I hope Tony is as utterely distraught (privately) as I am

[Prince Monolulu]

Yes it's football. If you feel like that join the women's institute! I'll pretend I did not read your post!!

 

[sdmartin1]

It seems like there has been cock up after cock up since the Amex opened. Losing Murray to Palace for free, losing the play offs to Palace when we were in top form, now looking on as two of our former centre backs lead a club like Bournemouth into the Premiership whilst we are languishing at the bottom of the division.

Yes, we are in a better position than we were previously in our history and yes, other clubs in the Championship are in worse positions but we now have top quality facilities and incredible season ticket numbers and should expect much better. It really does pain me to think that if the right decisions had been made we would be in the Premiership at least a couple of season ago.

People will trot out the old cliches 'anything can happen in football' and 'no club has a divine right to get promoted' but we had a huge opportunity and blew it, and now the gap is getting bigger and bigger as Prem clubs are getting more and more money and we have to resort to trying to find cheap lower league journeymen who are good enough.

 

[chaileyjem]

It seems like there has been cock up after cock up since the Amex opened. .

That goal 97 minutes after the Amex opened was quite a thing I remember. All cock ups after that of course.

 

[chaileyjem]

we have to resort to trying to find cheap lower league journeymen who are good enough.

PS: stockdale, Hughes, Colunga, Holla, kayal
McCourt, have all played in prem league or respective in their countries, and weren't cheap.
COG, Stephens, weren't cheap, aren't journeymen and weren't "lower league". Baldock is the 3rd most expensive signing in club history.
Who are these cheap lower league journeymen we've resorted to ?

 

[Lincoln Imp]

I hope you are right. I cannot believe how far we have fallen this season when we have been in the playoffs for the last two. We see others promoted and we always miss out. Our players on transfer/loan do better in other teams than they ever do with us, so where do we actually go wrong? Find it all depressing to be honest and don't have that much confidence in the needed team rebuilding during the summer.

There is a danger that the present season is seen as a one-off aberration after a sequence of brilliant ones. It could be a trend - season 2012/13 fell apart right at the end, summer 13 was an administrative nightmare, season 2013/14 was statistically OK but we flattered to deceive, summer 14 was administratively poor and marked by more terrible decisions and season 2014/15 was very nearly as bad as a season can be as the spirit of the club drifted away away in exactly the opposite direction to Bournemouth's.

Let's be positive. Let's hope that Chris Hughton can buck the trend. But we'll be doing ourselves no favours if we deny there's a trend. Someone needs to put their foot on the ball.

 

[sdmartin1]

PS: stockdale, Hughes, Colunga, Holla, kayal
McCourt, have all played in prem league or respective in their countries, and weren't cheap.
COG, Stephens, weren't cheap, aren't journeymen and weren't "lower league". Baldock is the 3rd most expensive signing in club history.
Who are these cheap lower league journeymen we've resorted to ?

The club mouthpiece is here again

 

[nwgull]

The club mouthpiece is here again

No. He's just a rare example of a regular NSC poster who engages his brain before posting. There is no arguing with the list of players he's given and the money spent on them - either in transfers and/or wages.

 

[Gullflyinghigh]

This.

Whinge, whine, moan, mope.

F*cking pack it in NSC.

You know that's never going to happen, there are those on here who seemingly cannot wait to have a good moan about the club, they just needed to be given a reason.

This season has given them plenty, it won't stop for a while, apparently bad seasons aren't allowed to happen anymore, at least not without mass sackings, signings and scapegoating.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

The club mouthpiece is here again

It's a list of facts, not his opinion.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Albion's core business is paying the wages and fees of footballers. Nearly £500k a week on its squad.
I'm frustrated that we've finished 20th. And I'm frustrated that we've spent that fortune on a squad thats weaker than it looked.
But it doesn't mean Tony Bloom has spent £205m of his fortune to become a mad property developer. He's no chance of making anything back from the stadium, or the Academy. If he was a hotel developer then Falmer wouldn't be the best place to start.
Every time you say it , its an insult to the money he's put into the club and his commitment to turning this club round.
So why do you keep saying it when the facts don't stack up.

How on earth can Tony Bloom make a profit from selling the real estate he's built and to who if thats his core business . Please tell us .

Looks like you've got a long old shift ahead of you today

 

[hoveboyslim]

Very much this! I can't believe it either, we are 14 places lower in the same league! It is an absolute total and utter shambolic disgrace and the whole board ought to be sacked and Tony Bloom should do the decent thing and sell to a foreign business man then maybe we'd have half a chance of promotion. When was the last time we were promoted, let alone as champions FFS? A big club like us should be in the Premier League, it's our natural home. How much of our money has been wasted on the new stadium and new training facilities? Look where it's got us? All this nonsense about building for the future, we don't want success tomorrow, we deserve success now. It's pathetic, were just a feeder club to the teams in the league above, where we would be if they'd only listened to the fans when we said don't sell Tommy and Cookie. We don't need to waste money developing young players or buying old guys who are past it or loan players. It's so obvious and so simple, bin the whole team there a waste of space, buy in good young players cheaply and then be successful like Bournemouth. You're right Spicy, we do always miss out. How many times have we missed out on promotion since we lost the Goldstone? Same old Brighton, always relegation fodder, never successful. Take off your rose tinted glasses Tony and smell the coffee! Rant over.

I can't work out if you are being serious or sarcastic?!

 

[Man of Harveys]

No. He's just a rare example of a regular NSC poster who engages his brain before posting.

Deep, deep breath. So just to check: anyone who doesn't live with their nose so far up the club's a*se that you can easily smell whatever fancy macrobiotic muesli Paul Barber's just eaten for breakfast actually just isn't "engaging their brain"? Right-ho. Thanks for clarifying that.

Serious question, are you on some kind of happy medication? So this brain that you're good enough engage every time that you inform us far stupider mortals as to how great everything is at the moment, is actually artificially, chemically stimulated?

 

[sdmartin1]

No. He's just a rare example of a regular NSC poster who engages his brain before posting. There is no arguing with the list of players he's given and the money spent on them - either in transfers and/or wages.

I am suggesting lower league journeymen signings is the way we are heading, we haven't got there yet. If you think the desperate loan signings of the ilk of Best and Halford, both who can't make the grade in mediocre Championship teams is a positive signal of the clubs intent then I would suggest you are quite blinkered. Wayne Bridge to Leon Best, says it all about the clubs demise when we were so close.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

I can't work out if you are being serious or sarcastic?!

He's being sarcastic.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Deep, deep breath. So just to check: anyone who doesn't live with their nose so far up the club's a*se that you can easily smell whatever fancy macrobiotic muesli Paul Barber's just eaten for breakfast actually just isn't "engaging their brain"? Right-ho. Thanks for clarifying that.

Serious question, are you on some kind of happy medication? So this brain that you're good enough engage every time that you inform us far stupider mortals as to how great everything is at the moment, is actually artificially, chemically stimulated?

So, are you saying that what he 'said' isn't FACT?

 

[Juror#13]

I'm expecting the same this summer as last summer. We're going to be last again at doing any deals and will wait for everyone else to get their business done before we pick what's left on the carcass.

 

[chaileyjem]

I am suggesting lower league journeymen signings is the way we are heading, we haven't got there yet.

I'm not arguing about their quality - 20th in the table is all we need to know about that, just inference that our recent signings were cheap (they're not), lower league (mostly not), and journeymen (they're not).

 

[Triggaaar]

Crazy talk I know, but reckon the key to competing with clubs in receipt of very generous parachute payments might be to invest to get up there and grab some parachute payments of our own. Sound like a plan?

Sounds great. Have you got a spare £20m to invest on us getting up there?

 

[hoveboyslim]

He's being sarcastic.

Thanks. The bit that threw me was about buying old players and getting in loan players as that has some element of truth in it. The rest is very good though.

 

[Lincoln Imp]

Albion's core business is paying the wages and fees of footballers. Nearly £500k a week on its squad.
I'm frustrated that we've finished 20th. And I'm frustrated that we've spent that fortune on a squad thats weaker than it looked.
But it doesn't mean Tony Bloom has spent £205m of his fortune to become a mad property developer. He's no chance of making anything back from the stadium, or the Academy. If he was a hotel developer then Falmer wouldn't be the best place to start.
Every time you say it , its an insult to the money he's put into the club and his commitment to turning this club round.
So why do you keep saying it when the facts don't stack up.

How on earth can Tony Bloom make a profit from selling the real estate he's built and to who if thats his core business . Please tell us .

I'm not pretending I know anything about this subject and I'm certainly not assuming that the chairman is planning to sell anything but didn't Palace report a profit of £23-odd million recently, and wouldn't a well-founded and flourishing (ie Premier League) business with a high quality infrastructure that could report regular profits in that general area have a value of many many times that figure?