Tim, you need to get it into your head that Ridsdale's gamble could NEVER have worked!!!
It's nothing to do with football - it's all to do with the economics of running a business. 95% of our turnover was accounted for by the wage bill. That leaves 5% to cover all other costs, including the punitive interest charged on the borrowings that were used to sign the f*cking players. The only way to pay the interest was to increase the turnover - the only way to do that without having to sell players was to qualify for the champions league, year in, year out. The board should never have allowed Ridsdale to put such a plan into action. Leighton (the star business non-exec) should have stopped it. He didn't. so he's as culpable as Publicity Pete. ZERO risk management. 100% destined to fail. You can convince yourself that O'Dreary's daft book or Brian Kidd or the sodding goldfish are to blame. They aren't. They're just excuses that fans can understand. Look at the balance sheet for the real reasons. There is only one way to live the dream in football - back your ambitions with enormous, private wealth. >>First of all Mark, I need to stress I'm not picking on you today!! ;-) BUT ... I do think there is a lot of credence in what Damien says. Looking back at that whole saga and the current state of clubs 'chasing the dream', the Ridsdale gamble was/is the only way to break the mould. Teams come and go and flirt with the top 4, but ultimately fail because of a lack of strength in depth, ottenham are the current nearly men and are only nearly men bacause they have not 'done a ridsdale'. Had O'Leary not published that bloody book and, in doing so, alienated a team that was with him and playing care free flowing footy and then got Brian fcuking Kidd in to stifle all that was good about the team, then maybe, just maybe, we would have been succesful in the gamble.<< _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email leedslist-unsubscr...@gn.apc.org MARCHING ON TOGETHER (There's it)
