I don’t mean this in a bad way directly at you - but there it is again…“It feels through DR’s focus is…”
Its not just his focus though is it? Its the whole leaderships focus, but only one guy gets the heat with the bad outcomes and the cynicism if there are any good ones.
For Clarity, I am not trying to take any heat away from DR but rather widen that scope of critism. Just because 2 of them, the ones arguably above him, are publicly silent doesn’t mean they aren’t equally liable.
There were pieces earlier in the year that described ML as on the phone daily. Kept informed on everything. He IS interested imho. He’s just very good at making sure people forget about him and so direct there anger elsewhere.
My issue that he literally hasn’t done this. When we win by fluke e.g. Stevenage game he’s happy and when we only lose he goes on about the defence.
That’s my concern.
If he’d said, “look we’re not attacking well enough. I’ll be looking at how to change to shape to get us creating chances, because it’s been far too poor up front. We’ve scored bugger all goals and created even less. While players are tired, that’s no excuse and I know it’s on my overly negative tactics. I’m ready to change to give the fans some excitement.” then I’m up for giving him a chance.
But he doesn’t. He only talks about the defence.
Bear in mind the game he thought we didn’t deserve to lose Orient had a clear cut chance that should have been scored inside 30 seconds. We created zero chances of note all game while they had at least 3 chances you’d give them a better than 50/50 chance of scoring.
Does he mention any of that? No.
We’ve had zero chances of note for as long as I can remember. When was the last time we created a decent chance that wasn’t through an opposition defender falling over at an inopportune time?
Maybe the Shrews game? I can’t remember one since then.
I would happily liked to be proved wrong, but Data Dan is the interim Chairman.
As I said in the pther post, I have no issue with Dan getting heat. But there have been some murmurs of “if I did my job as bad as Rice, It’d be sacked, so why hasn’t Dan?”.
Well, good question. The answer is "If your doing what your boss has asked you to do and run things how he wants you to run it, You ain’t ever getting sacked. Even if people outside of the leadership circle think you’re bad in what you are doing.
Ergo, why isn’t anyone mentioning those above Dan as being responsible for him letting things get demonstrably worse?
Let me re-state:
I feel DR wants his legacy to be #1 and if we achieve #2 then so be it.
I feel Eduard and ML are focused on #3 via the mechanism that #1 will provide.
I think #2 is the least of their priorities and MB looked like delivering that this year and they wanted credit for it not MB and anyone to do with the previous regime.
I feel that because DR wants his legacy to be #1 more so than EV or ML, hence I push more weight towards DR.
Quick reminder again that Lomtadze acquired Wycombe in May 24 and have delivered the clubs highest ever league 1 placing in their first season. May yet deliver only the second season in the Championship next season.
I see it that ML, DR and EV want a football academy to be the focus and have a small football club attached to the side so they can move players into a first team squad and sell on.
Because the football side is a lesser priority, the position of football manager has suddenly slipped from perhaps the 2nd most influential position in the club (2nd or maybe equal to an owner), to somewhere well down the pecking order and is “just” the Head coach. THIS is where the friction with MB was for me. Its the only thing that makes sense. His Lower standing within the club, lower responsibility, not allowed to have his own recruitment team, some say no saying on signings (I would and have argued he would have had a say, just a MUCH lower voice in the room). Basically a huge demotion (maybe even pay cut) but that is the model they wanted to install into the club. And Yes, that is a disrespect to MB and all his time with us.
But again, thats not JUST a DR call. It was all over them.
I see no real evidence that they didn’t want promotion, or they are so consumed by self interest that they wanted sole credit for it. The easiest thing in the world would have been to “let” him continue, funded players he wanted taken all that glory and then fired him in the first sticky patch in the championship (after pocketing all that extra money for playing in the Champ)
I’d agree that they don’t want much to do with the previous regime but only in so much as there priority has been the academy and structuring everything else around that, with the small football club attached to the side.
Yes, you’ve alluded to this a few times and as you like a hypothetical, just imagine what could have happened if MB was still here, loved and supported. I mean why would Mr Wycombe feel the need to leave his true love? And before you say it, yes, he left for Col U but that was part of the succession planning put in place to give him leadership / managerial experience before returning to us in the future. It may have failed miserably and backfired but it turned out it didn’t and was invaluable for MB at WWFC when he returned.
How do you feel about MB leaving the club, the message of thanks he was given by the leadership group, the removal of three key members of his backroom team before this, the data signings and another AI statement released yesterday (signed by no one)?
By the way, it is not our highest ever league 1 placing. We finished 3rd on pts per game
I agree with most of what you say but I believe they wanted MB gone on day 1 and would have pulled the trigger if he had a bad run. The problem was, he never had one - quite the opposite.
As they couldn’t remove him for underperforming, they instead undermined him every step of the way until he left of his own accord or some may alledge “constructively dismissed”
A friend of mine is a Millwall fan and Bloomfield interviewed for that job when it came up, which shocked me. The only reason he’d have done that is if he felt he was being forced out, which I think that he was.
As you say, the team just kept playing better and better and winning more and more so there was no scope to sack him, but they clearly wanted him gone and Blooms was well aware of that.
We can be disappointed with tactics and results since…but none of the above is the fault of MD, the players or the new signings…who have all been involved in some way with the success of this season so far.
The proof of Dan Rice’s pudding will be next season.
Why would Dan Rice turn down millions for Kone and Low if he didn’t want us in the Championship this year.
What makes you so confident Bloomfield would have achieved promotion.? Birmingham and Wrexham have spent multi millions to get promoted. So they were always in prime position. Bloomfield is a good young manager that I was sorry to lose but he was still learning his trade. I do believe some posters on here write about him as he is the next Arne Slot or Pep Guardiola .
Two mysteries remain for me, and I apologize if these have already been addressed somewhere.
why didn’t the new owners sack Blooms on the first they owned the club? If things were always going to end up the way they did, why let it drag out? They’d be under far less scrutiny now if they had.
why was the summer transfer window all Bloomfield players? Again, if data driven signings was the plan from the get-go, why waste time on Alex Hartridge?
If they wanted him gone on Day 1, they would have fired him. New owners do that all the time. With this lot in charge, the average season (albeit it picked up massively 2nd half) they had all the excuses and reasons in the world to do it Day 1 if they really wanted to, imho. I mean, if they were willing to screw over a 20 year club veteran in the way they did, are you honestly telling me they would have given two hoots at the fall out of just firing him almost as soon as they arrived?
I 100% think they wanted to change his role from Day 1 from Manager to Head coach and probably hoped he would take it but without agreement they couldn’t just change his contract.
I think a result him not wanting to (as I wouldn’t either ), everything else around Matt was dismantled, moved or Removed (Scott Mitchell being the obvious one) to move to the new model and to the point they isolated him even though he was having the start of the season we could only have dreamt of.
But, to stick to my theme - that has been core decision making by the leadership group and not just Dan.
So, please lets continue to hold Dan accountable for what he has done. Lets not let the others off.
Don’t entirely agree that when we win it’s been by fluke. Bolton just the other week was a good, solid performance and we thoroughly deserved the win, we were much the better side in the 2nd half. Stevenage may not have been pretty, but Kone missed a sitter in the 1st half which would’ve changed the game entirely.
Also, has Dodds not on several occasions said that he’s not been happy with how we’ve played in possession? I thought that had been quite a common theme in his post match interviews. Agree that Orient deserved the win on Saturday. I actually thought we were much more progressive in how we played, Kone for example saw much more of the ball than in recent games, but he and the rest of our forwards seem so low in confidence. Only Udoh really looks sharp. Orient looked more of a threat in the final third.
As I say, I’m not convinced about Dodds, but he’s not had enough time for me to become unconvinced in him. As we saw with Blooms, getting ideas across often takes time.
When have I ever said that MB would achieve promotion? We just do not know.
My sole focus has been on the way he has been treated and how the current leadership group have, in my view, ripped apart our values and run roughshod over a club legend and his team.
I’d suggested that Dodds could be removed after the play off game yesterday if things didn’t improve but on reflection, today, I’ve suggested it probably isn’t his fault and perhaps anyone coming in may struggle to manage under these conditions. I want Dodds to succeed but I feel he needs to change to a more positive mindset.
I want a club that is honest, fun, caring and holds each and every one of it’s staff and supporters in high regard. Supports them as human beings and is respectful. Yes, tough conversations may be needed and inevitably in football there maybe a parting of the ways but it’s how you do it that counts.
What I’m seeing and feeling is something very different. Even if we get promoted, I’ll never forgive them for the way I feel they have treated MB and his team.
Re point 2 - its still wild to me that people think the leadership had zero input into the signings last summer, and that they were all Blooms/Mitchell signings, when they were ready to pull the trigger on a £25m training facility for us in Reading.
I think people forget that while the deal went through in May, they were already well in bed with us WELL before then.
Let’s agree to disagree. I don’t think they ever wanted him and didn’t have the balls to remove him.
You feel they wanted to keep him but in a head coach role.
What we can agree on, is that it is not just DR but he is the mouthpiece of the group.
