Life after Steve Gibson

Rauko

Well-known member
With the Geordies being bought out .. another English team gone to foriegn owners .. it got me thinking about Boro.

Steve Gibson can't go on forever .. at some point retirement or worse will come to pass .. and the club will need a new guiding hand ..

Do we know if there are any provisions in place for when that time comes? A naturally groomed successor? Or do we think SG will look to get the best deal possible for the club from outside at some point?

It's becoming obvious that sooner or later your place within the Premier League will be decided by which Billionaire owns your club .. that will have a knock on to the Championship due to relegation and to outside investors who, dazzled by the bright lights of the Premier League, will look to pick up a bargain in the Championship and chase the riches (as is slowly happening already) on offer.

What is the future for Boro .. either with SG still at the helm or beyond that? Like it it not - if we want success do we NEED a bigger Sugar Daddy / Investment fund to give us that? Or .. will we (and will we be happy) to drift out of the limelight due to not being unable to compete?
 
Unless a large amount of the debt is written off it is difficult to see a future at all. No one would want to take on the club and the alleged £120 million plus debt.
 
Dont think we are exactly in the position to attract many people to the club, poor area, far from London, historically small support and debt owed to the current owner. Expect there are plenty of other championship clubs that would be looked at long before we are
 
I think be thankful and enjoy his patronage while he's here.
Wanting him out is Champions League Fkwittery.
After he died at the behest of his wishes Jack Walker's Trust pumped £100million into Blackburn until they eventually decided enough was enough. As charitable to the club as he is I doubt Gibson will be as kind to the Boro.
And I'll repeat, if I was a neutral and wanted to get into English Football Middlesbrough would be closer to the bottom of the list than the top. That's reality.
 
It's not really a question of whether we could or would .. it's wether we would need to if we wanted any sort of flirtation at the top table in the years / decades ahead .. The Premier League, and the money that goes with it, isn't going away anytime soon .. More and more clubs are going to be bought out and even though it doesn't automatically breed success it certainly increases your chances.

But if we hoped that it would not happen (or couldn't due to the issues raised) .. would we as fans be happy being a club playing at a low level (due to lack of being able to compete) with success measured by wether we manage to draw a "big" club in a cup?
 
Dont think we are exactly in the position to attract many people to the club, poor area, far from London, historically small support and debt owed to the current owner. Expect there are plenty of other championship clubs that would be looked at long before we are

Historically small support? Aren't we something like top 20 in the country for all time average attendances?

We don't compete with big clubs based in cities obviously but we have far better support than many other clubs who've attracted buyers in recent years. Barnsley immediately spring to mind for one.
 
Historically small support? Aren't we something like top 20 in the country for all time average attendances?

We don't compete with big clubs based in cities obviously but we have far better support than many other clubs who've attracted buyers in recent years. Barnsley immediately spring to mind for one.
We're 16th according to this page :

 
Dont think we are exactly in the position to attract many people to the club, poor area, far from London, historically small support and debt owed to the current owner. Expect there are plenty of other championship clubs that would be looked at long before we are
Not true about small support - 16th best supported team in England/Wales historically.

Reading has been looked at losts of times by overseas investors and despite being 45 minutes from Heathrow and in a booming part of the UK has never really been invested in in a big way.

I can't think of a Championship club that I would say thats a much more attractive proposition for investment,there are alot of similar clubs and some clubs with parachute money.
 
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