Live updates from the Thursday night forum.
Summary
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17:46
Good evening everyone, text updates from the Thursday forum will appear here from 6.30pm.
18:26
Four minutes to go, fans are arriving and taking their seats.
18:31
Intro from club SLO Simon Clarkson, who will keep the event flowing tonight. Panel of John Nixon, Steven Pattison, Nigel Davidson, Billy Atkinson, Suzanne Kidd, Paul Simpson, Nigel Clibbens.
18:31
First Q - for John, previously owners have said they wouldn't want to be paid to hand over the club - is that still the case?
18:34
I need to clarify that - there are two type of shares, A and B shares. A shares have votes - I don't think any of those A share holders want any sort of payment. There may be some form of legal costs if there is a takeover, so we would want those covered. B shares, non-voting, they are shares put in by directors with pound notes - £1.4m. Those directors may feel they want something back for that. There are three individuals in the B shares, and they may say they want a small payment. I don't know, we haven't got to that point in any negotiations we've had. I don't think the A share directors would want anything, but we would legal costs to be covered.
18:37
I agree with John. One of the misconceptions is that we got the club for £1. When we took it over it was in difficult times because noone else would. If the right person comes in, and we do get a lot of enquiries, but I for one would only hand over to the proper person. The sheikh came in, and that happened under the radar. When he came in he said he wanted to buy a new coach to travel to away games, and that was an incident that told me he didn't know what he was on about. That's why we need the right person to come on. At the top you get a pat on the back, at the bottom people pat you on the back and they have knife in their hand.
18:38
Q - shareholders, in the past we've heard a lot about succession. What does succession mean to the shareholders. Does it mean they still hold shares, or will they be relinquished?
18:38
I will happily give all of mine up and take a seasone ticket at the back of the stand. I would be happy with that.
18:40
For us it means a majority shareholding in the club. You don't get succession if they hold significant shares, but they may want some shares. The Trust would want some involvement, but if all directors keep their shares there is no succession.
18:45
That's an open question. To me it means we get someone or a company, organisation, into the club that has similar aims and objectives which is to maintain league football and hopefully take us up the leagues. Now, under the rules, they have to show source and sufficiency for a minimum of two years without outside investment. As a director I would want to see alonger commitment than that. Right now, some directors have PGs on the club and that needs to be sorted. We have to have those PGs sorted, so it may be that the movement of shares over a period will be in one, two or three phases until the PGs are taken care of, and until the debt to Purpay is sorted. Yes, shares would go across, but in tranches ensuruing that certain triggers have been met to safeguard the future of the club. I've watched foreign investment come into clubs like Brum, Wigan, and after two years they get starved of funds and they start to fail. You can see when owners have had enough, so I would say that in any of this transfer of shares I personally would expect to see them going in one or two phases so you've seen the same ethos from the new people who want the club to succeed. That doesn't mean I'm being awkward, it means I'm being cautious.
18:45
Q - which team has impressed most and why?
18:47
A few - Mansfield here, when they spanked us. Stockport away impressed me - I wasn't impressed with us, I thought we were poor that night. Those two are the strongest. Stevenage, they have a style of play that's very effective. They have a manager who knows how to get results. Orient were there to be beaten in both games. Double deflection down there, and up here two decisions cost us.
18:47
Q - impassioend plea to improve training facilities. How have they taken those pleas and how will we move forward?
18:51
We 100% agree. When we look at teams around us, we're inferior. Paul doesn't complain, but we know it needs to improve. It's a challenge. We've been looking to find something better. In the last month we went to look at a potential facility, with the cost needed to have the rooms we need as over £60,000 a year, and the cost to get the grass up to spec was a quarter of a million. Sadly we don't have the funds to do that right now. As with any club we absorb cash, and we simply don't have the scale of cash needed to do it. That's why we have to build relationships with places like Gretna, so that we have something. That's why when JN talks about succession, we need somebody who has the capital investment to take the club forward. Until we get that it's going to be a real struggle.
18:56
Training facilities have been important to us, I've been involved for many years. To get a 3G pitch will cost close to £1m, and we can't do that. We've looked at the Sheepmount, we couldn't get the council to agree. We worked on the changing rooms at Gillford Park, but all teams ended up playing on the pitch we worked on. During Covid, meetings with Sport England, and the dominoes were all set up for Morton School. Cumberland FA were involved, and it looked really good, then Covid struck and it all collapsed. We're trying to resurrect that, but there's no money. We did try to buy Gillford Park, it's owned by the Railway Pension Fund, and I was talking to Brian Hall, but we just couldn't get a figure. Just recently someone has bought it, and they've knocked all the trees down, and the plan seems to be to build houses there. That would have been ideal. We haven't not been looking for better training facilities, we've spent a lot on the main training pitch, and Fred was going to do the area behind the east stand, but the EA said no. We are trying.
18:56
NC has confirmed that he and Simmo have looked at the Newman School site - those were the costs he alluded to earlier.
18:58
I went with them to Newman and it's about the offices, changing facilities and rooms. The pitch is only the one part of it.
19:00
The idea of going there is to get the players away from here other than on match days. It wasn't ideal, but there were good parts, and the building could be turned into a workable space. The pitches are nowhere near the standard we need. As Nigel said, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds to do that. We've been lucky this season, we've had 10 days where we've had to go to Gretna, one day at Harraby, and some split days in the Neil. Some days the pitch behind the ground is a bog. So we do need places for meaningful sessions.
19:01
The training facilities are the biggest burning platform in us progressing as a club and there's no easy solution, unless someone arrives with a big cheque book.
19:01
Q - new strip? back to Royal Blue?
19:01
Yes, and is more of a traditional blue than the current best seller in the club's history.
19:02
Q - Hendo sell-on and others?
19:03
I can't give percentages, but we have interest in Henderson, Trafford, Branthwaite and a couple of younger players, such as Joe White.
19:04
Q - standard of refereeing has become short of what is required. What is protocol of process of what the assessor does, and what happens after his report is submitted?
19:07
My son is on the line at EFL level, he's doing Lge 1 this season. Assessors assess every decision, and the feedback I'm hearing is that they see a different game to what we see as coaches. I talk to Joe, my son, and I think it is difficult. We don't get to see what marks are given by the assessor. If i give the ref a mark thats lower than a certain number, I have to give feedback. Somtimes we get feedback after that, but most of the time they say they agree. I accept they're going to make mistakes, but I don't get some of the decisions they make.
19:09
KMI - key match incidents - they're game changers and are really important. We see the assessors because they come in the boardroom, and sometimes you just think wow, what are they seeing. I think everyone in the game wants a high standard and that more decisions that matter are right. The growth of VAR has damaged refereeing at the lower levels because there's a void with officials sucked out to do that. Now there's a lot of learning on the job, and that's difficult.
19:12
My biggest frustration is when we talk about the Respect campaign. On Monday their bench was effing and blinding at the fourth official and nothing was said. When we didn't get a throw, I asked the fourth to help the lineo, and he told me to calm down and that I had to shut up having listened to everything else that went on. I didn't wag my fingers or shout, but he said that to me. It's baffling.
19:16
At grass roots level the referees come up through that system, the biggest problem is that in year one 50% of referees pack in because of abuse. That's at grass roots out on the park on weekends. It's difficult to stop and makes a problem of getting them in at the bottom. Then 20 PL games means 10 VAR officials at Stockley Park. That means officials have had to move up and we can't keep that conveyor belt going.
19:20
I'm involved at grass roots, and we can't get referees because of the abuse. Lately we've been runnign quiet weekends where nobody on the touchline is allowed to shout. We have some great female referees, and that's great to see. Two referee courses next month, anyone from 14 upwards. Get on the course, £40 for refereeing a game, that's good pay.
19:24
Q - JK Gordon, has he gone?
19:26
No, he's still here. He came off training the day before the Orient game, he was feeling his thigh, so he travelled with us anyway. On the Saturday morning he told us it didn't feel right, and since then I've chosen other options, so he's missed out. He'll be in the squad for this weekend and there's a chance he may be involved this Saturday. He's definitely still here, and the last three training sessions he's trained really well and looked more the player he was when he first came into the club.
19:26
Q - succession, leading shareholder getting older, what happens if the worst happened, to the shares and PGs. Is there a disaster plan?
19:30
PGs will be passed on. I don't know what AJ will do with his shares, it's not my place to ask how they have been willed. That's not something we've actively discussed. That's why it's important to find companies, individuals, to take the club on. None of us are going to go on forever and we have to put things in order, which is what we're doing at this time. Not easy, wenhaev PGs and we put them in place for the club to have a line of income. None of us want to leave PGs behind us, we want the club to move on. I'd like to think that before my demise I'm sorted out, because I wouldn't want to leave the troubles and anxieities of running a club to them. That's why I want to see someone with the good of the club at heart. I want anyone who comes in to have the same feeling for the club and the area as I have had. We know it needs to be sorted out.
19:32
As far as the EFL is concerned, no matter how the shares are moved around, all of the EFL rules kick in. That means you're into source and sufficiency and proving that is there. That's why this is a really important issue. We're self-funding, but we will run into issues of source and control and sufficiency. Once the EFL come with a magnifying glass it can become very difficult. Their approach to change is for clubs to agree plans and a low risk approach, and if you don't comply you can be deducted points. It is really important.
19:33
Q - meeting, EFL Trophy, three-year extension for B teams, never noticed anything public, are these teams here to stay?
19:39
The Trophy is part funded through the professional game. Something like three quarters of a mill comes into the proze money from PL. Part of that is trying to get young players games. Even in L2, young players will play if they're good, so part of the idea is to develop young players at the lower league level. And the PL teams put their players in to develop them. They do play in Development Leagues, but it isn't the same. PL saying that the Trophy games are best development they can get. Funding has been agreed, and some inside the game would like to see more involvement, currently capped at 16. New sponsor next season, and I don't see the competition changing for the next two or three years. The amount of prize money is extremely important, it's something like £10k, so it doesn't matter how many people come to the game. At Wembley I think the finalists will take something like £1m out of that game alone. We need something to put competition to give us a chance to earn prize money.
19:40
On finance side Cat 1 sides don't get the prize money. From a football perspective I think it's a really good competition. To play Man Utd and for us to see the technical ability and fitness, and pace, and our players achieved their highest stats from that game. I really like that competition for that reason, you see a different level of player.
19:43
I believe the changes to come will mean more games, and more teams that aren't EFL teams involved because that's where the PL want it to go. It tends to be that where the PL leads, we go. EFL clubs have agreed to changes to get more money, and it is what it is as far as this club is concerned. I personally like the competition, I like to see stars of the future, and sometimes it can be a look ahead for the next loan window. There are more benefits, but games are enhanced when people come to watch, so we need to find ways to get fans to come and watch those games.
19:44
Discussion about VAR at our level.
19:45
PS - from what I've seen I don't think it's working. It's taken the celebration side out of it and I actually think it's ruining the game. In South Korea we had one of the first decisions given when an Argentinian player head butted one of ours and it was missed.
19:48
Ryan Carr - these clubs have scouts at all of our games. At Creighton, for a youth game, I as stood beside a fella from Man Utd. The fact that Ryan had featured with the first team it gave us a bit more of a bargaining chip, but not much. EPPP gives the bigger clubs the power if they see a player. There are brackets in place for a Cat 1 to take a Cat 3 based on the number of years you've had the player, so you have to get what you can. If we'd left it to the summer we'd have got less than we did.
19:48
Q - current players close to signing - how much turnover in the summer?
19:51
No, and we don't know for the second part. We need to see what league we're in, who is out of contract, and what funds we'll have for that. I know the players we have options on, and if we don't want them they'll go, if we do they have to stay. I have a visual on my laptop of what I want the squad to look like. I have Greg working on that as well. I know players here were talking to clubs before the end of last season. I won't do that, we'll have things in mind then we'll act. I know what the squad will look like, I know who I want here and who I want to move on, based on where we are and what division we're in.
19:51
Q - planned updates to ticket system?
19:51
We have a functional ticket system that does the job for us right now.
19:51
Q - hamstrings?
19:54
Had a meeting with the staff on Wednesday and that was a word that came out - unlucky. I'm not prepared to accept that, we have to looke deeper into it. I'm told from research papers that you shouled expect six hamstring areas a season and we're over that. I'm being told it's the load we put on them in training and in games, it's the pitches, but we need to get past excuses and to look at it more. I want the medical and S&C department to come up with the data and see if there are reasons for this, because it is frustrating.
19:54
PS now explaining the injuries to Feeney and Back which were discussed at last week's press conference.
19:59
We travel down, my first away game here we trained at Villa, no showers, got back on bus in sweaty kit, I didn't like that. We now train here, then travel. Would love to get the train, but we wouldn't make it to Euston to catch it. If we could find a better solution I'd love it.
20:00
Q- iFollow - Sutton?
20:02
Last game of the seson, the agreement is that it's not allowed on iFollow. Sky have said no. Two board meetings ago at EFL, I made the request to ask Sky to change that. We weren't in a strong position to do that, because the EFL was out to tender. Currently told that we've asked the question again. We may have a beam back on that Monday to see if that will be alowed. We need definitive answers.
20:02
Q - waterworks be used more?
20:03
It depends on crowds and demand. Plan is to open it for the Salford game, a big push, and then we can look forward from there. It was nice to see all four sides for Tranmere, and we would like to try it again for that Salford game.
20:03
That's it from the forum tonight - thanks for following us tonight.
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