Worst case scenario is that Donald keeps us on and we struggle on and off the pitch for a another year, and he can't pay the bills so administration becomes a genuine possibility. At that point we'd be in serious danger. I call that a relatively low chance (<5%) but anything even approaching that is still bad for us. Very few serious investors are going to get involved in a salvage job if we're in League One and struggling for money, need a full rebuild etc. That's a massive investment even if you got the club for nothing (or in FPP's case, for £10m). That's why it's so ****ing annoying. Ultimately if we're financially ****ed enough to force Donald out, I suspect that we'll also be financially ****ed enough to deter the type of owners we want in the long run, so we'll end up with another Donald. ****ing tired of it all now though, I've tuned out the last few weeks and accepted that we are pretty much in limbo for the foreseeable future.
The only way to force this issue is finance. If renewals drop of significantly they will panic. This guy does not have the money to improve the squad at all. We will be stuck with the same team or even worse next season. He will know this already and once the league is resolved I think things will start moving.
I agree with the sentiment mate, but if people are choosing this path they should be aware of how big the stakes are if it goes wrong. We could drive Donald out and not get a wealthy new owner, or we could hurt Donald which is most likely to be passed on to our first team recruitment in the short term. Basically the more we hurt him, the less attractive the club is to a buyer. I'm not saying we should do either and I'm torn too, but I'm 60/40 towards renewing at the mo.
I'm probably the opposite, 40/60 for renewing at the moment just to try and force his hand. I will still attend the games, unless something is organised, that urges me not to attend, like a mass protest. We all know (or have a bloody good idea) that Donald is asking too much for a club in the position we are in. We have got to try something to get him to lower his asking price to a more realistic figure. I'm like many on here that don't think the season will continue, and have the forlorn hope that this will be the catalyst for Donald to lower the price.
Don’t get me wrong I am not advocating deliberately harming our own club. I simply think that renewals will drop of considerably by virtue of the fact people are sick of watching absolute ****e. I also believe many people blame the current owners for the lack of progress on and off the pitch Including messing up the proposed takeover. All of these factors and others not mentioned will conspire, I believe to produce a significant fall in revenue from the fans. This is a view held by most of my friends who attend they are waiting to see what progress is made before committing.
I am renewing too and happy to not be refunded the rest of this season if it goes towards Del Boy and his chums leaving. I would like some direction from FPP though as to their intentions. It’s been radio silence from them and I am very surprised if they are interested that they haven’t been feeding things to the press. The 9m loan is a noose around our neck.
"Very few serious investors are going to get involved in a salvage job if we're in League One and struggling for money, need a full rebuild etc." That's pretty much where we've been for the last 2 years tbh.
It sounds dramatic right now but I agree. I fear for the squad we will be able to put together for next season, the first eleven will be weaker than we have now and the rest, well I dont want to think about what we will have to dig us out of the inevitable **** we will find ourselves in.
Yep, and very few serious investors have been willing to get involved in a salvage job in League One. Even when they have shown interest like FPP, it's not in the dogfight down here, it's when we get better. I think if we're seriously rooted down here (and you could probably argue we are now) then that's less likely to happen, and even worse, there'll be a who's who of cowboys and chancers just like Donald waiting to try and siphon our revenue into their own pockets. I'm worried about the next 12 months. I didn't ever think administration was a serious threat under Short, but there's a conceivable path to that happening under Donald if we're down here. Grim times.
Whilst I think SD and CM had good intentions, time has ultimately proved that they tried to apply the model / experience SD gained managing Eastleigh to a big club. Sadly, it’s failed big time and we have missed our best and second best opportunity to get back to the championship. We now desperately need new direction.
We couldn't have been much closer to promotion without getting it to be fair, the plan very nearly worked. If we'd performed better on that one day in that one game we'd have gone up.
To be fair to SD. We shouldn’t have been in the play off final. We were something like two points ahead in first place with a game or two in hand six games to go and we messed it up! That is JRs fault albeit SD signed him.
Yeah the blame does probably lie with Ross for the season fizzling out, it might have been just a bit too much for a young manager. I'm not loving the current state of the club under Donald but I wouldn't criticise him too much for the recent past because it could so easily have gone differently. It's like knocking someone for sticking or twisting on 16, it could go either way. We're Sunderland so of course it has to go the most painful way possible.
I would just add that Donald was hugely culpable for the fiasco of selling Maja and putting his all into buying Grigg when after watching STID 2 he seemed to be the only one convinced with this player. That one decision in buying a player who wasn't fit and subsequently didn't settle in for that season cost us promotion. But thats my opinion.
Last day of May. Either today’s the day, or it’s yet more bullshit from Methven / Donald’s gob. I wonder which