H
Hetzkes Ballet Teacher
Guest
More fool you, then. Everyone has an agenda. I prefer to examine a range of sources objectively and come to my own conclusions. You start believing everything you hear and you wind up a mindless drone and agent of whatever propaganda you have been spoon-fed.
Niall Quinn says Bob is reet canny as owt so that means the 15 and 19 pointers which happened on his watch, with his managers, with the budgets he approved, and the mistakes he repeated, weren't anything to do with him? Aye.... riiiiiightio marra. Those two seasons, in my opinion anyway, which is just as good, valid, and considered as anyone else's, set us back years, and the only real constant pressence at the business end of the club during those seasons was Bob Murray. The Stadium and Training ground counted for nothing when we were scraping the barrell looking in the lower leagues for people to sign for us because no one else dared. Only when Keane came, which was Quinn's appointment, did we get a semblence of pulling power back, and most of that was just borrowed from Roy Keane. Even then it we couldn't persuade the likes of Nugent, Baird, and Taylor we were a better bet that Portsmouth, Fulham, or Bolton on which to gamble their careers.
I am just trying to be objective. Some things he deserves credit for, some things he deserves criticism for, and on balance I think the damage he did to our reputation on the field negates the quality of the work he did off the pitch with regards the infrastructure he built. Therefor I have no interest in villainising the bloke, but I don't see cause for showering him with unreserved credit either. Those are just the conclusions I have come to, and you won't be persuading me they are unfair.
Drumaville (and Short) said it was vital to them that the club already had the infrastructure they wanted. That makes sense. Why would I want to go round looking for something else to believe?
You really do talk utter nonsense sometimes, for the sake of it it seems.
I'm not denying that there were low times on the pitch, but both the 15 and 19pt seasons were quickly recovered from in the great scheme of things, and there were also equivalent high times.
What is far more important, to anyone with any kind of objectivity, is that that the foundations of the club was being built up to something resembling a proper, top football club. When you've got that, everything else will come if you play your cards right - which RSM did spectacularly well with Drumaville.
He also deserves massive credit for playing his (and our) cards right on other occasions, when he had to go against the grain of the support:
1) Moving from Roker Park
2) Investing in infrastructure when we'd all have happily had him buy half a dozen Flos.
3) Not selling to the first potential buyer, instead waiting for the right one.
We're reaping the benefits of that wisdom now. Who gives a shit that we once got 15 points in a season - that's transient, gone, and if it still matters so much, then you need something else in your life (an iPad??).