The Falkirk FC Thread

[Harry Kinnear]

Don't we? Muirhead is a better centre back than right back, Brough looked a better centre back than left back and I wasn't there but didn't Russell do well in the reserve game at cb? 
Not a pop by the way, just seems to me we have plenty of options. They all just happen to be shite. 

Russell was excellent playing at the left side of centre back for the reserves. Much better than Dallison.

[Shodwall cat]

6 minutes ago, Duncan Freemason said:

While the BoD have indulged in one or two decent initiatives, there is no doubt that when they get it wrong, there’s no half measures. It tends to be cataclysmic. Be it the current mess, or the George Craig disaster, it tends never to be the little decisions that go badly wrong.

The common thread seems to be a MSG who appoint people into roles, and then allow them to simply do as they please with the only performance measures being “lags”......all they really tell you is if something has gone wrong or is about to go wrong. There never seems to be anything in place to stop it going awry in the first place.

If you choose to believe in complete autonomy for the manager,then what we are seeing now isn’t such a surprising outcome (where the only checks and balances are within or out with budget). I keep harping back to the “Paul is going to put things in place such that the club never finds itself in this position again”. I would love to know what he sold to the BoD that made them believe that was what he was doing. That should have been a business plan that they understood, but in actual fact, I reckon they fell for some real soft and woolly subjective nonsense with the backing of our social enterprise CEO.

The same pish was trotted out the year we nearly went down under Hughes. The club must make sure we're not in this situation again.  A year later and we're relegated. Our Bod continually fail to heed the warnings unfortunately and we keep jumping from one mess to another even bigger one.

[Guest]

I would say no they shouldn't but do we know how many players Hartley saw or had looked at before? Was he operating the same way he did at alloa and Dundee, where it worked both times apart from his last season with Dundee? I don't know the ins and outs of the board's relationship with Hartley and his methods but I'd rather have a board that is willing to back their manager (and hopefully learns from any mistakes) than previous owners that took out but never put into the club! 
The club and the board have made a lot of mistakes, some only apparent in hindsight but they have also done a lot right, we would've walked this league but for the freak circumstances of 3 of the 5 biggest teams in Scotland being down here. We have excellent crowds as the club have managed to keep the interest alive even if the last 2 seasons have been poor. 

I really could not care how he operated at Dundee and Alloa. This is our club and IMO it should be structured to get the best out of the resource we had. No idea how many he hadn’t seen. You hear numbers from 6 to 12 depending who you speak to. 1 is too many for me.

[Skyline Drifter]

1 hour ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

If you can play centre half bring your boots on Saturday. Don't worry about training. Part of the deal is you must annihilate Stephen Dobbie in the first minute when we play QOS though.

He's too short to play centre half, and too slow to catch Dobbie. What time should he turn up for matches for Falkirk?

[GMBairn]

We have the third worst record in the world apparently. I was going to post a screenshot but p&b doesn't like those files so here is the link to Twitter.

[Homer Thompson]

1 hour ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

If you can play centre half bring your boots on Saturday. Don't worry about training. Part of the deal is you must annihilate Stephen Dobbie in the first minute when we play QOS though.

I did play centre half for a time, more of a sweeper role really. 

Absolutely no dice though

14 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

He's too short to play centre half, and too slow to catch Dobbie. What time should he turn up for matches for Falkirk?

 ... hang on

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, GMBairn said:

We have the third worst record in the world apparently. I was going to post a screenshot but p&b doesn't like those files so here is the link to Twitter.

 

....and I would be willing to bet that if we got drawn against Dundee in a cup competition, they would wipe the floor with us, and beat us by two or three goals.

[RC55 FFC]

This BOD (inc CEO) have allowed Hartley to sign multiple players he hadn’t physically seen (Chair confirmed this) which is unheard of by most football managers. They are as much to blame as he was for our current plight. They sacked him when asked as they fucked up & knew it.

 

 

[Shodwall cat]

Most bod's give the manager a quite a bit of time before he gets the boot. The fact that we acted so quickly says to me they've known thing have been a mess for quite some time. They go about the place and I've no doubt that some of them will be about when trainings on etc. Problem was they've let him try to cover over the shit signings with a few panic signings like Irving and Haber.  Unfortunately by the time they acted the horse had basically bolted.

[Guest]

Hartley got carried away with the amount of freedom he was given. Did he argue the case for that all on his own, or did he have someone justifying this to the BoD on his behalf?

If he did it on his own, then fair play, he must either have incredible skills of persuasion, or he had someone in the employ of the club doing it for him. Someone with George Craig’s  DNA who loved playing around being a football club mover and shaker, but who in reality, didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

[EdiBairn]

14 minutes ago, RC55 FFC said:

This BOD (inc CEO) have allowed Hartley to sign multiple players he hadn’t physically seen (Chair confirmed this) which is unheard of by most football managers. They are as much to blame as he was for our current plight. They sacked him when asked as they fucked up & knew it.

 

 

Hartley was given a playing budget by the Board of Directors and then allowed to spend that budget. The idea that the board at any club will analyse every potential signing's history, ability and potential and then permit or refuse the signing as some on here seem to be suggesting is utterly ridiculous.

[AL-FFC]

Just now, EdiBairn said:

Hartley was given a playing budget by the Board of Directors and then allowed to spend that budget. The idea that the board at any club will analyse every potential signing's history, ability and potential and then permit or refuse the signing as some on here seem to be suggesting is utterly ridiculous.

Pretty sure that was the job of the scout to scout the lower leagues of England to try and find the "QUaLITY" we were looking for there are a  lot to blame for the current predicament BOD for the Mitch  debacle, Hartley for the signing them and more or less the whole f**king team for being an abomination of an excuse for football players.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, EdiBairn said:

Hartley was given a playing budget by the Board of Directors and then allowed to spend that budget. The idea that the board at any club will analyse every potential signing's history, ability and potential and then permit or refuse the signing as some on here seem to be suggesting is utterly ridiculous.

Wrong wrong wrong. What is ridiculous is to allow any single person complete autonomy to do as they pleased with a season’s budget. The very fact that he could deliver such a crock of shit tells you the process is completely and utterly flawed.

[DeeBairn]

Telling that put of the three worst teams in Europe, Hartley has recently been involved with two. Guincamp must be shitting themselves. 

[Shodwall cat]

Just now, Duncan Freemason said:

Wrong wrong wrong. What is ridiculous is to allow any single person complete autonomy to do as they pleased with a season’s budget. The very fact that he could deliver such a crock of shit tells you the process is completely and utterly flawed.

Yeah i'd love to know what the signing talks were like between bod and manager. Its obvious to most of us on here that his original plan of small squad better quality went out the window as soon as he saw the players he signed to start with.  Hartley quickly realised they were gash and so continued to sign more and more players to try to cover up his feckups. Unfortunately these signings have also been murder and so we're left with a big pile of shite.

[EdiBairn]

2 minutes ago, Duncan Freemason said:

Wrong wrong wrong. What is ridiculous is to allow any single person complete autonomy to do as they pleased with a season’s budget. The very fact that he could deliver such a crock of shit tells you the process is completely and utterly flawed.

Every manager(certainly at this level) will have control of the playing budget. Would you rather Margaret Lang had said "you know what, we're not going to let you sign Paul Paton, but you can have this player we've found for you instead". No manager would accept that and they'd be out the door instantly.

[Bairnardo]

I think the big question for me is, if we win on Saturday, will this thread become any more bearable?

[Aubrey Maturin]

2 minutes ago, EdiBairn said:

Every manager(certainly at this level) will have control of the playing budget. Would you rather Margaret Lang had said "you know what, we're not going to let you sign Paul Paton, but you can have this player we've found for you instead". No manager would accept that and they'd be out the door instantly.

If you want someone at board level to veto signings you need a director of football not a group of non footbalk people who couldn't identify a player.

Continually you see break downs in relationships due to board members who have never played the game thinking they know more than a manager.  

[Falkirk_Bairn_1983]

2 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

I think the big question for me is, if we win on Saturday, will this thread become any more bearable?

Here's hoping. Onef looks like a ray of sunshine compared to this place. 

I keep reading the same posts over and over and over 

[ATB1961]

27 minutes ago, RC55 FFC said:

This BOD (inc CEO) have allowed Hartley to sign multiple players he hadn’t physically seen (Chair confirmed this) which is unheard of by most football managers. They are as much to blame as he was for our current plight. They sacked him when asked as they fucked up & knew it.

 

 

IMO an effective BoD makes sure checks and balances are in place; constructively question the decisions of Management to ensure they aligned to strategy  and are not just a rubber stamp.  I have attended Board Meeting where the non-executives ask Management the difficult questions and address the elephants in the room. Non executives are not necessarily subject matter experts  but bring to an organisation their experience of matters impacting the business. Did our BOD demonstrate any of these functions?