The Falkirk FC Thread

[Guest]

Utter nonsense. That’s why they are there. You are essentially saying that once a manager is appointed and given his budget, there is no way on earth to adopt a system that can stop him from making a complete mess of it and damaging a club for years to come....and even worse, you believe that’s how it should operate.

You are actually making me laugh out loud at how ludicrous that is.

 

[MrDust]

4 hours ago, Grant228 said:

I don't want to turn this into an argument off "Our team is shitter than yours", but I fucking will. 

 

Fwiw if we're being serious for a second I don't think the points deductions are severe enough for going into administration, if you're not automatically getting relegated you should have a points total which absolutely fucks you, then a secondary points deduction the season after. 

The admin cases in Scottish football seems to have dried up but when Dundee and Livvy were repeat offenders, I personally felt our governing body should've applied a rule that any club going into admin should have their initial standard punishment with a 10pt minimum points deduction for 5yr or more or longer depending on the level of debt.

On manager board transfer subject, I'd be surprised if our board or any board interfere over player transfers other than someone out a wage bracket or to increase budget to get a player, ML as much as said the first part in the recent Q&A.

Its all very well with hindsight to point fingers when its went tits up but forget we signed nearly a new team under Hartley last season and that's your answer why it happened again in the summer.

[Guest]

A natural extension of what you've proposed is the board of directors stopping a manager from signing the players he wants even within budget, whether that's at their own discretion or a third party's. Very few managers at this level are going to accept that.

No.

How difficult is this for you?

No BoD should have allowed their manager to sign players he had not watched himself. For them to allow that was naive, lazy and unacceptable. That and that alone is the issue. Certainly for me.

[Guest]

You know Duncan, every time I read one of your posts I'm reminded of a business consultant who charges boards thousands for their services and comes up with waffle to justify it. 

Phrases like "transformational project", "management of change", and "risk analysis" have my eyelids drooping.

I don't agree with you. Edibairn doesn't agree with you.  From some of posts made by others, I don't think we're the only ones.

To me it's simple. The BOD hires the manager, sets the budget, and trusts him to spend it wisely.  If they don't trust him then they have him work with or under a Director Of Football - type person. Or better still, fire him and get someone in that they do trust. That's all there is to it.

Nothing you say will change my opinion on that. Just as nothing I say will change your opinion. That's cool. We're entitled to disagree. I respect your opinion, as I hope you respect mine.

I'd just like to hear it a little bit less. You've been banging on about "oversight" for weeks now and it's almost as tedious as Branchton and his compensation hobby-horse.

Gonna gie it a rest?  Let's just agree to disagree and move on eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dealing with the you give the manager a budget and let him get on with it bit.

 

I think I agree mostly with that but to allow Hartley or any manager to sign players he had not personally seen is the bit I can’t get my head around. Do you think at many clubs the Board don’t say “talk us through why you want to sign ......” after that is asked it isn’t a no you are not getting the signing merely they are understanding the managers plan. I can’t believe even at Falkirk that question is not asked.

 

As a club our issue is a lack of football knowledge at Boardroom level. That, IMO needs to be addressed, I am pretty sure Wednesday’s ramblings conceded that too.

 

If we look at the signings we have made in 4 of the last 5 transfer windows via two different managers you can see something is wrong. Is it the cash we pay, is it the scouting, is it the managers fault, or is it the way we go about our business generally from the top down? I suspect everything within that has a part to play in the mess we are in.

[DeeBairn]

4 hours ago, Duncan Freemason said:

Utter nonsense. That’s why they are there. You are essentially saying that once a manager is appointed and given his budget, there is no way on earth to adopt a system that can stop him from making a complete mess of it and damaging a club for years to come....and even worse, you believe that’s how it should operate.

You are actually making me laugh out loud at how ludicrous that is.

 

The one that springs to mind is Newcastle, when they had Dennis Wise doing the job, didn't work out well. No manager will stand for being told he can't sign a player. The Director of Football is there to work with the scouts and present a list of players TO the manager. It's the manager that should be getting the final say. To do it any other way is utter madness.

[Stainrod]

5 hours ago, Duncan Freemason said:

So, DoF don’t exist. Everywhere in the world, it’s the manager who has the first and only say in player selection. Yet more rubbish.

Read again what I said. What we did in the summer was near enough unprecedented. The outcome that our manager delivered was because there was no-one seeking assurances that what Hartley was doing was up to snuff. Can you grasp that premis? 

Couldnt agree more, the key point is the unprecedented level of risk in this move to recruit a whole new squad in 3weeks of madness. I for one don't believe this was Hartley’s plan I suspect the idea to use Mitch came from within the club. No doubt Hartley wanted to bring in his guys but the methodology and timing was not his style. For a business to entrust such a wholesale recruitment to a third party is nieve at best. 

[Bairnardo]

Most of the players we signed in the summer dont appear to have the talent to match our ambitions. Some of them appear to be utter shite.

That fact has cost Hartley and Mitchell their jobs.

Why is it so hard to move on from these facts? Its like fucking groundhog day in here.

Duncan, why cant you accept that even if the board had sought assurances from Hartley, having talked himself into the job, talked himself into a January clearout and presumably talked himself into the use of a scout, he woukd have been easily been able to appease any board member.

Also, who has said DoF doesnt exist anywhere in the world? This is getting fucking stupid now aswell as tedious.

[Anthony Fitzgerald]

This thread is making my eyes bleed reading the same shit over and over again.

[Bairnardo]

This thread is making my eyes bleed reading the same shit over and over again.

Well and truly OneF'd it.

[Bainsfordbairn]

5 hours ago, Back Post Misses said:

I think I agree mostly with that but to allow Hartley or any manager to sign players he had not personally seen is the bit I can’t get my head around. Do you think at many clubs the Board don’t say “talk us through why you want to sign ......” after that is asked it isn’t a no you are not getting the signing merely they are understanding the managers plan. I can’t believe even at Falkirk that question is not asked.

As a club our issue is a lack of football knowledge at Boardroom level. That, IMO needs to be addressed, I am pretty sure Wednesday’s ramblings conceded that too.

If we look at the signings we have made in 4 of the last 5 transfer windows via two different managers you can see something is wrong. Is it the cash we pay, is it the scouting, is it the managers fault, or is it the way we go about our business generally from the top down? I suspect everything within that has a part to play in the mess we are in.

Assuming we did sign a large number of these players without PH seeing them, I tend to agree with you. However, Bairnado's point a few posts later probably nails it. Hartley would have had no difficult in persuading the BOD that he was bringing in superstars. They don't have the football knowledge to argue with him. And I suspect EBs point about managers at our level refusing to have their signings veto'd is also correct.  Outwith Hearts during the Romanov period, I can't think of many Scottish clubs who've worked that way.

You've been around our club long enough to know that the manager is judge, jury, king, and god all rolled into one. Boards will refuse them cash and  fire them, but apart from those sanctions they have a great deal of autonomy. Very few managers in business get anything like the latitude a football manager does.  

[Marshmallo]

6 hours ago, Back Post Misses said:

 

No.

How difficult is this for you?

No BoD should have allowed their manager to sign players he had not watched himself. For them to allow that was naive, lazy and unacceptable. That and that alone is the issue. Certainly for me.

 

How do you control for that?

[Bairnardo]

How do you control for that?

Especially considering Hartley had already managed to sell the board on the appointment of Mitch and subsequent deployment of him to scout the particular leagues these players were signed from. Going by the Dundee fans descriptions of Hartleys travelling exploits, and indeed the amount of football he supposedly watched on a weekly basis for us, the sell was likely that he would burn himself out like at Dundee and have less time with the team, if he were to watch all of these games himself. Given that during the interview process its likely Hartley had to explain what went wrong at Dundee, if he cited that as an issue and then proposed a way to resolve it (Mitch) and the the board swallowed that, I am genuinely unsure what more they were meant to do.

As far as the board were concerned, the plan was already sanctioned long before the players true levels were known.

[AL-FFC]

Just now, Bairnardo said:

Especially considering Hartley had already managed to sell the board on the appointment of Mitch and subsequent deployment of him to scout the particular leagues these players were signed from. Going by the Dundee fans descriptions of Hartleys travelling exploits, and indeed the amount of football he supposedly watched on a weekly basis for us, the sell was likely that he would burn himself out like at Dundee and have less time with the team, if he were to watch all of these games himself. Given that during the interview process its likely Hartley had to explain what went wrong at Dundee, if he cited that as an issue and then proposed a way to resolve it (Mitch) and the the board swallowed that, I am genuinely unsure what more they were meant to do.

As far as the board were concerned, the plan was already sanctioned long before the players true levels were known.

I thought the Mitch appointment was the BoD appointment as they wanted Hartley concentrating on the team more than the scouting ?

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Bainsfordbairn said:

You know Duncan, every time I read one of your posts I'm reminded of a business consultant who charges boards thousands for their services and comes up with waffle to justify it. 

Phrases like "transformational project", "management of change", and "risk analysis" have my eyelids drooping.

I don't agree with you. Edibairn doesn't agree with you.  From some of posts made by others, I don't think we're the only ones.

To me it's simple. The BOD hires the manager, sets the budget, and trusts him to spend it wisely.  If they don't trust him then they have him work with or under a Director Of Football - type person. Or better still, fire him and get someone in that they do trust. That's all there is to it.

Nothing you say will change my opinion on that. Just as nothing I say will change your opinion. That's cool. We're entitled to disagree. I respect your opinion, as I hope you respect mine.

I'd just like to hear it a little bit less. You've been banging on about "oversight" for weeks now and it's almost as tedious as Branchton and his compensation hobby-horse.

Gonna gie it a rest?  Let's just agree to disagree and move on eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you don’t agree with me, then you propose what I propose as part of a potential solution. Wow.

Btw, you don’t hear my opinion, you read it. Just pass by anything I write. It sends you sleep anyway so why bother reading it? I promise, it will contain no references to you whatsoever. You repeatedly miss the core of the argument here, but I respect you for missing it.

[Bairnardo]

I thought the Mitch appointment was the BoD appointment as they wanted Hartley concentrating on the team more than the scouting ?

Well either way, the board clearly had signed off on the strategy having either devised it, or taken Hartleys word that it was the correct way to go. It seems reasonable to assume that would then be the point where the board let go of the wheel and passed it over to Hartley, the guy with the convincing vision who they had appointed to manage the Football team.

People are claiming the board should have intervened based on knowledge we have now that no one had or even could have had then at the point where this intervention "should" have occured.

Its absolute nonsense tbh and I really dont understand why we arent moving on. The manager responsible is gone. The board reslonsible are not but they are nursing some seriously burnt fingers. Now we have Ray McKinnon in place and the current players until January. I dont see the point in continuing to flog this.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

How do you control for that?

You would think that the players collectively coming to us would have been the way to do it. While closed door trials might not show their true match condition abilities, it could well have ruled out half of them before a contract was signed.

[Guest]

Just now, Bairnardo said:

Well either way, the board clearly had signed off on the strategy having either devised it, or taken Hartleys word that it was the correct way to go. It seems reasonable to assume that would then be the point where the board let go of the wheel and passed it over to Hartley, the guy with the convincing vision who they had appointed to manage the Football team.

People are claiming the board should have intervened based on knowledge we have now that no one had or even could have had then at the point where this intervention "should" have occured.

Its absolute nonsense tbh and I really dont understand why we arent moving on. The manager responsible is gone. The board reslonsible are not but they are nursing some seriously burnt fingers. Now we have Ray McKinnon in place and the current players until January. I dont see the point in continuing to flog this.

You are right. I just hope the fingers are nipping enough that they understand that there has to be a better way of going about things.

Let 3 months of formation proposals commence...

[AL-FFC]

I think even McKinnon is looking at team and formation lucky dip given what he has to work with, i dont envy the man.

As mentioned previously Brendan Rodgers lad Anton was the trialist playing yesterday, his last team was Irish side Hungerford Town, its in the Falkirk Herald

[Bairnardo]

I think even McKinnon is looking at team and formation lucky dip given what he has to work with, i dont envy the man.

As mentioned previously Brendan Rodgers lad Anton was the trialist playing yesterday, his last team was Irish side Hungerford Town, its in the Falkirk Herald

I dont think we will be seeing a back three again tbf. McKinnon isnt fucking about with formation as much as Hartley was. Every week that passes is a week of knowing the players better and them knowing what he wants. I think Ray knows the value of a settled system so I dont think it will be too long before we see a go to formation followed by a preferred line up.

[Senator Frimpton]

Not sure how little anyone could know about football, especially one involved in the day to day running of a football club () that they couldn't recognise the need for say, a recognised right back in the squad. Executives at the club surely sign off on every single staff contract, which would require some at least basic conversation with management (who's this player, what do they do, any good, value for money?) Hardly getting in the managers face to have him talk through each signing.

If this isn't the case, then fan ownership the way forward