I asked you what 'fight' Sugar showed during the years he owned us?
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I asked you what 'fight' Sugar showed during the years he owned us?
The point I was making was how much better the approach was doing that than trying to buy stars for instant success, and largely failing miserably. Instead, ENIC improved the squad steadily and made stars of promising talent, and it took us almost to the summit of club football.
Indeed, it seems a poor choice to be listing names like Waddle, Gazza and Lineker, considering how little they won for us. 1 single FA Cup, and that was after Waddle left. Teddy, Jurgen and Ginola won bugger all, despite how much we enjoyed watching them play.
It's a really bad argument, in fact, if the goal is to persuade us how much better our approach was back then...
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Leadership. Signing players, vocal and outspoken. It was chaos though
That was the tail end of our aura and he absolutely started the rot and lowering of ambitions
I can imagine you read it like that. What's worse is that the people thinking it's funny are standing in the stupid line with you too.
Do you not realise how percentages work?
And what ambitions were those, exactly? What grand ambitions did we have beforehand? Eventually winning another FA Cup?
Under ENIC we've flirted with the biggest prizes in football. How can you guys be so confused about this?
I'd like to win another FA Cup
So why aren't all the other london clubs like Crystal Palace, Fulham and West Ham magically making that revenue then?
Woolwich have spent most of the last 20 years skint as fuck, and Chelsea are basically only solvent because they have borrow over £2bn from two different owners
Ah fiction.
The kind of fiction that is actually documented you mean? 1990 didn't happen! Got some brass neck trying to claim that I'm the one talking fairy tales. We had the largest debt in the football league at the start of the 80s, and Scholar tripled that debt before he left, and the club had to borrow money from Maxwell on the side.
I'm guessing you'll be suggesting that Rover were a rich company because that for all the mismanagement of money, there was always another rich manufacturer lining up to buy them.
I'd like to win another FA Cup
So would I, but I'd rather win the European Cup.
How 'bout you?
Listen to your eldersAnd what ambitions were those, exactly? What grand ambitions did we have beforehand? Eventually winning another FA Cup?
Under ENIC we've flirted with the biggest prizes in football. How can you guys be so confused about this?
Why? Your memory seems pretty dodgy mate. I remember the 90s, that's for sure. Spent half the decade closer to the relegation zone than the title, and got spanked in the FA Cup every year after 91. As for the 80s, as we've discussed we had a couple of successful years in the Cup at the beginning of the decade, which featured a fair degree of luck, and the majority of the time we were dumped out before the quarters.
Was that ambition to you..?
Well, if so then fair enough. But there's definitely more ambition shown by ENIC since they took us over. Whether you think Levy is full of shit or not when he says he wants to win the league and the CL, the fact of the matter is that he's gotten us closer to doing either than at any point since football was in black and white.
Whether it's ambition, transfer policy, league position, infrastructure, European success or recognition on the world stage, ENIC's out-performed your time. The only metric by which they've let you down is the FA Cup, and honestly, I'm glad we've had bigger ambitions than that.
Do I get to win the European Cup or do I get smoke blown up my ass about how the blind luck of an already dead project somehow stumbled into a final in which it got embarrassed six and counting years ago?
....they are?
In 2001 Palace, Fulham and West Ham being massively richer and being able to buy whatever players they want from Ajax and Porto and Celtic and all but handful of teams total in Germany, Spain and Italy was a pipe dream.
That is now reality, and those are not individual case studies of business genius. They are rickety boats that caught a tsunami of a rising tide.
Woolwich and Chelsea, like us, are thriving money-spinning giants. Chelsea benefitting from fakery beyond their means certainly, but there is not a world in which those three entities are not prominent players in the 2025/26 Premier League.
It's all just the fans, man. We are bottomless pits of revenue. Levy and Lewis knew this, that's why they bought us! They saw the tide rising!
It wasn't blind luck, we beat multiple good teams to get there, and we did it heroically at that. If anything the blind luck was against us when Sissoko raised an arm. But the point is this: we got there because of the ambitions of Daniel Levy. Everything from the squad assembled to the coach who led them, to the period of perennial Top 6 (even Top 4) presence, to the training facilities, scouting network and deal with Wembley to host our games for two years while we built the best stadium in the land.
That's all thanks to the ambitions of the bald tightwad. It really, really is. An echo of glory, if you will.
And the thing they say about luck is that it's where preparation meets opportunity. We got to the summit of the sport thanks to long preparation with the squad, and the opportunity to get a perfect choice in Poch. Same with our flirting with the league title.
I want to get back to competing for those things with a new project. That's why if we had not won the Europa this season, I would have been furious too, and maybe I might even have turned ENIC Out, with us having stumbled so far from where we were only those few years ago. But we didn't, the season was saved, and we've replaced the coach with hopefully a better one, so we go again, and this time we have every reason to expect better.
I do think you're right in that it's possible they've taken us as far as they can, and I would welcome a new owner who wants to use what they built to become a true heavyweight. But I don't think it was luck that got us there.
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If you want to play football at any level, you need to get your head up.
If you want to understand the world at any level, you need to get your head up.
Hyper focusing on the short term is bread and circuses. Take the advice or don’t.
When did this happen?
Odds to Finish Top 4 next season, per the DraftKings app on my phone:
Newcastle +130
Aston Villa +350
Tottenham +400
Head's up!
So what you've done is correct the argument. Instead of merely listing random players many of whom were not illustrative of any strategy. But I critiqued your ORIGINAL post not the subsequent one. You know the one that juxtaposition Hutton and Rebrov with Dembele and Bale and asked "That's a little better."
No, it was to point out all the players that have come through our doors of which we can be proud, and to show the track record of smart signings.
See, I'm not impressed by being told that once upon a time we bought Gazza, considering we also bought a bunch of players nowhere near him. Teddy Sheringham we signed for a club record, and he was top scorer in the league that year, while the team finished 8th. The season after that we came 15th, and definitely without the UEFA Cup alongside it.
But it is better. Dembele and Bale were better signings than Hutton and Rebrov.
Not a serious response. I’ll leave it there.
Serious as a heart attack mate, I haven't the foggiest what you're on about.
All poor odds.
Can get better odds at any UK bookmaker for all those sides.
We are 5/1 (+500 in your currency) 8th favourites for Top 4.
Liverpool City Woolwich and Chelsea all odds on, Newcastle 19/10 (+190). Villa and Man Utd 9/2 (+450)