Loki
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Yeh, but, besides all that, they ay done too bad.
New Manager Search *BACK ON*
- Thread starter GLASGOWOLF
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Nobody can argue with any of that.
It’s probably worth adding that in a very long list of negatives, you haven’t intentionally left out the positives - there just aren’t really any.
Shi & Sellars took out of the squad in the summer 4 big leaders / characters that had passion for the club in Coady, Boly Sais and Ruddy not just on the pitch but in the dressing room they were worth their weight in Gold & Black..
Not only that Shi & Sellars because of their many stupid decisions over the past few months also have took away the heart and soul it appears out of our great club
Not only that Shi & Sellars because of their many stupid decisions over the past few months also have took away the heart and soul it appears out of our great club
AndyWolves
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Aikiwolf
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Seen some of these rumours. It's no surprise we couldn't attract a manager, wouldn't even have to be a huge amount to spend imo. Just enough to replace the whole playing leadership that Shi and Sellar have sold...
Tyrannosaurus Dan
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Yeah, fuck it. Just bring Nuno back. We’re not getting any ‘outstanding candidates’ after the World Cup are we.
It’s so bloody annoying. We were in a great position and nothing has happened to cause us to implode - it’s been Jeff thinking he’s some kind of football impresario and acting it out. That’s the only reason we are spiralling unstoppably into the championship. He’s made 15-20 shocking decisions and if he had just taken a bit of advice we could have turned this around. But oh no! Jeff knows best!
Yep, everything has been of our making. Poor decision after poor decision
MARKakaJIM
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How much influence does Shi actually have? Would he be allowed to go out and employ a proper DoF, new scouting network, coaching team or whatever of his own accord or is he just a Fosun man keeping an eye on the books and making it look like they're engaged?
It's been pretty obvious from day 1 that the main man on football decisions is Mendes, Thelwell was allowed to do some tinkering with youth team and backup players, Dalrymple had a glorified PR role but everything key with the first team has been all Mendes. Is that hierarchy enforced on Shi from above? Just told to sit there and make sure they don't go into the red, use the existing staff to keep the club ticking along and Mendes will tell you who to sign as and when. I mean it's not like he cleared out the likes of Dalrymple and Thelwell to make room for his own men, they both left of their own accord from memory, then just some internal promotions to fill the void. Maybe that's the Fosun plan, rather than just Shi, just keep everything else ticking along with minimal effort, as long as Mendes brings in the players/managers then everything else should fall into place.
That's the fundamental flaw behind everything isn't it, the reliance on Mendes for anything and everything football related. It's one thing to go and find a bunch of promising players and sign them up for your agency, they get big moves and you make big money, they go nowhere and well their names just drift to the back of the filing cabinet no harm done. Bit more difficult to find the right players to fit together and form an actual team though, which isn't proving to be Jorge's forte, and had bigger consequences. You can spend big money on getting some of these lads an then absolutely destroy their value shoehorning them into the wrong system or position and making them look bad, that costs you money.
Mendes hasn't got the right experience for the capacity Fosun are using him, it needs more nuance than what he's used to and the stakes of failure far higher, though obviously not to him. It was a creative idea to cosy up to him in some ways but they were quickly over reliant, and as Wolves reputation/level increased compared to your typical Gestifute client it became an ever less potent weapon in the arsenal.
They're sort of stuck now though as there doesn't appear to be anyone else within Fosun, or at least not linked immediately to Wolves, with the knowledge or contacts to setup and alternative structure. The only football knowledge they appear to have available is Mendes and Gestifute, who obviously aren't going to admit to there being a better way to do things that doesn't really include them.
It's been pretty obvious from day 1 that the main man on football decisions is Mendes, Thelwell was allowed to do some tinkering with youth team and backup players, Dalrymple had a glorified PR role but everything key with the first team has been all Mendes. Is that hierarchy enforced on Shi from above? Just told to sit there and make sure they don't go into the red, use the existing staff to keep the club ticking along and Mendes will tell you who to sign as and when. I mean it's not like he cleared out the likes of Dalrymple and Thelwell to make room for his own men, they both left of their own accord from memory, then just some internal promotions to fill the void. Maybe that's the Fosun plan, rather than just Shi, just keep everything else ticking along with minimal effort, as long as Mendes brings in the players/managers then everything else should fall into place.
That's the fundamental flaw behind everything isn't it, the reliance on Mendes for anything and everything football related. It's one thing to go and find a bunch of promising players and sign them up for your agency, they get big moves and you make big money, they go nowhere and well their names just drift to the back of the filing cabinet no harm done. Bit more difficult to find the right players to fit together and form an actual team though, which isn't proving to be Jorge's forte, and had bigger consequences. You can spend big money on getting some of these lads an then absolutely destroy their value shoehorning them into the wrong system or position and making them look bad, that costs you money.
Mendes hasn't got the right experience for the capacity Fosun are using him, it needs more nuance than what he's used to and the stakes of failure far higher, though obviously not to him. It was a creative idea to cosy up to him in some ways but they were quickly over reliant, and as Wolves reputation/level increased compared to your typical Gestifute client it became an ever less potent weapon in the arsenal.
They're sort of stuck now though as there doesn't appear to be anyone else within Fosun, or at least not linked immediately to Wolves, with the knowledge or contacts to setup and alternative structure. The only football knowledge they appear to have available is Mendes and Gestifute, who obviously aren't going to admit to there being a better way to do things that doesn't really include them.
And Jeff is a football legend in his own lunchtime - the ideal idiot for Mendes to bleed dry.
MARKakaJIM
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Guo is the man who established the Mendes link, Jeff is just the guy who has to sign the cheques for whoever he wants to place at Wolves each window.
MARKakaJIM
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This is the problem isn't it.
Mendes just looks for potential in players because he knows that if/when they realise that potential there's a transfer that will make him money. It's a genius business model really because even the failures are paying you to represent them as an agent, thought obviously a pittance, but those big transfers on the successes make it rain. The overheads of scouting and making the sales pitch to sign these guys to the agency must be comparative chicken feed.
It's a much easier game to just find players that you think will get better opposed to players that will work together though. That's where Fosun have been duped, they look at Mendes' empire and think he's some kind of football oracle.
In the early years it was easy, pretty much any coach or player in the Gestifute stable was going to improve Wolves from the point Fosun bought them. Mendes could line his pockets facilitating deals, deals that none of the other clubs he dallies with would probably have been interested in, and Wolves were almost certainly being upgraded. He was flogging his tat but it was enough at that point, everyone was coming out of the deals better off.
It's far more difficult than that to keep everyone happy now though, the margins are too fine. Required talent greater, sums of money greater and the pool of options far smaller. Mendes hasn't any idea what it takes to build a cohesive team or squad, why would he, why would be even waste his time thinking about it. As long as he gets enough successes to keep Fosun as a customer he won't care whether the players work out at Wolves or not.
He's played a blinder really, talked them into a market they have no clue about and now he's got them wrapped up in a big investment with him as an integral, and only profitable, part of it.
SLB
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Crystal clear now right?
Tony Towner
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Well yes, but it's hardly a eureka moment, about 3 years behind the curve
MARKakaJIM
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As recently as last month there was a fairly wide consensus that Lage was the main problem, that he was holding the players back. The lack of uptick since his departure has seen a lot of other names dragged into the blame ring. Slowly the whole thing seems to be slowly unravelling, both in the performance of the relationship and the way it's being perceived by the fan base. The blame is slowly climbing the ladder, first Lage now Sellers, Shi getting in on the act too, it goes higher than all of them.
Mendes has often been brushed under the carpet whilst the going was good, I know you dissented more than other at times but I think even you'll admit to times you were content to go along with it when it bought advantages. This is his concept as much, if not more so, as it is Fosun's. If they had caught the football bug they would've looked to move away from him and done more their own way as time went by, if they were looking a pure investment a couple of years after promotion they should've sold with the increased value Mendes' connections had helped create. They've been played, he sold them a vision of some bold new way of owning and operating a football club but all it ended up with was another chequebook under his control, he'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Might go and take a look back at the introduction of SLB to the forum as see where opinions were on the Mendes front way back when. Maybe even do a little scatter graph to see who was behind/ahead of the curve.
Stan Hullis
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Seems to me like Nuno was the person that was keeping the “pack” together despite the pressure from above.
I really don’t want to sugar coat the end of his tenure too much because we were looking really poor.
But I feel like he turned down Hwang, Guedes etc and even though he’s part of the ‘Mendes stable’ he actually tried to push against it.
Now look where we are. The same tactics are being imposed on the managers from above.
I’m so sad and so pissed off from where we got to and where we are now.
What a shit show.
I really don’t want to sugar coat the end of his tenure too much because we were looking really poor.
But I feel like he turned down Hwang, Guedes etc and even though he’s part of the ‘Mendes stable’ he actually tried to push against it.
Now look where we are. The same tactics are being imposed on the managers from above.
I’m so sad and so pissed off from where we got to and where we are now.
What a shit show.
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