Tony Khan interview...

[Twig]

In my opinion, there is no way The Rational Fan is an account controlled by Tony Khan's marketing team. I'm no marketing man, but even I can see the best way to get a message across is to start a topic - get your headline message on the General Discussion page and ensure that everyone opening the topic reads your view and reads it first. In two-and-a-half-years on this forum, The Rational Fan has made more than 4000 posts. Yet only 34 of these have been to start a topic.

Moreover, if I were running an account to defend/promote Tony Khan on here, I would make sure I was online at the times when the forum is at it's busiest (which I presume is in the evening on weekdays).  No good allowing those anti-Tony Khan threads to go unchallenged for too many hours. And yet The Rational Fan makes three-quarters of his posts between midnight and midday, and hardly any at all between the hours of 4p.m. and 9p.m.

The evidence suggests that The Rational Fan is simply someone who holds a minority view in respect of Tony Khan and nothing more. Those who are trying to portray it differently are barking up the wrong tree.

The Tree the good and the great were barking up happened to have the Rational Fan sitting on one of its branches and therefore he has been found guilty as charged, and the tree standing nearest to that tree in the forest said to that tree, "you are the son of a BiRCH ", and the other tree replied " you are the son of a BEECH".

Are you TWIG in disguise?

The Twig is here and he's calling for a root and branch review of our management structure.

[ALG01]

Arthur, I suspect the Rational Fan is exactly what you say but wow, I am 100% impressed you took the trouble to analyse that 3/4 of his posts, 4,000 of them, were between 4 pm and 9pm.  Is that a guesstimation or is there a way to track that data? I love numbers and was just wondering.

My stating that three-quarters of TRF's posts have been between midnight and midday was an estimate based on looking at a bar chart; I didn't check each of his 4000 posts individually, that's for sure.

I can tell you, ALG0, that you average two-and-a-half posts each day; have started 146 topics; are most likely to post between midday and 2 p.m. and have never posted between 2 and 7 in the morning. And I found out all this simply by clicking on your moniker next to your post two above this one and then clicking on 'Show Stats' on the page it took me to. Enjoy!

Thank you for that bit of info. I wish I had known before.

I am now worried about the times I do post at!

[The Rational Fan]

Well I do understand the words and admire your outlook but I do have to say that I think you are absolutely wrong. I especially do not think
a) he has any long term plan worthy of the name

We need to get promoted from the championship within two years. The long-term squad contract until that point is Rodak; Tete, Odoi, Hector, Tosin, Mawson, Kongolo, Robinson, Bryan; Reed, Anguissa, Cairney, Onamah; Knockaert, Kamara, Mitro, Reid, and Cav. That is a decent long-term squad for the championship.

His long-term plan was to build a solid championship side and loaning some premier league players until we stay up at least one season.

b) the idea only a fool would buy in Jan 2021 is absolutely incredible. he would have save the season getting two forwards of note. we were playing very well, not letting in goals and just needed forwards to complete the jigsaw. failing to spend guaranteed relegation.

Getting relegated isn't bad as long as a team is in a position that they can recover. We could have bought Josh King in Jan 2021, but only at the cost of next season's squad.

c) yo yo to success? That is as nonsensical. We are in the prem, we couold have survived. Getting relegated is totally ridiculous.

Nothing ridiculous about being relegated, it just means you are not one of the best 17 teams in England.

d) he hasn't managed to get a squad together yet worthy of the name, so what makes you think he will do it now.

Tony Khan has assembled the 18th Best Squad in the Premier League. If he improves us over the two seasons, we will have the 17th best squad in the premier league. I consider that total success.

e) I suspect you are the only person that thinks babel was a bad move. He was the highlit of the last campaign and single-handed nearly dragged us back into contention.

Babel was brilliant as a player, but even if he got a goal or assist every game he played, we still would have only got 30 points. The money spent on Ryan Babel could have been spent in the championship instead and if it gained us 3 points we would have got automatic promotion, giving FFC and Mitro more rest time between seasons.

Every pound saved now helps next season? You are not serious are you.

This is simply how FFP works, we must balance the books over three seasons. Technically, it would be more correct to say, every pound saved this season is one we can spend on promotion or the next relegation battle.

Mr rational, ... but one thing is sure, you have never run any sort of business because the logic you have suggested is perverse and runs counter to any logic.

I have run my own business for 22 years so it's nothing to do with football but on this forum "the ideas" of the football manager, businessman, and street sweeper measured according to the quality of the ideas, rather than the record of the person saying it.

If TK went onto dragon's den with that financial plan, they would laugh him out of the programme.

Maybe, but if you say "I want to buy Fulham Football Club, choose a football expert, let him run invest £200m and we will collect the profits", then you will be laughed at of the room fastest than Tony Khan because they will say "thousands of people have invested in football clubs and none have made a profit that don't have a history".

The biggest challenge for anyone wanting to get funding for a football club is answering 'what is going to be done differently to before?". If everyone before you lost money and you cannot explain an improvement, then bye-bye.

Investment bankers have told me, that the last thing investor in football clubs want is the same ideas repeated. So  Tony Khan wisely convinces his father that he will be the first DOF to do things differently using stats and will make money by better decisions. It's probably bullpoo, but its better than the truth "Fulham cannot make money".