Ambition

[HemmingsHappyClapper]

I have recently been contemplating Trevor Hemmings ownership of the club, and the absolute lack of any form of ambition, and the way we are just stagnating.

It made me think, my dad has never seen North End in the top division, and obviously neither have I. This has happened while all our neighbours have been there. And countless similar sized and smaller clubs across the country.

I then found this article below highlighting how we are possibly the biggest club to have never been in the Premier League. To me this highlights the awful job done by successive chairmen and owners.

Redirect Notice

For the Hemming ownership is now farcical, he doesn’t benefit from owning us, and we don’t benefit from him owning us and keeping us afloat treading water.

anyone can blindly support hemmings and ridsdale simply because we aren’t going bust is baffling.

I do not want my dad and myself to never see North end get promoted in our lifetimes. And unfortunately with Hemmings and Ridsdale in charge, that won’t change any time soon.

as you can tell, I’m on a bit off a downer about North End currently, but is anyone in the same boat as me?
P.s. Trev, sell up and find us someone with ambition

 

[Liberation]

Ambition........... Stay in this division with the millions it brings and run/operate it all based on a captive ( supporter) audience.......Invest only if survival in this division looks in threat... End of thread. 😀

 

[HemmingsHappyClapper]

Ambition........... Stay in this division with the millions it brings and run/operate it all based on a captive ( supporter) audience.......Invest only if survival in this division looks in threat... End of thread. 😀

That’s basically what it seems to be, not sure I can handle 50+ years of that with the occasional league 1 tour

 

[California_PNE]

I have recently been contemplating Trevor Hemmings ownership of the club, and the absolute lack of any form of ambition, and the way we are just stagnating.

It made me think, my dad has never seen North End in the top division, and obviously neither have I. This has happened while all our neighbours have been there. And countless similar sized and smaller clubs across the country.

I then found this article below highlighting how we are possibly the biggest club to have never been in the Premier League. To me this highlights the awful job done by successive chairmen and owners.

Redirect Notice

For the Hemming ownership is now farcical, he doesn’t benefit from owning us, and we don’t benefit from him owning us and keeping us afloat treading water.

anyone can blindly support hemmings and ridsdale simply because we aren’t going bust is baffling.

I do not want my dad and myself to never see North end get promoted in our lifetimes. And unfortunately with Hemmings and Ridsdale in charge, that won’t change any time soon.

as you can tell, I’m on a bit off a downer about North End currently, but is anyone in the same boat as me?
P.s. Trev, sell up and find us someone with ambition

It was an interesting article that 👍🏻

 

[Liberation]

That’s basically what it seems to be, not sure I can handle 50+ years of that with the occasional league 1 tour

Unless Trev is offered anything like his money back ( 70 mil ish ) then we are stuck with it ( the share buy back proves it) ... Who knows, we might get lucky and go up but it won't be by design that's for sure.

 

[Schemer]

I have recently been contemplating Trevor Hemmings ownership of the club, and the absolute lack of any form of ambition, and the way we are just stagnating.

It made me think, my dad has never seen North End in the top division, and obviously neither have I. This has happened while all our neighbours have been there. And countless similar sized and smaller clubs across the country.

I then found this article below highlighting how we are possibly the biggest club to have never been in the Premier League. To me this highlights the awful job done by successive chairmen and owners.

Redirect Notice

For the Hemming ownership is now farcical, he doesn’t benefit from owning us, and we don’t benefit from him owning us and keeping us afloat treading water.

anyone can blindly support hemmings and ridsdale simply because we aren’t going bust is baffling.

I do not want my dad and myself to never see North end get promoted in our lifetimes. And unfortunately with Hemmings and Ridsdale in charge, that won’t change any time soon.

as you can tell, I’m on a bit off a downer about North End currently, but is anyone in the same boat as me?
P.s. Trev, sell up and find us someone with ambition

As the cliché goes, I hope you've got your tin hat on😉

I didn't realise until Ridsdale mentioned it in his last epistle, that 49 different clubs have been in the Premiership/Premier League since it's inception - more than half of 'the 92'.

Would it be expecting too much for Preston North End, one of the founder members and the first winners of the League to have been one of those 49 clubs?

Indeed, PNE are the only founder member, apart from Accrington (who no longer exist) and Notts County (who missed out by one season and are now in the NL) not to have played in the Premiership/PL.

I get the argument about living within our means, not becoming a Wigan/Bolton/Bury etc, etc but the fact is that if your only aim is to stand still, sooner or later you go backwards.

 

[MrHodgeheg123]

Trevor Hemmings is currently worth £1.4B, a huge amount of money which is why many supporters feel aggrieved at what they see as lack of investment by him to get PNE over the line.
I've just had a quick look at and picked out some of the other Championship owners and their worth. Trevor's a bit of a pauper compared to some and makes others look poor.
Bristol City £2.6B
Barnsley £9.1B.😲
QPR £15.5B😲😲
Stoke £9.4B.😯
Birmingham £450m
Rovers £860m
Cardiff £750m
Derby £700m.
Interestingly, the two clubs promoted automatically in Norwich and Watford are worth "just" £30m and £120m respectively.
There must be supporters across the land questioning why their owner/s aren't investing more.
So what are Norwich and Watford doing differently?
Is it all down to parachute payments?

 

[MBcha]

Waiting for all the boring replies of 'I don't see a queue of people waiting to buy us'...

 

[Many Clouds]

This thread is perfect timing for my feelings whilst watching Brentford 2-0 up at Wembley. Another team who will get to the premiership before us, making me wonder "what if".

What if Davies was backed in the two seasons he got us to the play offs.
What if Simpson was backed when he had us top of the league at Christmas.
What if Neil was backed in January 2020 after having us top and around the top 6.

I get there's a fine balance Hemmings has to make running the club and ensuring we stay afloat. But I'm not calling him to spunk in £100m. I'm asking him to fund the 'plan A' players we identify, not the plan B's, C's or D's that are clearly not good enough that we have been signing these past few seasons.

We might stand a chance then at making the final push.

 

[Henry Weston]

This thread is perfect timing for my feelings whilst watching Brentford 2-0 up at Wembley. Another team who will get to the premiership before us, making me wonder "what if".

What if Davies was backed in the two seasons he got us to the play offs.
What if Simpson was backed when he had us top of the league at Christmas.
What if Neil was backed in January 2020 after having us top and around the top 6.

I get there's a fine balance Hemmings has to make running the club and ensuring we stay afloat. But I'm not calling him to spunk in £100m. I'm asking him to fund the 'plan A' players we identify, not the plan B's, C's or D's that are clearly not good enough that we have been signing these past few seasons.

We might stand a chance then at making the final push.

I think all the majority of us are asking for is that a decent proportion of funds received from player sales is reinvested in quality replacements. That would at least be a good starting point.

 

[Thracia]

Since it's pretty well established now that nothing is going to change while TH is in charge, we have to look post-TH for any prospects there (and I don't mean by TH selling up, because I don't think he has any intention of doing that either).

When the time eventually comes, many years from now, will the Hemmings family want to (1) keep shovelling in the same money as TH every year, or (2) shovel even more money in... or will they want to (3) shovel a lot less in, maybe even (4) seek to offload the club as soon as they can, for whatever they can get for it?

We don't know (and in a recent interview with FTF, PR revealed he doesn't know either) - but any "ambition" that differs from the current variety will only come then IMO - and as far as we know, any of the above 4 scenarios could occur, including a potential Wigan/Bolton/Bury outcome.

 

[Durutti]

Unless Trev is offered anything like his money back ( 70 mil ish ) then we are stuck with it ( the share buy back proves it) ... Who knows, we might get lucky and go up but it won't be by design that's for sure.

Luck has been understated by North End fans in recent years though. I completely agree with the OP, we are probably the biggest club to not play a season in the prem, it's just fact.

However, are we not ignoring the truth that on three or four occasions we've been bloody unlucky or good quality managers like Davies and Irvine have made catastrophic decisions in those final play off games. That's not Trev's/Bryan Gray or even the bizarre Derek Shaw's fault. It's just life.

 

[OB1]

Trevor Hemmings is currently worth £1.4B, a huge amount of money which is why many supporters feel aggrieved at what they see as lack of investment by him to get PNE over the line.
I've just had a quick look at and picked out some of the other Championship owners and their worth. Trevor's a bit of a pauper compared to some and makes others look poor.
Bristol City £2.6B
Barnsley £9.1B.😲
QPR £15.5B😲😲
Stoke £9.4B.😯
Birmingham £450m
Rovers £860m
Cardiff £750m
Derby £700m.
Interestingly, the two clubs promoted automatically in Norwich and Watford are worth "just" £30m and £120m respectively.
There must be supporters across the land questioning why their owner/s aren't investing more.
So what are Norwich and Watford doing differently?
Is it all down to parachute payments?

Aren’t a lot of those Consortiums and families though so have combined wealth? I read somewhere in terms of single owner wealth there’s only two owners richer than Hemmings in the EFL

 

[Liberation]

Luck has been understated by North End fans in recent years though. I completely agree with the OP, we are probably the biggest club to not play a season in the prem, it's just fact.

However, are we not ignoring the truth that on three or four occasions we've been bloody unlucky or good quality managers like Davies and Irvine have made catastrophic decisions in those final play off games. That's not Trev's/Bryan Gray or even the bizarre Derek Shaw's fault. It's just life.

I'd go twice....Moyes leaving and playing West Ham and not turning up.... The rest ( as you say ) is just life.... I don't agree that Irvine was quality btw. 🙂

 

[Realistic]

Luck has been understated by North End fans in recent years though. I completely agree with the OP, we are probably the biggest club to not play a season in the prem, it's just fact.

However, are we not ignoring the truth that on three or four occasions we've been bloody unlucky or good quality managers like Davies and Irvine have made catastrophic decisions in those final play off games. That's not Trev's/Bryan Gray or even the bizarre Derek Shaw's fault. It's just life.

I don't think it was bad luck to lose the two finals. Maybe against Bolton we were inferior but against West Ham we weren't, and yet we were hopeless, petrified (it looked like) before we'd kicked a ball and yet we'd beaten them twice in that season.

There's no doubt that PNE have had their chances, but in classic PNE tradition, we f*cked it up. Some clubs just seem to develop a kind of losing 'mentality', others a winning one, even though there's no logic behind it. The only exception was the fantastic 2015 play off win which was a massive relief but not enough to undo all the previous calamities.

I'm sick of seeing other clubs going up and us going nowhere but blaming Hemmings is too easy IMHO. Even when we were close to the play offs under Alex Neil, we let that chance drift away as if it wasn't worth pushing for. I don't have the answers.

 

[Liberation]

I don't think it was bad luck to lose the two finals. Maybe against Bolton we were inferior but against West Ham we weren't, and yet we were hopeless, petrified (it looked like) before we'd kicked a ball and yet we'd beaten them twice in that season.

There's no doubt that PNE have had their chances, but in classic PNE tradition, we f*cked it up. Some clubs just seem to develop a kind of losing 'mentality', others a winning one, even though there's no logic behind it. The only exception was the fantastic 2015 play off win which was a massive relief but not enough to undo all the previous calamities.

I'm sick of seeing other clubs going up and us going nowhere but blaming Hemmings is too easy IMHO. Even when we were close to the play offs under Alex Neil, we let that chance drift away as if it wasn't worth pushing for. I don't have the answers.

Agreed.... And Bolton dicked us..No one could have come away from that game claiming that we we were unlucky.. Not unless they were bonkers. 🙂

 

[lenny]

We have ambition so have Brentford the difference is how different we are in trying to for fill that ambition one club buys the best players they can and reinvest a lot of the money their top players are sold for . The other team go for the cheap option and when they sell their better players reinvest very little . Well done Brentford playing football the right way being entertaining you deserve you promotion . One more club a similar size to us showing Trevor how it should be done .

 

[Thracia]

Brentford have shown you don't need parachute money, you don't need bigger than 11k crowds - so all those excuses can now be consigned to the bin.

You just need a plan, commitment, investment, and some hard work.

We're not too interested in any of that though.

 

[Many Clouds]

We have ambition so have Brentford the difference is how different we are in trying to for fill that ambition one club buys the best players they can and reinvest a lot of the money their top players are sold for . The other team go for the cheap option and when they sell their better players reinvest very little . Well done Brentford playing football the right way being entertaining you deserve you promotion . One more club a similar size to us showing Trevor how it should be done .

The club have in the past championed the 'burnley / Blackpool way' - a "tight knit" squad bought with peanuts, practically going up on squad morale alone. That was only possibly 10 years ago.

Maybe they should now look at the 'Brentford way' - reinvestment and proper recruitment and youth set ups.

 

[JK]

The club have in the past championed the 'burnley / Blackpool way' - a "tight knit" squad bought with peanuts, practically going up on squad morale alone. That was only possibly 10 years ago.

Maybe they should now look at the 'Brentford way' - reinvestment and proper recruitment and youth set ups.

Well done Brentford. Good club with good fans.

Another club simular size to us makes the Premier League..... meanwhile we plod along.

At least we've paid HMRC though.