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2 hours ago, north stander said:

1.

When Archie was finally binned, we were in 8th, 5 pts ahead of 9th and 6 pts ahead of 10th, and just 2 pts off of 4th.

Can anyone raise their hand and honestly say that they envisaged us to be, approaching 5 months later in March, sitting in 10th? - and 11 pts off 4th, and more points behind the league leaders than we have amassed in total?

 

2.

Especially after our chairman stated her pick to replace AA was the outstanding choice and that she was "blown away by Gary's interview preparation" and that "he had done an analysis of each player, identified a training schedule to deal with the fitness levels and pulled together a vision of how to get Thistle playing well enough to secure promotion,"

 

On these 2 points alone it is clear to everyone that the appointment of GC has been an abject and unmitigated disaster and failure, and both the chair and manager should be nowhere near Firhill by 1st June, no matter what position we finish in come 4.50pm on 4th May.

Factual, clear and pretty damning. The appointment of GC has not delivered on the purpose of him being appointed. 

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The root of the problem is Jacqui Low.  She is the Weirs' placewoman, and is in complete control of the Club in the absence of any direct involvement by the Weirs.  It is almost certainly Low that is behind the spin in every Club statement that increasingly are completely detached from reality.  She alone is responsible for hiring Caldwell and for his continued presence at the Club.  She is controlling the main fans trust through Club appointed trustees, when the two fans' trusts (who together own 26% of the shares) should be having a meaningful say in Club decisions at this critical time. 

Caldwell has duped Low, whose knowledge about football is less than the square root of bugger all.  The fact that Low appointed Caldwell despite others' opposition almost certainly means that she will be reluctant to admit her mistake, and that means Caldwell might be here longer than is healthy for the Club.

If the worst happens and we are relegated, then it is hard to see how the training ground could be justified given more pressing calls on any support the Weirs' will hopefully continue to provide.   The panic hiring of elderly players by Caldwell in January also puts a question mark on the relevance of the Academy.  Who will benefit from these young players if short termism continues to determine recruitment and team selection at the Club?

A failure to be promoted back into the Championship in 2020 would leave the Club with the huge albatross of a 10,000 seat stadium round its neck, with no one to fill it and no funds to pay for it.  There is however the tantalising option of selling it and moving to a new small stadium somewhere north of Glasgow..

On the 20th January, I emailed Pauline Graham who is chair of the main fans trust and asked how many shares each of the PTFC directors held, and what were the impediments to a fans' trust representative getting a seat on the Board.  I have yet to receive a reply. 

 

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1 hour ago, eljaggo said:

The root of the problem is Jacqui Low.  She is the Weirs' placewoman, and is in complete control of the Club in the absence of any direct involvement by the Weirs.  It is almost certainly Low that is behind the spin in every Club statement that increasingly are completely detached from reality.  She alone is responsible for hiring Caldwell and for his continued presence at the Club.  She is controlling the main fans trust through Club appointed trustees, when the two fans' trusts (who together own 26% of the shares) should be having a meaningful say in Club decisions at this critical time. 

Caldwell has duped Low, whose knowledge about football is less than the square root of bugger all.  The fact that Low appointed Caldwell despite others' opposition almost certainly means that she will be reluctant to admit her mistake, and that means Caldwell might be here longer than is healthy for the Club.

If the worst happens and we are relegated, then it is hard to see how the training ground could be justified given more pressing calls on any support the Weirs' will hopefully continue to provide.   The panic hiring of elderly players by Caldwell in January also puts a question mark on the relevance of the Academy.  Who will benefit from these young players if short termism continues to determine recruitment and team selection at the Club?

A failure to be promoted back into the Championship in 2020 would leave the Club with the huge albatross of a 10,000 seat stadium round its neck, with no one to fill it and no funds to pay for it.  There is however the tantalising option of selling it and moving to a new small stadium somewhere north of Glasgow..

On the 20th January, I emailed Pauline Graham who is chair of the main fans trust and asked how many shares each of the PTFC directors held, and what were the impediments to a fans' trust representative getting a seat on the Board.  I have yet to receive a reply. 

 

This is spot on.

We have a board that ownes zero of the club but controls 100% of it, and I’d question how much actual control Alan Rough and Gerry Britton even have.

For a small to midsize business on the turnover we have it’s almost unique for none of the board to have a decent amount of the ownership or their own cash tied up in it.  I audit many engineering and service companies in my current job and I yet to come across this scenario. Even if Lowe is placed their by Colin Weir, the Weirs do not own any of the company (club).

The trust appears set up in such a way as to ensure that it is controlled by Lowe which is worrying, as it was meant to grow fan ownership and engagement, currently that isn’t happening, it’s more spin.

It seems very strange that the previous board who own substantial shares are not seen around Firhill especially the directors box as guests. Are they not welcome from our current board? Do they want to distance themselves from our current board?  I don’t know but something seems wrong.

Lets not kid ourselves relegation will lead to part-time football and a strong possibility of administration, which I doubt we’d get through.

The next 3 to 6 months are potentially the most critical in our clubs history since Save The Jags

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1 hour ago, eljaggo said:

The root of the problem is Jacqui Low.  She is the Weirs' placewoman, and is in complete control of the Club in the absence of any direct involvement by the Weirs.  It is almost certainly Low that is behind the spin in every Club statement that increasingly are completely detached from reality.  She alone is responsible for hiring Caldwell and for his continued presence at the Club.  She is controlling the main fans trust through Club appointed trustees, when the two fans' trusts (who together own 26% of the shares) should be having a meaningful say in Club decisions at this critical time. 

Caldwell has duped Low, whose knowledge about football is less than the square root of bugger all.  The fact that Low appointed Caldwell despite others' opposition almost certainly means that she will be reluctant to admit her mistake, and that means Caldwell might be here longer than is healthy for the Club.

If the worst happens and we are relegated, then it is hard to see how the training ground could be justified given more pressing calls on any support the Weirs' will hopefully continue to provide.   The panic hiring of elderly players by Caldwell in January also puts a question mark on the relevance of the Academy.  Who will benefit from these young players if short termism continues to determine recruitment and team selection at the Club?

A failure to be promoted back into the Championship in 2020 would leave the Club with the huge albatross of a 10,000 seat stadium round its neck, with no one to fill it and no funds to pay for it.  There is however the tantalising option of selling it and moving to a new small stadium somewhere north of Glasgow..

On the 20th January, I emailed Pauline Graham who is chair of the main fans trust and asked how many shares each of the PTFC directors held, and what were the impediments to a fans' trust representative getting a seat on the Board.  I have yet to receive a reply. 

 

Couldn't have put it better myself.

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10 hours ago, Norgethistle said:

Caldwell most definitely isn’t the solution, his apparent arrogance and inability to see when he gets it wrong or the acceptance of the magnitude of the situation we find ourself in.

Whilst for him or any manager to come in and completely reverse 18 months of decline on the park overnight would have been a near impossible task, he should have been able to steady the ship and reduce the bleeding till the transfer window, but he never. For that he should have walked.

Whilst his transfers and performances since new year till 3:45 on Saturday was an improvement, the teams we beat included Alloa, Stranraer and East Fife, hardly world class.  The collapse in last 2 games show we still have massive issues.

Caldwell though is only a symptom of a far bigger problem at the club, one that comes from the top.

They left the previous manager in too long , doing massive harm to the club and in fairness to Archibald

They brought in a replacement who had failed massively at his last 2 clubs

They appear not to have interviewed anyone else but been blown away with his presentation (PowerPoint or not)

Throughout all of this they keep harping on about promotion 

They announced the training complex would be ready by June and only when pressed by fans in January did they mention a problem but still pushing it will be ready in time (12 weeks from now)

They have known for months now about ticketsite issues yet even for our next game fans can’t buy tickets on line.

They place spin on all communications 

They have potentially left us exposed massively over Coulibally, even signing a guy who currently couldn’t play nor had played in a year was farcical for a club our size with limited squad size

 

They way things are going relegation could kill us as a club, yet the board don’t seem to get this, but it’s not their investment, their not died in the wool fans, they’ll move on to the next gig. Unfortunately we can’t 

 

Nailed it. 

I would add that the financial momentum of recent years has potentially been squandered by maintaining a premier league off Pitch infrastructure and staff costs for a team bottom of the championship. 

Despite my above point customer experience in many areas remains poor.  Exhibit a : jagzone highlights. 

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52 minutes ago, Norgethistle said:

This is spot on.

We have a board that ownes zero of the club but controls 100% of it, and I’d question how much actual control Alan Rough and Gerry Britton even have.

For a small to midsize business on the turnover we have it’s almost unique for none of the board to have a decent amount of the ownership or their own cash tied up in it.  I audit many engineering and service companies in my current job and I yet to come across this scenario. Even if Lowe is placed their by Colin Weir, the Weirs do not own any of the company (club).

The trust appears set up in such a way as to ensure that it is controlled by Lowe which is worrying, as it was meant to grow fan ownership and engagement, currently that isn’t happening, it’s more spin.

It seems very strange that the previous board who own substantial shares are not seen around Firhill especially the directors box as guests. Are they not welcome from our current board? Do they want to distance themselves from our current board?  I don’t know but something seems wrong.

Lets not kid ourselves relegation will lead to part-time football and a strong possibility of administration, which I doubt we’d get through.

The next 3 to 6 months are potentially the most critical in our clubs history since Save The Jags

Colin and Christine weir own 5% each. 

Factual correction. Not in any way disagreeing with the substance of your point though.  

For the record, I just cannot believe this was Colin weirs vision of the supporters trust when he agreed to inject cash  and  write off the debt. 

I don’t even think it is so important whether the board own shares or not   You are correct regarding SMEs and how unusual that would be  but we are a football club, and I think that offers the opportunity for a board to consist of the ultimate stakeholders - whether they have shares or not - the fans  

The thing with this board is we never saw them before they were board appointed and I doubt we will see them around firhill if they were no longer on the board  - if there still is a firhill at the end of their shambolic tenure  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by jaf
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3 hours ago, eljaggo said:

The root of the problem is Jacqui Low.  She is the Weirs' placewoman, and is in complete control of the Club in the absence of any direct involvement by the Weirs.  It is almost certainly Low that is behind the spin in every Club statement that increasingly are completely detached from reality.  She alone is responsible for hiring Caldwell and for his continued presence at the Club.  She is controlling the main fans trust through Club appointed trustees, when the two fans' trusts (who together own 26% of the shares) should be having a meaningful say in Club decisions at this critical time. 

Caldwell has duped Low, whose knowledge about football is less than the square root of bugger all.  The fact that Low appointed Caldwell despite others' opposition almost certainly means that she will be reluctant to admit her mistake, and that means Caldwell might be here longer than is healthy for the Club.

If the worst happens and we are relegated, then it is hard to see how the training ground could be justified given more pressing calls on any support the Weirs' will hopefully continue to provide.   The panic hiring of elderly players by Caldwell in January also puts a question mark on the relevance of the Academy.  Who will benefit from these young players if short termism continues to determine recruitment and team selection at the Club?

A failure to be promoted back into the Championship in 2020 would leave the Club with the huge albatross of a 10,000 seat stadium round its neck, with no one to fill it and no funds to pay for it.  There is however the tantalising option of selling it and moving to a new small stadium somewhere north of Glasgow..

On the 20th January, I emailed Pauline Graham who is chair of the main fans trust and asked how many shares each of the PTFC directors held, and what were the impediments to a fans' trust representative getting a seat on the Board.  I have yet to receive a reply. 

 

The Trust was set up at the behest of the bank when the 'debt free' deal was done. The quote from David Beattie, in this article, makes that clear.

 “We haven’t ironed out all the details, but the supporter’s trust being formed was one of the aspects that the bank were eager for us to set up and we’re happy to do that."

It is a sham. The Board have no intention of giving the fans any say in the running of the club.

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I wonder what the Bank's motive was in asking for fans' involvement? Could it be an attempt to reduce the risk of future mismanagement by widening the experience of the Board?  Why would the bank even raise the topic since they were no longer creditors the Club being debt free?

In the article you quote BB, Beattie stresses about how communication is the key. 

Bollocks. 

Better decision making is the key, and the fans know all about that.

He also talks about a "fan ownership model" as though there were only the two polar cases of either no fan involvement and complete fan control:  An evasive response that ignores the option of some fan involvement at board level. 

I'm afraid you're right BB, there is no intention of giving the fans a seat on the board.   It would be interesting to hear an opinion from someone versed in company law on the rights of the fans trusts (with over 26% of the shareholding) in influencing or vetoing major decisions made by the Board.

 

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4 hours ago, eljaggo said:

On the 20th January, I emailed Pauline Graham who is chair of the main fans trust and asked how many shares each of the PTFC directors held, and what were the impediments to a fans' trust representative getting a seat on the Board.  I have yet to receive a reply. 

 

This is a bit of a shocker. Willing to give trustees the benefit of the doubt but that’s just incredibly, incredibly poor. The communication from them - particularly about what the trust actually does - is dire. 

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30 minutes ago, eljaggo said:

I wonder what the Bank's motive was in asking for fans' involvement? Could it be an attempt to reduce the risk of future mismanagement by widening the experience of the Board?  Why would the bank even raise the topic since they were no longer creditors the Club being debt free?

In the article you quote BB, Beattie stresses about how communication is the key. 

Bollocks. 

Better decision making is the key, and the fans know all about that.

He also talks about a "fan ownership model" as though there were only the two polar cases of either no fan involvement and complete fan control:  An evasive response that ignores the option of some fan involvement at board level. 

I'm afraid you're right BB, there is no intention of giving the fans a seat on the board.   It would be interesting to hear an opinion from someone versed in company law on the rights of the fans trusts (with over 26% of the shareholding) in influencing or vetoing major decisions made by the Board.

 

I never understood what 'debt free' really meant. Not helped by this from Beattie in the same article

“What it means is we don’t have a mortgage anymore. How great is that? We have no debt, and we owe no money to any other banks."

So, we owe money to one bank. And, presumably, this is not debt any more(?). As part of the restructuring of this deficit they insisted on a Fans Trust.

All the stuff about communication is, as you succinctly describe it, bollocks.

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2 hours ago, jaf said:

Nailed it. 

I would add that the financial momentum of recent years has potentially been squandered by maintaining a premier league off Pitch infrastructure and staff costs for a team bottom of the championship. 

Despite my above point customer experience in many areas remains poor.  Exhibit a : jagzone highlights. 

Exhibit b: Online ticket site

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15 hours ago, Big Col said:

I appear to have missed February’s video production by the board, manager or CEO telling us how it’s all going to plan.

Can anyone give me a link to it?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ffa64ae82-9a59-11e8-9b62-17ec317258a6.jpg?crop=1337%2C752%2C78%2C14&resize=685

Actually haven't seen any monthly communication from our chairperson who specialises in communication. In fact not a sausage.

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10 hours ago, north stander said:

1.

When Archie was finally binned, we were in 8th, 5 pts ahead of 9th and 6 pts ahead of 10th, and just 2 pts off of 4th.

Can anyone raise their hand and honestly say that they envisaged us to be, approaching 5 months later in March, sitting in 10th? - and 11 pts off 4th, and more points behind the league leaders than we have amassed in total?

 

2.

Especially after our chairman stated her pick to replace AA was the outstanding choice and that she was "blown away by Gary's interview preparation" and that "he had done an analysis of each player, identified a training schedule to deal with the fitness levels and pulled together a vision of how to get Thistle playing well enough to secure promotion,"

 

On these 2 points alone it is clear to everyone that the appointment of GC has been an abject and unmitigated disaster and failure, and both the chair and manager should be nowhere near Firhill by 1st June, no matter what position we finish in come 4.50pm on 4th May.

Out of likes, again.

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18 hours ago, Auld Jag said:

If we go down again this season, imo very few on the board,managerial side or playing side could be happy with their contribution to this season. We must be in the top 4 budgets and if we finished bottom, we would be unable to finish above a part time team. Like you I will still follow Thistle no matter what league we are in, but not everybody will. I just hope the board , manager and players realise just what a blow to our club another relegation would be.

The must realise AJ, I'm just not convinced they care enough.

Look, no one player goes onto a pitch and thinks, today I have decided I will be sh1t. There is no one single reason to explain why we are where we are. It's almost a perfect storm. The chair ignores her football adviser and appoints what we seem to agree is doing a great impression of being a dud. But it didn't start there. We can go back to the 6 nil v Aberdeen result and probably even before that. 

I think history will show that although AA did a very good job after McNamara left, it started to go slightly awry when he began making his own signings. McCall started the process and McNamara improved it. (The detectives amongst you will note this is the first time I've not used "ratnamara")......would we have been better off keeping AA, I don't  think so but would we have been in this mess if McCall or McNamara had stayed, I don't think we would. AA was great, he did us a right good job but his signings were his downfall.

I can't  produce any stats but I'd doubt McCall or McNamara would have as many dud signings as AA. Cakdwells don't look as bad but then again they could be the players who take us down again. Some, myself included, would take McCall back. Personally I think McNamara improved what McCall did, I'd swallow my pride and consider him coming back.....There I've said it. Tastes really bad though!! Just my bored meandering thoughts on a gameless saturday.

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Before last Saturday there had hardly been a negative word said about Jaqui Low for about a month. Criticise her if you like, but at least be consistent about it. Yes, she picked the manager five months ago, but she doesn't pick the team from week to week, and her performance should not be judged from week to week on that basis.

This is just frustrated people lashing out.

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1 hour ago, Thistleberight said:

I  can't  produce any stats but I'd doubt McCall or McNamara would have as many dud signings as AA. Cakdwells don't look as bad but then again they could be the players who take us down again. Some, myself included, would take McCall back. Personally I think McNamara improved what McCall did, I'd swallow my pride and consider him coming back.....There I've said it. Tastes really bad though!! Just my bored meandering thoughts on a gameless saturday.

Apologies for the selective quote.

In my view this point is worthy of further debate - and yes it's with the wonderful benefit of hindsight.

But how many howlers did McCall sign? (Akins - and look where he is now).

McNamara? - (Elliott - and look where he is now).

In retrospect, Archibald's signings were a lucky bag. Hit and miss throughout most of our top division period, and utterly miss after the 17-18 fixture list was announced and some diddy on here decided that it was a disgrace that we had to meet the hardest teams in the first five weeks. So we got that lot out of the road and promptly got dubbed 0-2 by bottom of the league Kilmarnock.

And we still have Miles Storey.

Signed by Archibald.

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1 hour ago, allyo said:

Before last Saturday there had hardly been a negative word said about Jaqui Low for about a month. Criticise her if you like, but at least be consistent about it. Yes, she picked the manager five months ago, but she doesn't pick the team from week to week, and her performance should not be judged from week to week on that basis.

This is just frustrated people lashing out.

I don’t think this is right. 

The constant spin on everything is frustrating. 

The under performance of the board in many operational areas  eg ticketing 

the blind faith in promotion, including not reacting to relegation, and maintaining a premier league off field staffing budget  

intermittent communication with the fans  selective direct communication with some fans

So I guess there are quite a few areas I think I would be critical of  quite apart from results on the pitch  

To step away from criticism and negatives, what are the things you think our board are doing particularly well right now? 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, allyo said:

Before last Saturday there had hardly been a negative word said about Jaqui Low for about a month. Criticise her if you like, but at least be consistent about it. Yes, she picked the manager five months ago, but she doesn't pick the team from week to week, and her performance should not be judged from week to week on that basis.

This is just frustrated people lashing out.

No sh1t sherlock

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1 hour ago, jaf said:

I don’t think this is right. 

The constant spin on everything is frustrating. 

The under performance of the board in many operational areas  eg ticketing 

the blind faith in promotion, including not reacting to relegation, and maintaining a premier league off field staffing budget  

intermittent communication with the fans  selective direct communication with some fans

So I guess there are quite a few areas I think I would be critical of  quite apart from results on the pitch  

To step away from criticism and negatives, what are the things you think our board are doing particularly well right now? 

 

 

 

I'm not defending them. I'm only noting that nobody was talking about it when we were winning.

People were talking up protests at the Stranraer game because we were losing a lot and Erskine had left and everyone got angry. Then we won a few games and it was all rosy. Nobody said a word. My point is that our club is either being badly mismanaged  from the top or it isn't. But if you truly believe it is, then wins over East Fife and Alloa shouldn't distract from that. The individual wins are down to the team and the people managing the team. As are the defeats. The board of directors is an entirely different question.

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2 hours ago, Semi Nurainen said:

On the bright side, and I only first started to notice this a couple of weeks ago, Queens are sinking pretty quickly .

Amazing what you notice when you don't have a Saturday afternoon game.

QOS on a bad run. A few weeks ago it was Dunfermline, look at where they are now. We need to start another good run in the league to put pressure on teams. If we don't it doesn't matter how bad the others are , we will be the team going down.

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1 hour ago, allyo said:

I'm not defending them. I'm only noting that nobody was talking about it when we were winning.

People were talking up protests at the Stranraer game because we were losing a lot and Erskine had left and everyone got angry. Then we won a few games and it was all rosy. Nobody said a word. My point is that our club is either being badly mismanaged  from the top or it isn't. But if you truly believe it is, then wins over East Fife and Alloa shouldn't distract from that. The individual wins are down to the team and the people managing the team. As are the defeats. The board of directors is an entirely different question.

This just shows how fickle football is. Wins on the park paper over a multitude of problems. Sure I and many others were being cohesively and constructively critical of the manager and his team and of ms low and her board. Separate threads but linked by virtue of being at the same club. This petered out when we strung a few wins and draws together. It has always been this way.

You'd have to have your head buried to think that ms low and Mr Caldwell are not an issue at our club and that there is much room for improvement all over the club.

NOT replying to e mails is crass. Ridiculously incompetent processes at the club, if not the fault of an individual.

Broken ticketing systems if that's what it is.

Minimal communication and minimal engagement is questionable.

Of course had we been

A/ still in the premier

or

B/ challenging at the top of the table

little would be being posted about all if our problems. And if course we fans are angry and vent on this forum and others. We do this alloy because we care and the board and management are doing a right good impression of being yesterday's people here today and gone tomorrow. Back to their day jobs and supporting their original fav team once they have fecked over our club. Not saying they are doing it intentionally, just saying they are at this present time, doing a sh1t job, imho.

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18 minutes ago, Thistleberight said:

This just shows how fickle football is. Wins on the park paper over a multitude of problems. Sure I and many others were being cohesively and constructively critical of the manager and his team and of ms low and her board. Separate threads but linked by virtue of being at the same club. This petered out when we strung a few wins and draws together. It has always been this way.

You'd have to have your head buried to think that ms low and Mr Caldwell are not an issue at our club and that there is much room for improvement all over the club.

NOT replying to e mails is crass. Ridiculously incompetent processes at the club, if not the fault of an individual.

Broken ticketing systems if that's what it is.

Minimal communication and minimal engagement is questionable.

Of course had we been

A/ still in the premier

or

B/ challenging at the top of the table

little would be being posted about all if our problems. And if course we fans are angry and vent on this forum and others. We do this alloy because we care and the board and management are doing a right good impression of being yesterday's people here today and gone tomorrow. Back to their day jobs and supporting their original fav team once they have fecked over our club. Not saying they are doing it intentionally, just saying they are at this present time, doing a sh1t job, imho.

Agree with this. A number of things will need to be discussed at the end of this season. Lets hope one of them isn't  how will we survive relegation to league 1.

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