Now bear with me on this one.
On the non footballing side he has got the basics right in that he arranged to have the pitch replaced, the ground tarted up, Sparrows Lane improved, lowish admission and season ticket prices - as a non footballing person I'd expect he saw the problems, allocated budgets and told those who know to do the work - all good stuff so far.
He didn't mess with the under 21s or 18s and those teams are doing well - another tick in the box.
He has tied down our younger players to long term contracts - tick
Now we come to the first team which we all agree is rubbish, we can't say he hasn't spent money on it because he has, but he isn't a football man so who is he relying on to buy and sell players. Whoever they are, as we all know, have got it very wrong with the sale of Stephens, Kermorgant and Morrison who were sold for little and replaced with expensive sub standard players. This has carried on throughout the two years with the most recent examples of Johnson, Sanogo and Poyet being either unfit or unskilled. Whilst Duchatelet must take the ultimate blame as the owner it doesn't mean that he does not have the best intentions but he relies on the wrong people.
He obviously has a belief that the matchday experience matters, now if the first team were performing reasonably well then I'm sure that the majority of us would put up with the sofa and other weird, sorry unique, experiments
As he is a successful businessman who I would guess must have good management teams in his companies it defies logic that he can't see that his management team/advisors for CAFC have got this part of the club so very wrong.
Just maybe he has suddenly realised that he has trusted the wrong people and this caused him to have a mental abboration which resulted in the statement.
OK I'll stick to the Statbank
Comments
It's less that he has got the U18s and U21s right, more that he hasn't interfered with them to the same extent as the first team...
The problem is, even if this were the case then he's been operating for 2+ years with people who are failing to carry out their duties correctly and he has yet to rectify it. Furthermore, his statement on Tuesday clearly underlined his underhand tactics which I think were meant to create a split in the fanbase. Sadly, I think he's just a bit of helmet.
Thus, Taylor says no.
Anyone can do the easy stuff. Pitch layers are pretty easy to find.
Playing staff is a completely different ball game and recruitment and strategy should be left to those that know football.
Ideally,when you're plying your trade in England,by professionals that know the English game.
And that's where this whole charade falls flat. A belief that they know best and it can be done on the cheap has created the situation we find ourselves in today.
To put it bluntly - as you should realise if you read the interview - he is a delusional crackpot with some sort of 'messiah' complex (cue inevitable 'Life of Brian' joke).
If you buy a house with a big hole in the roof, you negotiate a lower price to reflect the fact that you've got to pay for a new roof. It's exactly the same as that.
As for the rest of it, he's at best an idiot, at worst an evil lunatic who happens to practice idiocy in his spare time. Can't believe anyone's still putting forward the case for the defence!
How much of what has been (for the sake of argument) a success under the regime was planned ahead of the purchase and just held back by lack of resources?
Look at the decisions that clearly relate to the regime (often the smaller ones, like the Programme sellers or making sure season tickets went out on time), they should have been easy, but were completely buggered up.
Well yes, let's just say it was a concerted effort when they arrived.
Now it's more of a 'f*** the lot of you' approach.
Personally, I was convinced that you were just out of your face on illicit drugs and alcohol.
Glad to be proved wrong.
I don't know the name of that place though.
2. It's not going well off the pitch
3. If there was a place between the two, it wouldn't be going well there either.
Hope that clears it up.
But the day-to-day stuff, which needs to be right for the long-term stuff to be right, is a snowballing clusterfuck, and puts everything else at risk.
Aside from Duchatelet's somewhat 'eccentric' interview in CAST News 10 that I posted - I think the main bit you've got wrong is to assume that the less than successful player acquisitions and sales are the fault of someone other than Duchatelet, rather than flowing directly from his 'player farming club network' plan to make football 'pay'.
If you revisit the round of interviews he did a couple of weeks ago on the club website and with Richard Cawley of the SLP I think you'll see that he is still committed to trying to develop players through the academy or buy in players with supposed potential to sell on at a profit - while fans 'matchday experience' consists of the privilege of watching these 'premiership stars of tomorrow' rather than a team competitive in the championship and possibly pushing for promotion.
He is a failed 'player farmer' and the club is heading for relegation not because he has employed the wrong people to run the club but because his 'plan' is unworkable because he doesn't understand the concept of a 'team' or why people support a club, and that 'player farming' is incompatible with being competitive in the championship and possibly pushing for promotion.