David Clowes

[Kathcairns]

37 minutes ago, ram59 said:

The question is, 'where do we go from here?'

Under DC we will hope to have sustainable growth over the next few years, leading to promotion to the Premier.

However, we football fans are an impatient lot, would we prefer a mega rich foreign owner to come in and take over the club, in the hope that they will buy instant success?

Personally, I hope that DC will be rewarded by us fans with patience, but I wonder if it will be possible in modern day mega bucks football.

I maybe old school, but no way would i want a mega rich foreign owner, but im probably in the minority. If that happened to all the so called big clubs in the championship and league 1 what happens to all the small clubs, prob go out of buisness like we nearly did.

[Tamworthram]

5 minutes ago, Kathcairns said:

I maybe old school, but no way would i want a mega rich foreign owner, but im probably in the minority. If that happened to all the so called big clubs in the championship and league 1 what happens to all the small clubs, prob go out of buisness like we nearly did.

I don’t think the “small clubs” would go out of business but they’d probably become totally uncompetitive (unless they had an owner trying to punch above their financial wealth). We’d probably end up with an imitation of the Premier league whereby there would be a group of teams competing at the top pretty much every year, yo yo-ing up to the Premier League and back, and the rest relieved to be lower to mid table in the Championship.

[LeedsCityRam]

David Clowes is the owner I always hoped we'd end up getting one day.

A lot of fans seem utterly fixated on the respective spending power of owners but unless you have materially more wealth than all of your competitors (extremely rare), the differentiator becomes how you manage your club. What culture are you looking for? Do you back your managers when things get tough? Do you have a long term plan? Quite apart from the extraordinary sacrifice David Clowes undertook in grossly overpaying for Derby County, everything since has been an exercise in how to run a club properly. He is an elite level owner & best of all, he cares - he's one of us.

Its no secret I'm a Warne-sceptic but I had to admire Clowes sticking by Warne during his decidedly dodgy autumn. Sitting outside the playoff spots as late as 24th November would have had many chairmen pulling the trigger but there was absolutely no sense Warne was even on his final warning - he was given time & Clowes was utterly vindicated by the subsequent promotion. That is the kind of responsible stewardship successful clubs need & that we have so often lacked in the past.

Tales of his humility elsewhere in this thread endear him even more, as does that open letter on the official site today. A successful businessman, a qualified pilot & now a successful football club owner - that is a bloody rare skillset & all credit to him that he lets his actions do the talking rather than resorting to the egocentric approach of many of his peers. I'm genuinely excited to see how he approaches the challenge of competing with clubs with bigger budgets & more reckless strategies - I strongly suspect this is where the backroom structure he brought in 2 years ago starts to bear fruit - quality recruitment, quality youth progression & a tight, respectful culture that gets the best out of everyone in the building. Progressive ownership is the only sensible game in that snakepit of a division & Clowes is smart enough to realise this.

Most of all, I hope he's enjoying it. I loved seeing him get the limelight on Saturday - the fans singing his name & him picking up the trophy - he deserves every accolade going. I hope David Clowes stays with us for many years, I'm certain he will steer us back to the Prem if he does.

Edited April 29 by LeedsCityRam