Football News: What's the real reason for Wolverhampton Wanderers' progressive decline?

Many of us have had a pop at Wolverhampton Wanderers 'top table' casting Jeff Shi and Scott Sellars as a sort of Burke and Hare of the Premier League, (younger posters Google them, lol) but are they just doing the owners bidding.

Fosun are in a dire financial situation, $90Bn in debt which they are struggling to service and are selling off any asset with liquidity to meet the spiralling costs. Is there a larger elephant in the room that many of us may not want to contemplate?

Isn't Shi's reliance on Mendes over the years telling us that Fosun and its people don't have any football knowledge themselves?

Many are hoping Fosun will step in and sort out this mess, but currently they are more likely to expect those that created it, to clean it up? Most of the fans believe Fosun should introduce much more football savvy people, aka a DOF, into the club to help improve its prospects, it won't happen, they've got far worse problems to deal with. Any changes will have to be implemented and paid for by the club itself because they are viewed as a standalone business by the Group.

The fact that Wolves had to become a standalone cost centre with the Fosun Group is understandable from Fosun's point of view as a multinational business, but we all know football doesn't always fit that model. How many businesses, on a daily basis, risk losing their main assets simply due to injury, the effects of that magnified thanks to the thin squads required by that very cost sensitive model? I know FFP sits in there as well, but that standalone element must create a detachment as the Group relies on the local management to run things, the very people who the fans feel have been found lacking, of late.

Maybe there's another approach to all of this, especially in their current circumstances, which is for them to just accept they're not football people and should maybe consider selling the club to an institution to whom football is more of a core business that they understand.

This may seem a bit of a drastic knee jerk to some just because we lost a game 4-0 but we've lost 4-0 before and may do again. Or, was that just the full manifestation of something that has been brewing over the last two years or so and was finally brought into full focus by that result and the circumstances of that game? Discontent has been growing for a while but can any of us really see this situation changing anytime soon? Our owners financial situation suggests otherwise and I can't see Shi going anywhere whether Sellars gets thrown under the bus or not.

I don't mean any disrespect to Fosun, they've done a great job, but more recently Wolves seem to have become an afterthought, a backwater in their new reality. This may yet improve over time as the world recovers from the devastating financial effects of the pandemic. Yes, they've written off a £100M debt recently and yes, they've spent a similar amount in the last window, I don't know how, but are they now just blowing their money and our emotions out the window?

Am I suggesting that Fosun are bad owners, no, I'm simply asking are they the right type of owner? Does a football club fit Fosun and do Fosun fit a football club? Put another way, have Fosun taken the club as far as they can as unless they show a willingness to effect changes we will just continue to struggle?

This is not a irrational 'Fosun out' call but an attempt to consider all aspects of our situation. So, is this a reasonable topic for debate, an expression of self-entitled ungratefulness or just panic? Thoughts?

Written by LongmyndWolf October 26 2022 16:06:11