This is what I don’t get about what
@SebastianBlue (who is a fucking brilliant poster btw) is saying. How can the people at the top of an organisation, with executive control, and huge resources at their disposal, not be ultimately be responsible for the direction of that organisation over a twenty year period? To say they had no power to address these things simply cannot be right given the enduring revenue of that organisation, which would have given them the means and the time to make those difficult choices.
Or putting it this way, I reckon there are sales managers on £60k who could genuinely do a better job at running that club (as would any competent person of reasonable insight and intelligence) such is their ineptitude. They really are that bad.
Second generations of self-made men are often ineffectual and decadent. They don’t have the hunger, desire or street-smart of the parent that gave them that leg up in the first place. That is what we are dealing with here.
One only has to look at the state of that stadium, in actual and relative terms to when they took over the club, to realise how much they are completely out of their depth.
On that basis, and on the basis that any competent person could do a better job, the argument they were powerless to substantively tackle the issues at the club holds no water.
It’s akin to saying Peter Swales was powerless to stop our decline over the course of his tenure.
The buck, as you say, stopped with him.