RR EXCLUSIVE: Charlie Methven discusses Sunderland’s investment, transfer window & scouting plans

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gipetto said:
Have people actually listened to it?

I thought Reid spoke well, very honest and it makes you understand how difficult it is for the club to hold on to talented players. The U16 teams are all performing well, one age group U13s or U14s are national champions. Methven added that yes the results are not good at U23 and U18 level, however that's when our local lads if you will are beginning to compete against Premier League academies that have players playing for them from all over the world. He added that as a club they've made a decision to loan out our more talented players e.g. Robson, Diamond, Embleton etc. If they were all playing in our U23 side, if Hume was playing in the side also and Gooch etc. we'd obviously be winning more games, but ultimately it's not about that, it's about bringing on players that can contribute to the first team.

I know it's hardly groundbreaking, we probably already knew it, but it does highlight the difficulties the club has, regardless of who is running it and how much money they have.

It costs the club circa £2m each year to maintain the category one status.
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I quite like Reid tbh
 


rocky said:
You clearly still miss my point. As demonstrated by the quoted post.
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I totally see your point. We should have had a scouting network from day one. That's fine, but on day one we did have a scouting network, it was just shit and eating up money so it needed getting rid of.

Putting a new one in place would cost money, whereas they needed to balance the books to bring in investors to make us a better club long-term.

And so the scouting took a back seat while they brought in investors, which they've now done, and the first priority after securing the investment was to put a new, better scouting network in place.
 
With gratitude comes responsibility, few will worship mediocrity, charm works well when times are good, and balls stuck in empty stands are not a ringing endorsement of good times.

The massed ranks of apathy could be seen yesterday, sat on the empty seats. podcasts for the masses are beginning to wear thin.

We need to hope that we are not mired in this league again next season. Hope.
 
Comeback_Kenwyne said:
I know the structure thank you. But unless words have lost all f***ing meaning, that arrangement is very much "something to do with" our club.
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Only indirectly. Presumably this gives SAFC a layer of protection in case the investors decide they want to pull out at any point. None of us know the ins and outs of it, and as CM says it's up to the investors whether they want to reveal their involvement or their motivations, it's not CM's or SD's place to make the decision to speak on their behalf.
 
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rocky said:
I quite like Reid tbh
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Pretty difficult for any of us to judge his performance, but like I say it must have been pretty uncomfortable getting the "fans think you're doing shite, fancy going for a recorded interview with a fanzine about it?" call! He's not a PR bloke like Methven, must have been hard for him to do but I thought he spoke really well and you have to respect him for having the balls to do it. Not saying he's mint after listening to it, but he sounded like he knew his stuff, he wasn't condescending, he came across really well
 
fyl2u said:
After hearing CM talk about the process that went into hiring a new manager, I'm content that they hired the person that they perceived to be the best candidate.

When it comes down to it, it doesn't matter who they hired, someone on here would be unhappy about it. Personally I would have been unhappy if they'd given it to Phillips, whereas quite a number of posters were crying out for us to hire him. The same can be said of every realistic candidate. According to CM in that podcast, not only did Parkinson have three promotions from this division under his belt as well as having kept Colchester punching two divisions above their weight in the Championship and Bolton managing to stay up despite a two year transfer embargo, but also when they spoke to people who have worked with him in various different capacities, the references were overwhelmingly positive, to the extent where CM says he's "never seen such a unanimous positive set of references for someone they were thinking of hiring for any position".

That's a good enough explanation for me for why they hired him. If all that is true, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, then I probably would have hired him too, even though he wasn't even on my radar before we hired him.

With regard to threats and abuse, again CM explains in the podcast that it's not just the abuse and threats, it's the unpleasantness and the aggression with which people were talking to them. As he says, questioning them is absolutely fine, but if someone's asking questions in an aggressive and unpleasant manner, that's something different entirely.

I can completely relate, having found myself on the wrong end of unpleasantness and aggression on here myself. Hell, I'm no angel myself, I've been unpleasant and aggressive to people on here myself, and it's something I'm ashamed of and am trying to correct but I'm aware I haven't fully shaken the habit yet. I'd like to think that any other people on here who have also been guilty of it will at some point go through the same thought process, but I fear that for some it's a level of self-examination they're probably not capable of. Their aggression and unpleasantness is just innate.

I've also found myself wondering at times whether I should just stay off this forum, as the vast majority of the time it doesn't make me happy to be here. At the moment there are still a slack handful of posters that I enjoy engaging with, and that keeps me here, but I have to say at the moment it seems like there are quite a lot more people on here that I don't want to engage with than there are people I do want to engage with. Perhaps one day I'll reach tipping point and just stop coming here. I don't think that day is far off if things continue on here the way they have been recently.

As such, I have no problem with SD staying away from social media, and it makes me sad that SD feels like he doesn't want to be in the stadium on matchdays at the moment because of the way people have been interacting with him. Hopefully they manage to turn things around to the point where he feels comfortable coming back at some point soon. I certainly don't see it as "convenient", whatever that means. If attending means he gets grief that he wouldn't get from not attending, then maybe staying away is his best option. It doesn't exactly make me proud to be a fan when our chairman feels that way though.

With regard to the on-field performances and the squad, of course I'm not happy. Of course I want to see improvement. That can't happen until January though, and CM has stated that he and SD already planned to back Parkinson in the January window before the new investment came in, so it has no bearing on that plat whatsoever. So, if money is available to strengthen the squad in January, why get angry that money is also available to improve the facilities and scouting network? It makes no sense to me at all.
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One of the best posts ever well done mate .Ive thought about leaving but thought why the hell should i.If its the same after signings in jan might call it a day,becomes a grind
 
fyl2u said:
Only indirectly. Presumably this gives SAFC a layer of protection in case the investors decide they want to pull out at any point. None of know the ins and outs of it, and as CM says it's up to the investors whether they want to reveal their involvement or their motivations, it's not CM's or SD's place to make the decision to speak on their behalf.
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I think you're making a lot of good points on this mate. The only thing I'd say about the FPP thing is that it is a bit annoying how much of a damp squib/ unknown it all is at the moment. Everyone needs a lift and these people getting involved should be providing that but instead it's being totally talked down. I think you're absolutely right in that it isn't Methven's place to give specifics, but I don't think the Americans could complain if he sounded a little more upbeat about it all! Maybe "I can't give any specifics, you'd have to ask them if they want to give them, but their involvement is a huge positive for the club and the fans can be confident that it will really help us meet our targets over the next few years". Something like that which is vague, doesn't confirm they're buying us, but sounds like it's a bit more than just a one off arrangement. Not sure why they're playing it down so much, just seems the wrong approach imo
 
fyl2u said:
I totally see your point. We should have had a scouting network from day one. That's fine, but on day one we did have a scouting network, it was just shit and eating up money so it needed getting rid of.

Putting a new one in place would cost money, whereas they needed to balance the books to bring in investors to make us a better club long-term.

And so the scouting took a back seat while they brought in investors, which they've now done, and the first priority after securing the investment was to put a new, better scouting network in place.
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Scouting took a back seat whilst we went and signed a huge amount of players, one for a record fee. Scouting took a back seat whilst we fitted 250k worth of new seats {yes I know the fans wanted them blah blah blah, they'd have preferred a better side}
It was a fuck up. One that we're paying for now given the squad is piss poor
 
fyl2u said:
The people you mention are just the "overseers". Each of them will have extensive teams of scouts working under them. So far they've been trying to organise a plan for a whole network while also trying to do the jobs of that whole network themselves at the same time. Hardly surprising that the range from which we've recruited players so far has been less than admirable.

Putting the scouting back in place takes money, and quite a bit of it. That money would mean the books would have been harder to balance, which in turn would have made it harder to attract investment.

We now have the investment we were looking for, and so we've reached the next phase in the redesign of the whole club structure, the rebuilding.

I'm happy to see the wheels in motion for us to be better than we are.

If we'd managed to secure the investment faster, then maybe the scouting network would have been rebuilt faster, but if 18 months is what it takes to put together a comprehensive plan in order to do things properly, then I'd rather they took that long than did a slap-happy botch job in a shorter timeframe.

If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. If it's worth doing right, it's worth taking your time over it rather than rushing it.
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You make some good points. Nice to have a debate with someone without it becoming a slanging match too
 
Grumpy Old Man said:
The one certainty is that it's in no-one's interests, including the owners, for the club not to succeed. It was always going to nigh on impossible to fix the money side and the football side simultaneously - the mess was just too big. I think they underestimated the problems and the difficulties, and, as a result, led the fans down the same route. Any manager will tell you that it's best to underpromise and overdeliver. The message on day one should have been that getting things back to where they need to be was going to be a long, slow job. I think, right now, we're at the bottom. The negativity is results driven as much as anything else. Though it seems highly unlikely right now, if we were to go unbeaten between now and the end of the year, much of the criticism would go away. Not all, for sure - there's a sizeable body will never be convinced.
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Got to say I disagree with the contention that it’s impossible to fix both football and financial simultaneously. However, even accepting that, the least we should expect if the club is concentrating on the financial is that we don’t exacerbate the problems on the football side. The Donald’s regime has created a playing squad that was put together haphazardly, is expensive, provides poor value, lacks key technical and physical ingredients, is too big, provides little prospect of sell-on value and ultimately looks likely to fail to get us promoted despite two swings at it. That isn’t a problem that Donald has inherited - it’s one he has created.
 
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Guinness Guzzler said:
I think you're making a lot of good points on this mate. The only thing I'd say about the FPP thing is that it is a bit annoying how much of a damp squib/ unknown it all is at the moment. Everyone needs a lift and these people getting involved should be providing that but instead it's being totally talked down. I think you're absolutely right in that it isn't Methven's place to give specifics, but I don't think the Americans could complain if he sounded a little more upbeat about it all! Maybe "I can't give any specifics, you'd have to ask them if they want to give them, but their involvement is a huge positive for the club and the fans can be confident that it will really help us meet our targets over the next few years". Something like that which is vague, doesn't confirm they're buying us, but sounds like it's a bit more than just a one off arrangement. Not sure why they're playing it down so much, just seems the wrong approach imo
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Yeah, it's difficult to judge isn't it?

With the people who are involved with the investment, a lot of us (myself included) were guilty of getting our hopes up massively about what it might mean, and I don't think many of us even considered it might just be a "small" (relative to their worth) investment in Madrox that they were considering.

Who knows, perhaps this is just step one and they plan to pump a load more money in once we're in the Championship, and a boatload more once we're back in the Premier League?

We just don't know.

For at least the time being though, I'm going to try to refrain from "biting the hand that feeds us" and instead just wait to see what happens.

As CM says in that podcast, seeing all the unpleasantness directed towards the owners isn't going to motivate investors to want to give us money. Makes sense to me.
 
One of the things that struck me about the podcast was the mention of the abuse the board has received and the effect this could have on potential investors. He was wholly correct that successive chairman have been hounded out of this club from Cowie to Short and that will without doubt have a negative effect on future potential buyers for the club.
I realize that fans are pissed off and performances on the pitch are as bad as any of us can remember , but to make an atmosphere where the owners do not want to attend games is disgraceful and massively counter productive.
 
samaistonsrightfoot said:
That's stuff about wearing a sheepskin. Why does he feel its so necessary to be such a condesending bellend when the club crumbles down around him under his guidance?
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fyl2u said:
Of course I'd be happier if we were top of the league or in a higher division. That should go without saying.

Just because we're not, doesn't mean I'm going to act like a spoilt child who got the wrong toy for Christmas.

The stuff on this thread, man. I've never seen such a collection of entitled children.

Looks like some of them are on the verge of holding a public mock funeral for the club, getting their bedsheets out and writing "boycoutt" on them, and punching horses.

Sure we're in a less-than-ideal place but don't be bad losers, have some dignity and grace under pressure.

Threads full of bile aimed at the owners will not help matters. If anything it's more likely to demotivate them and push potential investors away. Why the hell would new investors want to get involved with a club that has so many wailing fannies complaining about every word out of the owners' mouths?
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There’s not one single suggestion of mock funerals or horse punching or bedsheets. That’s pure conjecture and rhetorical nonsense.

And to label people who are genuinely concerned about the state of the club, and very rightly so, as ‘wailing fannies’ hardly makes you any superior to the ‘entitled children’ you describe.
 
stevo said:
Will always go to match rocky but struggling on here
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I'm genuinely considering wrapping in a season ticket I've had for 20 odd year. I hate even thinking about it.
palm 1 said:
One of the things that struck me about the podcast was the mention of the abuse the board has received and the effect this could have on potential investors. He was wholly correct that successive chairman have been hounded out of this club from Cowie to Short and that will without doubt have a negative effect on future potential buyers for the club.
I realize that fans are pissed off and performances on the pitch are as bad as any of us can remember , but to make an atmosphere where the owners do not want to attend games is disgraceful and massively counter productive.
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Short wasn't hounded out. He wanted out when we were a Premier League side
 
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The Sheepfolds End said:
There’s not one single suggestion of mock funerals or horse punching or bedsheets. That’s pure conjecture and rhetorical nonsense.

And to label people who are genuinely concerned about the state of the club, and very rightly so, as ‘wailing fannies’ hardly makes you any superior to the ‘entitled children’ you describe.
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I agree. It's a personality trait I'm trying to drum out of myself but I'm aware I've still got some way to go.
 
fyl2u said:
Yeah, it's difficult to judge isn't it?

With the people who are involved with the investment, a lot of us (myself included) were guilty of getting our hopes up massively about what it might mean, and I don't think many of us even considered it might just be a "small" (relative to their worth) investment in Madrox that they were considering.

Who knows, perhaps this is just step one and they plan to pump a load more money in once we're in the Championship, and a boatload more once we're back in the Premier League?

We just don't know.

For at least the time being though, I'm going to try to refrain from "biting the hand that feeds us" and instead just wait to see what happens.

As CM says in that podcast, seeing all the unpleasantness directed towards the owners isn't going to motivate investors to want to give us money. Makes sense to me.
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Your spot on mate but unfortunately at the minute you’re pissing against the wind as fans can’t see past the fact that we are at the moment playing badly. The board came into this club at a time when there was more chance of us doing a Bury than returning to the premier league. This is going to be a slow process and of course I’m f***ing hating every minute of it , but I honestly believe they will get it right in the long run.
 
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