Rewind 7 months

[MF68]

It is about 7 or 8 months since the new Board took control at TUFC and no matter what has happened since every fan owes them a huge debt for stepping in where nobody else would. They will know that there have been errors and some of the early ones may have really been the important ones.

1. Was it really the most sensible thing to place Hargreaves, Veysey and Hodges on gardening leave?
If it was,they must have known that it would take a fair amount of money to pay them off or agree severance.

2. Who's decision was it to bring in Paul Cox?
What was he promised and who reneged, him or the Board?

3. When Cox did go who was behind Kevin Nicholson's appointment ?

4. Has there been offers of help/support made to Nicho or for that matter the Board. Nobody would begrudge either party receiving any form of help if it benifitted the Club in the long run.
If this has been offered why has it not been accepted.

5. At what point do the Board decide to plan for next year as relegation becomes a reality week by week. This is not a criticism if they do.

6. And this is my biggest regret - Why has the communication been so disastrous with the fans? Was it not one of the first promises made at the opening Forum? Half of the criticism, moaning, abuse or even fans turning their back could have been avoided with more honesty and transparency. Decisions are made for a reason and keeping fans in the loop is a great way of keeping them onside.

Anyone who can answer some or all of these questions or can throw a chink of light on them, would be great to hear from.

Please....no swearing, namecalling or abuse.................just calm responses.

Good luck to the team tomorrow.

[Glostergull]

i take your point with some of the comments but can't agree on the transparency issue keeping fans onside. it is more than plain that there are some fans who think they are experts and better than the current board. in fact better than any board ever. and would consitantly criticise and moan, even abuse the board and management whatever happened and i for one if in their position would revue my contact with fans when put under that sort of pressure. I for one even if i had a huge amount of money would be very wary of putting myself in a position of responsibly only to have fans tell me what i should be doing with my money when they have their own heads up their asses doing nothing else in return.

[Gullscorer]

I take your point with some of the comments but can't agree on the transparency issue keeping fans onside. It is more than plain that there are some fans who think they are experts and better than the current board, in fact, better than any board ever, and would constantly criticise and moan, even abuse the board and management whatever happened, and I for one, if in their position, would review my contact with fans when put under that sort of pressure. I for one, even if I had a huge amount of money, would be very wary of putting myself in a position of responsibility only to have fans tell me what I should be doing with my money, when they have their own heads up their asses doing nothing else in return.

MF68 I feel a good number of your questions would be answered by reading through all the posts on this forum over the past year (if you have time), as well as the news from the club on the O.S. And I agree with Glostergull, given all that the current board has had to cope with, the matter of communication between them and the supporters is no better or worse than we should have expected. Keep the faith..

[tomogull]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, but I'm damn sure that if Hargreaves and Lee Hodges were still here, the club wouldn't be in the position it is now. Although last season was a disaster, but not as bad as this, Hargreaves should have been given more time. Regarding points 1 & 2, I suspect Dean Edwards was the one pulling the strings.

[Scott Brehaut]

It is about 7 or 8 months since the new Board took control at TUFC and no matter what has happened since every fan owes them a huge debt for stepping in where nobody else would. They will know that there have been errors and some of the early ones may have really been the important ones.

1. Was it really the most sensible thing to place Hargreaves, Veysey and Hodges on gardening leave? YES
If it was,they must have known that it would take a fair amount of money to pay them off or agree severance.

2. Who's decision was it to bring in Paul Cox? DEAN EDWARDS
What was he promised and who reneged, him or the Board?

3. When Cox did go who was behind Kevin Nicholson's appointment ?

4. Has there been offers of help/support made to Nicho or for that matter the Board. Nobody would begrudge either party receiving any form of help if it benifitted the Club in the long run.
If this has been offered why has it not been accepted.

5. At what point do the Board decide to plan for next year as relegation becomes a reality week by week. This is not a criticism if they do. ONCE IT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO STAY UP

6. And this is my biggest regret - Why has the communication been so disastrous with the fans? Was it not one of the first promises made at the opening Forum? Half of the criticism, moaning, abuse or even fans turning their back could have been avoided with more honesty and transparency. Decisions are made for a reason and keeping fans in the loop is a great way of keeping them onside.

Anyone who can answer some or all of these questions or can throw a chink of light on them, would be great to hear from.

Please....no swearing, namecalling or abuse.................just calm responses.

Good luck to the team tomorrow.

[madgull]

1. Was it really the most sensible thing to place Hargreaves, Veysey and Hodges on gardening leave?
Well, seeing as most fans were screaming for it, apparently so.

2. Who's decision was it to bring in Paul Cox?
The board's? It seems he was being paid peanuts, we hoped we could increase revenue to allow him pay, which didn't happen, so he quit.

3. When Cox did go who was behind Kevin Nicholson's appointment ?
Again, THE BOARD.

4. Has there been offers of help/support made to Nicho or for that matter the Board. Nobody would begrudge either party receiving any form of help if it benifitted the Club in the long run.
Of course help and advice has been offered, Nicho has spoken many times about how he has constantly been on the phone to other managers for help. WE ARE TAKING ALL THE HELP WE CAN GET.

5. At what point do the Board decide to plan for next year as relegation becomes a reality week by week. This is not a criticism if they do.
Any football club will be in a constant state of planning for all eventualities, why do you think ours is any different?

6. And this is my biggest regret - Why has the communication been so disastrous with the fans? Was it not one of the first promises made at the opening Forum? Half of the criticism, moaning, abuse or even fans turning their back could have been avoided with more honesty and transparency. Decisions are made for a reason and keeping fans in the loop is a great way of keeping them onside.
The board has communicated as much as any board would, all this really comes down to is you wanting to know EVERY detail. You can't, no fan will. Tough titties. On a side note, even when the board DO communicate, they get criticised.

Most of these answers just took a moment of calm, considered thought, and not immediately trying to play the blame game for our current plight. We're where we are cos we're a small, crap club. It's that simple. It's like grief, it's easier to get angry and yell at the doctors for not doing enough, but at the end of the day it isn't anyone's fault that your friend died from an invisible cancer with a tiny detection rate, it's just one of those things.

[Colorado Gull]

Dean Edwards caused this total chaos. Yes, he got the consortium together to save the club, but if he loved TUFC that much, he wouldn't have given himself a salaried position of Director of Football. I mean, FFS, who needs a DOF in the Conference! Instead of paying a very good manager and assistant, Deano was receiving the wage. When Cox asked if he was going to start getting paid at the beginning of November with the answer being no, he (understandably) departed. To top it all off financially, Deano receives a decent pay off, despite resigning a few weeks after Cox leaves.

[eddyh]

Just for correctness, Dean Edwards did not give himself a position. He conned the board into giving him one. I suspect some blind idolisation, very much like that which caused them to appoint our current manager, made them weak at the knees and give him what he wanted. It was perhaps the first but most crucial of many poor decisions. People may think that I have a personal dislike for the board or CEO, I don't. My personal opinion is that they just don't know how to run a football club. All the talk of passion and hurt is fine but a successful business requires much more than that. It needs good strong knowledgeable individuals aligned with passion for the task. Having only one of those is being 50% short.

[brucie]

Exactly. Edwards is a useless little turd who hasn't been any good at anything he has done at the club. Didn't he end up with a 40% shareholding in the club. How on earth did that happen? It is beyond comprehension.

The problem the board doesn't possess any of the attributes you mention.

[Fantasia]

Some attributes the board has:

The willingness to risk losing hard-earned money.
The confidence to take decisions to stop the club haemorrhaging money.
Increasingly thick skins ( I guess ) to be able to cope with abuse.
A love of the club.

Since no-one with any better credentials was prepared to do anything 7 months ago, that is what we have.

[eddyh]

As I said, attributes that are simply not enough to run a football club successfully. As we head for the lowest of the low and in all likelihood bankruptcy then I'm not sure that saying they saved the club is strictly accurate.

I absolutely acknowledge that they inherited a mess and were brave to take it on. However the decision making has been absolutely shocking and basically continued the downward trend.
I know that Bill Philips is public enemy number 1 on here and I don't know the guy or what he may or may not have done but if he was running the ship today in the same way it is being run, would he be getting the same excuses made for him? On the crowds we get there is no way we should be pretty much certainties for relegation, how anyone can argue that is incredible.

[davidcaldwell123]

In defence of the board, they did their job and appointed a manager and have supported him, he needs to deliver as if we were winning games and out of trouble, they be the best board in the league. The team early November was capable of picking up point and winning games, this team is, the league is not great and some marginal gains in certain areas would provided confidence and results is my opinion. There is a big but and we all need to realise it, we are down unless we roll the dice and do something different and I don't mean sacking Kevin, he needs to accept help that may make the difference, when your drowning you don't just go under, you hold your hand out for help! its time!!!

As I said, attributes that are simply not enough to run a football club successfully. As we head for the lowest of the low and in all likelihood bankruptcy then I'm not sure that saying they saved the club is strictly accurate.

I absolutely acknowledge that they inherited a mess and were brave to take it on. However the decision making has been absolutely shocking and basically continued the downward trend.
I know that Bill Philips is public enemy number 1 on here and I don't know the guy or what he may or may not have done but if he was running the ship today in the same way it is being run, would he be getting the same excuses made for him? On the crowds we get there is no way we should be pretty much certainties for relegation, how anyone can argue that is incredible.

[eddyh]

Whilst I would agree that it's too late to sack him ( to save this season) I still think appointing a rookie was a reckless and frankly daft gamble. An average conference manager as a safe pair of hands was required as the squad was just about good enough to stay up. Backing the manager is admirable to a point but when you picked the nag with 3 legs in the paddock it's all a bit irrelevant. I would agree that help is required but think it's way too late to be honest.

[davidcaldwell123]

Tend to agree, I said at the beginning we did not have time to restructure a team and had to get the best out of what we had, add a couple of effective players in positions to suit a robust system with the teams strengths in mind. I still think Kevin was too over confident to think he could play, coach, manage and run his own PR with just Robbie helping him, both of them are great guys and I still wish them well, but "insanity is continuing to do things the same way, expecting the outcome to be different".

Whilst I would agree that it's too late to sack him ( to save this season) I still think appointing a rookie was a reckless and frankly daft gamble. An average conference manager as a safe pair of hands was required as the squad was just about good enough to stay up. Backing the manager is admirable to a point but when you picked the nag with 3 legs in the paddock it's all a bit irrelevant. I would agree that help is required but think it's way too late to be honest.

[lucy6lucy]

Personally, I would re-wind to the Exeter v Torquay match on sky sports, when ling " fell ill" before the match, albeit we won 1-0, but nothing has quite been right since then.