@aloysius obviously not. I don’t believe you think there is an equivalency between rushing into a poor deal on a shirt sponsor (allegedly) and moving lock stock and barrel to the Hayes Dome.
Furthermore, the Trust Board are volunteers who support the club, whereas as Hayes was in it for himself. So, behave.
Marlow Chair unfortunately has form for making derogatory insinuations about the club current and ex-chairman and the Trust Board without quite specifying what his accusations are. that is anything but holding power to account, it is simply undermining those who give their time to run the club without any evidence whatsoever. The danger is that given that social media finds a haven for conspiracy theories and becomes a self-fulfilling echo chamber, those insinuations apparently based on nothing or half-truths have a habit of becoming "fact".
Exeter lost a successful manager in a large part due to such things. Floyd repeats a social media/echo chamber "fact" above that doesn't appear to tie in with the objective facts. In the wider world, Trump relies on it for his base. Social media and its ability to create "alternative facts" (or lies as they used to be known) is one of the major issues that society will have to deal with.
@marlowchair - may I suggest you re-read your posts, as I'm not alone in having this misunderstanding. In suggesting commercial activity is not handled well at present, you have certainly criticised those brought in on that side. Is AH not part of that process?
@ Aloysius Erdogan and Honecker - not too far from Godwin's law on this one then? I don't think this is about accountability at all, its about anonymous briefing against those running the club, with very little clarity as to what the endgame is, or the competence of the anonymous critic.
@floyd said:
It was the less than flattering way you referred to the trust board that made me question your motives.
The trust board are good people and do a great job.i’ve never had an issue with them and more than you know are concerned they are not furnished with the full picture also.
@StrongestTeam said:
All for transparency, for example see no reason why transfer fees should be undisclosed and would love to see if we actually save any money by buying the worst burger baps in the northern hemisphere.
Leaking negotiations in the middle of them, when you think we are short of sponsors anyway doesn't seem particularly helpful though to anyone. And that is assuming its not made up anyway.
I'd be worried if we didn't bother approaching new companies , if mates rates took precedence over concrete offers from elsewhere etc, but knowing which name will be on the shirt two weeks before it launches doesn't interest me that much.
The negotiations were closed and complete long before I said anything here. If you read by earlier comments on this topic all I did was raise exactly the same concerns you have in your last para , asking the question about our process and ability to adhere to process with the current operating structure.
@DevC said:
Marlow Chair unfortunately has form for making derogatory insinuations about the club current and ex-chairman and the Trust Board without quite specifying what his accusations are. that is anything but holding power to account, it is simply undermining those who give their time to run the club without any evidence whatsoever. The danger is that given that social media finds a haven for conspiracy theories and becomes a self-fulfilling echo chamber, those insinuations apparently based on nothing or half-truths have a habit of becoming "fact".
Exeter lost a successful manager in a large part due to such things. Floyd repeats a social media/echo chamber "fact" above that doesn't appear to tie in with the objective facts. In the wider world, Trump relies on it for his base. Social media and its ability to create "alternative facts" (or lies as they used to be known) is one of the major issues that society will have to deal with.
@Baldric said: @marlowchair - may I suggest you re-read your posts, as I'm not alone in having this misunderstanding. In suggesting commercial activity is not handled well at present, you have certainly criticised those brought in on that side. Is AH not part of that process?
AH had nothing to do with that process!? He hasn’t for 12 months,there’s been enormous changes since he became sporting director .
Not so long ago, marlow, you were insinuating that Andrew Howard and beechdean got their shirt sponsorship at mates rates thereby damaging the club for his own personal interest. You provided no evidence whatsoever to support this, just I presume rather hoped that the more gullible would pick up your social media insinuation and turn it into social media "fact".
Now you are back making more insinuations but never quite stating what your accusations of wrong or who you are accusing of bad, inept or fraudulent behaviour.
If you have something to say, say it. This is my accusation, this is the evidence to support it. I suspect you will refuse to man up though, little baseless insinuation on anonymous forums is far easy after all.
@DevC said:
Not so long ago, marlow, you were insinuating that Andrew Howard and beechdean got their shirt sponsorship at mates rates thereby damaging the club for his own personal interest. You provided no evidence whatsoever to support this, just I presume rather hoped that the more gullible would pick up your social media insinuation and turn it into social media "fact".
Now you are back making more insinuations but never quite stating what your accusations of wrong or who you are accusing of bad, inept or fraudulent behaviour.
If you have something to say, say it. This is my accusation, this is the evidence to support it. I suspect you will refuse to man up though, little baseless insinuation on anonymous forums is far easy after all.
Incredible, you don’t want discussion or information raised here but you are encouraging me to state far more damaging things and name people. Presumably so you can then say I am spruiking outrageous unfounded lies...
@DevC said:
Not so long ago, marlow, you were insinuating that Andrew Howard and beechdean got their shirt sponsorship at mates rates thereby damaging the club for his own personal interest. You provided no evidence whatsoever to support this, just I presume rather hoped that the more gullible would pick up your social media insinuation and turn it into social media "fact".
Now you are back making more insinuations but never quite stating what your accusations of wrong or who you are accusing of bad, inept or fraudulent behaviour.
If you have something to say, say it. This is my accusation, this is the evidence to support it. I suspect you will refuse to man up though, little baseless insinuation on anonymous forums is far easy after all.
Btw, I never insinuated anything of the kind regarding Mr Howard and his sponsorship. You and other snowflakes became overly defensive and read it that way , when in fact what I said was that he came on board when we were friendless, and now the club has other new money sponsors on board his benevolence isn’t needed.
I then suggested that in the interest of transparency and process, I would expect and hope that all transactions where a director is involved are firstly fully market tested and valued so as to avoid at all costs any perception of favouritism etc. How can you or anyone reasonably argue against that?
I also said that in light of recent changes and losses of resource I was unsure how or who we had in place to go to market and get those measures and values.
This morphed the discussion when I discovered we had no new sponsors or money replacing Beechdean and in fact are shuffling and upgrading others to replace Beechdean and full the front of shirt positions,
Contrary to your perception, I fear we are in a far worse position for mr Howard’s and Beechdean Absence and lesser influence
That would depend on whether you have any evidence.
I have already formed an opinion on that but maybe you would surprise me.
If you are not prepared to lay down your issue, your evidence and who you are talking about, its hard to see why you are posting at all. its a free board however.
@floyd said:
Furthermore, the Trust Board are volunteers who support the club, whereas as Hayes was in it for himself. So, behave.
I really don't agree with you on this I'm afraid. Just because the club is run by a committee of supporters rather than one owner, benevolent or otherwise, doesn't mean that committee should avoid scrutiny or criticism for poor decision making. Don Woodward deserved credit for helping set up the current ownership model but shouldn't be immune to criticism for spunking a potential windfall up the wall by naively negotiating away the Matty Phillips sell-on clause.
In fact, in my opinion, any member of either the Trust or the Club board who does not believe they should be subject to scrutiny should be booted off the board because that's not the calibre of leadership we need or deserve.
Furthermore I still can't understand how it makes any sense to have one man fulfil the role of both Club board chairman and Trust board chairman, given the latter's job is to scrutinise the former and hold him to account. The UK Corporate Governance Code says the roles of chairman and chief executive should not be held by the same person, which is basically the equivalence of what we have here at the moment. We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than that. Trevor Stroud should resign one of those roles and his successor should be elected on a pledge of greater openness and transparency.
I agree with @aloysius that the current situation, whereby the same person is chair of both Trust and Football Club, is highly undesirable and should be redressed.
I really don't agree with you on this I'm afraid. Just because the club is run by a committee of supporters rather than one owner, benevolent or otherwise, doesn't mean that committee should avoid scrutiny or criticism for poor decision making.
Agreed, but surely i don't need to spell out to you the difference between Hayes running the club and the Trust running the club? Or the difference between whether or not shirt sponsorship was offered at a discounted rate and leaving AP? Or the difference between snide comments driven by, we can only assume, personal animus, and a campaign to basically save the football club as we know it?
The Trust are absolutely not above criticism, for some of the reasons you've outlined but i feel like the deserve the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
As a personal observation @marlowchair I feel that the (presumably valid) points you are raising are muffled somewhat by the grinding sound of the axe that you appear to be holding.
I don’t actually think that is your intent but on casual reading of your posts that was the impression I got from them. It could just be how I read them but others seem to have drawn similar conclusions
I really don't agree with you on this I'm afraid. Just because the club is run by a committee of supporters rather than one owner, benevolent or otherwise, doesn't mean that committee should avoid scrutiny or criticism for poor decision making.
Agreed, but surely i don't need to spell out to you the difference between Hayes running the club and the Trust running the club? Or the difference between whether or not shirt sponsorship was offered at a discounted rate and leaving AP? Or the difference between snide comments driven by, we can only assume, personal animus, and a campaign to basically save the football club as we know it?
The Trust are absolutely not above criticism, for some of the reasons you've outlined but i feel like the deserve the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
So we are only allowed to discuss the big issues as you or the powers that be determine are important enough?
In a few discussions here you have wrongly determined and labelled me as snide and accused me of being driven by personal animus ( feel free to quote me where you perceive I have Demonstrated this, I’d be glad to apologise and clarify ) .That is the lot of anyone who raises concerns then is it? Seems rather dictorial and suppressive to me.
It might be equally as paranoid to suggest the trust directors and football club board directors and their life partners and friends who post here should identify themselves in the interests of fair play , as to take a personal set against anyone with a contrary opinion or one who poses genuine questions of concern?
Personally I'd advocate a model based on much more separation between the club and trust boards, where no person was allowed to serve on both at the same time. The club board should be properly accountable to the trust board, with the trust board having the authority to remove club board members if they're not up to the job.
The trust board should become much more transparent and democratic. I would change the trust membership model so that every season ticket holder becomes an automatic member of the trust with equal voting rights (there's an argument to extend it to any supporter who's bought tickets to more than, say, five matches in the preceding season as well). By extending the membership we're much more likely to get genuinely contested elections to the trust board and no cabals / slates developing, bringing in supporters with a wealth of skills that could benefit the club and who could add real value to the trust board.
Finally I'd make trust board meetings much more open to scrutiny, having the open to the public and livestreamed on the web (we don't all live in High Wycombe, sadly). Just as with local authorities, commercially sensitive and personnel discussions should be able to be held in closed sessions where necessary.
As a result we would be able to have scrutiny by Gasroom debate, @micra, yes indeed. But that debate would be informed debate rather than insinuation and speculation - and would be so much more productive as a result. We would finally have true supporter ownership that ties us all in together and allows us to shape our club - and a backroom operation to mirror and complement the great work done by GA and AH and their team on the sporting side.
@bookertease said:
As a personal observation @marlowchair I feel that the (presumably valid) points you are raising are muffled somewhat by the grinding sound of the axe that you appear to be holding.
I don’t actually think that is your intent but on casual reading of your posts that was the impression I got from them. It could just be how I read them but others seem to have drawn similar conclusions
I understand how you might see that but unfortunately my contributions to discussion on ladies football or where to watch the World Cup don’t attract responses as many in number as this topic! It’s obviously of interest but my attention to it is no more grinding a personal axe as those wishing to debate my motives or right to raise it
It wasn’t even me who inferred anything untoward has been done at the start and I never have since!
I said “ perhaps at below market rate” when referring to Mr Howard’s sponsorship over the past few years and then clarified that by saying it was because no other companies were interested ahead Beechdean was probably being Benevolent in supporting us during hard times!
The sensitives among us took that as a dastardly slight on Mr Howard by yours truly and have ignored the fact I credit him with the success of so much in recent years ....go figure
Comments
It was the less than flattering way you referred to the trust board that made me question your motives.
@aloysius obviously not. I don’t believe you think there is an equivalency between rushing into a poor deal on a shirt sponsor (allegedly) and moving lock stock and barrel to the Hayes Dome.
Furthermore, the Trust Board are volunteers who support the club, whereas as Hayes was in it for himself. So, behave.
Marlow Chair unfortunately has form for making derogatory insinuations about the club current and ex-chairman and the Trust Board without quite specifying what his accusations are. that is anything but holding power to account, it is simply undermining those who give their time to run the club without any evidence whatsoever. The danger is that given that social media finds a haven for conspiracy theories and becomes a self-fulfilling echo chamber, those insinuations apparently based on nothing or half-truths have a habit of becoming "fact".
Exeter lost a successful manager in a large part due to such things. Floyd repeats a social media/echo chamber "fact" above that doesn't appear to tie in with the objective facts. In the wider world, Trump relies on it for his base. Social media and its ability to create "alternative facts" (or lies as they used to be known) is one of the major issues that society will have to deal with.
@marlowchair - may I suggest you re-read your posts, as I'm not alone in having this misunderstanding. In suggesting commercial activity is not handled well at present, you have certainly criticised those brought in on that side. Is AH not part of that process?
@ Aloysius Erdogan and Honecker - not too far from Godwin's law on this one then? I don't think this is about accountability at all, its about anonymous briefing against those running the club, with very little clarity as to what the endgame is, or the competence of the anonymous critic.
The trust board are good people and do a great job.i’ve never had an issue with them and more than you know are concerned they are not furnished with the full picture also.
The negotiations were closed and complete long before I said anything here. If you read by earlier comments on this topic all I did was raise exactly the same concerns you have in your last para , asking the question about our process and ability to adhere to process with the current operating structure.
what “form”?
Utter nonesense from you there Dev
AH had nothing to do with that process!? He hasn’t for 12 months,there’s been enormous changes since he became sporting director .
Not so long ago, marlow, you were insinuating that Andrew Howard and beechdean got their shirt sponsorship at mates rates thereby damaging the club for his own personal interest. You provided no evidence whatsoever to support this, just I presume rather hoped that the more gullible would pick up your social media insinuation and turn it into social media "fact".
Now you are back making more insinuations but never quite stating what your accusations of wrong or who you are accusing of bad, inept or fraudulent behaviour.
If you have something to say, say it. This is my accusation, this is the evidence to support it. I suspect you will refuse to man up though, little baseless insinuation on anonymous forums is far easy after all.
Incredible, you don’t want discussion or information raised here but you are encouraging me to state far more damaging things and name people. Presumably so you can then say I am spruiking outrageous unfounded lies...
Nice one Dev
Btw, I never insinuated anything of the kind regarding Mr Howard and his sponsorship. You and other snowflakes became overly defensive and read it that way , when in fact what I said was that he came on board when we were friendless, and now the club has other new money sponsors on board his benevolence isn’t needed.
I then suggested that in the interest of transparency and process, I would expect and hope that all transactions where a director is involved are firstly fully market tested and valued so as to avoid at all costs any perception of favouritism etc. How can you or anyone reasonably argue against that?
I also said that in light of recent changes and losses of resource I was unsure how or who we had in place to go to market and get those measures and values.
This morphed the discussion when I discovered we had no new sponsors or money replacing Beechdean and in fact are shuffling and upgrading others to replace Beechdean and full the front of shirt positions,
Contrary to your perception, I fear we are in a far worse position for mr Howard’s and Beechdean Absence and lesser influence
That would depend on whether you have any evidence.
I have already formed an opinion on that but maybe you would surprise me.
If you are not prepared to lay down your issue, your evidence and who you are talking about, its hard to see why you are posting at all. its a free board however.
snowflakes? Erdogan? Honecker? I come on here to escape the news.
I really don't agree with you on this I'm afraid. Just because the club is run by a committee of supporters rather than one owner, benevolent or otherwise, doesn't mean that committee should avoid scrutiny or criticism for poor decision making. Don Woodward deserved credit for helping set up the current ownership model but shouldn't be immune to criticism for spunking a potential windfall up the wall by naively negotiating away the Matty Phillips sell-on clause.
In fact, in my opinion, any member of either the Trust or the Club board who does not believe they should be subject to scrutiny should be booted off the board because that's not the calibre of leadership we need or deserve.
Furthermore I still can't understand how it makes any sense to have one man fulfil the role of both Club board chairman and Trust board chairman, given the latter's job is to scrutinise the former and hold him to account. The UK Corporate Governance Code says the roles of chairman and chief executive should not be held by the same person, which is basically the equivalence of what we have here at the moment. We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than that. Trevor Stroud should resign one of those roles and his successor should be elected on a pledge of greater openness and transparency.
I agree with @aloysius that the current situation, whereby the same person is chair of both Trust and Football Club, is highly undesirable and should be redressed.
I also agree with @Aloysius. The current situation is unhealthy and I am surprised that Trevor Stroud cannot see this.
Agreed, but surely i don't need to spell out to you the difference between Hayes running the club and the Trust running the club? Or the difference between whether or not shirt sponsorship was offered at a discounted rate and leaving AP? Or the difference between snide comments driven by, we can only assume, personal animus, and a campaign to basically save the football club as we know it?
The Trust are absolutely not above criticism, for some of the reasons you've outlined but i feel like the deserve the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
But will they use the correct shade of Cambridge Blue on the new shirt?
Or appoint Sol Campbell as our next manager?
Scrutiny by whom @aloysius and on what procedural basis? Not Gasroom debate, I assume.
Anyone who throws around the term Snowflake without irony in 2018 is deeply suspicious in my opinion.
As a personal observation @marlowchair I feel that the (presumably valid) points you are raising are muffled somewhat by the grinding sound of the axe that you appear to be holding.
I don’t actually think that is your intent but on casual reading of your posts that was the impression I got from them. It could just be how I read them but others seem to have drawn similar conclusions
Absolutely justified criticism my apologies
So we are only allowed to discuss the big issues as you or the powers that be determine are important enough?
In a few discussions here you have wrongly determined and labelled me as snide and accused me of being driven by personal animus ( feel free to quote me where you perceive I have Demonstrated this, I’d be glad to apologise and clarify ) .That is the lot of anyone who raises concerns then is it? Seems rather dictorial and suppressive to me.
It might be equally as paranoid to suggest the trust directors and football club board directors and their life partners and friends who post here should identify themselves in the interests of fair play , as to take a personal set against anyone with a contrary opinion or one who poses genuine questions of concern?
Maybe we'll find out something on this 6-7 show tonight on Wycombe Sound with Gaz and AH.
Meant to be some "big" announcement..apparently.
What exactly is your "genuine question of concern"? Could you spell it out clearly please. you may find when you do that others are equally concerned.
Good question, @micra.
Personally I'd advocate a model based on much more separation between the club and trust boards, where no person was allowed to serve on both at the same time. The club board should be properly accountable to the trust board, with the trust board having the authority to remove club board members if they're not up to the job.
The trust board should become much more transparent and democratic. I would change the trust membership model so that every season ticket holder becomes an automatic member of the trust with equal voting rights (there's an argument to extend it to any supporter who's bought tickets to more than, say, five matches in the preceding season as well). By extending the membership we're much more likely to get genuinely contested elections to the trust board and no cabals / slates developing, bringing in supporters with a wealth of skills that could benefit the club and who could add real value to the trust board.
Finally I'd make trust board meetings much more open to scrutiny, having the open to the public and livestreamed on the web (we don't all live in High Wycombe, sadly). Just as with local authorities, commercially sensitive and personnel discussions should be able to be held in closed sessions where necessary.
As a result we would be able to have scrutiny by Gasroom debate, @micra, yes indeed. But that debate would be informed debate rather than insinuation and speculation - and would be so much more productive as a result. We would finally have true supporter ownership that ties us all in together and allows us to shape our club - and a backroom operation to mirror and complement the great work done by GA and AH and their team on the sporting side.
@aloysius a good constructive post thank you.
I understand how you might see that but unfortunately my contributions to discussion on ladies football or where to watch the World Cup don’t attract responses as many in number as this topic! It’s obviously of interest but my attention to it is no more grinding a personal axe as those wishing to debate my motives or right to raise it
It wasn’t even me who inferred anything untoward has been done at the start and I never have since!
I said “ perhaps at below market rate” when referring to Mr Howard’s sponsorship over the past few years and then clarified that by saying it was because no other companies were interested ahead Beechdean was probably being Benevolent in supporting us during hard times!
The sensitives among us took that as a dastardly slight on Mr Howard by yours truly and have ignored the fact I credit him with the success of so much in recent years ....go figure