Relegation to the championship could cost the club £100m, the local area even more. On top of that hundreds of jobs both directly connected to the club and in the area. Even worse our local pride will take a massive knock when things just seemed to be turning a corner.
These two men, one head of recruitment and the other the man who appointed him have presided over this mess. Whilst being overseen and trusted by a board seemingly sleep at the wheel.
I fully appreciate and accept that Tony Scholes is no chief scout, he has no footballing experience to speak of in the game. However after many statements from the club that "only the manager signs players", we have seen with the signings of Bauer and Ndiaye that this is not strictly true. In terms of quality of player bought in he is not to blame. He is however responsible for the man he hired to do that side of the work. They have both failed on numerous occasions.
Tony Scholes however is in charge of how budgets are used, and as head of “running” of the club, he oversees all aspects including setting the standards of what the club is and means to those affected by it.
Yet again tonight we have Jesé in the papers with reports he’s out on the piss in Spain, not really spending time with his child and the Stoke City mole John Percy has another exclusive again about lack of standards and care from stoke city footballers with no official line from the club.
What is our press department doing?
Why does nobody at the top of our club appear to have a grip of this situation?
Why have we had bad press after bad press when we are in a relegation battle for week after week?
Why is Tony Scholes and the board not setting the standards for what is expected of players and Staff? Regardless of who is manager? Why is it not intrinsically drummed in to players what it means to play for this club? What it means to the area and why is that respect for the club instilled into them from day one? Why does it appear it has taken a new manager to come in to install discipline into this squad and give the club direction? It is clear we need more successful "footballing people" at the top of the club to sort this mess out and people with proven track records of success. Especially recruitment.
The whole situation reeks of a rudderless ship that has already hit the iceberg and I'm afraid the club management were willingly asleep at the wheel.
Since Cartwright has come in I dare say his hit rate has been less that 50% on signings. Scholes and he have presided over::
- Berahino fiasco - A player with a known chequered past and now clearly spending far over the odds
- Imbula - A player with the wrong 'attitude' from the start, little grasp of English. Another player who was clearly the wrong fit for the club
- Agudelo - What happened there?!
- Wimmer - A player with an astronomical fee but no quality to show for it. Another time Spurs have had our pants down.
- Palacios - A make way for the crouch deal with little pay off
- Jese - Ambition...say no more
- Moting - A free transfer replacing your best player who kept us in the league must be great for a CEO when it comes off, but when it does you pay the price
- The late signing of Bruno - Seemingly a self sabotage mission to mess up the start of the season and what was turning into the most stable centre back partnership we'd had in years for what?
- Letting Bardsley go for Johnson
- Extended contracts for Ireland Affellay? Why?
- John Guidetti, Texiera, Sidwell, Van Ginkel, Jamie Ness, Edu, Shea, Bony - All failures
- The failure to sign a striker of good enough quality since 2012
Its nothing short of a complete shambles and shows how without a strong manager we are a vacant of any identity as a club as it is not being set by the board at all.
We have heard about 'self sustainability' and wanting to produce more academy players and yet we have had a revolving door of academy directors and seemingly no pragmatic approach to put things right apart from keeping talking about it and hoping it becomes true. Im sure Peter Coates would love for stoke to follow a Southampton model and sell one or two academy or recruited players for £30m+ every year but we have no track record of being able to do it, and no idea how to start to make that happen. The academy and scouting team is not up to it and simply wishing it would happen gets us in the situation we have now. Simply buying good foreign players for the U23 squad or an off the shelf Coever training scheme won't cut it.
Not only that but hoping to do that would mean the club have an ongoing identity of both the club they are, the type of players they want to recruit and the type of football we want to play. And I have seen nothing to suggest we have a clue?! We have no identity, no 'stoke way'. For example, even in the championship the Brighton academy philosophy was "Brighton want to play and attractive brand of possession football with a winning mentality throughout their teams. We therefore recognise the need for all players to become skilled and confident technicians who enjoy and are comfortable on possession. Whilst developing a real game understanding"
What do we stand for? Apart from a trying to get in a bunch of failed mercenaries that nobody else wants? Name the number of times stoke bought a successful recognised premier league player who was wanted by other clubs? Allen? Crouch?
Yes the community aspects of the club have expanded but anyone who has any day to day interaction with the club know that is not a well run ship. From match day experience, the car parks, ticket office, the PA system, communication from the club, marketing. The club have done lots of great things in recent history such as the ticket price freezes, away fan travel, supporters council etc but I don't think this is enough to cover the ongoing clusterfuck that is Stoke City FC at the moment. The former management team staff still being at the club, failed signings, bad press.
These problems are not from recent times and will take a lot of tough honesty and pragmatism from the club to put right. Change must happen.
As fans I think we need to put pressure on them to make sure they do.