| ME's 5 Year Plan 15:22 - Dec 31 with 4281 views | jasondozzell |
Town win versus Chelsea made me think of ME and the 5 year plan from December 2016.
To provide a significant ongoing financial commitment to the club’s academy, enabling a steady flow of players into the first-team
To provide a sustainable and competitive squad salary budget
To make annual investment funds available to purchase players in the early stages of their career and to assist in their development
Maintaining a stable management and coaching team
To develop a team to play attractive and exciting football
Ironically I would say we've now cracked each and every one! Just a few years later and via a path none of us could have predicted.
And in a way, I hope last night's result might have given ME, boyhood Chelsea fan, a bit of a smile. For all his sins, he did the right thing by us by writing off the debt and securing good buyers.
5 year plan complete!
[Post edited 31 Dec 2024 15:25]
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| ME's 5 Year Plan on 23:38 - Dec 31 with 613 views | suffolkpoker |
No mention of oxygen or growth… |  |
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| ME's 5 Year Plan on 23:47 - Dec 31 with 593 views | Churchman |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 23:30 - Dec 31 by Zx1988 |
With hindsight, and detachment, I rather view him as the 'Tim Nice But Dim' of football owners.
There never seemed to be any negative intention with his ownership of the club. He bought in at a time when he was relatively wealthy by 'football owner' standards, made some cr@p decisions, and the game very quickly got away from him.
Even if he did the bare minimum he kept the club going, at a time when other owners were showing that it was more than easy enough to just cut the money off and attempt to wind things up if things weren't going well.
When he did come to sell, it does seem that he did his due diligence in trying to source a decent buyer, rather than any of the number of asset-stripping sharks that are in the market at any given time; for every Gamechanger there must be plenty of Chansiris/Dai Yonggs/Ken Andersons etc., and I've no reason to doubt his claims that he'd turned down multiple bids that were not right for the club.
I've no significant ill will towards the chap. He naïvely bought a football club thinking that it was an easy money-spinner, and was proven wrong. |
Maybe it was more about a group of people wanted to buy a football club with as much potential as they could find.
They found one that had not only been hollowed out, but left to decay and was in decline to god knows where. Neglected and unloved. If Satan himself had offered £10m more does anyone seriously think Evans would not have bitten his trident off?
As for winding things up, there was no gain in it for him and besides, name one club where that’s happened to apart from Bury, Aldershot decades ago and one or two very small clubs (Rushden?).
I refuse to get moist eyed about Evans. I watched him nearly kill this club so he’s never going to make my Christmas card list. |  | | |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 00:25 - Jan 1 with 570 views | You_Bloo_Right |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 23:47 - Dec 31 by Churchman |
Maybe it was more about a group of people wanted to buy a football club with as much potential as they could find.
They found one that had not only been hollowed out, but left to decay and was in decline to god knows where. Neglected and unloved. If Satan himself had offered £10m more does anyone seriously think Evans would not have bitten his trident off?
As for winding things up, there was no gain in it for him and besides, name one club where that’s happened to apart from Bury, Aldershot decades ago and one or two very small clubs (Rushden?).
I refuse to get moist eyed about Evans. I watched him nearly kill this club so he’s never going to make my Christmas card list. |
Do you think he notices that neither of us send him Christmas cards? 
FWIW I think your original analysis was spot on. The ticket tout took us on as a punt and came unstuck and in the process nearly destroyed the club. |  |
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| ME's 5 Year Plan on 00:57 - Jan 1 with 544 views | Churchman |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 00:25 - Jan 1 by You_Bloo_Right |
Do you think he notices that neither of us send him Christmas cards?
FWIW I think your original analysis was spot on. The ticket tout took us on as a punt and came unstuck and in the process nearly destroyed the club. |
Errr, I doubt it!
I wonder if he ever visits the club? Joe or Phil might know. | | | |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 01:15 - Jan 1 with 541 views | mutters |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 19:44 - Dec 31 by RegencyBlue |
“ For all his sins, he did the right thing by us by writing off the debt and securing good buyers”.
You know why he wrote off the debt? Because nobody was going to buy a club saddled with that level of debt on top of the amount of additional investment required to put right Evans 14 years of neglect. That’s why he had no option but to write it off!
As for finding the right buyers, I imagine that was nothing more than dumb luck judging by the fact he didn’t get any meaningful decision right in his tenure here. |
Whatever people may think about Evans, he certainly could have done a lot worse to us to try and recoup his investment. He could have completely asset stripped the club, sold off everything and everybody and basically folded the club in a bid to maximise his return (or minimise his losses). We would be in a position of having no club. |  |
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| ME's 5 Year Plan on 02:00 - Jan 1 with 528 views | Deano69 |
But we must do this on a budget of £1.50 |  |
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| ME's 5 Year Plan on 00:03 - Jan 2 with 421 views | davblue |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 01:15 - Jan 1 by mutters |
Whatever people may think about Evans, he certainly could have done a lot worse to us to try and recoup his investment. He could have completely asset stripped the club, sold off everything and everybody and basically folded the club in a bid to maximise his return (or minimise his losses). We would be in a position of having no club. |
There’s an argument we weren’t far off that when he left. Who was an asset on the playing staff? What talented back room staff did we have? Let alone what staff did we have to run a football club effectively? |  | | |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 00:58 - Jan 2 with 397 views | Cheltenham_Blue |
| ME's 5 Year Plan on 23:30 - Dec 31 by Zx1988 |
With hindsight, and detachment, I rather view him as the 'Tim Nice But Dim' of football owners.
There never seemed to be any negative intention with his ownership of the club. He bought in at a time when he was relatively wealthy by 'football owner' standards, made some cr@p decisions, and the game very quickly got away from him.
Even if he did the bare minimum he kept the club going, at a time when other owners were showing that it was more than easy enough to just cut the money off and attempt to wind things up if things weren't going well.
When he did come to sell, it does seem that he did his due diligence in trying to source a decent buyer, rather than any of the number of asset-stripping sharks that are in the market at any given time; for every Gamechanger there must be plenty of Chansiris/Dai Yonggs/Ken Andersons etc., and I've no reason to doubt his claims that he'd turned down multiple bids that were not right for the club.
I've no significant ill will towards the chap. He naïvely bought a football club thinking that it was an easy money-spinner, and was proven wrong. |
I really struggle with the level of support still shown for ME in some quarters, particularly given the regular statements from our CEO, current chairman, former chairman and new owners about how shocked they were about how far the club and stadia had been run down by the previous ownership.
That man should get zero credit. He bought us as a money spinner, thought promotion to the Prem would be easy, and then he would have sold us to the likes of those you mention, but then the ITV digital scandal happened and the arse end fell out of football at Championship level.
Rather than move on, he hung on, cutting every over head he could, (remember the tree growing on top of the stand?), at least the likes of Vincent Tan never allowed that to happen to their clubs.
He was a c unit, pure and simple, who let his own arrogance get us to mid table in League One, with nothing more than League Two on the horizon. |  |
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