Should Knight quit as chairman

[The Large One]

From a purely football (ie on the pitch) perspective this looks a reasonable point of view to hold.
However, some of DW's actions/activities when team manager were outside of his business remit and rendered his position as a member of the Club's senior management untenable; that is what lead to the Board concluding that he should be removed from that position.

This is the CENTRAL point to this whole affair.

And it's something that is far too often overlooked.

 

[British Bulldog]

Dick Knight should and most probably will stay as chairman until the Falmer project is completed, But along with the rest of the board Knight needs to take a long hard look at some of the decision making over the last year or 2 and learn from the mistakes they have made. Ever since the summer of indecision over the future of Mark Mcghee they've lurched from one disaster to another and they'll only have themselves to blame if we end up in league 2 next season because it will be they're piss poor decision making that will have put us there.

 

[Deleted member 2719]

He's not there to try to get people to think he's a nice chairman. He's there to make decisions for what he believes are the best interests of the Club - thats his job. Some he's got right, some he's got wrong, and its only with the power of hindsight that we can look back and judge.

He gets more right than wrong, the club is still solvent, and we'll have a proper stadium in a couple of years. That tells me he tends to get the BIGGEST decisions right, on the whole. And thats good enough for me.

Sorry Easy i don't buy this hindsight line that people keep throwing around it was pretty obvious you don't sack a improving manager on the verge of the play-offs for another man unless it's ferguson or wenger it was a rash decision however you look at it which has cost us big time financially which could have a knock on effect and undoing all there efforts in keeping us solvent, worst case scenario it could have even cost us our club,that's how big a mistake it could be.

That said Slade will do a great job but it's whether we have the time, Slade may well save DK's bacon.

In the mean time i must stick a few quid on us to stay up.

 

[The Large One]

Sorry Easy i don't buy this hindsight line that people keep throwing around it was pretty obvious you don't sack a improving manager on the verge of the play-offs for another man unless it's ferguson or wenger it was a rash decision however you look at it which has cost us big time financially which could have a knock on effect and undoing all there efforts in keeping us solvent, worst case scenario it could have even cost us our club,that's how big a mistake it could be.

That said Slade will do a great job but it's whether we have the time, Slade may well save DK's bacon.

In the mean time i must stick a few quid on us to stay up.

How many more times do you need to be told that it wasn't his coaching skills that got him the sack?

 

[Easy 10]

Sorry Easy i don't buy this hindsight line that people keep throwing around it was pretty obvious you don't sack a improving manager on the verge of the play-offs for another man unless it's ferguson or wenger it was a rash decision however you look at it which has cost us big time financially which could have a knock on effect and undoing all there efforts in keeping us solvent, worst case scenario it could have even cost us our club,that's how big a mistake it could be.

That said Slade will do a great job but it's whether we have the time, Slade may well save DK's bacon.

In the mean time i must stick a few quid on us to stay up.

I don't know the full facts on why Wilkins was sacked. Its easy from the outside to say they cocked up with that decision, and one look at the league table would obviously back up that point of view. But without knowing the full picture, without knowing the REASONS for the sacking, we're pissing in the wind somewhat. I can only assume there must have been a damn good reason for it, it would not have been done on a whim.

 

[Taybha]

Perish the thought this club ever becomes successful! nowt to moan about,nobody to slag off,no weather, no religion too,nsc closes down due to full houses at falmer! scary times ahead eh!

 

[Barnham Seagull]

How many more times do you need to be told that it wasn't his coaching skills that got him the sack?

No apparently not, but they got us to 7th!

If what he did was so bad he should have been sacked not offered a different role.

Does not add up.

 

[clapham_gull]

and this my friends - amongst the pile of opinion posted on this thread is the one stated fact (as it now appears was supplied by a significant shareholder of the club and not someone who would cow tow as an acolyte in this or any other business he has been involed in).

We have now heard this from a shareholder, an agent, players, friends of players and others who claim to be close to the club.

So with all this in mind, the decision Knight took to fire Wilkins whilst in playing terms may have looked a strange one, in general company terms seems (I emphasis this word) to have been one based on business judgement and backed by not only the majority of the board (Naylor has referred to one dissenting voice) and other shareholders. Was it a maistake? Did it cause us to be where we are now? Nobody can say yes or no to either of those for sure.

However, I would say that the board in general and the chairman in particular have never been slow to back (either morally or financially) managers of this football club. As I've said before, Wilkins must have done something to not engage that kind of support.

"Judgement" - don't make me laugh. Let's also offer some facts.

I'm sure Wilkins was a very very naughty boy, but that isn't really the issue is it.

It was the way in which it was handled. Obviously not naughty enough to be dismissed on the spot or not naughty enough to be have been offered the role of coach again.

Obviously not naughty enough to be allowed to plan for next season so we had the situation were players were released then lo and behold they were back again.

People criticise him for bad man management, well even if the decisions were collective I think we can quite clearly direct a similar criticism towards the board can't we ?

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

No apparently not, but they got us to 7th!

If what he did was so bad he should have been sacked not offered a different role.

Does not add up.

Status quo or dismissal are not the only options, you could move him into a role that is better suited to his skill set. It often happens in companies where the individual has difficulty with some elements of the job.

 

[clapham_gull]

Status quo or dismissal are not the only options, you could move him into a role that is better suited to his skill set. It often happens in companies where the individual has difficulty with some elements of the job.

Do you wait months to do it whilst in the interim letting him go through the process of releasing his own staff.

Bizarre no ?

 

[Deleted member 2719]

How many more times do you need to be told that it wasn't his coaching skills that got him the sack?

Off to work but Barnhams post below also suggest Dean was badly managed himself as it wasn't a instant dismissal so it was - we have no reason to sack you take a lesser job, knowing Dean was very ambitious he was sure not to take it - Why hinshlewood did probably shows why he wasn't the right man to lead the Albion.

No apparently not, but they got us to 7th!

If what he did was so bad he should have been sacked not offered a different role.

Does not add up.

Barnham i am afraid some people will only think with there heart and not there head when it comes to Dick.

Status quo or dismissal are not the only options, you could move him into a role that is better suited to his skill set. It often happens in companies where the individual has difficulty with some elements of the job.

But if you know they wouldn't want that job the end result is they will leave it was just a good line for Dick to spin at the forum "but we were happy to keep dean in a coaching role capacity",be honest you been around the block Dick wanted him out because he found him to ambitious and demanding and all he wanted was a "yes man".

 

[The Large One]

No apparently not, but they got us to 7th!

If what he did was so bad he should have been sacked not offered a different role.

Does not add up.

Actually it does.

Status quo or dismissal are not the only options, you could move him into a role that is better suited to his skill set. It often happens in companies where the individual has difficulty with some elements of the job.

Agreed.

 

[The Large One]

"Judgement" - don't make me laugh. Let's also offer some facts.

I'm sure Wilkins was a very very naughty boy, but that isn't really the issue is it.

It was the way in which it was handled. Obviously not naughty enough to be dismissed on the spot or not naughty enough to be have been offered the role of coach again.

Obviously not naughty enough to be allowed to plan for next season so we had the situation were players were released then lo and behold they were back again.

People criticise him for bad man management, well even if the decisions were collective I think we can quite clearly direct a similar criticism towards the board can't we ?

You're not offering facts, you're offering conjecture.

You'd need to how he was 'naughty' in order to appreciate that those questions miss the point.

 

[Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!]

Do you wait months to do it whilst in the interim letting him go through the process of releasing his own staff.

Bizarre no ?

You may be waiting to see whether the club's going to be promoted? In FL money alone this would have been worth >£500K this season and is not an insignificant sum, particularly when you're running a loss of £2.5-£3.0M pa.
From memory, the players concerned were told that their contracts, due to expire at the end of June 2008, would not be renewed so they will have been employed until that date. An odd piece of timing I agree but these announcements came from DW himself and he may not have told the Board when he was going to do this; may be an public example of the type of behaviour that made his position untenable?

 

[The Large One]

Off to work but Barnhams post below also suggest Dean was badly managed himself as it wasn't a instant dismissal so it was - we have no reason to sack you take a lesser job, knowing Dean was very ambitious he was sure not to take it - Why hinshlewood did probably shows why he wasn't the right man to lead the Albion.

Barnham i am afraid some people will only think with there heart and not there head when it comes to Dick.


But if you know they wouldn't want that job the end result is they will leave it was just a good line for Dick to spin at the forum "but we were happy to keep dean in a coaching role capacity",be honest you been around the block Dick wanted him out because he found him to ambitious and demanding and all he wanted was a "yes man".

Sorry, you are still wide of the mark.

 

[Brovion]

You're not offering facts, you're offering conjecture.

You'd need to how he was 'naughty' in order to appreciate that those questions miss the point.

Eh? Everything Clapham's said is a fact. The only unknown is, as you say, we don't know how 'naughty' he was.

I said on another thread I was going to give it a rest and stop banging on about how incompetent, deceitful, disjointed and shambolic the club executive hirearchy is, so this will be my only post on the subject.