Alhagi Touray sisay

Quoted from Poojah

Nope. Jolley was sacked on the 18th November and Holloway appointed some 43 days later on NYE. If Holloway was interested for football reasons, why did it take nearly a month and a half for contact to be made and a deal reached?

Why on earth would Holloway, a multi-millionaire who has twice won promotion to the Premier League, based in Bristol, want to join Grimsby Town, a club 230 miles away that had spent its entire time back in League Two stagnating in the bottom third of the division, and with a playing budget befitting such a lowly status? It doesn’t make sense, does it? It can’t have been due to whatever measly salary we’d have been paying him, can it?

So what could it have been then? Let’s retrace our steps a moment. What was Fenty’s greatest motivation? He wanted his legacy, a new stadium delivered by him with his statue outside. Except every time he tried, he’d failed. For all the bluster, he had no idea how to finance the construction of a new ground.

And then one day, Fenty’s prayers were answered. Someone knocks on his door, claiming to hold all the financial keys required to unlock the rising of the Fentydome from the soil. There was just one problem; that person was Alex May, director of Tram Sports; a serially convicted and repeatedly jailed fraudster. Notts County fans, no virgins to dodgy takeovers themselves, had hounded him out of town in July 2019, only a few months earlier. And it wouldn’t wash with Town fans either. Or would it?

If you’re John Fenty, who even in the winter of 2019, was not doing too well in the approval ratings amongst Town fans, how do you convince the fan base that accepting significant investment from a consortium led by such a tremendously dodgy character is in the best interests of the club. Answer; you don’t - you get someone else to do it for you. And who better to do it than celebrity manager and professional sweet talker Ian Scott Holloway?

So Holloway arrives that fateful New Year’s Eve to quite the fanfare, with promises of joining the board, investing his own hard-earned cash and with the proclamation that “I’ve got a funny feeling you’re going to get that new stadium”. What could have given him that feeling?

So there’s the plan. He lands at Blundell Park on a massive charm offensive. An effective one too, if truth be told. He’s given budget to bring in new, better players that seemingly hadn’t been there for Jolley in the summer. Form picks up, Holloway is seen fraternising with all kinds of local groups and is hailed as the new messiah. Town fans hanging on his every word. Christ, even Fenty was getting his “credit where it’s due”, which tells you something about the mood-changing power of Holloway’s appointment.

Everything was perfect. Set-up beautifully so that when news broke of our unscrupulous suitors, Holloway was poised and ready to bat any fears away and dismiss concerns as being out of touch. “Look, I know football, I’ve worked for good owners and bad owners. I know what I’m talking about, and these guys are the real deal. The future of this club has never looked better”, he’d say, going off on a massive tangent half way through.

But then, somewhat ironically, just as the ink had been drying on his contract that cold December evening when he first rocked up to BP, someone was shagging a pangolin in downtown Wuhan. As butterfly effects go, this one was pretty big. The world suddenly shuts down in the biggest health and economic crisis in a century and all of a sudden May hasn’t got access to the finances needed to get his ‘investment’ over the line. At least not for now.

So when the football world finally begins to awake from its Covid hibernation, we’ve got a markedly different Holloway. Pre-season training starts late, we have only one pre-season friendly and his signings are lazy and for the most part absolutely hopeless. He seems confused and disinterested. His reason for being here, ergo a tidy payday for his crucial part in getting the May deal over the line, is effectively null and void.

And yet he’s stuck here. He has no good reason to hand his card in, and so he spends the next five months going through the motions, with complete disdain for the fans he claimed brought him here in the first place. He doesn’t want to be here, and it begins to show. The mask starts to slip.

Then it transpires that his investment of £100k to join the board was never made. In typical fashion, he brushes any suspicions aside. “I’ll be investing the money when my house in Bristol is sold”, he says, as if a man of his wealth doesn’t have access to £100k in liquid cash. Except his house was never up for sale. That money was only going in via his cut from the May deal.

And just as it appeared the May deal might be back on, it was off again. The May news breaks unofficially, with neither Holloway or Fenty (in particular) holding enough good will to suppress the ill feeling from the fans. The deal is dead, along with Fenty’s tenure at the club. Any chance of Holloway’s payday has gone up in thin air, and so he concocts a story about not being able to work with the new owners as they have attempted to make “inappropriate contact” with him, and makes his exit at the first opportunity.

Fúcking good job we had such fantastic new owners waiting in the wings, else that series of events could have all but killed the club. Count your blessings and never forget.

Quoted from forza ivano

IMHO Holloway was a changed man due to Covid
It's difficult to be a disinterested observer, given how he left us, but if you can take a step back then i believe you can see there were 2 Holloways and Covid completely fecked him mentally.
We were in  a mess when he joined us, but within 6 weeks he'd signed 4 good players and got us organised and playing well, backed by passionate support.
Those performances ,and the support, at Mansfield,Bradford and Orient were awe inspiring , amongst the best away days I've ever had with Town.
The contrast with season 20-21 is day and night , and i put that down to his mental state.I defy to think that anyone could've gone from such a level of competency to total incompetency in less than 6 month without what happened to him during lockdown, I can't believe that such an experienced manager, in the right state of mind, could've presided over such a shiite show

Quoted from Poojah

Nope. Jolley was sacked on the 18th November and Holloway appointed some 43 days later on NYE. If Holloway was interested for football reasons, why did it take nearly a month and a half for contact to be made and a deal reached?

Why on earth would Holloway, a multi-millionaire who has twice won promotion to the Premier League, based in Bristol, want to join Grimsby Town, a club 230 miles away that had spent its entire time back in League Two stagnating in the bottom third of the division, and with a playing budget befitting such a lowly status? It doesn’t make sense, does it? It can’t have been due to whatever measly salary we’d have been paying him, can it?

So what could it have been then? Let’s retrace our steps a moment. What was Fenty’s greatest motivation? He wanted his legacy, a new stadium delivered by him with his statue outside. Except every time he tried, he’d failed. For all the bluster, he had no idea how to finance the construction of a new ground.

And then one day, Fenty’s prayers are answered. Someone knocks on his door, claiming to hold all the financial keys required to unlock the rising of the Fentydome from the soil. There was just one problem; that person was Alex May, director of Tram Sports; a serially convicted and repeatedly jailed fraudster. Notts County fans, no virgins to dodgy takeovers themselves, had hounded him out of town in July 2019, only a few months earlier. And it wouldn’t wash with Town fans either. Or would it?

If you’re John Fenty, who even in the winter of 2019, was not doing too well in the approval ratings amongst Town fans, how do you convince the fan base that accepting significant investment from a consortium led by such a tremendously dodgy character is in the best interests of the club. Answer; you don’t - you get someone else to do it for you. And who better to do it than celebrity manager and professional sweet talker Ian Scott Holloway?

So Holloway arrives that fateful New Year’s Eve to quite the fanfare, with promises of joining the board, investing his own hard-earned cash and with the proclamation that “I’ve got a funny feeling you’re going to get that new stadium”. What could have given him that feeling?

So there’s the plan. He lands at Blundell Park on a massive charm offensive. An effective one too, if truth be told. He’s given budget to bring in new, better players that seemingly hadn’t been there for Jolley in the summer. Form picks up, Holloway is seen fraternising with all kinds of local groups and is hailed as the new messiah. Town fans hanging on his every word. Christ, even Fenty was getting his “credit where it’s due”, which tells you something about the mood-changing power of Holloway’s appointment.

Everything was perfect. Set-up beautifully so that when news broke of our unscrupulous suitors, Holloway was poised and ready to bat any fears away and dismiss concerns as being out of touch. “Look, I know football, I’ve worked for good owners and bad owners. I know what I’m talking about, and these guys are the real deal. The future of this club has never looked better”, he’d say, going off on a massive tangent half way through.

But then, somewhat ironically, just as the ink had been drying on his contract that cold December evening when he first rocked up to BP, someone was shagging a pangolin in downtown Wuhan. As butterfly effects go, this one was pretty big. The world suddenly shuts down in the biggest health and economic crisis in a century and all of a sudden May hasn’t got access to the finances needed to get his ‘investment’ over the line. At least not for now.

So when the football world finally begins to awake from its Covid hibernation, we’ve got a markedly different Holloway. Pre-season training starts late, we have only one pre-season friendly and his signings are lazy and for the most part absolutely hopeless. He seems confused and disinterested. His reason for being here, ergo a tidy payday for his crucial part in getting the May deal over the line, is effectively null and void.

And yet he’s stuck here. He has no good reason to hand his card in, and so he spends the next five months going through the motions, with complete disdain for the fans he claimed brought him here in the first place. He doesn’t want to be here, and it begins to show. The mask starts to slip.

Then it transpires that his investment of £100k to join the board was never made. In typical fashion, he brushes any suspicions aside. “I’ll be investing the money when my house in Bristol is sold”, he says, as if a man of his wealth doesn’t have access to £100k in liquid cash. Except his house was never up for sale. That money was only going in via his cut from the May deal.

And just as it appeared the May deal might be back on, it was off again. The May news breaks unofficially, with neither Holloway or Fenty (in particular) holding enough good will to suppress the ill feeling from the fans. The deal is dead, along with Fenty’s tenure at the club. Any chance of Holloway’s payday has gone up in thin air, and so he concocts a story about not being able to work with the new owners as they have attempted to make “inappropriate contact” with him, and makes his exit at the first opportunity.

Fúcking good job we had such fantastic new owners waiting in the wings, else that series of events could have all but killed the club. Count your blessings and never forget.

Quoted from Hagrid

See this is a complete myth about Holloway

Mansfield we played well backs to the wall ground a 1-0
Orient and bradford were just standard 1-1 draws?
We were excrement away at scunny, i remember us playing plymouth and swindon, possibly northampton too, all played us off the park. This idea that Holloway would have had us challenging if not for covid is all a load of excrement

Quoted from forza ivano

i didn't say that Holloway would've had us challenging. Jolley was sacked with us in deep trouble. Limbrick ,at best, steadied the ship . Holloway , pre covid, pulled us way from relegation. Mansfield we were down to 10 men early on, Bradford were going for promotion, and if i remember correctly orient were lucky to get a draw. Glennon, Clark, Grandin and Benson were all bloody good signings, plus he got Whitehouse and Clifton playing well.

All I'm saying is to try and take a step back - the 2 '3 month seasons' he was involved with were such polar opposites that it's difficult to think of any other rationale for the change

Quoted from forza ivano

i didn't say that Holloway would've had us challenging. Jolley was sacked with us in deep trouble. Limbrick ,at best, steadied the ship . Holloway , pre covid, pulled us way from relegation. Mansfield we were down to 10 men early on, Bradford were going for promotion, and if i remember correctly orient were lucky to get a draw. Glennon, Clark, Grandin and Benson were all bloody good signings, plus he got Whitehouse and Clifton playing well.

All I'm saying is to try and take a step back - the 2 '3 month seasons' he was involved with were such polar opposites that it's difficult to think of any other rationale for the change

Quoted from Hagrid

See this is a complete myth about Holloway

Mansfield we played well backs to the wall ground a 1-0
Orient and bradford were just standard 1-1 draws?
We were excrement away at scunny, i remember us playing plymouth and swindon, possibly northampton too, all played us off the park. This idea that Holloway would have had us challenging if not for covid is all a load of excrement