The Gaouchan Lai era

[Johnny akes]

He is/was indifferent to the fate of the club and would willingly have stripped it to the bone if he had been able to. No one made him pay an absurdly high price for the club, that was all down to him/his consortium. How anyone, especially an Albion fan, can feel sympathy for him is utterly bewildering.

[Fulham Fallout]

As much as it was a disaster, they lost a fortune of their own money, they made bad football decisions and that can and will happen to lots of clubs. When people say they robbed the club- did they really or did they try and get as much money back as possible. They paid far too much, got stopped by the their own government and their other businesses turned to shit. An all round mess.

You can't steal what is yours!

You can if you don’t own all of the assets.  The minority share holders were impacted as a result as their value of their shares would fall as a result of the net assets dropping in value. Not that they can easily sell them mind

[Mullers]

He and subsequently we became the victims of circumstance with the CCP pulled investment in foreign football just as he paid top dollar for us!!…
No successful businessman enjoys losing money!!!…

The CCP are a disgusting, reprehensible regime. The fact that they will no longer be a stakeholder in our football club is incredibly important.

As for Lai, I’ve no sympathy for him. Good riddance. His only ‘success’ at the club, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, is that he didn’t veto Corberan’s appointment.

[Fulham Fallout]

He personally did nothing for this club.

Signing the paperwork to sell the club? 

He could have refused to sell up and continued to take money out of the accounts. 

He was a shit owner, and I really don't want to sound like I'm saying otherwise, but he was a victim of circumstance. I'm glad he's gone, but I really don't think he's the evil character many paint him to be.

Not once MSD were involved.

[Pragmatist]

He personally did nothing for this club.

Signing the paperwork to sell the club? 

He could have refused to sell up and continued to take money out of the accounts. 

He was a shit owner, and I really don't want to sound like I'm saying otherwise, but he was a victim of circumstance. I'm glad he's gone, but I really don't think he's the evil character many paint him to be.

Thats just it.  He simply couldn’t continue to take money out of the club, at least not legally.  

I agree that there’s a high degree of victim of circumstances.

[Peachy]

He and subsequently we became the victims of circumstance with the CCP pulled investment in foreign football just as he paid top dollar for us!!…
No successful businessman enjoys losing money!!!…

The second CCP stopped funding, which was very early on in his tenure, he should have looked for a buyer whilst we were a Prem side. Ok he might have taken a small loss but it would have been the sensible play.

The reason I have no sympathy for Lai is he fucking hid. He hid from the problems and he abandoned us basically. He didn't man up and try and find any solutions. He was in China scrambling around and picking off our carcass to fund his other failing business ventures.

Good riddance to the bloke and I hope he is getting some rough treatment from his investors.

[HugeHons]

He and subsequently we became the victims of circumstance with the CCP pulled investment in foreign football just as he paid top dollar for us!!…
No successful businessman enjoys losing money!!!…

The CCP are a disgusting, reprehensible regime. The fact that they will no longer be a stakeholder in our football club is incredibly important.

As for Lai, I’ve no sympathy for him. Good riddance. His only ‘success’ at the club, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, is that he didn’t veto Corberan’s appointment.

This

[Shabby Russian]

My view is that it is for the best that Lai and Co are moving on.

But I don't believe they are responsible for the decline in the football side of the club, and frankly that's all I care about.

They took control at a time when decline had set in, albeit we didn't know it. There was a core of good quality premiership players, sadly they were either already in decline or close to decline. With no prospect of receiving decent transfer fees ,we were left with the task of replacing these players with inadequate resources.

Where we spent reasonable amounts of money on players, it wasn't spent wisely.
The 40 to 45m spent on Burke, Diangana and Grant has shown very little return. Not sure any club of our financial standing could withstand such a financial hit.

Ultimately Lai has to take responsibility and the financial hit, for poor football related appointments. But can we be surprised that he made those mistakes. Even more attentive owners like Coates at Stoke screw up on appointing senior staff.

He has left us with a good manager, and a reasonable squad if players, given our financial straits. And most importantly now we have new leadership,, hopefully a financial clean slate.

[SuperBob2002]

My view is that it is for the best that Lai and Co are moving on.

But I don't believe they are responsible for the decline in the football side of the club, and frankly that's all I care about.

They took control at a time when decline had set in, albeit we didn't know it. There was a core of good quality premiership players, sadly they were either already in decline or close to decline. With no prospect of receiving decent transfer fees ,we were left with the task of replacing these players with inadequate resources.

Where we spent reasonable amounts of money on players, it wasn't spent wisely.
The 40 to 45m spent on Burke, Diangana and Grant has shown very little return. Not sure any club of our financial standing could withstand such a financial hit.

Ultimately Lai has to take responsibility and the financial hit, for poor football related appointments. But can we be surprised that he made those mistakes. Even more attentive owners like Coates at Stoke screw up on appointing senior staff.

He has left us with a good manager, and a reasonable squad if players, given our financial straits. And most importantly now we have new leadership,,  hopefully a financial clean slate.

I agree with a lot of this, but get your tin hat ready. That's far too reasonable for some on here and you'll get a lot of criticism.

[Gzbaggy]

Good bit of concise analysis Shabby Russian

I think one of the problems has been we have never replaced Ashworth with someone who
worked in the same way. I am sure a lot of the old players we have signed would not have
been signed if he had been here.

Be interesting to see how the new owner gets on. Remember owners of American sports teams (franchises as
they call them) expect to make money out of them.