You've known me a long time on here Stu - pretty disappointed you'd accuse me of any agenda when all I'm doing is trying to widen the way we look at comparative eras and achievements. I'm not saying the Moores era is a complete failure, but those comparing pure trophy hauls without looking at the landscape, what was achievable etc.
Don't accuse me of an agenda ever again. Poor form mate.
I'm not one who is deriding what fsg have done, off the field you have to say they have done some fantastic things, their decisions that relate to on the field they have made mistakes that they are learning on the job I terms of football.
But I dont really accept they have done more for the club than Moores ever did.
That's simply a massive statement in isolation
For one it's too hard to compare, the world and football has changed far too much from the early 90s to when fsg took over to now.
You could say that Moores missed a trick in terms of modernising us in the early 90s, but football wasn't what it was now, then.. and no one really saw where it was going, if anyone did ironically it would have been Rick Parry who worked on the formation of the premier league.
Man Utd were the only ones and even theirs was against the back drop of luck. They won the league at perfect time, now you could say that wasn't luck but in terms of the perfect storm it was.
Utd were a struggling force in the 80s and had some disastrous stuff around them at that point, a churn of managers getting sacked, a stadium they couldnt sell out, the Micheal Knighton stuff.. But they were lucky to the extent that they had space around old Trafford to build without any opposition or compulsory purchase needed. They didn't know that they would do that and win their first league in 25 years just as football was becoming awash with cash.. It was a perfect storm that they just on and ran with, and to be fair to them they ran with it brilliantly.
We were the biggest club at that point, we used to buy the pick of who we wanted because we were the best and we generated money to keep us there.. We didn't really need to change the world like Utd did to even attempt to catch us (which is what they were doing).. So yes maybe things could have been done differently but had the status quo stayed the same within the game we probably wouldn't have needed to.
No one else saw the change in football coming. Chelsea and city have been falsely blown up by oil money. Even Arsenal only reacted after the event, they did t start building the new stadium until 2000 and moved in 2006. That's not premepting the curve it's reactive to it.
It's impossible to compare the two times. Fsg knew what football business was by the time they brought the club so knew what needed doing. They have done some great stuff of the field to drag us towards being able to compete in modern day football but when Moores was heŕe football wasn't the modern day corporate game we know now. In fact if you remember he sold becuase he knew he couldn't take us where we needed to be in that modern day game.
Obviously we didn't win the league under him but to an extent and above most clubs in the country he kept the winning culture of the club alive and tried to pass it on when he knew football has changed too much for him to be able to compete on a monetary level.
Both have their merits but fsg have still got a way to go in my opinion to be classed as great owners. And as well as turning the ship off the field they need to provide a winning culture on it again.
