Sack the board

[Upton Rover]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

[Bessie Red]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

Have you not been to Fish Bits?

[dickos1]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

This is the problem, people don’t understand what club doncaster is or what it does.
Without club doncaster we’d be in a far worse position.
Club doncaster helped us get through the pandemic, the cheap season tickets are because of club doncaster, the money spent on the playing budget comes from club doncaster
So if club doncaster didn’t exist the ticket prices would be more and the new signings would be much less frequent,

[Bessie Red]

Maybe the idea is to get the gates down to an average of 3000 so that we can compete in League One, like pandemic-immune Accrington are doing. 

Only reason they are where they are is down to John Coleman. Nothing ro do with attendances, budget etc they just have a damn good manager for that level.

[Glyn_Wigley]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

Ditch Club Doncaster.

So the football side immediately goes back to losing £3mill a year.

How would you concentrate on the footballing side then?

[Cramby10]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

This is the problem, people don’t understand what club doncaster is or what it does.
Without club doncaster we’d be in a far worse position.
Club doncaster helped us get through the pandemic, the cheap season tickets are because of club doncaster, the money spent on the playing budget comes from club doncaster
So if club doncaster didn’t exist the ticket prices would be more and the new signings would be much less frequent,

don’t often agree with you lad but you’re spot on. It’s really not difficult to understand but some of these halfwits don’t or refuse to get it.

[pib]

Maybe the idea is to get the gates down to an average of 3000 so that we can compete in League One, like pandemic-immune Accrington are doing. 

Only reason they are where they are is down to John Coleman. Nothing ro do with attendances, budget etc they just have a damn good manager for that level.

I think you've reinforced my point for me Bessie. They make the best of the resources they've got, and recruit smartly for their club and system. If we were able to do so we would be a damn sight higher than mid-table L2.

[Draytonian III]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

This is the problem, people don’t understand what club doncaster is or what it does.
Without club doncaster we’d be in a far worse position.
Club doncaster helped us get through the pandemic, the cheap season tickets are because of club doncaster, the money spent on the playing budget comes from club doncaster
So if club doncaster didn’t exist the ticket prices would be more and the new signings would be much less frequent,

Well said

[Bessie Red]

Maybe the idea is to get the gates down to an average of 3000 so that we can compete in League One, like pandemic-immune Accrington are doing. 

Only reason they are where they are is down to John Coleman. Nothing ro do with attendances, budget etc they just have a damn good manager for that level.

I think you've reinforced my point for me Bessie. They make the best of the resources they've got, and recruit smartly for their club and system. If we were able to do so we would be a damn sight higher than mid-table L2.

Not always easy to recruit a damn good manager who will be loyal and stay for more than a couple of years though.

[Campsall rover]

I find it odd, TB has had joint ownership of this club for the last 16 years thereabouts, and yet the last 2 years , which followed a global pandemic, we’ve been really poor on-field, been really good off-field, and these are the reasons for the abuse that’s being dished out?

I think some of our supporters need to give their head a shake.

Ah yes, that pandemic that didn't affect the other 91 football league clubs.....

Of course it did.

Yes, I know it did.

So why have we fared so badly by comparison? The pandemic affected all football clubs and budgets will have been hit in all clubs big or small. That's why an answer to the question of where our budget currently places us out of the 92 seems quite a pertinent question. Baldwin stated the figures were very easy to quantify and he wasn't shy about crowing about how highly we ranked in League 1 back in 2018 at the launch of the Five Year Plan for Championship football.

So come on guys, we're five years down the line so now would seem a good time to assess whether or not that Five Year Plan was successful or not. Where does our budget rank as of today? Is it still a top half of League 1 budget? If so then I absolutely agree that the likes of Wellens and those who have followed him, have absoultely p***ed it away. But if, as I suspect, we now have a mid table League 2 budget....should we be surprised that we find ourselves mid-table in League 2?

Tommy we were told in the Summer of 2021 before last season that we had a top half league 1 budget.
That to me means at least 12th highest.
This season we were told from what I can remember that it was at least a play off budget.
Now I would be very surprised if any other club barring, Bradford, Stockport, Swindon and maybe Salford have a bigger budget than us this season.
I would expect, Leyton Orient, Mansfield, Wimbledon & Northampton, to be similar to ours possibly less but not more.
I don’t have any facts but that’s how I would read it. 
stevenage, Carlisle, Barrow, Sutton are all overachieving based on budgets. We are under achieving.

The fact is we underachieved last season ( that’s some understatement ) due to poor management and recruitment. The same can be said this season. The emphasis more this season on the management as the recruitment was better last summer. GM simply wasn’t up to the job and so far DS hasn’t been able to get this team to its capabilities. Hopefully he will.  Time will tell on that one.

So to me the budget is just something that’s hardly relevant, but it seems some people are hell bent on pursuing the budget as the cause for our ills.
It simply isn’t the case. Unless we have been lied to. Now what purpose would that serve. Where is the benefit in the board lying to us. 
They are not stupid people. They are not rogues with ulterior motives. The want success for this football club just as much as all the supporters do.

Big mistakes on recruitment time after time, that’s why we are 11th in league 2 after being 3rd in League 1 on Boxing Day 2020 under Darren Moore in Season 20/21

[TommyC]

To say budget is no relevance is clearly wrong. I would refer you to Gavin Baldwin's own comments that directly contradict what you say. He said himself that there is direct correlation between budget and League position. Anomalies occur occasionally yes where someone massively overachieves or underachieves by reference to their budget but those are rare exceptions. But by and large, your budget dictates your league positon. His words, not mine.

If we still had that top half of League 1 budget I would be in full agreement with all those saying the fault lies with how the budget was spent. However given it sounds like we now have a budget that places us slap bang in League 2, it seems to me we are where we should be.

The budget has been reduced and we're broadly where we deserve to be.

[lee.j09]

The football side of club Doncaster won’t improve till the ditch the club Doncaster farce and just concentrate on a football team, and keep club Doncaster separate. A fish and chip shop is no good selling Pizza and Kebabs, but brilliant at providing good fish & chips

Ditch Club Doncaster.

So the football side immediately goes back to losing £3mill a year.

How would you concentrate on the footballing side then?

As a massive dons fan as well as rovers.

I’d genuinely love for someone to explain this one…

[Sammy Chung was King]

One problem is we haven’t had a manager for some time who has used his budget well. With some of the players Wellens brought in that pre season it must have been a whip a round budget.
I don’t think our budget will be as good as Bradford City’s, you have to look at the fans they get watching their games. The budget was always going to drop when instead of three owners, we have one. The club Doncaster helps to make up some of that shortfall but probably isn’t allowing us to be extravagant with signings.

The players we sign now most tend to not give you that buzz of excitement we’ve had in the past. Hurst is a good young player. Molyneux we just haven’t got out of him what he did for Hartlepool. Miller has been a good signing, would be better if the manager’s formation allowed him to succeed.
We have to look at young hungry players that need a chance to play, also bits of experience to help them along.

Our side for me at the minute is paying for the ups and downs of young players form naturally going up and down. The disappointing thing is the experienced players have been very poor or injured. A great result against Tranmere, now let’s see if we can win away at Swindon, at least get a point.

[Alan Southstand]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

[TommyC]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

Absolutely spot on. I could not agree more.

Through a combination of smoke and mirrors, deliberate obfuscation and generally appalling communication and disconnection with the fans, they have totally failed to manage expectations.

For example, I had no idea the much trumpeted Five Year Plan had been ditched and I was still under the apparently false delusion we aspired to Championship football and had a budget that year on year would have us in or around the playoff spots in League 1. We've never had a meaningful update regarding that plan and I certainly wasn't aware it had been ditched. All we get are deliberately vague assurances that the budget is "competitive" or "good" or "what it was" or that the appointments of Butler and McSheffrey weren't "cheap". The credibility of certain people has not been served well by that, even if what they have said on here or in the press were beliefs honestly held.

Had I known that our budget was no longer what it was and our vision, ambitions and aspirations reduced so drastically, I daresay I too may have moderated my expectations.

[TommyC]

Baldwin stated in 2018 that the club was at a point where the Directors didn't need to put any money in at all as we were pretty much self sustaining, but they chose to invest a seven figure sum straight into the playing budget because they wanted Championship football.

Fast forward to now and we are told that we still have a self sustaining club where the Directors don't have to put any money in and apparently they don't, unless they need to balance the books. Pats on the back all round for us being self sustaining but ignoring the elephant in the room that the owners no longer invest in the playing budget. All they've done is put a positive spin on the fact that the owners don't put any money in anymore.

I'm not criticising that. It is what it is.  Its their money and they can do wjat they want with it. But some honesty might help appease the fans. People don't like being bullshitted.

[Campsall rover]

To say budget is no relevance is clearly wrong. I would refer you to Gavin Baldwin's own comments that directly contradict what you say. He said himself that there is direct correlation between budget and League position. Anomalies occur occasionally yes where someone massively overachieves or underachieves by reference to their budget but those are rare exceptions. But by and large, your budget dictates your league positon. His words, not mine.

If we still had that top half of League 1 budget I would be in full agreement with all those saying the fault lies with how the budget was spent. However given it sounds like we now have a budget that places us slap bang in League 2, it seems to me we are where we should be.

The budget has been reduced and we're broadly where we deserve to be.

We were told mid table was the realistic target & the budget for 2021/22 reflected that target.
So yes GB may well have said budgets in most cases reflect where you end up in the league table.
The fact is we massively underachieved. Just in the same way Accrington consistently over achieve.
It happens.
It does not mean we must have had a bottom 4 budget last season.   

Please don’t tell me that Accrington, Morecambe, Burton, Crewe, Cheltenham, Cambridge, Shrewsbury Gillingham, Fleetwood had a higher budget than us last season.  Possibly Wimbledon, Wycombe and a couple of others also.
I include Fleetwood because they had cleared out their high earners before last season. 
So that’s 9 teams + possibly 2/3/4 others.

Yes this is not factual information but seriously would be astonished if any of that 9 had a higher budget than ours.

[Alan Southstand]

Having said all that, Campsall, the truth is you, like me, don’t know. You choose to spin it how you want and others maybe differently.

[Campsall rover]

Just an add on to the previous post.

Accrington, Burton, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Shrewsbury all finished well above us because they had better managers than we had.

Good managers over achieve. Poor ones under achieve.

Of course the budgets matter Tommy I didn’t say they didn’t.
What I was saying in our case it wasn’t the budget that landed us in relegation.

[Campsall rover]

Having said all that, Campsall, the truth is you, like me, don’t know. You choose to spin it how you want and others maybe differently.

Well did GB lie to us then? 

[TommyC]

Having said all that, Campsall, the truth is you, like me, don’t know. You choose to spin it how you want and others maybe differently.

Well did GB lie to us then? 

He has omitted to highlight the fact that the owners are no longer investing in the playing squad to the extent they once were. Not a lie, but an omission all the same. As Alan says, you can spin things however you like without them being out and out lies.

"We are self sustaining requiring no investment from the Directors. A club that can stand on its own two feet and is secure for the future"

Sound so much better than......

"The owners by their own choice used to put millions into the playing budget. They didn't have to do that as we were  self sustaining club but they wanted a Championship club. But they changed their mind and stopped doing that a couple of years ago so we're just ticking over now. "

[Bessie Red]

One problem is we haven’t had a manager for some time who has used his budget well. With some of the players Wellens brought in that pre season it must have been a whip a round budget.
I don’t think our budget will be as good as Bradford City’s, you have to look at the fans they get watching their games. The budget was always going to drop when instead of three owners, we have one. The club Doncaster helps to make up some of that shortfall but probably isn’t allowing us to be extravagant with signings.

The players we sign now most tend to not give you that buzz of excitement we’ve had in the past. Hurst is a good young player. Molyneux we just haven’t got out of him what he did for Hartlepool. Miller has been a good signing, would be better if the manager’s formation allowed him to succeed.
We have to look at young hungry players that need a chance to play, also bits of experience to help them along.

Our side for me at the minute is paying for the ups and downs of young players form naturally going up and down. The disappointing thing is the experienced players have been very poor or injured. A great result against Tranmere, now let’s see if we can win away at Swindon, at least get a point.

We need to go to Swindon with the mindset of firstly not getting beat and look to score on the counter. There were signs on Tuesday that we are capable of keeping a clean sheet so that should be the major aim on Sat. get a point min and get out of there. We need to start building some consistency and that starts with a solid defence.

[silent majority]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

You think that would stop anything? No chance.

People like you would continue to take two separate conversations, years apart, quote them out of context and without any justification link the two together, just like you have in this thread.

[Alan Southstand]

I don’t need to justify anything about what people have said. They said it - are you saying they didn’t?

[DearneValleyRover]

Maybe the players we signed were on high wages and bonuses that they haven’t justified

[TommyC]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

You think that would stop anything? No chance.

People like you would continue to take two separate conversations, years apart, quote them out of context and without any justification link the two together, just like you have in this thread.

I don't think it unreasonable to discuss  a "Five Year Plan" at the five year point. Do you?

[Glyn_Wigley]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

The problem is the usual suspects will immediate say they don't believe what they're being told and off we go round the mulberry bush again.

[silent majority]

If we had transparency, where the budget is concerned, it may well stop all these arguments. For reasons, better known to the Board, we simply have no idea what the budget is. We’re one of a minority of Clubs, in the EFL, that chooses to go down this route.

It’s easy to stop the theorising, one way or the other, just tell us what it is!

You think that would stop anything? No chance.

People like you would continue to take two separate conversations, years apart, quote them out of context and without any justification link the two together, just like you have in this thread.

I don't think it unreasonable to discuss  a "Five Year Plan" at the five year point. Do you?

I know you're trying to pick a fight, but to keep misquoting and misinterpreting what I type is not the way.

[silent majority]

I don’t need to justify anything about what people have said. They said it - are you saying they didn’t?

I didn't ask you to justify anything, what I mentioned is that you've taken two separate remarks from Gavin, several years apart, and without any context, and then you've interpreted those comments to attempt to discredit what he said.

[Alan Southstand]

No, I havn’t.

I never mentioned Gavin, did I?