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Great news, look forward to a bit more detail, specifically on what’s happening with Glanford.
A real relief that the club isn’t facing a “records expunged” season and re-founding, been a terrible worry.
Best of luck to the new people involved in taking the club forward.
I think he’s also not helped by the fact that managers are also expected to be “personalities” these days. Not everyone can be as engaging a post match speaker as a Klopp, a Steve Evans, someone like that. these guys attract loathing and praise in equal measure but they always say something interesting that people react to.
As others have said JD comes across as very authentic and honest and is clearly passionate about the club despite having taken over at the most challenging time in its history. It would be very easy to walk away and no one would blame him in the current circumstances. Huge testament to his character that he’s not only staying to lead the fight but also seems to be a galvanising figure for the players. I’m happy as long as he can get his message across to the players when it is needed- the media don’t really matter.
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I lose more interest when people throw buzz words like cultural Marxism around. Ignoring the problematic origins of such terms (I do not think bpg is using it for this purpose, but there are those that still do), it just seems to be jargon aimed to sound intellectually strong, but doesn’t have much meaning behind it for many. For one, many of the people slammed as ‘cultural Marxist’ are not Marxists. I wouldn’t be surprised if bpg sees me as a ‘cultural Marxist’, yet I have no yearning for Marxism or any kind of far-left ideology. I am no fan of communism and am fully aware of the totalitarianism associated with it. I do not think we are at risk of it now either.
You’re right, we hear a lot of “Marxism” these days in the media depsite the fact that Marxists are powerless, disorganised, hopelessly split and widely derided politically. It’s as absurd as basing a political project around the suppsed evils of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Their vote in by elections regularly trounces those of the CPGB or one of the other Heinz57 political groupuscules on the far left.
The idea that Jeremy Corbyn- the sort of guy who plays the kindly Modern Studies teacher in a Ken Loach film- was some sort of dangerous “Marxist” and threat to British society was absolutely laughable. He was many notches to the right of Michael Foot’s manifesto of 1983, let along Attlee’s manifesto of ’45 that built the Welfare State the Tory party has been dismantling enthusiastically.
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Just look at the chaos and misery Marxism inflicted on the world in the 20th Century.
The Woke ( cultural Marxism) of the 21st century will make the Marxism of the 20th century seem like the good times – even though it led to the deaths of over 100 million people. The Woolfie Smiths of this world will not give up their proven false ideology.no offence, but do you even know what Marxism is?
what on earth does 21st century identity politics have to do with an economic / political philosophy from 175 years ago?
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Fair play to Dean who has conducted himself very well this season. The team had some good results and although there may be a dip in the next few games owing to folk not eing paid and behind the scenes turbulence, I think he’s done pretty well in the circumstances.
The guy is clearly not very articulate in front of the cameras and doesn’t like interviews, but then give me a decent manager every day over a shiny-toothed patter merchant who talks a good game but doesn’t deliver any results.
Fingers crossed we get through all this.
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why would it be given to the club? I’m sure it will be straightforward to estabish a mechanism where it can be paid to those who need it directly.A little bit like strike pay where those who need money are paid by a mechanism outwith the company /factory.
Would be deranged to hand it over the the club in its present state but no need to do that. I’m sure Matt and the organisers will update everyone.
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It’s an awful situation there, 65,000 people left, the whole highway between Stepanakert (NK’s capital) and mainland Armenia is just a river of cars.
Meanwhile Europe and the US shift from buttock to buttock and look at their shoes as they hope for some cheap Azeri gas to make up the Russian shortfall. Sickening.
Some interesting background here:
https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/90631
https://eurasianet.org/plans-for-doubling-azerbaijans-gas-flows-to-europe-on-hold
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/09/28/no-one-s-going-to-fight-for-us
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Matt & the guys involved here have given me no reason to think otherwise. With so many donating from across the footballing community and a lot of media scrutiny on this situation I’m pretty confident it will end up with the SUFC staff.
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I read the statement as a doubling down and an attempt to shore up a pretty weak position with an impression of determination to carry on.
Fair enough, but personally I think a period of silence would be welcome from the leadership. Actions not words are what counts. Either the resources exist to face down the CCJs, winding up order, debts, or they don’t.
Only time will tell us what the real picture is.
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A protracted tantrum after the “Careless Whisper” in the Athletic
(wanted to believe he was genuine but sadly recent events mean we are left praying for a footballing romantic with more money than sense to try and save the club from extinction).
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I also think talk of a phoenix club is a little premature. However if things go badly in the next few months then it would do no harm to think seriously about it quite soon.
What is a football club? A community of fans, and a tiny number of professionals, supported by a wider group of volunteers, at this level.
In six months Scunthorpe United could lose control of Glanford Park and be completely insolvent. It’s not fanciful to think this could be the club’s last season in it’s current form. If the club goes, as the first post shows, it will be at least a decade for a return to the five o’clock football results on a Saturday. The quickest return from a disaster was AFC Wimbledon who took nine years to return from their foundation, after the awful MK franchising, to being members of League Two.
Some old league names vanished in the seventies and are still in non-league- Workington, Southport, Bradford PA. Barrow took half a century and several near extinctions before making it back.
To be competitive in the fifth tier (the National League) I’d say you need a playing budget of 1.5-2 million to be competitive nowadays. That’s daft money. Effectively, it means just over half the clubs have some chance of promotion whereas the rest are just happy to be competing at that level.
I agree that every effort should be made to keep the current Scunthorpe United entity going. However, the support may face the situation where that’s not possible, quite soon. In which case, basic questions:
Who will establish a new club?
On what basis- private business, CIC, co-op?
Where will it play?
How will it be funded?
What level will the club start at and what will be the realistic timeframe for progress back towards competing at the current / one level above?
It will take a year or so to at least have some answer to all these tricky questions. Timing is everything if the worst happens and the fans still want to see a Scunthorpe team playing at some level next year.
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The whole farce is so utterly demoralising. On the park the club looks capable of turning the corner after five and a half excruciatingly awful years since the dismissal of Graham Alexander.
Off the park the future looks very, very uncertain and it will be no surprise to see the team challenging for promotion whiolst desperately trying to stave off existential threats to our home and continuing existence.
The Taft stuff yesterday was the peanut on top of this pile of freshly laid shite. Personally, I would gladly trade a few years at this level for the chancers, shysters and dubious folks to GTF, and for the club to be an honest and respected business in the community again under some form of credible leadership.
As someone said above, however, no one has the money to buy out Swann or Hilton, and the more damaging headlines and poor business practices are highlighted, the more potential investors will stay away. No one has the money to burn on someone else’s binfire, unsurprisingly.
Somehow the chances of a re-formed “Scunthorpe AFC” wearing a Pendle or Stanno kit and playing the likes of Hall Road Rangers in a couple of years really felt real again yesterday. Bleak stuff. Then again, at least we’d be able to concentrate on the actual football in that situation rather than lost shouting at our own refelctions in the Swann-Hilton hall of mirrors / lies.
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For me it was an impossible stick-or-twist situation for Hilton.
Even if Nelson had been persisted with there’s no guarantee the club would have avoided relegation after such a disasterclass in the first part of the season. Club goes down, owner castigated for lacking imagination / being too conservative in replacing a failing manager.
I was horrified by Dean’s first interview- scarcely literate to be honest- and did wonder then how he’d inspire the players. Subsequent results have been appalling with one or two exceptions and standards appear to have gone backwards with some of the signings bizarre to say the least.
Will it be harsh if Dean goes- maybe a little, as he’ll rightly argue that he wasn’t given enough time. But my strong feeling is that this guy is totally out of his depth at a full time club, whose credibility, if he ever had any, is totally shot- and if I were the one launching wads of cahs into a black hole I’d maybe be finding soemone who was able to make a bit more of my ‘investment’.
The club needs a total re-set and I’m afraid Dean going and a line being drawn under the utter prugatory of this season needs to be part of that.
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Stockport stagnated in NLN for a few seasons- having been relegated to there in arguably a worse state than us- and actually wnet hybrid / part-time, being promoted as a hybrid full time / part time outfit.
They were in the relegation zone for a while in their first season and humiliated by the likes of Altrincham and Curzon Ashton.
What price a stable ownership who has the money, patience and time to see a strategy through- it’s the only way they came back.
Mid-table next season with the club in such a sorry mess is a realistic aim. Will likely take 3-4 years to come back to National League level.
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Will be great news if true.
Unfortunately, the word “if” is doing a lot of work for me, still, in that sentence.
Still I am cautiously optimistic about 22/23. The new kits are great, there’s new sponsorship and I appreciate the hard work Lee Turnbull is doing.
The squad is thin still but I am more optimistic than I was in June that a further relegation isn’t on the cards. If there’s not too much more movement on the transfer front then realisitically we are looking at a lower mid-table finish and start to reverse the downward momentum in 23/24.
The NL is a touhg old league and crazy money is being thrown about by Hollywood Wrexham and a few others. If new ownership can revitalise the club on and off the park, then great.
