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Millers Banter: Unofficial Rotherham United Fans Forum / Message Board → Football / Sport / RUFC Related → Can we sustainably compete at this level?
 

Topic: Can we sustainably compete at this level?

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ChesterGreenMiller
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Can we sustainably compete at this level?
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I'm not sure. The stats showed we were clearly behind the others in terms of wage budgets, and despite the daft false posturing portrayed to the media about Stewart never saying no to Evans' requests, there's no way if Evans wanted a £1m for a striker from Scotland (where else) that Stewart would fund that (and probably rightly so).

But compare and contrast that to the likes of Burnley and Bristol City that are prepared to bid £6m and £9m for players. Wednesday chucking millions round, Fulham the same. In fact not throwing silly money seems to be the exception rather than the norm (and then rather infuriatingly Sky Sports News then sensationalise this in a positive light revealing how net spend is more than the Bundesliga and La Liga etc).

We stayed up last year. I wouldn't be daft enough to write this season off no matter how unlikely a recovery looks at the moment, but then what? Same struggle again? Are we fighting a losing battle?

I'm a bit confused as to the strategy of the club. When languishing in the lower divisions, the dream was always sold as Championship football. Why? Is it the large revenue streams? If so, why are we not at least competing a little bit to keep a hold of that? I'm not suggesting getting ourselves into trouble, but what about a £300k-£400k gamble on a lower league player or unproven Premiership youngster, like we did with Bowery and Clarke-Harris last season?

There's no shame not being able to compete. We're up against some real big fish in this league, andsome pretty medium fish stupidly trying to be big fish. I'd rather not wind up in £m's of debt again. In fact, looking at league 1, it would be much more appetising as things stand for local games, which in itself would look after the attendances. If I thought the gulf in revenue wasn't so enormous, I wouldn't be concerned.

But what are we going to do now to fight for our place in this division, given we're playing catchup and given that, even though we're not as calamitous, we're still dropping points, still playing non inventive route one football and being described by the opposition as a pub team time after time. And that's after the improvement.

So where do we go now?



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DavidR
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The aim was Championship, but that wasn't the priority. The priority was the ground and the redevelopment of the Guest and Chrimes site. I'm pretty sure the idea was that Renaissance of that part of town, the income from conferences and the retail units would subsidise the club and get TS a return on his outlay. But none of it happened,and TS isn't going to bankrupt himself, so the club lives on its income. Which is titchy compared to most other teams.

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Exetermiller
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And lets look at the transfers.

What is it 50 on perms and only a max of 10 have actually been worthwhile plus another 40 on loan where again only 10 max made a positive contribution.

That is abject failure from his staff, then he makes the final decision what we do and falls on the sword. Maybe Southampton's methodology with staff turnover is where the future is. They have a system where the team manager is only one voice and not the dictator, they freely admit, this means long term policy on recruitment or development makes no difference who manages the team where the average job lifespan is less than 3yrs. I think Brentford wanted to adopt similar, Warburton didn't take so they parted ways. For me it makes sense. Why should player recruitment & development have to turn on its head each time a new manager comes in the door, it seems balmy and far more logical to have a team in place dedicated to this solely regardless of manager.

As for the tactics, antiquated league one, one dimensional, thoughtless rubbish. The players know this. The group we have is good enough for this league, Tony will have given a budget yes with its constraints, but one he would expect to be able to compete. We are no way near competing right now and I don't think his patience will last too much longer, especially when more red empty seats appear week on week at NYS. Bums on seats will force a chairman every single time

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sickly child
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At this moment no.

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BradtheMiller
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The answer to the sustainability is an obvious no. I applaud the clubs stance on wage structure because at the end of the day, no matter what happens on the pitch, we still have a viable football club to support, who wants to go back to the administration/Points deductions days?
Saying that however, season 2015/16 sees us in the Championship, the second tier in the money drunk English football pyramid, the same pyramid in which One Sheffield Wednesday home game ticket price would buy you 2 1/2 Bundesliga tickets.
We have neither the infrastructure (yet), the fanbase, or the Million(billion)aire backer or indeed the ghastly unfair parachute payments to be able to compete on a level playing field.
What we could do to try & compete is to rid ourselves of the Major Oaf that is Mr Evans & his sidekicks, Msrs Raynor & Black who seem intent on making RUFC this seasons joke club as Blackpool were last season. The mans style of football is repetitive, predictable & bloody awful to watch. I truly believe that this season's squad is WORSE than the squad that won promotion from League 2! The team spirit that I admit he built that got us over the line last season has evaporated. His recruitment apart from Camp, Newell & at long last JCH has been dreadful, in short, he must be replaced at the earliest opportunity. I don't think replacing Evans will save us this season but at least a new guy could make a damned good start in instilling a new way of playing,(we might even try to play football eh?) team spirit etc, which would be a good grounding when we start 2016/17 in League 1, competing on more equal terms with our rival clubs for a change.



-- Edited by BradtheMiller on Tuesday 15th of September 2015 10:56:14 PM

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smiler
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Supporters will accept that we are likely to struggle to compete and no right thinking Millers would want us to run the risk of financial disaster again. At the same time they want to see the team trying to play decent football and see the club building a base on the field as well as off it. I'm banging my favourite drum here, but here goes. Trial and error signings, loanees and safety first percentage football might win a few fans over for as long as it gets results but as soon as the results don't come it starts to look a bit desperate.

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hillsborough miller
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we need a change of style of play if he cant do that i will drive him to peterborough and raynor can run behind

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Tricky
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The only explanation for TS sticking by SE in the way he has so far, is an admission that he believes no one else could do any better with the resources we are prepared to throw at this season. To me he is saying " I would rather be relegated than sack SE and give another manager a chance". If you recall the start to last season, Fulham and others had a terrible start, they changed their manager and got the reaction a change at the top often generates. And they eventually stayed up. Blackpool on the other hand stuck by their manager in what feels like the same approach as TS to SE, and they went down. This is me indicates a lack of future funding availability, or ambition, or too much loyalty between our chairman and SE. I would rather let another man have a go, and go down having really tried, rather than watch this tripe currently on offer, which has to be as much down to Evans as the quality of the players. STOP THIS NONSENSE and give someone else enough games to get us out of this mess! 



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ian
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Some very good points that are increasingly hard to undermine given 7 Games and 2 points.

It is possible that TS simply thinks SE can get us up the league. It could be that simple.

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Heman
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I agree pretty much with everything brad says except the bit about getting rid of Evans and Raymor. We will always be a small fish in a big pond in the championship.

I remember a Barnsley fan phoning in on praise & grumble the day they got relegated. He said that he was sick of the last 6 years or so fighting relegation and was glad to drop to a level where they can win matches.

I'm not quite in that frame of mind yet, but it will come if we finish 4th from bottom for the next 5 years.

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ian
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Some very good points that are increasingly hard to undermine given 7 Games and 2 points.

It is possible that TS simply thinks SE can get us up the league. It could be that simple.

At some point he has to be right or wrong and there are question marks over anyone's thinking if they persist beyond reasonable evidence.

Tricky points out the plight of blackpool last season and it's possible that TS Is suffering from the same Hubris as their bonkers and unambitious chairman , who seems content to take his winnings and let the house go to rack n ruin.

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