PURE SPECULATION - Nicola Cortese

[Chuckle Brother]

He's been linked with a move to one of the top Italian clubs.

Never coming here.

Top Clubs? AC Milan are 11th, the equivalent of Aston Villa....

Are you seriously comparing Milan with Villa?

Was a pretty tight tie in Europe about 25 years ago.

Although that was Inter.

[Royal Rother]

Unfortunately....our club (for better or for worse) has always been run in a very amateurish way and IMHO just got lucky twice with the temporary right mix of manager and players.

That really is quite a classic even by your standards!

It's what I feel.
So many things over the years have been done on an ad hoc basis with such little planning and only within the last 5 years or so has the club realised that the future had to be with a successful youth set-up. something that most clubs ,with the glaringly obvious example of Southampton, have done for so many years.

We also did not build a squad to stay in the Premier League, we cobbled a side together that was good enough to get promoted and then bad enough to get relegated.
I call that old-style true-blue amateurism with an owner deciding whether to buy or sell on a whim.

This is ridiculous.

Having bumbled along in the lower leagues for decades the club has had incredible success in recent years, never finishing lower than 9th in The Championship in the last 13 seasons, winning it twice, and thus spending 3 years in the Premier League.

That has not happened by chance.

Yes, opportunities will have benn missed along the way, some poor decisions made, (every single club in the land can have that one levelled at them), but to call the way the club has been run in the last 20 years "amateurish" is verging on madness.

[marcusopp]

Topics like this are why I love Hob Nob (I also like Hob Nobs, but we need a biscuit thread for that....)

plain or chocolate covered?

[marcusopp]

This is ridiculous.

Having bumbled along in the lower leagues for decades the club has had incredible success in recent years, never finishing lower than 9th in The Championship in the last 13 seasons, winning it twice, and thus spending 3 years in the Premier League.

That has not happened by chance.

Yes, opportunities will have benn missed along the way, some poor decisions made, (every single club in the land can have that one levelled at them), but to call the way the club has been run in the last 20 years "amateurish" is verging on madness.[/quote]
Couldn't agree more.
The new fans forget we've spent most of our 130 years in the 3rd tier, then the 4th, then 2nd. Our average crowd was below 6000 when i started going in the early 90's. That made us about as big as Wycombe are now, then. Donny or Barnsley are a realistic comparison. SJM is a legend, took us up from a 3rd tier club (i.e. 45th to 69th in the country) to a top championship club (top 30 clubs).
No amateur could achieve that

[3points]

Swap Howe for Cortese?

[AthleticoSpizz]

a Nigel for a Nicola anyday

[dogzbollox]

Topics like this are why I love Hob Nob (I also like Hob Nobs, but we need a biscuit thread for that....)

I think we need a whole biscuit section where one could discuss ones fave biccys ....me? McVities Dark Choccy digestives btw

[SydenhamRoyal]

Topics like this are why I love Hob Nob (I also like Hob Nobs, but we need a biscuit thread for that....)

I think we need a whole biscuit section where one could discuss ones fave biccys ....me? McVities Dark Choccy digestives btw

No contest. Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Quadruple Chocolate Cookies. A close second are Waitrose Belgian Triple Chocolate Cookies.

[Royal Rother]

M&S triple choc.

[Barry the bird boggler]

Huntley and Palmers honey biscuits..... Now that's going back a bit....

[Samrfc01]

Threads like this are why we get laughed at.

Why on earth would Cortese come to us? Madness.

[Mr Optimist]

Threads like this are why we get laughed at.

Why on earth would Cortese come to us? Madness.

Normally Sam I would agree with you but ££££££ seems to do the trick in football these days!