What’s the consensus on Gibson then?

[Bruce]

Long may SG own the club.

Every year we try to get promoted and fail, we lose a shed load of cash.
Occasionally, like Luton, you get lucky and get promoted on the cheap but that's the exception, not the rule.
I never intended to look football finances (and there's distinct limits on my knowledge) but the Championship is a black hole. The only way to stay afloat without someone like Gibson to loan you money is to make a good profit off your transfers or cut your wage bill so far that you have a squad that is mid-table at best then hope to get lucky one season.

Personally, I don't envy Gibson. If I were him, I would be exhausted and frustrated by the last 15 years but the bottom line is that he has never wavered from his financial support for the club. Problem is that the responsibility for the last 15 years of failure stops at his desk. He has made the big decisions and he has got them wrong. Although we have all paid for his mistakes, he's the one that's paid for them out of his wallet.

If SG sold all or part of the club there is no guarantee that the new owners would put in more money or make a greater success than Gibson has. There's also the risk that lacking the emotional connection Gibson has that any new owner might cut and run if it goes wrong. Gibson's mistakes have led to a sustained period of mediocrity but you only have to look at Bolton to see that it could have been far, far worse.

 

[Nano]

The money isn't really the issue with Gibson. His decision making has been shockingly poor for a long time and the way he runs his business is exploitative. It might be the norm for a football chairman to be exploitative but that rightly opens him up to scrutiny. We're in the position we are because of him and it's not a great position, it's below our long term average. We aren't punching above our weight at all. We're exactly where a single team town with a big catchment area with 150 years of history of being a 1st/2nd division side should be without even trying. We used to punch above our weight but now we're watching teams like Luton, Bournemouth, Brentford and Burnley etc playing regular PL football.

I used to think he was "one of us". A local lad done good but I'm now fairly certain that we are only there to provide him with the income to run his club the way he wants to. When was the last time he even spoke to the fans? When was the last time he made a decision that benefits fans or the area? He is completely out of touch charging top whack for everything and that's just football. It wasn't that long ago he was sending out letters of support for Conservative politicians etc. He's not one of us anymore.

 

[JackG]

I understand the points you make but if he intends on recouping any money whatsoever why isn’t he gradually reducing the debt? It doesn’t make sense really, I don’t believe the ‘loans’ will ever be recovered and will be written off when it’s time to sell or pass on.

Gibson's only chance of recovering his investment is having MFC in the Premier League. At the moment that requires a successful team in the Championship which, in turn, means operating at a loss. The championship involves a brutal winner-takes-all arms race - a crude summary: 3 teams win the lottery, 17 lose fortunes. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Corco65]

Every year we try to get promoted and fail, we lose a shed load of cash.
Occasionally, like Luton, you get lucky and get promoted on the cheap but that's the exception, not the rule.
I never intended to look football finances (and there's distinct limits on my knowledge) but the Championship is a black hole. The only way to stay afloat without someone like Gibson to loan you money is to make a good profit off your transfers or cut your wage bill so far that you have a squad that is mid-table at best then hope to get lucky one season.

Personally, I don't envy Gibson. If I were him, I would be exhausted and frustrated by the last 15 years but the bottom line is that he has never wavered from his financial support for the club. Problem is that the responsibility for the last 15 years of failure stops at his desk. He has made the big decisions and he has got them wrong. Although we have all paid for his mistakes, he's the one that's paid for them out of his wallet.

If SG sold all or part of the club there is no guarantee that the new owners would put in more money or make a greater success than Gibson has. There's also the risk that lacking the emotional connection Gibson has that any new owner might cut and run if it goes wrong. Gibson's mistakes have led to a sustained period of mediocrity but you only have to look at Bolton to see that it could have been far, far worse.

I agree, SG has made what I would consider mistakes, which at the time most people including SG wouldn't consider them a mistake otherwise he wouldn't have made them. I don't blame him for his choice of manager although there have been a few who i was totally against, but that's just my opinion. Most managers seem to get just over a year now to be a success, the turn over is huge, so it isn't just SG who gets it so called wrong and at some point the Match will be the right one, things will click and relative success will follow but there is no special formula for that to happen. For me the biggest error of judgement SG made, was backing the judgement of whoever thought not to play Blackburn was a good idea, it might all have been so very different and I'm sure he must regret that too.

 

[Nano]

I agree, SG has made what I would consider mistakes, which at the time most people including SG wouldn't consider them a mistake otherwise he wouldn't have made them. I don't blame him for his choice of manager although there have been a few who i was totally against, but that's just my opinion. Most managers seem to get just over a year now to be a success, the turn over is huge, so it isn't just SG who gets it so called wrong and at some point the Match will be the right one, things will click and relative success will follow but there is no special formula for that to happen. For me the biggest error of judgement SG made, was backing the judgement of whoever thought not to play Blackburn was a good idea, it might all have been so very different and I'm sure he must regret that too.

It's not just that he's made bad decisions on managers, you never know how they are going to work out, but it's the way he has appointed managers that are so different to one another in the way they play each time. That means every new manager needs a "rebuild" because the previous manager's players are unsuitable. There is some evidence he has tried to put that right by appointing Scott and heading down a player development route but the first managerial appointment we made with Scott was Wilder which either means we either really had no strategy or Scott was over-ruled by Gibson appointing who he wanted. On top of all those bad managers forcing us into rebuilds all the time he also is seemingly easily conned by charlatans. Pulis, Warnock, Strachan, Wilder and Monk have all played him. They've talked about how wonderful he is while being given shed loads of cash to ruin our squad and line their own pockets which I think is why he tends to surround himself with people he knows or rookies, whether they are suitable for the job or not.

The biggest error of judgement Gibson has made is trying to run a business in a global sport that has got too big for him and he's trying to do it part time. He has hired nobody with any experience to help. It's got to the point where he's like a local grocery shop trying to compete with Tesco and Asda.

 

[Bruce]

It's not just that he's made bad decisions on managers, you never know how they are going to work out, but it's the way he has appointed managers that are so different to one another in the way they play each time.

I think that's the key point. There are no guarantees in football but you can at least try to be systematic in how you approach it. He hasn't been. He has made really bad misjudgements and sometimes doesn't seem to have learned from them. Appointing Southgate to oversee cost-cutting was a disastrously bad idea (as many said at the time) but he then repeated that with Woodgate and the "golden thread." There's a risk he's now doing the same with another novice manager.

Mostly though it is the 180 degree turn between managers - Monk - Pulis - Woodgate - Warnock - Wilder - Carrick. Each manager was provided with a brand new team to fit their style. I *hope* the appointment of Scott is an attempt to draw a line under this.

Up until Scott's appointment he ran the club like a 70s style chairman: it was his personal kingdom. 20 years ago he was hailed as the chairman every manager wanted to work with. Not any more.

 

[indeedido]

So basically the master plan of running a successful football club is that we need and expect to find an even bigger mug than SG and expect them to gamble their millions away, buying players, paying their salaries and their agents. I thought this was what SG has already done. As with other clubs, there is a chance it might get you in the Premier league and you can hover around for a few years maybe mid table if your lucky or perhaps the excitement of a relegation battle before things turn again, and a lot of clubs in premier league are in debt despite being there. Over the last 10 years Man U have spent over 1.5 billion net on players and what have they achieved. Last time we were in the premier league and for most seasons before that in the Premier league we rarely sold out, some clubs have limits to growth potential unless like some others you are owned by a nation state and all that brings, and then once nation states own all the clubs, the same thing happens, as there will be the richest and poorest nation states.

It also seems that if we can't find a mug stupid enough to want to waste their money, then a lot of people would be happy with SG if he started to waste his millions again as long as he doesn't expect to protect it in someway.

The man has in some form or other invested almost 200 million into the club and he is accused of mismanagement and it's all his fault and yet the answer is, do it again, what you did before, for which he is criticised, for so called turning us into a basket case club, only this time you simply just need to find the right people to work for you, which was what of course he thought he had done last time, until things don't quite work work out like they should on paper and then their all useless again and look what SG has done, he doesn't know what he is doing.

Too many people are playing fantasy chairman with other people's money and stating simplistic solutions to complex situations.

Also I don’t expect or think it's my right that someone else should subsidise my entertainment and demands , and if I was a multi millionaire or billionaire I know who I would be giving my money to and it wouldn't lining the pockets of players and agents, or subsiding those amongst us who would only blame me when I did.

Long may SG own the club.

UTB

It is not about finding another mug who can waste his money. How about finding somebody remotely capable of running a club by making very good key decisions rather than calamitous ones.
He is financially out of his depth, but that isn’t the biggest problem. His decision making is.
He does everything at the wrong time. Once an accident, but over and over again has not been.

Corco he has “invested” £232m and has a business worth -£132m. That is catastrophic given we are now where we started under him.

 

[Corco65]

It is not about finding another mug who can waste his money. How about finding somebody remotely capable of running a club by making very good key decisions rather than calamitous ones.
He is financially out of his depth, but that isn’t the biggest problem. His decision making is.
He does everything at the wrong time. Once an accident, but over and over again has not been.

Corco he has “invested” £232m and has a business worth -£132m. That is catastrophic given we are now where we started under him.

Please share you plan that guarantees whoever runs the club, would not make a mistake or continue to have to put money in other then the very simple, they should employ the right people.

You can even start on the premise that SG gives away the club with no debt, starting now.

 

[Redwurzel]

It would be interesting to compare Gibson with the American who owns Burnley.

 

[coluka]

Please share you plan that guarantees whoever runs the club, would not make a mistake or continue to have to put money in other then the very simple, they should employ the right people.

You can even start on the premise that SG gives away the club with no debt, starting now.

As you well know, nobody can offer guarantees in life on anything. You are asking for something nobody will give you, offer you or ever achieve. However, there are ways and means to mitigate failures and enhance successes. Just off the top of my head and not meant to be a complete list by any stretch.

1. Money…. Appropriate backing to be funding the club in order to to meet a fully costed 1 year, 3 yr and 5 yr plan, including contingencies, regularly reviewed and tweaked as necessary.
2. Due Diligence at every level, clear Vision, Strategy, forward planning, contingency planning.
3. Investment in quality personnel off the pitch as well as on it
4. Appointing qualified people with proven track records that understand the football business inside out and can demonstrate achievement and positive effective decision making skills.
5. Trusting in the process and leaving those people employed to do their job
6. Incentivise success, penalise failure.
7. Do not be tempted to intervene at every opportunity through a hands on approach thereby undermining senior employees roles.
8. Do not lurch from strategy to strategy.
9. If replacing senior staff appoint personnel to fit the stated vision, strategy, rather than their own agenda, 100% commitment essential.
10. Build in ambitious, achievable targets, review all above points regularly, be flexible and open to change as time marches on.
11. Be a good listener and never be afraid to admit mistakes.
12. Good, honest, positive communication system for customers (internal, external and fans).

The who depends initially on the offer of sale and vision of potential purchaser. There is a moral onus on the seller to do due diligence on the purchaser as the EFL/PL clearly don’t. Contract of sale may include penalties for failing to keep to terms of sale. The devil is always in the detail.

However, (no offence intended) non of the above will satisfy you in any way shape of form as you come across as entrenched in Gibson being the only possible way forward, as some of us will be to you in believing Boro can have and do better, and that it is entirely feasible the current owner has taken us as far as he financially can, or is financially willing to do at this juncture in his life. The last 16/17 yrs have been largely poor with only arguably 3 exciting seasons of which only one ended in success. Anyone wanting to settle for that doesn’t value sporting glory nearly enough imho. For me, sport is about competing to be the best and giving everything possible that you can, in the modern game a multi millionaire needs far more luck than a billionaire as ffp does not allow a level playing field. Football is big business first and foremost, and no longer like a trip to the theatre to watch a show.

Just my quick thoughts, but I appreciate you and others will be aghast that I see a different owner now to the saviour and hero he undoubtedly once was, but I am grateful for all he currently does. The 2 comments are not incompatible.

 

[Corco65]

As you well know, nobody can offer guarantees in life on anything. You are asking for something nobody will give you, offer you or ever achieve. However, there are ways and means to mitigate failures and enhance successes. Just off the top of my head and not meant to be a complete list by any stretch.

1. Money…. Appropriate backing to be funding the club in order to to meet a fully costed 1 year, 3 yr and 5 yr plan, including contingencies, regularly reviewed and tweaked as necessary.
2. Due Diligence at every level, clear Vision, Strategy, forward planning, contingency planning.
3. Investment in quality personnel off the pitch as well as on it
4. Appointing qualified people with proven track records that understand the football business inside out and can demonstrate achievement and positive effective decision making skills.
5. Trusting in the process and leaving those people employed to do their job
6. Incentivise success, penalise failure.
7. Do not be tempted to intervene at every opportunity through a hands on approach thereby undermining senior employees roles.
8. Do not lurch from strategy to strategy.
9. If replacing senior staff appoint personnel to fit the stated vision, strategy, rather than their own agenda, 100% commitment essential.
10. Build in ambitious, achievable targets, review all above points regularly, be flexible and open to change as time marches on.
11. Be a good listener and never be afraid to admit mistakes.
12. Good, honest, positive communication system for customers (internal, external and fans).

The who depends initially on the offer of sale and vision of potential purchaser. There is a moral onus on the seller to do due diligence on the purchaser as the EFL/PL clearly don’t. Contract of sale may include penalties for failing to keep to terms of sale. The devil is always in the detail.

However, (no offence intended) non of the above will satisfy you in any way shape of form as you come across as entrenched in Gibson being the only possible way forward, as some of us will be to you in believing Boro can have and do better, and that it is entirely feasible the current owner has taken us as far as he financially can, or is financially willing to do at this juncture in his life. The last 16/17 yrs have been largely poor with only arguably 3 exciting seasons of which only one ended in success. Anyone wanting to settle for that doesn’t value sporting glory nearly enough imho. For me, sport is about competing to be the best and giving everything possible that you can, in the modern game a multi millionaire needs far more luck than a billionaire as ffp does not allow a level playing field. Football is big business first and foremost, and no longer like a trip to the theatre to watch a show.

Just my quick thoughts, but I appreciate you and others will be aghast that I see a different owner now to the saviour and hero he undoubtedly once was, but I am grateful for all he currently does. The 2 comments are not incompatible.

Nice list and I'm sure people can add many more, good luck in dream land in finding the person who ticks all your boxes.

How many did SG tick when he he invested over 200 million, won numerous promotions, got us to 3 domestic cup finals, 1 European final and built a new ground.

I'm not opposed to someone else running the club, I just think it's very easy to criticise from the side lines a man who has done more for the club then anyone ever will, but it today's world he's fair game as people sense of entitlement regarding what others should do and where the club should be is astounding.




...

 

[indeedido]

You are not interested in alternatives really, now are you corco?
If Gibson keeps us losing £10m per season in the Championship for the next ten years, we will owe him nearly a quarter of a billion and yet be in the Championship for almost a quarter of a century.
You will still be saying “we are not worthy”.

 

[Corco65]

You are not interested in alternatives really, now are you corco?
If Gibson keeps us losing £10m per season in the Championship for the next ten years, we will owe him nearly a quarter of a billion and yet be in the Championship for almost a quarter of a century.
You will still be saying “we are not worthy”.

Not worthy of what, every supporter I expect wants their club to win and be the best, it's just not possible. People talk about our average being 19th and that's where we should be or we are under achieving. Well if we finish 19th every season in reality we would be back in the championship every season, which is where we are now. An average is just that, and will move one way or the other at various times.

I believe SG will never liquidate us and will one day if he has to walk away leaving the club in no debt, he might not of course but that's my view and could of course be wrong. If he does walk away and leave us in no debt, the fact is he will have achieved so much under his tenure and the only person who loses out is him.

If you work on the basis that he will call his loans in, then fair enough, you will be proved right and he has been a disaster.I don't know anything about SG other than what i hear here and elsewhere and he might be a Tory and a nasty piece of work and difficult to work with, but I believe he has put his money where it needed to be and is more of an honourable man and boro fan then you give him credit for. Time will tell which side of history SG will end up on, but I know where my money lies.

 

[Nano]

Nice list and I'm sure people can add many more, good luck in dream land in finding the person who ticks all your boxes.

How many did SG tick when he he invested over 200 million, won numerous promotions, got us to 3 domestic cup finals, 1 European final and built a new ground.

You make it sound like a lot but that's about the average revenue for a single season for a mid table premier league team. If he was better at his job his investments would have been dwarfed by the revenue we'd be earning.

I remember when I went to uni in the early 00s and having arguments with fans of "big clubs" like Newcastle and Everton who made fun of our single trophy in our history. I pointed out that Middlesbrough were arguably the most exciting team in all of football to support. We had seen all those things you mentioned in a short period of time, which covered basically my whole life. Since then though we have possibly been the dullest. We've had very little to get excited about. You can't keep talking about all the good things Gibson did as we get further and further away from them. I wouldn't let my mates count trophies their club had won before they were born and I wouldn't give Gibson's successes that happened in a completely different era as much weight as his more recent performance.

Gibson today is not the Gibson of the 90s. He used to be young, rich and ambitious. Now he's not really any of those things anymore.

 

[Muttley]

If he was better at his job his investments would have been dwarfed by the revenue we'd be earning.

Sorry that is just nonsense, I actually laughed at that. You can come and clean the snot off my monitor.

It is the assumption that all we have to do is "be better" or "show ambition" because no one else in this division or in the others is "showing ambition" or trying to "be better".

If someone else comes along and want to pump money into MFC, we'll talk then. I tried to stay out of this because it is just people making stuff up or stating the screamingly obvious that has nothing to do with anything (Gibson not as young as he used to be)

I wouldn't let my mates count trophies their club had won before they were born

Here's the thing. You will very likely never see us win another trophy in your life. Sorry to break it to you like this. That is the reality of supporting a club like Boro. All my life I've followed and supported this club. The only thing likely to stop me is it being bought out by someone like Red Bull or a blood stained oligarch and inevitably by my own mortality.

 

[Keanu_Reeves]

I wonder just how long an owner can live off the back of winning the league cup and reaching the UEFA Cup final - probably not that long if we go down, and those two glory moments happened the best part of 20 years ago now. As i said earlier the club has been on a largely downward spiral since the final whistle at Eindhoven, and that is all down to the chairman's constant poor decision making, and he can't blame anyone else because he's effectively the only one on the board. I've no doubt there would be takers interested in a sharehold in the club but it seems Steve Gibsons planet sized ego won't allow it.

 

[Muttley]

I've no doubt there would be takers interested in a sharehold in the club but it seems Steve Gibsons planet sized ego won't allow it.

Two made up things, one sentence.

 

[Keanu_Reeves]

Two made up things, one sentence.

Whatever - they're both accurate

 

[h_m_boro]

I would hate for Gibson to hold on too long, let the club drift to being a bit of a perrenial also ran. His first 20 years becoming tarnished.

1986-2010 - no-one can question his commitment, vision, drive to put Middlesbrough on the football map. Best period in the clubs history and I will be forever grateful to Gibson for this.

But since then .....been a bit sh*t hasn't it? Definitely not all his fault, football finances have gone absolutely mental and he has done a good job steadying Boro through some very tough times.

But where do we go? What are we doing? What is Gibsons position? Haven't heard a peep from him for years, not even at ST renewal time. Seems happy to sit back and let Bausor and Scott take all of the flak for the on and off pitch decisions.

Are fans generally happy? I dunno. Probably the majority are. But could things be run better - the commercial side, maximising revenue, realistic ticket prices, communication with the fans all seem to be getting constant flak from the fans.

Very well aware of "be careful what you wish for", be our luck we'd end up being owned by a shell company/consortium with links to North Korea. But could Gibson stop running the club like a little dictator, seemingly out of touch with the fans and Teesside public?

 

[Soutra]

Whatever - they're both accurate

In your opinion.