{"id":68335,"date":"2022-08-21T08:00:50","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T07:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/?p=68335"},"modified":"2022-08-20T21:26:15","modified_gmt":"2022-08-20T20:26:15","slug":"there-is-really-only-one-place-the-buck-stops-next-level-and-all-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/2022\/08\/21\/there-is-really-only-one-place-the-buck-stops-next-level-and-all-that\/","title":{"rendered":"There is really only one place the buck stops &#8211; next level and all that"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After almost 15 years of unprecedented success the Swans business plan turned sour the moment that the money of the Premier League overtook the need to protect the football club and we have been paying the price ever since.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody really knows at what point the dollar signs hit home to the previous board but what has become clear in the six years since the deal was concluded is that little due diligence was done on a group that clearly do not care about Swansea City nor for that matter have too much of a great understanding about how football works.<\/p>\n<p>We all still wonder whether our relegation in 2018 was a surprise given the fact that in American sport they do not believe in such a scenario but the words uttered by our current owners as the old ones scuttled off to count their gains are still repeated on several occasions having long since proven to be total rubbish.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='n9iYwdTeQnBM5RM9cC5ydQ' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/686416602' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'n9iYwdTeQnBM5RM9cC5ydQ',sig:'UfRFk_1YoK4epvjXuez9M-YGwRR9xt0t6SSQ5RaevTI=',w:'594px',h:'363px',items:'686416602',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;We will be relentless in our determination to continually improve this club &#8211; and we have the financial resources to do so.\u00a0 \u00a0We will be competitive and we will outwork our opponents on the pitch and in the boardroom,&#8221; were the words of Kaplan and Levien when they sealed the deal to buy a majority stake in Swansea City together with their band of merry men.<\/p>\n<p>We need to be frank here in that there is\u00a0<strong>no<\/strong> aspect of the club that these people have improved us and that was hit home as recently as last night when Russell Martin made it perfectly clear we do not have the proverbial pot that is needed.<\/p>\n<p>From sanctioning some of the most incredibly bad decisions you will ever see in our last two years in the Premier League to seeing our parachute payments sucked away by those very same decisions we papered over the cracks for two years under Steve Cooper with some astute loan signings and the faint belief that we may just reach the Premier League again &#8211; something of course we almost did.<\/p>\n<p>Now as we face a second season with Russell Martin the manager cannot bring in the players his squad is so desperately lacking and even the multi million pound sale of a midfielder has left the coffers dry.\u00a0 \u00a0So dry that I have little doubt that everyone who has a say in the clubs budgets is desperately praying for a good offer for Piroe or someone in the next ten days.\u00a0 \u00a0In fact we have pretty much said as much so it should come as no surprise to anyone.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='oQvt2iZnQedxs8_cDnNNMA' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242613648' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'oQvt2iZnQedxs8_cDnNNMA',sig:'JsMyIzqXUfBHgd9HOzVNCkg5SbqQHQ4UZt7_ROyyAU0=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1242613648',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>The club is more than \u00a310m in debt to these people on a loan that the Trust tells us will be converted but why would anyone convert a loan when they are collecting a better rate of interest than widely available in most places and at a time when the conversion of the said loan is probably the least wise thing they could do.\u00a0 \u00a0The next level remember.<\/p>\n<p>The two original &#8220;faces&#8221; of the consortium seem to have forgotten where Swansea is so little have we seen of them since relegation whilst their new mouthpiece Jake Silverstein seems to be speaking on behalf of the ownership group despite having no ownership within the group.\u00a0 \u00a0You go figure that one out.<\/p>\n<p>It has also been suggested to me by more than one person that the club could now be leaking &#8220;consultancy fees&#8221; across the Atlantic &#8211; something that would be an even more worrying addition when we are seemingly unable to even consider a loan signing when we lose someone to a long term injury.<\/p>\n<p>I am all for not financially placing the club at risk but we have been in this division before and managed to compete on small budgets through good transfer moves so what has gone wrong this time?\u00a0 \u00a0The fact that we keep changing heads of recruitment, seemingly sign players the manager doesn&#8217;t want (this is not exclusive to our January 2022 signings) and of course the fact that we have the likes of Jay Fulton and Ryan Bennett who we cannot move on because the brains trust at the top end of our club sanctioned deals that they cannot match elsewhere.\u00a0 \u00a0Commercially astute they are not and football deals they clearly do not understand.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='BcQSGoM2QTNm_AZg0JwBGw' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/628960176' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'BcQSGoM2QTNm_AZg0JwBGw',sig:'EO9nLfUk8prkI59fXNx6o4iSKnx6nSiimZWl58O56ak=',w:'594px',h:'319px',items:'628960176',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>I remember previous visits of these people when they visited the dressing room of the team pre and post match on important Premier League games and I remember them trying to convince us at a Trust meeting that scouting players could be done through a computer alone.\u00a0 They were told then it was balls and it remains balls to this date.\u00a0 \u00a0You start to understand why it went wrong and the comments post match after Luton tells you just how wrong it went.<\/p>\n<p>There were plenty of calls online yesterday for the head of Russell Martin after our poor start to the season but for a club that has no money to make signings it is difficult to see how we can afford to sack a manager and pay the compensation that will follow.\u00a0 \u00a0Without of course placing the club further into debt.<\/p>\n<p>This really is the worst position we have been in since the end of the 2003 season.\u00a0 \u00a0At that point we had a City united behind its football team, owners that were deemed to be fans and a scouting system that was set to pick up some superb talent at affordable prices over a sustained period of time.\u00a0 \u00a0Oh and of course a series of managers that got the results that took us all the way to the Premier League, the League Cup and Europe.\u00a0 \u00a0Ah, memories, it all seems so distant now.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='2qX5GWbqQtR-SPFDcXohxA' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242613775' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'2qX5GWbqQtR-SPFDcXohxA',sig:'kE-IjwAB4l0g9rbVqdcYp6CaUBjnU07j87xdoY5T4fY=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1242613775',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Russell Martin it seems will be spending the season dealing with the squad he already has if nobody comes in for any of our saleable players.\u00a0 \u00a0On the evidence of our performances to date that is exceptionally worrying in itself .<\/p>\n<p>I am not sure right now where this is heading but with the squad we have we could find it much more of a struggle to stay in this division than we would like.\u00a0 \u00a0If I could see that changing then maybe it would be more comfortable but the words of the boss were telling last night, no money and no new players.<\/p>\n<p>Right now we have to face the facts that the buck for where we currently sit lies firmly at the door of our owners and their past decisions (and some of the decisions of those before them) and their silence speaks volumes.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the next level, I don&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty aligncenter\"><a id='iA3gfo1wTS9uiskAS1XZRA' class='gie-single' href='http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1234682278' target='_blank' style='color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;'>Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'iA3gfo1wTS9uiskAS1XZRA',sig:'P5oyS5UxAVYZOc3irt5PsOX-DO5Iy9vR-zP6LqVbuLI=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1234682278',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After almost 15 years of unprecedented success the Swans business plan turned sour the moment that the money of the Premier League overtook the need to protect the football club and we have been paying the price ever since. Nobody really knows at what point the dollar signs hit home to the previous board but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[767,766,575,665],"class_list":["post-68335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-jake-silverstein","tag-jason-levien","tag-steve-kaplan","tag-the-2022-23-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}