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No, no it isn’t, that’s the point. Yes there are circumstances outside of our control that go and have gone against us, but there’s plenty that’s clearly gone wrong that the club had control of. I honestly can’t understand how you can suggest otherwise. Its not about blame (IMO), it’s about root cause and fixing issues, denial isn’t going to get us anywhere.

Jim, I like facts. The situation before Attanasio came on the scene was that S&J owned 53 per cent of the controlling Ordinary shares. That was 327,109 out of 617,000. By all accounts the club, controlled by S&J, played a significant part in facilitating the sale of most or all of Foulger’s 98,000 shares to Attanasio. While not changing S&J’s percentage holding it gave Attanasio a 16 per cent holding. The club, controlled by S&J, then created non-controlling C Preference shares for Attanasio to buy, with the potential option to turn them into controlling Ordinaries in the future. The club, controlled by S&J, then authorised the creation of 194,000 controlling Ordinaries, the purchase of which in total by anyone would raise the number of such shares to 811,00 and reduce S&J’s stake to a minority 40 per cent. And if Attanasio were to purchase most or all of those new shares that would raise his holding well above the 30 per cent level at which point he would be officially regarded as having launched a takeover, and would have to offer to buy everyone else’s. The point there being that even if S&J did not then sell up Attanasio could still buy enough shares to have a majority. Aside from his holding of, say, 292,000 and S&J’s holding of 327,000 there would be roughly 200,000 shares he could sweep up to get comfortably past the new figure of 410,000 needed for control. And that is without taking into account the Ordinaries Attanasio might acquire by transforming his C Preference shares into Ordinaries. In short, the club, controlled by S&J, has gone to a great deal of useless trouble to create a position in which S&J can lose control if S&J, who control, the club, have no intention of losing control.

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

@Ness Point Runner I see quite a few of you binners are dipping your toes into our water again lately. I don't suppose any of you are a reincarnation of King Keano? He scarpered from here owing £63 to the CSF. Of course some big hearted City fans paid that debt. I guess we should have done the same for St John Ambulance... If your shirts had stars for unpaid debt I doubt there'd be room for the club crest.

Mountains of posts blaming anyone and everyone. It's the players. It's the coach. It's Webber, it's Mrs Webber. It's Delia/MJW.....and so it goes on. In reality there is no single blame, or multiple blame for that matter - just circumstances. Often circumstances beyond our control. So why do we have to look to blame someone all the while? If there is any blame at all it should be aimed at the people that run the game. They are the ones that create the circumstances clubs have to work under. Webber gets a lot of blame, but it is not his fault the way things are in the game. He can be criticised, of course, but blame for all our problems? Not in my book. Same for DS or anyone else at the club. Criticism is fine, they all make mistakes, we all do, but blanket blame is too strong imo. I wish the PL/FA/refs association got more blame. It is they who set the parameters clubs have to work under and the way football is set up. Any rot in the game is down to them to sort out and they don't do it. Our club is just doing the best it can within the parameters set.

'Our club is doing the best it can' And other hilarious jokes Webber tells himself about his failure to replace skipp and buendia

It isn't just that we haven't bounced back though. It's that we've failed to bounce back, failed to appropriately replace our title winning manager, failed to even remotely come close to replacing Bunedia or Skipp, all while spending sizable amounts on absolute ****e.

Disagree entirely. He had taken Brighton to the limit of their potential: they're never going to be a side who will push for the top four and compete for trophies on a regular basis. This was possibly the only chance he'd ever get to coach a genuine top club, which does compete for trophies and plays in Europe pretty much every season (except next season, in all likelihood). He'd be mad to turn it down, and no matter how successful he'd be at Brighton, the 'what if' element would probably gnaw away at him for the rest of his life. Even if the money on offer was the same as he was earning at Brighton, I'm sure he still would've taken the job.

I think it's a massive shame for English football that he has failed. The big six clubs never take chances on young English coaches (Lampard aside, who got the job based on the fact he was a club legend) so it's disappointing that when the first time it happens in a decade, he finds himself sacked within seven months. He was out of his depth, admittedly, but Chelsea are a total basketcase at the moment and even a top coach would've struggled. It's quite hilarious though that the combined cost of paying off Tuchel and his backroom staff, and then poaching Potter and his staff from Brighton, was said to be over £30m. And the whole thing has gone **** up in seven months.

Yes. Great choice

Spent 25 years working along side my wife. It didn't cause any problems at work or in our marriage which is 47 years today. At times both our children worked with us too. Didn't have a nephew on board though...

Which is the Who song with the line about the new boss being the same as the old boss? Is it 'Won't Get Fooled Again'?

Thanks. We can't get into his phone or laptop. I'm useless with that but his daughter will be home tomorrow. Despite the fact he was nealy 80 I never considered the possibility he may die. He seemed to be indestructible and in perfect health. I feel guilty because I've been a slob all my life and he wasn't. I'm a little bit stuck between helping his widow to grieve and dealing with 10 people who are fostering dogs. The moral to this story is that you may die tomorrow so sort everything out now.

Absolutely I don't doubt he has a very good legal team.....my experience is never to trust people you.ve been friends with when it comes to business! to say we don't speak anymore, but I still work with the engineers who left at the same time.

Absolute steal at £8m, Webber needs to find more bargains like him in the summer.

Quite, dear chap, quite !!! A very good post. I must admit, at times the red mist descends, and certain things do anger me, especially the quality of signings and the club allowing itself to let contracts run down and not sell. But...... there’s no point living in the past, I will myself give it 90% to be more positive.

Attanasio paid £10m for 10m newly created C Preference shares a while back. That represents the first time he has put money into the club. These shares don't help in terms of control of the club, but under some future circumstances they can be converted into Ordinary shares, which do count as far as control goes. Glad it seems as if I am in the loop, Indy, but not so. If i was I would know what the exact position is with the nearly 200,000 new Ordinaries and why such a specifically weird number was chosen...🤩

This is just making wild assumptions in.order to blame Michael and Delia every time there's disappointment. During good seasons there's just silence on the subject. Who is it they've turned away and how would we have been better if they hadn't?

Please stop being the ' typing weathervane' of this forum....repost articles by all means but your opinion seems populist at best, disingenuous shoitestirring at a median and crass stupidity of stating the obvious at worst.

I completely get your point about how the game is rotten. Elite football in this country long ago lost its right to describe itself as a "sport". It's an entertain industry more akin to WWE than something like Snooker. However, if you really think that where we are right now is "doing the best it can" then you're deluded. Maybe "trying to do the best it can", but it's undeniable that we could (and arguably should) be doing a lot better.

That Twitter Account spends half it's time sharing Ipsh*t goals. Read between the lines guys. They've singled him out for stuff that happens in every single game up and down the country. Anyone who wants Aarons to leave needs their head checking. He'll go on to a bigger club than us if he does, which kind of tells you what you need to know about our chances of equally replacing.

Personally I think the issue isn’t with Hanley, Gibson or Big Andy it’s the fact there isn’t a natural defensive midfielder player sat in front of them to break up play or help play through the press. They are all good championship centre backs.

Farke's first season was about rebuilding, this one is about falling apart. In that respect it rather reminds me of Worthington's post-relegation season of 2006/7. Our next season might easily become something like Farke's first.

That’s somewhat unfair - whoever is doing those tweets clearly has it in for him. Imo the guy definitely caught his foot, he made the most of it but it wouldn’t be enough for a pen. The embarrassing thing is to single him out for something every pro does all the time.

I agree with that in spirit, and if Webber had come out in October 2021 and said "we have the best possible coach here at NCFC and we're going to back him even if we go down again this season," I would have supported that, against the wide accusations of 'no ambition' that would have ensued, on here, from the trolls at TalkSport, and everywhere in between. It would have been the ultimate in 'ignoring the noise'. But, given the catastrophic transfer window that summer, we would have probably gone down without even a whimper, and I think we would have struggled to impose ourselves on the Championship this season. I think it would have got harder and harder for Webber to stick with Farke in those circumstances. And even if we had stuck with him and won the Championship again, he'd have been starting a third PL season with two failures behind him - the pressure would have been on right from the start. I think there's an attractive tendency in football to remember people's qualities and forget their failings. We remember the glorious Farkeball football in the Champs and are already forgetting how dismal we were without the ball in the PL, how often, especially away from home, we were just cannon fodder for teams as average as Palace or West Ham. I think what Webber realised was that Farke's Man City-lite approach was never going to work on our budget in the PL. But we just didn't have the players to play a more pragmatic style, so I think Webber was caught between two strategies. Given that we couldn't become Dyche-era Burnley overnight, you might be right that we would have been better off sticking to Farkeball (or finding a successor to DF who could have made it more defensively solid), rather than flailing about with whatever it was Smith was trying to do. But I suspect that without Emi and Skipp (or viable successors in those positions) we were doomed whatever decision was made about the coach. That has to come down to Webber in the end, and I totally get why people are angry with him. It looks like his time here is going to end in failure, despite getting pretty close to success along the way. But I find it hard to get too upset with him personally. The bottom line is that doing what we tried to do on our budget is bloody hard. The fact that Brentford have done it makes it seem as though we should have, but I think their achievement is exceptional, rather than ours being an egregious failure. We got close, blew it and never recovered, basically. This has become a bit of a rambling reply as I try to work out what I think. But in the end, when you say I share that feeling emotionally - it would have been great if Daniel had stayed and begun to build another great Farkeball team - but I also have a strong feeling that it would have ended in tears, and acrimony that he wouldn't have deserved, and which would have broken my heart a little bit.

We are currently an opposing manager’s dream… ”High press their defenders, they are hopeless under pressure”. ”Set up your deck-chairs in midfield, they haven’t got one”. ”Let their forwards have the ball, they can’t score for toffee”. ”Score a goal, and they’re dead and buried.They never win once going behind”. Our position in the table is testament to the quality in the Championship this season.

Circumstances beyond a club’s control is true for all clubs so cannot explain why Burnley have run awY with the Championship whilst Wigan are struggling to stsy in the Championship. A club’s performance reflects the decision making within the club from financing, recruitment, coaching and tactics employed. In our case we clearly have not made enough effective decisions in recent seasons to be particularly consistent in our outcomes.

Yes of course. Duck and weave next.

They both have the physical size but frustratingly neither seem to really put themselves about - see Grant Holt or Iwan Roberts. I'd kill to have Holty back in the side in his prime!

Sometimes late at night I'll watch France24 as it can be quite inciteful without our 'local' baggage. In fact it was on that very channel years ago I heard it first put plainly what I have always thought - that Brexit had a fundamental conundrum at it's heart - the vast majority that voted for Brexit are actually protectionists (no FOM, high welfare, pensions, NHS and so on i.e. a European style welfare state) whereas those that 'championed' it (ERG and right wing Tories) actually need, no Brexit required, the exact opposite - i.e. the hire'm fire'm American economic model - survival of the fittest and a lower welfare base including the NHS. That why its doomed (we have to sadly ignore the pensioner/boomer base as they are voting on something completely different being largely economically insulated from their actions and nostalgic for a forgotten past). If you don't believe me think of Truss (more immigration), Fox, Mogg etc. The Lexits where just plain gullible and stuck in the 70's.

What would you call them. Scum fans posting on a twitter feed, picked up as ever by Cambridge leading to 1 or 2 constantly attacking our best player. I think the word sums them up.

I don't support Webber. I don't have a rabid dislike for him though. He's abrasive but more open than anyone I've seen in a similar role before. Trouble is he's disliked to such an extent that what he says is ignored. He's trusted by our owners and board. It also appears that includes Attanasio. You need to ask them the question about support.

That sounds dodgy but I don't think there's anything dodgy about these shares. Attanasio has Foulger's shares? Doubt he's still signing up to an intricate scam. It's a disappointing season. That doesn't mean the hierarchy at the club is rotten. Good honest people are still good honest people.

Saw SLF the other week at Epic Magdalen Street....Great gig and although Jake is advancing in years his vocal chords and range are still evident....Great gig, and Slim Jim Phantom accompanied with his wifey on bass as the SLF support, were real good fun....Last time I saw Slim Jim was quite a few years ago at the Waterfront playing drums for Dead Men Walking with Mike Peters, Glenn Matlock, Kirk Brandon and Bruce Watson....brilliant....

Great to see them descending into an inconsistent mess. Their fans are vile and every one of them that sung Roman Ambramovich's name should be shipped out to the frontline in Ukraine. Just a shame Graham Potter has been tarred by association with them.

Would Mrs Webber as a Director state she is unhappy about DOF performance ? Would Mrs Webber bring up point of DOF performance if the other directors did not but Mrs Webber thought he was doing a bad job ? i am sure if she was unconnected to the DOF she may vote / talk differently about them it is human nature to protect your husband / wife / Family

You always appear to blame Delia. I suspect there's a reason for that and the fact that you rarely post about anything else.

I've said before I see this happening. McGovern will move on in the summer to get a coaching job elsewhere, Krul will take on MM's current mantle and will start preparations for his post-playing career. His kids are in school now, he's nicely settled within the Mulbarton media mafia, he'll start making TV appearances more often, maybe even take his coaching badges.

Lakey Out!!!

I’ve posted this band before, Stranglers covers band called Straighten Out. Used to be called Four More Heroes. My mate Phil is the frontman, bass player is Shaggy, who apparently used to provide The Stranglers with “substances”. https://www.straightenoutband.co.uk

So, if we were in Burnley's position right now, but we didn't have a Buendia or Skipp, this thread would still exist....?

I know your desperation to blame Delia for everything is generally limitless but I really respect you for the work you've put in to make up a completely new angle after your initial long-standing argument that they'd never accept sensible investment etc has unfortunately (for you, I guess) turned out to be wrong.

https://youtu.be/SH3OYObko_k

The trouble is with the Colney two ie Webbers. This is a no lose situation for them, total power without any lay out. Have a club to run until they get fed up with it. Plus £1.000.000 pa.Who's the mugs.

Rodgers and Hammers time.....

If Nunez, Dowell and Hernandez had been fit he wouldn’t have

Idah and Sargent on the wing has never worked and never will. That two managers are now trying even though this is obvious if baffling

Given our wage bill last season was £118 million as against £68 million for Brentford and £18 million for Luton. you called it. Sack Webber and his missus tonight.

I opened a bottle of milk this morning-unscrewed the plastic top, but the tab on the foil seal broke off as it had got stuck to the underside of the bottle top, leaving me to tear off the seal with my teeth-very annoying