@St Gregs, I am trying to understand why you want to belittle fans that want to see progress being made.
In the 10 years that we have been in the Championship, tell me how this club has moved forward in any way, apart from the training ground, which in itself is rather controversial.
For many years, fans have been saying we need to invest in a youth structure as well as buy younger players to invest and move on.
The beginning of our time in the Championship we did buy some promising young players, but we hardly sold them at the opportune time (I admit hindsight is always 20:20), but getting next to nothing from DJ, Pearson, Davies, Browne etc is borderline criminal.
The lack of player trading means no money comes in that we can then re-invest in the club, rinse and repeat. Before you say it cannot be done, there are plenty of clubs that are able to do so. But it means that investment has to be made in the scouting set up.
We lurch from one season to another with no joined up thinking and use excuse after excuse (FFP, Location, plenty of big clubs, attendances, KMI's and injuries, I will come back to injuries).
Instead of location being an excuse, why don't we try to make that an advantage. Plenty of young players get released by clubs near to us. Why don't we hold 1 week boot camps for these players, so we can have a good look at them? Again that costs money, but if we find 1 nugget (not Nugent) a year, it will be cost effective. It will obviously mean we have a better look at players than we did with Stewart (not against that type of signing, but with a proper look at).
Then there is the lack of junior coaching (lack of dome etc), it's not like there is a good example near by to copy, Fleetwood for fucks sake. Not just that, it would start to generate money raising that all to common excuse of FFP. Again this costs money would be the response, but this should have been done years ago and now would be starting to reap rewards. But the club never speculates to generate.
Not everything will work, especially at first, but there has to be an attempt to improve and not just manage the status quo, if we do not, we are just going down, down. That much is obvious.
That's what should have been happening in the 10 years we have been in the championship, if we had been doing that we really would be a "well run club".
Now, let's look at the current squad. It went into last season (and the season before that) too thin for the rigours of Championship football. There was no flexibility in the squad, no pace, no imagination, no flair and no depth. Certain players could not be rotated and ended up run into the ground, this is the main reason for repeated performance drop offs towards the end of the season. KKH was clearly our best player this season, but in the last 5 or 6 games, he was awful, but had given everything for the PNE Shirt throughout the season, lack of planning meant he couldn't be rotated, especially once Potts was injured, another one that has had a lot of game time over recent seasons.
Another issue with this squad is age, our youngest regular first teamer is 25! So how do we fix this? We offer Brady another fucking contract. So basically the opportunities for player trading is down to, Milly, McCann, Thor and maybe an inconsistent Mads.
I admit, all ideas to improve us costs initial money, that is what we should have been doing gradually over the last 10 years and failure to do that means each year the gap grows and so does the costs.
So quite rightly fans have been asking questions of the board, quite rightly fans are getting more and more frustrated with the lack of any ambition, clear communication. Quite rightly they are looking at the squad and saying WTF??
Then how does the board treat their customers (that is what we really are)? With absolute contempt. Look at the preachy messages we get out, the latest from a manager that I was happy with. The insulting way they treat people like JK, who puts in so much of his time into the club.
Sorry this was so long but as you can see, there isn't just one problem at the club, and failure of any forward thinking from the board has led us to the situation we are now in. It is time for fresh ideas, at board level, if the family do not want to sell up (for whatever reason), then they need to start bringing in fresh ideas and attempt to move the club into more modern times.
Fans are bored with the club, and there is nothing that seems to be done to try to energise them. Let's face it, the atmosphere generated for the Villa game was fan led, not club led, much like all good things at PNE at the moment. Anyone that criticizes the way the club is run is portrayed as a loon or a radical.
Unless there is significant change in mindset over the summer, I will not be there next season, and I am not the only one. This should concern a company that customers are willing to walk away. Any other business it would look at feedback, but not Preston North End. I am not wanting miracles, everything cannot be fixed straight away, but I want to see evidence of forward thinking ideas being introduced.
Sorry for the very long post, but comments from St Gregs and that WW chap on twitter need to be responded to.
Ridsdale Out!
