Is he?
I found little evidence to point towards anything but him being a good CFO.
It's like saying, that if he was a CEO of a smartphone brand over the last 20 years "yeah brilliant look how we have grown", when in face the market has EXPLODED around us and we merely tagged along proportionally.
And yeah. I'm talking about the football here. An unpleasant but needed caveat in this thread.
That's really not correct. Had we just "tagged along proportionally," as you suggest, we wouldn't have closed the gap on Utd, overtaken the goons, outstripped Everton and Villa, clubs that a decade or two ago were in a similar position to us, if not better.
Yes, I know that's not the Footballing side of things, but let's look at that under Enic's tenure.
Sugar sold a club that hadn't seen European Football for nigh on 2 decades. Under Enic we progressed from that to regular European qualification, with a CL final thrown in. The first in our history. We went from bottom half regulars to top 4 regulars. We challenged for the title twice, something not seen since the 80's.
Since 1991, our last FA cup win, we have been in 8 semi finals, losing them all.
Since 2008, our last trophy, we've been in 3 League Cup finals, losing them all to Utd and Chelsea twice. We've been in numerous semi final losses too.
We made it to a Champions League final for the first time in our 137 year history.
We've been competing for top silverware regularly over Enic's tenure, we just haven't gone that final step.
What else happened over the timeframe of the tenure? Chelsea were bought by Abramovic, who pumped a shitload of cash into the team, no regulation/FFP at that time, and proceeded to hoover up trophies regularly. Prior to him, the teams that weren't financially doped (Utd, goons, Scouse) we were beginning to compete properly with. Man City were bouncing between divisions back then. So Liverpool and the goons get frozen out of the title running, with only Utd able to match their finances.
Then the Qataris buy City, and the landscape changes again.
We're now arguably better than Utd, better than the goons, but have fallen behind Chelsea, City and Liverpool, one team actually deservedly where they are through good management, with the other two obscenely financially doped.
Now imagine the scenario where the financial doping were removed, and clubs would only be able to compete with their own raised revenue. Our competition financially would be Utd and Liverpool. We'd be top 3 and challenging far more regularly, of that I have no doubt.
Even so, we've been challenging regularly, just failing at the last hurdle. There's an argument that had Enic spent more it could have taken us over that last hurdle, I accept that and even agree to an extent. But I'd also say that the players have to be questioned. The CL final was a prime example of this. We knew we were good enough to beat Liverpool, we all believed that was going to be our first CL. The players didn't though, they played with fear and lost. That's not on Enic.
Apologies for the long windedness of the post, so I'll close it by saying that I hope the above is evidence enough to at least make you stop and think that Enic have done far more than you give them credit for.
Whether they are right for us going forward I think is something we'll have to wait and see, now the money is transparently available.