably be a bit embarrassed at the hysteria if I scrolled back through my posts far enough. Have to concede she seemed to do a pretty professional job here - no wonder she didn’t last. Clearly things went sideways for her at Charlton but the only relevance that had here is that she perhaps actually learned from mistakes (something DC is utterly incapable of) and applied that during her time at Wednesday. Through my better half I’m also a lot more familiar Belgian football nowadays and, much as Wednesday remains a class of its own in terms of incompetent management, in general it’s pretty stunning what owners of some Belgian clubs can get away with compared to here, so I can imagine it was difficult to adjust to the expectations of an English fanbase while working under the same Belgian owner as she had at St Truiden/Standard.