I'm sure he paid out nearly £3m for the club, comitted another £1m over time to the tax man and has now just sat back and left everything as it was. I mean, he hasn't sacked Agar/Webster, released a number of players, changed our training arrangements, brought in a new coach, new conditioner and physio has he, the man is clearly doing nothing to try and improve the club.

clearly, no plan at all, not even a hint of a plan!

I'm sure there is a plan and maybe if he shared some of the detail with the fans then there wouldn't be people questioning every decision made

why should he, it's his train set

compare it to the deafening silence of Kath and Co, McRae has made more comment in 6 weeks then they did in 4 years.

He should because he needs the fans onside. If the fans (stakeholders) can see the bigger picture then they'll be more patient. if they can't then they'll be calling for heads to roll when we don't suddenly transform into a top team overnight. Simple rule of business is keeping your stakeholders onside

there's only a few fans who are questioning things, and they all seem to be on here.

rlAbout 3 weeks ago?rl

TBF, I know what you're saying about the reputation of the area, but IMO it's not so different to most of the alternatives that it couldn't be outweighed by the main factors of trophy prospects, coach, and money. I still maintain that those are the main factors for players, and we've struggled to attract decent players in recent years because we've clearly been on a downward spiral.

no change there then

And you know that how? Was it you I saw stood with a clipboard on king edward street on Saturday?

and you know that I don't know that, how?

the majority of people I speak to, whilst a bit "uneasy" about a few things, are not questioning AP's ability to improve the club, or the way he is going about it. Most, quite sensibly, accept there are about 4 months to go before we kick a ball in meaningful competition, we have new coaches, conditioners, director of rugby and general professionalism around the club, they see no reason for the minority of hand wringing amongst some FC fans, and it seems the ame FC Fans that are never happy, no matter what.

I wanted two things as an FC Fan, Agar gone and Hetherington gone, both have happened, so it's the land of milk and honey as far as I am concerned at the moment.

I agree 100%, but that shouldn't have anything to do with voicing displeasure on the forum about individual things that the club does.

Kath and her pet loser leaving and Pearson, McRae and Gentle coming in is the best thing to happen to the club in years, I don't think anyone is disputing that. It doesn't mean though that people who want to question or voice their unease about certain decisions should be accused of 'moaning' or 'being negative' etc.

I'm cock-a-hoop about the overall changes at the club in the last couple of months, but does that mean I should pretend to be chuffed when we sign a seemingly disproportionate number of players through the same agent, appoint a husband & wife team to the coaching staff, or sign Tony Sodding Martin? Of course it doesn't, it's what the forum is for!

But there is no real basis for your displeasure, do you know the husband and wife team are doomed to fail, no, you don't, do you know that we signed Martin because he was our first choice, no you don't.

People just need to be a little more realistic, that's all I am saying.

I agree about being realistic, but AP hasn't done a great job of managing peoples expectations so far. In fairness to him though, I suspect that it's more a case of him initially underestimating how long it would take to make the changes that he wants to rather than anything untoward.

I don't buy the 'you don't know they are doomed to fail' line though, of course it's impossible to know that, but it doesn't mean you should be criticised for passing comment based on the evidence that's currently available. The currently available evidence on the three things that I mentioned suggests to me that they are all pretty dodgy decisions, so I'll say as much, it doesn't mean I've lost faith in AP.

what evidence, that is what I mean, there is no evidence to suggest the conditioner/physio is a poor appointment.

why is it an issue if players have the same agent, do we even know who is the agent of anyone else we've signed?

Well Devlin's career so far has hardly sparkled, but putting that to one side, I find it very difficult to believe that the best candidates for the conditioner and physio roles just happened to be married to each other. That's not condemning them to fail at all, but should I ignore it out of blind faith in AP and McRae?

The same idea applies to the Howes thing, there may be no problem with it at all, but it looks fairly dodgy to me so I don't see anything wrong with voicing that. Put it this way, if it was Kath and Agar doing it there'd be all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around.