The People And Davie Irons V Douglas Rae And Gmfc

[chris_mceleny]

Evidence for all of these figures please,

I'll phone the players round ask if I can get a hold of their P60s from that year.

[vikingTON]

I'll phone the players round ask if I can get a hold of their P60s from that year.

 

So you currently have absolutely no evidence to back those claims up? Thought as much. 

[TONofmemories]

So you currently have absolutely no evidence to back those claims up? Thought as much.

It was happening and that's the bottom line.

 

Not that that is an excuse for Rae, who was/is ultimately at fault

[El gofer]

What evidence is it that you want?

Greacen, McGuffie among others were given four figure wages by irons. This has been publicly stated previously. Probably on this board if you search hard enough.

it happened.

ddfr used it as evidence of what happens when he doesn't fully control.the entire budget and gives a free reign to the football manager.

As most will concur, calling out irons and his economy with the facts does.not automatically mean that someone is part of the "wagon circling for Rae" group.

[TRVMP]

What evidence is it that you want?

Greacen, McGuffie among others were given four figure wages by irons. This has been publicly stated previously. Probably on this board if you search hard enough.

it happened.

ddfr used it as evidence of what happens when he doesn't fully control.the entire budget and gives a free reign to the football manager.

As most will concur, calling out irons and his economy with the facts does.not automatically mean that someone is part of the "wagon circling for Rae" group.

 

Well, aye, but in some cases it definitely does. See the same whispering campaign against all previous managers (except McInally) after their ouster.

 

In management it is very rare for someone to turn down a job, but in Morton's case anyone coming to Cappielow needs to contend with the fact that their reputation will be damaged after they leave by the self-same people that hired them.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

FWIW I do believe that Irons was spending vast sums on somewhat mediocre players.

 

Quite how this exonerates Rae - the man who hired him and gave him a budget - is beyond me, but then again I don't have my head up his arse.

Hang on, if I understand you correctly you're now criticising Rae for giving his manager a decent player budget and letting him spend it as he sees fit??? What exactly did he do wrong, give him too high a budget, or let him sign whoever he wanted? Either way, I think it's a strange point you made.

 

I'm not saying Rae is blameless by any stretch of the imagination, with the benefit of hindsight you could of course question the wisdom of appointing Irons in the first place, but criticising him for giving his manager a healthy budget and free rein on how it's spent is a strange one. If he'd given him a meagre budget and/or interfered with signing policy you and many others would have berated him for that, and rightly so.

[vikingTON]

What evidence is it that you want?

Greacen, McGuffie among others were given four figure wages by irons. This has been publicly stated previously. Probably on this board if you search hard enough.

it happened.

 

Being stated on this dank, cockroach-infested bedsit of the Internet does not make it a credible claim. And anyway, Chris mentioned specific figures, some of which are well in excess of a benchmark, "four figure sum". The happy-clappers would be the first to demand hard evidence of incompetency by the Raes, so it's time that they put up the hard evidence for their claims about Irons.

 

ddfr used it as evidence of what happens when he doesn't fully control.the entire budget and gives a free reign to the football manager.

 

Ah right; so there was clearly no political incentive for Rae to spin such figures then. That's cleared matters up then.

[El gofer]

To be clear. I do not think that the current model of club ownership is a healthy one, particularly when the chairman is obviously buying players.

I am saying that Rae used the experience of Irons and his bull in a sweet shop approach to his budget as evidence that all football managers were the same and should have no control.

Stating what is a pretty widely accepted fact, although I don't have the empirical data to hand and frankly can't be arsed searching, does not mean that I am some sort of Douglas Rae apologist.

[TRVMP]

Hang on, if I understand you correctly you're now criticising Rae for giving his manager a decent player budget and letting him spend it as he sees fit??? What exactly did he do wrong, give him too high a budget, or let him sign whoever he wanted? Either way, I think it's a strange point you made.

 

I'm not saying Rae is blameless by any stretch of the imagination, with the benefit of hindsight you could of course question the wisdom of appointing Irons in the first place, but criticising him for giving his manager a healthy budget and free rein on how it's spent is a strange one. If he'd given him a meagre budget and/or interfered with signing policy you and many others would have berated him for that, and rightly so.

 

There are two points here. The first, yes, I'm criticizing him for that. The wisdom behind hiring Irons was that he was (apparently) the real brains behind Gretna's rise up the leagues. A similar spending spree to theirs should thus not have been required, but we were indeed spending huge amounts of money for relatively little return. Giving Irons a budget to spend as he wants - fine. But the particular budget he was given - not fine. It was wholly excessive both for the task at hand and Irons' abilities. The funny thing is, given what happened with Shiels, is that I think these days DDF would actually agree with this. It's a separate issue from the sustainability we all pretended to give a fuck about for all of an afternoon - it's simply knowing that most managers at our level of football are nowhere near equipped to spend near-Premiership-level budgets without making a pig's ear of it (as it proved with Irons.)

 

The second point, I probably differ from most Scottish football fans on this but I don't really think managers on 1-2 year deals should be in charge of signings anyway. Granted at low-level professional football like ours it's really difficult to achieve this because of short contracts, but ideally directors of football should be in charge of recruitment with an eye on the long-term, knowing the players who are coming through, who is available elsewhere, what kind of attributes you're looking for in signings etc. Now, it's clear as day that DDF should not be that director, but it does need to be someone with an eye on several years of the future, rather than the current season alone. In rare cases - you could maybe fit Reid at Hamilton into this - you find a manager who can double up, in conjunction with a forward-looking youth system, and identify targets who are appropriate to building for the future. But for the most part, with first team management being a results business first and foremost, you want someone who can coach, motivate, and arrange players tactically. Their ability to spot a player should be secondary or even completely redundant. Again, this is paradoxically much harder at our level of football than it is at, say, the second or third tier in England, where finances allow multi-year contracts without a huge amount of risk. But nonetheless I think it's the way forward in Scotland, as opposed to the current setup of giving mouthbreathers a budget, telling them to get on with it, then ripping it up and starting again every 18 months or so.

[HamCam]

There are two points here. The first, yes, I'm criticizing him for that. The wisdom behind hiring Irons was that he was (apparently) the real brains behind Gretna's rise up the leagues. A similar spending spree to theirs should thus not have been required, but we were indeed spending huge amounts of money for relatively little return. Giving Irons a budget to spend as he wants - fine. But the particular budget he was given - not fine. It was wholly excessive both for the task at hand and Irons' abilities. The funny thing is, given what happened with Shiels, is that I think these days DDF would actually agree with this. It's a separate issue from the sustainability we all pretended to give a **** about for all of an afternoon - it's simply knowing that most managers at our level of football are nowhere near equipped to spend near-Premiership-level budgets without making a pig's ear of it (as it proved with Irons.)

 

The second point, I probably differ from most Scottish football fans on this but I don't really think managers on 1-2 year deals should be in charge of signings anyway. Granted at low-level professional football like ours it's really difficult to achieve this because of short contracts, but ideally directors of football should be in charge of recruitment with an eye on the long-term, knowing the players who are coming through, who is available elsewhere, what kind of attributes you're looking for in signings etc. Now, it's clear as day that DDF should not be that director, but it does need to be someone with an eye on several years of the future, rather than the current season alone. In rare cases - you could maybe fit Reid at Hamilton into this - you find a manager who can double up, in conjunction with a forward-looking youth system, and identify targets who are appropriate to building for the future. But for the most part, with first team management being a results business first and foremost, you want someone who can coach, motivate, and arrange players tactically. Their ability to spot a player should be secondary or even completely redundant. Again, this is paradoxically much harder at our level of football than it is at, say, the second or third tier in England, where finances allow multi-year contracts without a huge amount of risk. But nonetheless I think it's the way forward in Scotland, as opposed to the current setup of giving mouthbreathers a budget, telling them to get on with it, then ripping it up and starting again every 18 months or so.

Hearts seem to be doing ok with Levein and Neilson.

 

DDFR has a track record of knee-jerk signings. I would much prefer someone like Hawke.

[vikingTON]

To be clear. I do not think that the current model of club ownership is a healthy one, particularly when the chairman is obviously buying players.

I am saying that Rae used the experience of Irons and his bull in a sweet shop approach to his budget as evidence that all football managers were the same and should have no control.

 

A purpose which means that what Rae stated at an AGM or through his lackeys providing 'first-hand knowledge' was a political calculation, rather than a credible description of facts. 

 

Stating what is a pretty widely accepted fact, although I don't have the empirical data to hand and frankly can't be arsed searching, does not mean that I am some sort of Douglas Rae apologist.

 

 

If it's a widely accepted "fact" then why is there no hard evidence whatsoever to support it? That it is "widely accepted" on this forum is beyond doubt; hardly surprising given the tendency of the usual suspects to believe anything our chairman or their mysterious first-hand 'sources' tell them, without actually scrutinising the club's agenda in doing so. 

[TRVMP]

We're never going to see a copy of a player's wage slip (and nor should we tbh) but I don't find it hard to believe that we had players earning nort of 52k a year.

[El gofer]

A purpose which means that what Rae stated at an AGM or through his lackeys providing 'first-hand knowledge' was a political calculation, rather than a credible description of facts.

 

I do not disagree with you here, in regards to ddfr probably using the situation politically as you said.

 

If it's a widely accepted "fact" then why is there no hard evidence whatsoever to support it? That it is "widely accepted" on this forum is beyond doubt; hardly surprising given the tendency of the usual suspects to believe anything our chairman or their mysterious first-hand 'sources' tell them, without actually scrutinising the club's agenda in doing so.

I don't know what the agenda of the three separate sources I spoke to had. I know they were pretty reliable though and I am happy to base my opinion upon these.

More a comment on Irons than anything, although it does reflect upon the haphazard running of the club aswell.

[vikingTON]

We're never going to see a copy of a player's wage slip (and nor should we tbh) but I don't find it hard to believe that we had players earning nort of 52k a year.

 

Except that a simple 'four figure' sum wasn't the claim: a specific claim was made that a player was earning well over £100k a year.