Time to Go

So youre saying they should sell but no one wants to but and why would they?

I could have told you this 10 years ago.

I personally think its more about the "state of football in general" than blaming owners or owners advisors.

Truth is the premier league "spoilt" football and in actuality we are doing pretty well for a club our size and without a massive dose of luck or an Arab benefactor, we will stay where we are, and god forbid the Hemmings dump us, we will become a mid table league 1 club. (which isn't a bad thing, its football)

imo the amount of information available and social media platforms has created an expectation and disillusionment that didn't exist 10 years ago.

Follow your club as a fan, expect good and bad times, enjoy the journey and understand the success/premiership isnt always the destination..

Whilst the odds are stacked against progress given the way that football is funded I say given a vision and strategy the club can be taken forward by being better run.

Just look at what's gone on. for intance
- recruitment has swung from young Prem casr offs, to Irish League, to signing crocks in the hope they woudl come good. The wage bill has shot throught the roof. Whilst the squad had grown in numbers it has diminished in quality
- commercial income at £2m is pathetic. There is huge potential for growth by using the facilities better. How inept
can you get reducing ST prices, and increasing attendances, but failing to benefit from the shop and catering?
- we have had the worst managerial appointment in the club's history in Medal Winner...but Lowe's home record is now even worse.

Yes there is a case for supporting the continuation of Hemmings ownership as long as they are prepared to continue funding the club...but it is apparent that this is not the case. The wage bill has been reduced and, beyond next season, it appears that there will be no added money.

In the circumstance could anybody else do worse?

Buyers are obviously not queuing up but anyone looking at the current books, 'subsidy', commercial incvome, gate money, is bound to shie away.

And yes I do fault Ridsdale...he's failed at every football and commercial level...what he has done is to run the club on a continuous shprt-term basis trying to keep down the amount of money required off the Hemmings (debt was always an anathema to TH and none of his businesses were ever run owing /borrowing money). I accept that you could maintain that he has succeeeded by keeping the club in the Championship and the annual suibsidy to a level that the |Hemmings have been prepared to pay. However this appropach has left the club where it is now .....and that is a very unattrqactive proposiition to anyone looking to take over a Championship club.

I seriously feel that with the current squad and manager next season not only will gates tumble but we will be relegation favourites.

Hence I no longer fear the Hemmings going.

They need to come out and say 'yes, we want to keep the club in the long term and we will continue to make good the losses' and I would say, get rid of Ridsdale and let someone else have a go, or else making it quite clear that the club is available at a realistic price and , for this reason, they are making the club a more attracctive buying proposiiton by currently reducing required expenditure.

I've supported the club through thick and thin (more thin than anything else) for over 60 years (and at considerable expense) but last Saturday was a watershed for me...first time I've ever left before the end.

I'm tired of a club that is so amateurishly run and with no other ambition than to stay in the Champ and keep down costs. This isn't because I'm mad about the Prem...I'm not.....but because I recognise that in football if you stop trying to go forward you end up going backwards.

And yes I do fault Ridsdale...he's failed at every football and commercial level...what he has done is to run the club on a continuous shprt-term basis trying to keep down the amount of money required off the Hemmings (debt was always an anathema to TH and none of his businesses were ever run owing /borrowing money). I accept that you could maintain that he has succeeeded by keeping the club in the Championship and the annual suibsidy to a level that the |Hemmings have been prepared to pay. However this appropach has left the club where it is now .....and that is a very unattrqactive proposiition to anyone looking to take over a Championship club.


When you ran your multi million pound business you probably employed people to manage sections of the workload.
If they were losing you money left right and centre, ruining the quality of the product and then started to insult your customers, what would you do?

This is why I can't load all the blame on Ridsdale.

Why can't you just say that you would sack him, and if you don't you probably get what you deserve?

Sorry Broughton,....you are obviously right. I'm getting carried away it's so long since we did bring in any significant money from 'added value' . But it's still just the 4 (I don't know the 'etc' to which you refer) and this is over a period of what? 8/9 seasons? And what has happened to the money? OK a lot has gone into the wage bill but a lot has also been dissipated on useless punts and overpaid contracts.

This happens at all clubs of course but the problem at PNE is that instead of building a player infrastructure to take the club forward (or even maintain the current status) the lack of commitment/success in both development and recruitment has left the club reliant on the Hemmings family income to stay where it is.

Take that away and what have you got?

A club that is going backwards, that's what.

And it isn't a matter of a few wins and everything will be rosy...because the failures (Ridsdale/Hemmings) to provide a foundation for developing players and develop successful recruitment practices leaves the club in the long-term lurch when the Hemmings money is no longer there to shore up such deficiencies.

And, as I say, it all boils down to a lack of strategic management and a focus on keeping down the annual financial input....not on longer term thinking and investment in growth (youth. commercial, recruitment) to reduce dependency.

The club desperately needs to be run better.

...and the rubbish that is being served up oldun is a direct consequence of the failures I've highlighted.....take away, or , as now, reduce the Hemmings £input, and there's been a colossal failure since the takeover to develop sustainable player recruitment and development programmes. We've been allowed to fall way behind other clubs in this regard because of the short-termism and focus on the annual balance sheet. The irony is that the wage bill has been allowed to spiral out of control because in order to stay where we are players have had to be recruited to fill positions and expensive (unaffordable) contracts have been handed because of the inability to develop our own players.

To some extent Broughton is right because when you have the opium of performances and results people do forget about the club infrastructure.

What's different now is that not only do we have a manager who hasn't a clue as to how to get results at Deepdale the
financial input from the Hemmings is being reduced so that without the infrastructure development having taken place described above, the club will now struggle to even maintain its current position.

My main gripe with the Hemmings is employing Ridsdale for so long and taking his word as gospel despite is obvious failures. Back the right team with a structure in place and we could still go places. Look at Bournemouth (yes they played a risky game) Brighton, Fulham, Brentford, Burnley etc. look at Luton now, how I would love to be in their position.

There’s a director of football earnings praise up in Scotland for his recruitment, goes by the name of Joe Savage, I wonder where Hearts picked him up from 🤔 bit of positivity picking up an analysis from Barnsley who is a Preston fan and he gets shunted into a new role. Bring in a new recruitment team that worked with our current manager in his successful period at Plymouth. I don’t see much of their input while Plymouth bring in a new recruitment team who again seem to be thriving. Maybe it has something to do with that final piece of the jigsaw seeing things over the line.

Why on earth has the injured Evans been given a new contract?
Surely you would wait until the end of the season before offering him one as there's now no incentive for him to earn one via his performances.

Trevor Hemmings gave Ridsdale the benefit of the doubt some ten years ago and gave him the job.

Since Trevor's sad demise his family have kept him in the job.

My conclusion, Ridsdale was/is doing exactly what the Hemmings family require of him and as such the buck stops with them.

Am I missing something?

A new owner would have to be prepared to subsidise the club, at least to start with and possibly to some extent anyway.

The amount of subsidising could be cut considerably by the means you have pointed out, but it would take a bit of financial input to start with.

This is no way to run a football club that wants to go forward....and I am not necessarily talking about the Prem ....but one of standing on its own feet, producing its own players, developing its own commercial income streams, growing the club on and off the pitch.

This bit is most important.

We are just going through the motions as a football club, trying to tread water while cutting costs, the summer window showed this. We got so many big earners off the books yet left ourselves 2 players short at the end of the window because of the budget.

This is only going to go one way and that is relegation unless somebody gets a grip of the running of the club from back to front. Somebody needs to come in and address the commercial aspects of the club and the ability to recruit to sell or produce our own players.

On one hand there is talk of wanting to upgrade the youth set up but on the other it’s brought up about needing an indoor pitch, who is going to pay for this etc. I’m sorry Craig but the family are the owners so that is for you to work out. Ingol had one in the plans 🙄 this was always the problem with Euxton. I don’t think springfields can get planning permission either. Why have we never done something with Uclan sports arena? There’s even an indoor set up at tulketh, that was built when I was still at school and I left in 2003. I see Peterborough have recently built an indoor facility and Fleetwood (who managed to take our head of youth recruitment) are about to build one. Meanwhile we’re getting hammered 4-1 off Rochdales youth team.

I think we’ve been banking on the sale of Riis to help finances and in the end we loose out on that income and then have to sign another forward on our minimal budget. I wouldn’t be surprised with that being the end of business. I felt sorry for Cannon as soon as I saw the line up on Saturday.

I don’t really get the whole upheaval of the Ben Whiteman rumour, if we can’t agree a deal on a contract extension then now is the time to sell and erm reinvest 🙈

Another year, another 15.5m loss. Poor commercial and player sale income. Two areas we need to sort out as the millions keep rising that the Hemmings have to put in.

This is up to June 22 I think so the contracts off the wage bill this summer probably won’t be showing.

Frightening way to run a business.

If the man with the terrible character was pulling up trees in business areas then you could understand said person staying in his job but put the 2 together, how has he lasted 13 years in the role and now on the payroll of the club.