Godt innlegg, verdt å lese:
Am I the only one thinking that Warnock has been involved in the takeover from Day One? Or rather, that the appointment of Warnock was part of the takeover process? Consider this: Any multi-million pound company buy-out takes place not over weeks, but over months – particularly in a complex case such as a potential takeover of LUFC where whose ownership, assets and facilities –not to mention finances - are buried amongst a myriad of offshore trusts, property developers and the like.
Anyone purchasing LUFC – or in any way involved in a transaction with Bates – would have had a team of lawyers, accountants and auditors crawling over LUFC’s books for a long, long time.
If then the Yanks have indeed been at an advanced stage of negotiations since say Christmas – assuming early negotiations were taking place long before then – they would undoubtedly have been all too aware – or at the very least been aware of the feeling amongst the fans – that the squad was simply nowhere near good enough to achieve promotion this season.
Now if I was that big foreign investor, I’d have waited until the window had closed – no point bringing in a new manager inside the window as the takeover was nowhere near completion but Bates won’t spend on transfers due to the likely impending sale and I wouldn’t spend just in case it all goes tits up - and bring in a new manager who, on paper at least, looks like the most likely candidate to get a team promoted, if given financial backing in the summer.
Now who could such a candidate be? How about the guy who shares the record for promotions and has said he wants one more job of only one season so he can achieve the record outright? If I was a foreign investor looking to take over a club in the second tier with aspirations of an instant rise, there would be only one name on my lips – and I’m sure the lips of my advisors. The man with a probably the best track record in the lower leagues of English football who is currently available - Warnock!
I might then just force the hand of the current ownership to sack the current management and get in the person I want as early as possible, giving him time to assess the current squad and ruthlessly cut loose those not deemed up to the task of achieving promotion the following season.
I might not even mind too much when he spends the entire remainder of the season not man-managing, not addressing defensive shortcomings, not looking to improve the individual players we have, but instead simply slaughtering the current squad time and again.
Didn’t Warnock’s three months in charge strike anyone else as the least like traditional football management they had ever seen? Whatever happened to an arm around the shoulder or "if we all pull together"? There was none of it. The only two players who appear to have done OK from Warnock’s point of view were Snoddy – “He knows what I think of him, etc†and Lees – but even Lees seemed to get a boot in the ribs along with every pinch of praise “individual errors, he needs to learn, but could be a decent playerâ€. Everyone else, it seemed to me at least, was deemed not up to the job, and Warnock basically said as much during every post-match interview. Team morale amongst the current squad was clearly never high on Warnock’s agenda, presumably because he knew 90 percent of them wouldn’t be there come August and he wasted little time in letting them know it.
Apart from his bizarre approach to squad management, was I the only one who felt that Warnock was the most unlikely appointment Bates could possibly have made? I say this because:
Warnock – whatever people may think about him – is a high profile manager in his own right. High profile managers do not come cheap and I imagine Warnock is on considerably more than Grayson was earning. When did Bates ever pay anything more than he absolutely needed?
Similarly, Warnock’s arrival came with promises of summer investment. LUFC fans know only too well that Bates simply does not do investment in the playing squad – not this summer, not last summer, not any summer. So why would Warnock have believed it was likely this time? Why did he believe that he would have been given the financial backing that no other manager in Bates’ reign has received? Warnock is far too wily an operator and has been around English football for far too long to simply have taken Bates at his word.
Similarly, why did Bates sack Grayson when he did? If it was for the good of the club then obviously he would have appointed a new manager before not after the window closed, even if he’d then only give him a few hundred thousand to spend.
And again, why no complaint from Warnock when the promised early spending – Pearce aside – failed to materialise? Presumably whatever the story around his appointment, Warnock was aware of an impending takeover by May, but it seems most unlikely that Bates – yes even Bates – would have appointed him in February without mentioning a takeover was looming.
From where I'm sitting the appointment of Warnock was never down to Grayson's failings or Bates' vision for the club.
Maybe it is just me, maybe I should peel the tinfoil off my windows and maybe I should just let these events happen instead of reading things into every word and utterance that emanates from Elland Road, but if anyone asks me, I'll stick by my guns: Warnock’s appointment was approved – or rather ordered - not in Monaco or St Tropez, but in Chicago or wherever else these damn Yankees have been hiding