Ren Xuandong (24 replies)

I’ve read various posts on here over the last few days suggesting that all we have to do is sack Karanaka and replace him with someone else (usually Paul Cook) and things will be ok. Such thinking I believe is incredibly naive. Ren Dong is much more culpable than Karanka.

It’s fairly well trodden ground but worth repeating,

Ren has appointed 5 first team managers now. None of them has had a successful reign - the one manager that looked like he may succeed (Monk) Ren fell out with and sacked. Now the narrative there has become that this was all Monk’s fault and we could have lost Bellingham for nothing. But surely a capable CEO would have dealt with that situation before it reached crisis point? The constant turnover of managers means there is no consistency in the dressing room and a constant stream of payoffs which must be approaching double digit millions. How anybody can have confidence that one more spin of the wheel is likely to be successful is beyond me.

Secondly there is Ren’s involvement in the football side of things exemplified by his appearances in a track suit under Clotet and office at the training ground. The tracksuit may be back in the closet now but Karanaka regularly talks about his partnership with Ren. How involved is he in the transfer side of things? I wonder what the dressing room thinks of him? Again capable CEOs would appoint experts to handle this.

Thirdly we have the administrative side of things. As well as the FFP shenanigans of a couple of years back the club continues to have a turnover of senior admin staff and ,as Dan has reported at least one potential industrial tribunal plus various CCJs against the club. Is the admin side of the club a happy ship? And if not does this impact on the players?

Finally there is the club strategy which seems to change on a regular basis. Under Harry it was signing proven players, then it metamorphosed into signing younger players with a view to potentially developing and selling them on and blooding some of the youngsters. This season the transfer strategy seems much more random again and for the last couple of games we have it had one club developed player in the the match day squads of 20 - not one. On the playing side the strategy has also metamorphosed from playing attractive open football at the start of last season to appointing one of the most defensive managers around in Karanaka. Now we have the confusion on the future of the Academy and the advent of the so called Strategic committee - although there appears to be no published findings from this august body. A decent CEO and Board would develop appropriate strategies and stick to them - not change them every 5 minutes. The confused and changing strategies and styles of play can’t do anything for the club.

I see no evidence whatsoever that the club is going to prosper whilst Ren is still in charge.