Not everyone is in a good place in regards to the club, so what more can be done to improve this?
Time as they say, is the great healer. It’s also a great tool to be able to put things into perspective or have a a wider look to see if things have worked out.
In the case of NUFC, we all have a version of the story that we can tell, especially since Mike Ashley bought the club over five years ago. A nightmare to some but the saviour to others.
Putting everything into perspective as mentioned above, we seem to be in a great place at the minute on the pitch but it’s the off field things which bother us. This isn’t right, but a side effect of how things have been here since Kevin Keegan’s resignation in September 2008.
A decision which caused uproar to the older fans especially because Keegan could do no wrong to us and was a living legend.
A man who’s every word was hung on for years before and after, only for him then to be betrayed by his employers and dragged through the courts with the inevitable conclusion for them to be branded liars.
In hindsight though, when you look through each and every ‘scandalous’ event, they are more than likely a case of amateurs starting out in this business and making mistakes which they wouldn’t now. Mainly because the experience is there.
Maybe if the experience was there in September 2008 then they would have known that a director of football was always gonna cause a clash in the end.
If they knew that we were doomed to relegation then would they have turned to another legend, Alan Shearer? probably not.
Did the ground name change actually win us the Wonga deal? probably not but then again, there’s many against it anyway.
Many more incidents can be mentioned but i think i get the point across. The regime will not simply make decisions to alienate the fans, they do them because they can and to be fair there hasn’t really been any bad decisions for a long time apart from the stadium name which has been put right.
We continually moan on about strength in depth or not spending on the right department but we have to respect that business decisions aren’t just made in the pub.
An actual transfer deal involves a massive piece of planning first before the delicate negotiations take place and if a club decides to move the goal posts then i suppose it is good to have an owner who wont be held to ransom although i agree that sometimes things can dictate a price increase especially if no pre-deal has been signed.
Which brings me to the conclusion….
The owners we had in place before Ashley and Llambias got criticism like everyone else but talk of boycotts was few and far between. The directors on many occasions took money out of the club and whilst it isn’t apparent that any dividends are leaving the club now, it’s only a wage that is paid to those that earn it. No bonus system is in place basically.
We constantly moan now about stuff which we didn’t give a toss about before and we don’t own the club. We should get a say but we don’t. We dictate the mood, maybe taken for granted at times but we’re expected to line the pockets of the club in exchange of feeling part of it. Which most of us do.
So, what more can NUFC do to get everyone back onside?