gentlebison72 said:If you guys elect that priest Grubišić as the next Mayor of Miami, he’s gonna get absolutely wrecked by the first, second, and third mafia ring in town.
By the way—you NFL Ultras really need to sit down and figure out your next move, because there's some truth in what that Kerumov lookalike was saying. That loan would just be delaying the inevitable collapse of Liverpool FC. Unless something fundamentally changes in how the club is run, you're going to find yourselves right back in this same mess in six months or a year. Right now, results are an afterthought—it's hard to win anything in this swamp anyway. Building a solid foundation and slashing costs is the only thing that actually matters.
Well, that's finally happening. Two years ago, the budget was north of $100 million. As far as I can tell, it's already dropped below $70 million, and the new board's goal is to squeeze the 2013 budget down to a much more realistic $50-$60 million.
The new management isn't the issue. The issue is the mountain of inherited debt we'll have to deal with over the next few years—and the real headache is those spineless losers on the City Council who rebelled against providing a guarantee for Liverpool FC. I mean, they aren't even handing over cash, just a freaking guarantee. And in exchange, Liverpool FC promises that if that guarantee is ever called, 30% of future revenue goes to the city. So the city isn't actually giving anything, despite how many people try to frame it that way; they're just acting as the primary guarantor. Not to mention, this rebellion is happening just as we're finally seeing some actual progress at the club. None of these idiots spoke up during the last 20 years while the club was being systematically gutted.
The next two or three years are going to be the toughest in the club's history, but I'm convinced that if we just run things normally, we can pull ourselves out of this gutter.
And here's a snippet from the recent Brbićen interview:
Are you satisfied with your performance so far?
- I thought I’d be able to focus more on the organizational side and long-term strategy, but most of these 72 days have been spent putting out fires—dealing with foreclosures, frozen accounts... The situation I walked into was significantly worse than I anticipated.
Even so, you haven't abandoned the goal of restructuring the club for the long term?
- We’ve prepared a new staffing structure that needs the Board of Directors to approve, and we’ve posted openings for three leadership roles... With this new setup, we're ditching the old "work community" model because it's totally outdated. We're splitting the club into four sectors: Sports (the most important), Commercial (marketing and sales), Finance, and Logistics.
Some might say you're only interested in the "executive suite" this season. In other words, the organization. But what about the "ground floor"—the sports side, the squad itself?
- I care about all levels. It's about the club's structure and building a healthy foundation. As for the ground floor, my very first move was focused on the sports side; I appointed a Sporting Director a month and a half ago—the key person for making the athletic side work. From what I can see, Sergije Krešić is working hard and preparing things that will be made public soon.
