I've had conflicting reports of what actually happened at Monday's meeting and what it all means.
My Dad's friend who went said how impressive Simpson was covering many but not all of the interesting issues. Marlon wanted to go becuase he was offered the chamce to earn 3 times the salary he was on at the Vic. Aidy kind of blew the bank on Ellington. He said he was the last part of the jigsaw to make the team become a success and obviously was an outright failure. The decision to go for Brendan was because it was felt could get a lot of decent loan signings in. I wonder how relevant this will be come January.
He didn't go into the reasons behind letting Boothroyd go, although maybe he felt he'd already done that with the needing a rest comment. He also didn't comment on the money situation.
Having heard all of this at half time during the Spurs match I felt a little more pacified, although this was probably partly due to the performance of the team.
Reading the WO website today however blurred things again with Ollie's broadside against the Iron Curtain running of the club, gagging orders on departing staff and the difficulty in gaining access.
I do wish he hadn't used the phrase roasting when commenting about Simpson and Ashton as it conjured very unpleasant images!
Having worked in the media for 14 years I can see both sides. The WO is considered by many fans to be one of the communication tools in getting info about the club, indeed other than the programme and some free papers it was the only one for many years.
However times have changed a hell of a lot and its completely unrealistic for the WO to expect the kind of exclusive access it used to enjoy.
For me neither ever comes out of their various quarrels particularly well. In fact, they only ever lessen my opinion of both in each and every case that has come up so far. The club seems far too quick to over-react and put up statements on the OS. The paper seem to quick to whinge and hark back to the ark without realising that probably half its readers neither remember, nor care how things used to be.
So I'm no clearer what I think really. I still wonder where the money's gone. I'd like to hear what ex-employees have to say. I wonder why Aidy really went. The fact we've got a boss in on the strength of his ability to act in the loan market hardly reassures about his credentials or the state of the club. Ironically, the appearance of the once questioned Salad Brothers kind of makes me feel a bit better about the future.
