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Post by JoeinOz on Dec 21, 2011 0:55:21 GMT
Kamara's first game was Swindon away on january 28th when SCFC lied and said Griffin refused to play.
First home game was Sunday against Boro. Live on telly and it was a big shock to me how wank we were.
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Post by skip on Dec 21, 2011 0:57:15 GMT
The club absolutely was in crisis. Christ knows how many fans didn't kick off for no reason at all you know. The fans saw it before the board would or could admit it. Arguably the players sensed it too. Like cows lying down in a field before the rain. Blimey, if mid-table is a crisis how would you describe Blackburn's position (- which is the initial point of this discussion). Yes but there's mid table good and mid table bad and Stoke under Chic Bates had mid table bad written all over them and everyone and their aunt knew that if they went down a division it would take twice as long to get back up. Now if that's not a club in crisis I don't know what is - unless accepting relegation as a fairly likely outcome is considered pragmatic business sense in your neck of the woods.
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Post by march4 on Dec 21, 2011 0:58:00 GMT
Smudge said Kamara was appointed in February and that the club were in crisis!!!!!!!!!! Both very wrong. The link you provided was to do with Bates' sacking. What's so wrong with accepting that your information was wrong (both in terms of date and league position) and Smudge called it correctly? This thread is growing pointlessly as a consequence ... I think you need to go back to 11pm on the thread Paul. The issue was whether our fans were right in their demonstrations during Bates' time in charge. I replied to Pugsley that things were not that bad under Bates and produced the evidence to prove the point. Only ONE piece of my evidence was wrong whereas the opinions of other posters is riddled with inaccuracies from start to finish. Smudge tried to belittle the arguement by attacking one piece of evidence, but his recollection of events was just as wrong. The facts are, as I have repeatedly pointed out; 1) Bates was a logical appointment 2) The club were not in crisis when he was sacked. I would even suggest that had he not been sacked we would have survived that season.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2011 1:00:54 GMT
The club absolutely was in crisis. Christ knows how many fans didn't kick off for no reason at all you know. The fans saw it before the board would or could admit it. Arguably the players sensed it too. Like cows lying down in a field before the rain. Blimey, if mid-table is a crisis how would you describe Blackburn's position (- which is the initial point of this discussion). The fans were protesting against the board, not the manager. On the playing side we might not have been in crisis, but off the pitch we were. This brings us back to Blackburn who appear to be in crisis both on and off the pitch. I'm not sure why their fans have chosen to make the manager the scapegoat, but my guess is that most footie fans are basically alike and in their position, we'd probably be doing the same.
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Post by skip on Dec 21, 2011 1:00:54 GMT
Repeatedly saying the club wasn't in crisis doesn't make any more accurate a recollection. It's an opinion. My opinion was that the evidence - squad, attitude, board of directors, lack of investment, awful communication with the fans, managerial merry go-round, restless fans et all all added up to a club in the mire.
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Post by march4 on Dec 21, 2011 1:05:06 GMT
Repeatedly saying the club wasn't in crisis doesn't make any more accurate a recollection. It's an opinion. My opinion was that the evidence - squad, attitude, board of directors, lack of investment, awful communication with the fans, managerial merry go-round, restless fans et all all added up to a club in the mire. We were 14th in a division of 24 clubs!!!! We had Griff, Kav and Thorney and there was money to spend (which Kamara wasted). We were in a brand spanking new ground. I think from an outsiders point of view any thought of crisis would be treated with a hearty laugh. The only thing I agree with you about was the 'restless fans'. With the benefit of hindsight, did they cost us time in the 3rd Division??? And I'm not being rude, But I'm shattered and off to bed. Night, all.
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Post by Paul Spencer on Dec 21, 2011 1:09:23 GMT
The link you provided was to do with Bates' sacking. What's so wrong with accepting that your information was wrong (both in terms of date and league position) and Smudge called it correctly? This thread is growing pointlessly as a consequence ... I think you need to go back to 11pm on the thread Paul. The issue was whether our fans were right in their demonstrations during Bates' time in charge. I replied to Pugsley that things were not that bad under Bates and produced the evidence to prove the point. Only ONE piece of my evidence was wrong whereas the opinions of other posters is riddled with inaccuracies from start to finish. Smudge tried to belittle the arguement by attacking one piece of evidence, but his recollection of events was just as wrong. The facts are, as I have repeatedly pointed out; 1) Bates was a logical appointment 2) The club were not in crisis when he was sacked. I would even suggest that had he not been sacked we would have survived that season. I just kind of expected, being the gent that you are, that you would have held your hands up and accepted that you were trying to embelish your argument with facts that were (very) wrong. Smudge was offering an opinion (the club were in crisis) and you were offering an opinion (that the club weren't in crisis) and you both used 'facts' to support your opinion. Smudge's facts were almost perfect (bar Kamara's appointment by a few days), however your facts, with respect - were way out fella.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2011 1:14:37 GMT
[We had Griff, Kav and Thorney and there was money to spend (which Kamara wasted). Get real March, I'm no Kamara apologist, but there was absolutely no money at all. The first thing Kamara had to do was to sell Griff in the first couple of weeks. The only money he was allowed to spend (from the £1.5m proceeds of selling Griff) was on Lightbourne and even then it wasn't as much as people thought. Stoke claimed they'd bought him for £500K and Coventry later claimed it was £300K.
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Post by JoeinOz on Dec 21, 2011 1:30:17 GMT
1) Bates was a logical appointment 2) The club were not in crisis when he was sacked
1... no it wasn't. A logical appointment would have been a manager experienced in that level of football and able to do a lot with little resources.
2... yes we were. When the fans stayed away from the first fifteen minutes of the Bradford game was it to celebrate not being in crisis?
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Post by onionman on Dec 21, 2011 1:31:30 GMT
Repeatedly saying the club wasn't in crisis doesn't make any more accurate a recollection. It's an opinion. My opinion was that the evidence - squad, attitude, board of directors, lack of investment, awful communication with the fans, managerial merry go-round, restless fans et all all added up to a club in the mire. We were 14th in a division of 24 clubs!!!! We had Griff, Kav and Thorney and there was money to spend (which Kamara wasted). We were in a brand spanking new ground. I think from an outsiders point of view any thought of crisis would be treated with a hearty laugh. The only thing I agree with you about was the 'restless fans'. With the benefit of hindsight, did they cost us time in the 3rd Division??? And I'm not being rude, But I'm shattered and off to bed. Night, all. We were 14th - but on a severe slide. Look back at the previous six or seven results to see what direction we were heading. I maintain Bates might well have (probably even) kept us up but we were still a team on the slide. A bit like the Mick Mills team of 1989 (the year before we went down). Griff was immediately sold. Kav and Thorney were bottlers. The rest of the squad were largely inept (Tweed, Nyamah, Muggleton, Pickering, Stewart, Gabbiadini off the top of my head). In fact our playing squad was so inept or lacking in bottle, our player of the year that season was Justin Fucking Whittle (who only played the final few games himself). We went down that season because we had a dreadful team who fell to pieces every time the going got tough. That's partly the board's fault, partly Jez Moxey's fault, partly Chic Bates' fault, partly Kamara's fault, partly Alan Durban's fault, and I hope each and every player in that relegation squad carried a weight of shame with him for the rest of his professional career, so disgraceful were their performances that season. The one group of people that weren't to blame were the fans.
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Post by prettything on Dec 21, 2011 4:48:53 GMT
The fans were not to blame that season.
Thorne was useless that season and was not an adequate replacement for Sheron.
We recruited the likes of Neville Southall and Paul Stewert who were clearly both cheap and past their sell by date.
Coates and Humphries failed in their duties as benefactors of the club, and at the time seemed to have no desire to take the club forward .
With no money forthcoming, there seemed to be a reticence by the owners to let go.
Griffen was always going, kav became to big for his boots, and there was simply no quality left in the team.
Kamara came along and dicked any money from the Griffen sale that was available to him, and it was an inevitable conclusion with what proceeded.
I remember him signing a player everyday on a free, with no idea of the players reputation or pedigree. It was no surprise Kamara never managed again.
The fans were not at fault! They were bad days, and the club was in a desperate situation.
It now seems that Coates did love the club but wasn't able to provide the support required to stabilise or take the club forward.
Coates had to go.....At the time
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Post by mica on Dec 21, 2011 5:30:13 GMT
One good thing about that time was that it was the early days of the original Oatie message board and the situation resulted in some excellent graveyard humour, which got even better when we had B Little and J Moxey to point the borax at. I remember writing the weekly edition of Jez's diary. ("Midday: Ate 4 chicken, 3 steaks, 12 packets of chips, 2 dozen oatcakes followed by a whole apple pie and a three-tier fruit cake. All washed down with a couple of bottles of Bollie. Only spoilt when some skinny fool in a tracksuit interrupted me to say he was Little and he wanted to sign some player called Small. It was clear he was taking the piss and I told him to bog off. Oh, then I had 2 litres of ice cream. By then it was almost time for afternoon tea.") Smudge was a much more regular visitor in those days. And he was always starting arguments then, too!* M * Joke, Smudge! Honest!
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Post by Pricey on Dec 21, 2011 6:24:06 GMT
Stoke's last win before that Bradford game on 16/1/98 was the superb 3-0 home win over Wolves....10 weeks earlier on 8/11/97.
Our record between those two matches was played 10, won 0, drew 4, lost 6; the most recent loss being a 0-7 reverse at home to Birmingham City the day after it was announced through the media that 8 players would be released at the end of the season.
We had replaced the £2.75m Sheron with the £500k Thorne to partly-finance our new stadium, had about 3 decent players (one of which was about to leave for Newcastle as we looked to take any half-decent money we could) and a collection of has-beens and never-would-bes who were appearing more and more gutless by the week.
I was 14 at the time and it's as clear to me now as it was then.
March....Bates was shit and Stoke were in crisis. For fuck's sake.
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Post by padders01 on Dec 21, 2011 8:41:12 GMT
Wow!
Didn't expect my post to lead to all this last night
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Post by guernseydave on Dec 21, 2011 8:41:44 GMT
The Bradford game was on Sky. The concours was packed with Stokies watching it waiting for 15 minutes untill they took their seats. I'd been on the Radio that day with Jez Moxey and some high up police cheif discussing the state of the club and the upcoming demo. The club was in a mess and a downward spiral. Didn't Coates resign as chairman but not from the board that day too ?
GD
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Post by Davef on Dec 21, 2011 8:50:11 GMT
There's some serious re-writing of history going on here.
No surprises who's re-writing it though.
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Post by LDE76 on Dec 21, 2011 9:17:52 GMT
Thorney useless and a bottler? Really? He didn't get off to a good start but didn't he end up with something like 15 goals in a team that was relegated? He was also the only Stoke player who came out of the Birmingham and Man City disasters with any credit.
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Post by stokiednk on Dec 21, 2011 9:28:59 GMT
It wasn't so long ago some Stoke fans were doing exactly the same! Yes, some of us have short memories I was going to put some sort of comment here but I can't for the life of me remember what it was lol
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Post by cousindupree on Dec 21, 2011 9:38:26 GMT
I am glad there are still enough sensible posters on here to put the record straight about the state of our club late 97/early98 rather than merely use a league table and points to justify their argument. Were you even supporting Stoke then March? If you genuinely were you would have felt sick to the stomach with what was going on. It was clear that we were financially in crisis due to the building of the new stadium. Quite bizarrely I actually sat next to Mike Sheron on the Manc to London shuttle when he was off to talk to QPR. In his words the 'ship is sinking fast with no body steering it' I wrote down some notes after we landed and still have them. He was 'happy and settled at Stoke' and 'hated the idea of living in the south'. The chairman 'gave him no choice' and 'without the transfer money' the financing was in a real mess'. So no direction off the pitch, broke having to sell our best players, and shite on the pitch we were a club in crisis..no question. The poor financing of the stadium was at the root of most of our problems leaving us financially without a pot to piss in.
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Post by sheikhmomo on Dec 21, 2011 9:43:25 GMT
The move to the new ground was a grade A lesson in mismanagement, the appointment of Bates was a weak one by a board bereft of ideas and investment.
Bates wasn't the worst manager we've ever had but at a time when we moved from our beautiful shit hole to a tin can, it was an appalling appointment and set the seed for the later discontent.
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Post by swampmongrel on Dec 21, 2011 10:02:06 GMT
I am glad there are still enough sensible posters on here to put the record straight about the state of our club late 97/early98 rather than merely use a league table and points to justify their argument. Were you even supporting Stoke then March? If you genuinely were you would have felt sick to the stomach with what was going on. It was clear that we were financially in crisis due to the building of the new stadium. Quite bizarrely I actually sat next to Mike Sheron on the Manc to London shuttle when he was off to talk to QPR. In his words the 'ship is sinking fast with no body steering it' I wrote down some notes after we landed and still have them. He was 'happy and settled at Stoke' and 'hated the idea of living in the south'. The chairman 'gave him no choice' and 'without the transfer money' the financing was in a real mess'. So no direction off the pitch, broke having to sell our best players, and shite on the pitch we were a club in crisis..no question. The poor financing of the stadium was at the root of most of our problems leaving us financially without a pot to piss in. Agree. It seems remarkable just how badly we were run back then under the same leadership as we have today. At that time there were loads of other clubs building new grounds and all of them did it cheaper, got better facilities and didn't have to asset strip their playing squads to do it (Sunderland, Bolton, Derby etc). Perhaps some of them had wealthier backers than we did but I'm sure the stadium could have been financed better. With the benefit of hindsight Stokies shouldn't be particularly proud of the way Coates was treated at the time but, ultimately, he was responsible for all of the fuck ups. Fortunately he decided he was going to put it right and he's paid us back threefold.
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Post by skip on Dec 21, 2011 10:16:12 GMT
I think that part of Coates' funding over the last five years has been payback for the crisis years.
As a small number of Oatcake posters from that era may recall, I had a meeting with Moxey and Coates and even allowing for the disappointment (kit design proposal) wasn't taken up, the manner in which the thing was treated was a shambles. It still irks me.
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Post by howedy on Dec 21, 2011 10:33:10 GMT
Bloody hell! 4 pages later and we only just discovered march was wrong? I could have told you he was wrong before he even started posting! Haha
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Post by foxysgloves on Dec 21, 2011 10:43:50 GMT
The fans were not to blame that season. Thorne was useless that season and was not an adequate replacement for Sheron. We recruited the likes of Neville Southall and Paul Stewert who were clearly both cheap and past their sell by date. Coates and Humphries failed in their duties as benefactors of the club, and at the time seemed to have no desire to take the club forward . With no money forthcoming, there seemed to be a reticence by the owners to let go. Griffen was always going, kav became to big for his boots, and there was simply no quality left in the team. Kamara came along and dicked any money from the Griffen sale that was available to him, and it was an inevitable conclusion with what proceeded. I remember him signing a player everyday on a free, with no idea of the players reputation or pedigree. It was no surprise Kamara never managed again. The fans were not at fault! They were bad days, and the club was in a desperate situation. It now seems that Coates did love the club but wasn't able to provide the support required to stabilise or take the club forward. Coates had to go.....At the time Sorry but I have to disagree. The fans who went to games were not at fault but those who didn't were. How can we have 25,000+ fans at games now when there were 10-13,000 Stoke fans at those games? The answer = it's easier to watch a successful team than a failing one. So those fans who went to games were not to blame whereas those who stayed away were at least partly to blame. If that team had been playing in front of 20,000 plus screaming Stokies they would have done better of that i am sure.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2011 10:46:44 GMT
Stop using evidence to rewrite history march!! What was it that Nicholas Boileau said: "A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." Was there any need to patronise?
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Post by Scrotnig on Dec 21, 2011 10:51:15 GMT
I lived in Blackburn for a little while, not long after "King Kenny" left and Ray Harford took over. The team plummeted down the league and he had to go, but the fans were pretty much the same then, they had become "used" to success after years in the doldrums and having won the Prem a few years earlier, relegation was unthinkable.
Coach Tony Parkes took over for the rest of the season and safely kept them up. Then they had the Sven Goran Eriksson debacle (nobody had really heard of him back then).
Blackburn did go down a few years later anyway, but came up again fairly quickly.
This year though there is no Parkes to rescue them, personally I think they and Bolton look doomed. Suspect Wigan will join them. Not good for Northern football that to be honest. Then again, as long as we're not down there I don't care!
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Post by mylovelymayomammy on Dec 21, 2011 10:59:06 GMT
What was it that Nicholas Boileau said: "A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." Was there any need to patronise? Some would be so so lost without Google. Can make a fool be admired by other fools
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Post by redstriper on Dec 21, 2011 11:36:22 GMT
Quality thread
Not sure why we have to find something to argue about when Stoke are in a better place than at any time since the internet was invented, but great to see some of the old and best informed posters from the old pre-rivals days contributing again.
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Post by Davef on Dec 21, 2011 12:15:59 GMT
Quality thread Not sure why we have to find something to argue about when Stoke are in a better place than at any time since the internet was invented, but great to see some of the old and best informed posters from the old pre-rivals days contributing again. So, just because things are great now, it means that people can just come on here and completely fabricate what when on during our darkest days and we all should nod in agreement? Along with Keith Humphreys and Jez Moxey, Peter Coates presided over one of the worst, if not THE worst periods in the club's history. Some people clearly feel uncomfortable with that fact considering the tremendous job he's done since he returned to the chairman's seat in 2006, but does that mean they can come on here and talk complete bollocks?
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Post by onionman on Dec 21, 2011 12:41:27 GMT
Thorney useless and a bottler? Really? He didn't get off to a good start but didn't he end up with something like 15 goals in a team that was relegated? He was also the only Stoke player who came out of the Birmingham and Man City disasters with any credit. He was at that time, for me anyway. He used to go missing when we needed him to stand up and be counted, and he had this infuriating habit of refusing to attack the ball in the danger area. He eventually became a good third division striker and had one incredible half-season in which he was probably the most prolific striker we've had in modern times. And respect for refusing to celebrate when he scored that hat-trick for Cardiff. But during that relegation season he was poor, and he didn't score 15 goals either.
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