The Roland Harris Column

Monday 20 May, 2002

In administration there is plenty of blame to go around

The Richmond Out brigade have got a lot of cheek.

They think that they are right now, they think that Geoffrey Richmond set course for administration and we all followed along. They say that he hascome clean on it. When GR said "It's all my fault." then they all nodded.

Funny how they had not agreed with a word the man said for the past two years but they all agreed with that. Ironic, dontcha think?

Wrong too.

This is not all Geoffrey Richmond's fault. Hell whena football club is in danger of going out of business one thing that you can guarantee is that there will be enough blame to go around.

Geoffrey Richmond has this to answer for. He sat looking at a balance sheet in the summer of 2000 and gave the orders to sign players like Benito Carbone and David Hopkin. He appointed a coach as manager then he appointed an uncaring Scot to replace him. Two bad moves on the trot. Blame yourself for that GR if you want, I'm suire that a load of City fans will join you in blaming you, but that is not the whole story and thats not all the blame.

Michael Wood pointed the fingure at the players, I'll agree with that. Our squad was knocking Charlton, Newcastle and Derby about 12 months ago. If you go from that to losing to Stockport home and away in a year you have to take a long look at yourself.

ITV Digital. This has been going on so long it's got boring to blame them but the fact is that two TV companies promised to pay the football league an ammount of money over a period of time and went back on that deal. They screwed us and if you are still watching Corronation Street then you are an idiot.

The FA. Yeah, those guys and their mates at The Premiership. This story is so old it's not funny but when people warned ten years ago that the Premiership would start to take more and more money and the lower leagues would have clubs going out of business they were not joking. This has not gone away in the past decade. Sure GR knew that this and ITV Digital could be the case but the fact he knew doe snot mean that they have not done it. The fat cats of football are trying to put us and our sort out of business. There is some blame right there.

Jim Jefferies, take a part of blame pie. You came from Scotland, got your mates in and when you were told that there was not any more money, and I think we have proved once and for all that there was not, you sodded off back. Your a coward and a quitter and I wish you nothing but ill for the rest of your career.

Chris Hutchings. "Anyone would jump at the chance to boss a Premiership club?" Yeah right. You saw an increased pay packet, you saw a cool job and you jumped at it. Never once did you stop to think "Hey- what if I cannot do this?" You don't get much blame, but you get some.

I'm reaching here but you get the point.

This is not all GR's fault anymore than the Premiership was entirly down to him.

Not that that will matter to some City fans, the anti-Richmond brigade. They never let the facts get in the way of a good moan. They will put all this onto GR and not learn a thing from this. They will carry on thinking that the only reason City have not won the European Cup is cause someone just wasn't trying hard enough. If only.

Personally I think that Valley Parade has seen the last of GR and I'm sorry about that. I think he has taken us places that most people never dreamed we could get to. If Geoffrey Richmond takes one thing from his time at Valley Parade it should be this:

People were crying blue murder because we finsihed in the bottom half of Division One. Before he arrived, that was the sort of level we were dreaming of.

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