ariotofmyown

I know the EFL get rightly ridiculed regards the owners fit & proper test but it is worth pointing out that Trevor Birch took over Jan this year and from what I have read he seems to be someone who actually knows what he is doing and will actually enforce this fit & proper test properly. Also, I believe he is the guy behind the new deal the EFL got for help with Covid which the previous director seemed to make a right balls up of.

I find this argument that people are just being negative a bit crazy.
Everyone knows multiple examples of dodgy owners coming in and ruining clubs. Everyone laughs at the pathetic fit and proper person test by the League and knows it is pointless. 
With this new prospective owner, there are a few red/amber flags already. Struggling to see any clear positives yet. We all hope it turns out to be great, but nothing much suggests this yet.
When it was clear the Amigos were crooks, it was easy to ignore because Burley has us playing well. All we've got now is the buying players for 20 million quote. Surely no one is excited by that.

As you say, none of completely understand Mels motives. I’d guess they are very human. A bit of a gamble, got the club at a reasonable price and a chance of the Prem at that time .. chance being the operative word. Then add in he is a fan without doubt. I think my defence of him is based on the fact that he stuck with it as long as he was able and ploughed money in even when the gamble hadn’t payed off. Decent, honest, professional. 
I’d be very interested to see how many clubs have been “successful” in the last 10 years .. by this I mean who a) reached the prem and thus guaranteed themselves a pay day and subsequent parachute payments (I.e. financial security and effective freedom from FFP ) or b) established themselves in the prem. There aren’t that many. Burnley Leicester, and then the hand full of yo-yo clubs. Any others I have forgotten ? Then the abject failures like Sunderland. Bottom line is we have been par for the course, ebbed and flowed with the tide. 

Even if the worst comes to the worst, I'll be right behind AFC Derby.
I completely get your point though. Spending ridiculous money on (the wrong) players is how we got into this mess in the first place.

Don't be such a drama queen. Southall is just a close friend, so of course Alonso knows what he is like. He won't risk getting him involved in the club where Southall can steal from again. He's just a close friend, that's all. Absolutely nothing to worry about whatsoever. I think it's great he has close friends with experience within English football.

Don't be such a drama queen. Southall is just a close friend, so of course Alonso knows what he is like. He won't risk getting him involved in the club where Southall can steal from again. He's just a close friend, that's all. Absolutely nothing to worry about whatsoever. I think it's great he has close friends with experience within English football.

Don't be such a drama queen. Southall is just a close friend, so of course Alonso knows what he is like. He won't risk getting him involved in the club where Southall can steal from again. He's just a close friend, that's all. Absolutely nothing to worry about whatsoever. I think it's great he has close friends with experience within English football.

I can’t really envisage any possible way that this takeover can go wrong. It’s bound to end really well for us. Inevitably a success you might say. It will go pretty much exactly like that interview with a man form Sky. What could possibly go wrong? The good times are here. Yay! 

I’m sorry, but this all absolutely reeks of some Fawazian dramatic comedy, or is it tragedy?
More and more alarming by the minute. I hope we, as fans, are ready to have to come together and look after the best interests of our club, because I feel increasingly sure that this is going to take us down a dark and ugly road. 

When did we go on a date?!

Yes, it's no even been completed yet, we don't really know what will happen and we should try to judge him by his actions and so on. But. "I'm going to get us promoted, spend £150m and buy £20m players" seems a bit "say things fans like so they are on side" rather than "here are some well considered thoughts on sustainable growth and a positive direction for the club"
It's nice that he thinks the end goal is promotion to the prem where the big money is, and I doubt any new owner would suck their teeth and go "well lads, lower midtable year on year is kind of the limit for the cash I have to spend on yous, but it's mine now ha ha ha"

It's literally his own tweets on the political stuff but whatever. 

I'm trying to look for the positives that outweigh the red flags (the lack of personal funds, the firing, the fans of the club he was involved with being happy he's left them alone, the shell companies, the unknown investors, the fact he's mates with Matt Southall) but I'm honestly struggling to find any apart from a press release and a tweet. If Sky are correct and he's seeking to recoup investment through promotion to the premiership that's just another giant red flag tbh. 
All you've come up with is that his dad had an as of yet unknown position on the board of Madrid and his families lawyer is Calderon as evidence that this will all be grand... Well I'm sorry but I don't really find that reassuring. Give the calamity of the previous takeover it's perfectly natural to be sceptical about the ownership until they actually tell us something concrete. 

playing the kids
keeping the ball in our 1/3rd for most of the game
selling our ground
investing in regular fan updates
abandoning all comms with fans

He's come out and given a good account of himself so far, therefore I'm going to judge him on his word: by his actions. 
If I was to say I'm not convinced by this takeover, I would be massively underselling it. I'm genuinely quite concerned with it all, but IF he's the real deal and his family is as well connected as he makes it seem AND we start to make better decisions from the top down. He has my support. He can make a strong start by gutting the scouting department and investing in resources. 
I'm also pleased to see that he vehemently went after the VOX party once that was brought to light. I guess I do find it hard to believe that as a Spanish national who has spent most of his life anywhere but Spain that he would have an issue with immigration. I genuinely hope that puts it to bed. 
If he can associate himself with good people then we have a chance, however there is a lot of variables in the above AND I'm not exactly sure how wealthy him or his family are in order to stomach huge losses. Mel Morris quickly got tired of it. 
The good news is that the club will own its own stadium again. 

Political views are what rich people open the curtains to.

"Look forward? They already have mate. Every single club!"

Really? I can't imagine a respectable far right party like Vox would operate in that way. If you can't trust the far right, who can you trust?
Good news about Alonso though. I hope he turns out to be ultra woke. Will be interesting to see people who were happy to ignore any dangerous political views he may have, then lose their heads if he does/says anything they deem unacceptable.

No new leaf from me. I always thought that GSE did a decent job in improving the club, even if progress was slow.
I'm highly skeptical about this boxing champion though. I don't really want the club to be associated with someone who may well have far right views.
People with far right views are usually unintelligent failures or grifters exploiting the problems of others. Neither seems like a good person to be involved with our club. 

Steady lad, steady!

I think fans can have a great deal of influence over how a football club is run. I also think Mel Morris is well aware of the influence of fans. That's why he did things like sit amongst fans at various times, invite members of this forum for PR breakfasts and so on. Why else would he visit this forum in the first place if it weren't to gauge the opinions of fans?
It's not white noise when fans start to get vocal about wanting a manager out. Why would it be at any other time? Fans call for this that and the other and the owner gets cheered for providing such things, even when it jeopardises the club's finances.

whereas those of us looking at things a little more deeply find your unquestioning acceptance of the deal as being naive at best, quite frankly 

I'd have thought only caring about what goes on on the pitch is an attitude that has been a significant contributing factor to the current state of the club.

If you don't know about where the finance is coming from how can you possibly know if the club is stable, secure and debt free or up to its eyeballs in loans and about to go bankrupt? Given our recent history with owners I'm surprised by your attitude tbh. 

Nobody wants this to be a failure but many people do care about things away from the pitch. And why shouldn't they? It's certyainly not pathetic to ask questions. I would still like to have a club to support long after this new lot have gone the way of Gadsby, Capn Bob, Lionel, GSE et al.

But you're effectively getting under people by inferring things that they aren't even saying. You kept asking me and others what Mel's options were but those people and myself never mentioned other options. We don't know what Mel's options were, so it's a moot point.