AyeDubbleYoo

That personalities dont matter to me, whether its fat Freddy, Rod Jane & Freddy, Bungle, the CEO of Greggs, Johnny Decker or Ant and Dec that end up in charge, all that matters right now is that they hand AS the job and let him get on with it. You're right there, personalities don't matter to me either, my dislike of both Ashley and Shepherd are because of their actions.

I'm honestly missing your point there Chez. I agree if we get competent owners who will appoint and back Shearer then we'll be happy. But is that not what the whole discussion is about?

That's a good post that. I always thought FS had good ambitions for the club, he was just incapable of pulling them off. And he overspent to get us there, paying the price when we fell short. I don't see any reason to want him back though, except that Ashley is worse of course.

The staff won't know what the fucks going on... costs are being slashed to the bone then suddenly it's back to caviar in the canteen again.

Aye, you're right actually, maybe lazy wasn't the right word. Flakey, inconsistent, temperamental, egotistic - those are better.

He's quite lazy and a bit of a luxury player really. That applies to most of the players City are signing though!

It's all relative anyway though. When I was on 18k a year I was desperate to break 20k, so on and so on. Everyone wants to better themselves in their profession and increase their rewards... seems irrelevant that Michael Owen earns more than people in 'normal jobs', that's not the market he's operating in. (Obviously morally the whole market is questionable, but it's not up to one player to change that)

Fourthed.

Too late, someone already said they would! I'm just disappointed because it would almost have been worth going through the Ashley nightmare, and relegation, if we could have come out of it with a decent owner and a bit of potential stability. If we end up back where we started I don't see any reason to be optimistic.

That's true, he never really did it in the Premiership either, it's a risky signing.

Surely if karma existed we would be due a takeover by a squillionaire backer with a pathological hatred for Shola Ameobi and Alan Smith?

I just wish it wasn't going to be Shepherd.

Well not entirely, we could always wait for another bidder in the future.

Potentially a good signing but high risk I reckon. Dave Kitson looked good playing for Reading but immediately flopped when he left.

The price does seem low, hopefully one of the other parties will seize the chance to outbid.

Similar to how an abuser has an intimate knowledge of their victim?

Well yeah, but what's the point in paying for it now? Dunno, probably none, only that you have to pay for it sometime! I guess a new owner might cut the prices, but not if it's FS.

I suppose we need to know more about the rest of the consortium. Unless they have serious money behind them I can't see them being able to do a lot to appease the fans.

Let's just say I really hope there are some alternative bids. Shepherd delivered some temporary almost-success, there's no arguing with that. But he leeched the club for his personal gain and left us in a very poor financial state. I hope he's learned the lessons from his last spell in charge, remains to be seen. One thing's for sure, he doesn't have the wealth to spend much money, without further increasing our debt burden. The one good thing that Ashley has done is clear some of the debt, so I wouldn't want to see that go to waste.

I really can't see this getting sorted in time for us to sort out the squad for the start of next season. Obviously that will have loads of cons and one pro, that we will keep the likes of Beye and Bassong for a bit longer.

I suppose if you know you're going to every game next season, whatever happens, you may as well save a few quid by getting a season ticket.

We're already in a position where the majority of the playing staff need to be replaced and there is no meaningful coaching or management structure, so I don't think that side of things could deteriorate much further in the eyes of a buyer. Another relegation would be the only thing I could see that would have that effect, and presumably things will be sorted before then (!).

Aye that's exactly right. They're just blowing the cash on expensive rent-a-strikers like Bellamy and the blatantly 'obvious' top class players who are happy to whore themselves around for megawumba. If you look at Chelsea's first signings, aye - they were well known but were sorta made up of hungry expensive players, like you say. I'm talking under Ranieri aswell, he still guided them to second place. Yeah, I can see that Hughes is kind of trying to buy players with premiership experience to bring consistency, the problem is that the ones he's going for (Santa Cruz, Bellamy) are either average or also have superstar egos. I can't see Man City cracking the top 4 next season.