Originally Posted by
jloome
Dude, I find your posts excellent generally but you've sort of skipped by the important part here rather quickly. He let his old friend run our club into the ground for four years, from being one of the league's powerhouses to being one of the weakest rosters out there, in need of a total rebuild.
He didn't just fuck the dog, he tortured it, starved it, left it marooned alone on an island for years then came back reluctantly and shot it.
Hiring someone utterly incompetent and misreading their persona and capabilities that badly is disqualifying for a club president.
If one fucks up that badly, he gets very little time to set it right, because he deserves very little time.
If we haven't gotten stronger in two windows, I'll be very surprised as -- as you mentioned -- I'm sure Bradley made sure he had carte blanche, within budgetary constraints.
But Manning seemed awfully involved in Insigne, or made himself seem such. He can't claim on the one hand to be involved in signing our biggest player but then also have no responsibility for the others.
Beyond all that, there's the mere fact that he did not have the judgement --as even many on this board did, and we're all rank amateurs -- to look at the players Curtis was signing and say, "uhhh.... NO."
If he doesn't have even the most basic understanding of how this league has transitioned to a more competitive level, how can he possibly assess whether the people he picks to run it are doing a good job?
On evidence, he can't.
EDIT: I will, for the sake of balance, note that I believe he got it right with Bradley. It's just that Bradley is a patient builder. He's not going to sign stopgaps. If he couldn't get exactly the players on his list (or the backup options etc), he's not going to grab 'available' seat fillers. And unlike Curtis, he's not incredibly limited in his knowledge of options.
Let's see what happens in the summer. But Manning's redemption sort of depends on BB nailing it. Again, on evidence, he'll build a winning team.