I have been posting the same on this board since 2018.
Nothing scares people more than the truth, Marlow Chair clearly got fed up with the dog's abuse he/she received on here and as a result the Gasroom lost it's best contributor.
My frustrations with him were never about his knowledge (he always came over well-informed) but his tendency to make it very personal which to me always got in the way of what he was trying to say.
He’d also go from knowing ‘A’ to concluding ‘C’ without ever really explaining the rationale in ‘B’ which is guaranteed to raise my pique.
@glasshalffull said:
You have to be pretty thick skinned if you’re going to post on here and if you can’t take criticism you shouldn’t dish it out.
I often don't share your perspective but on this I do. The apparently personal nature of his criticisms drove me away from him rather than the reverse.
@micra said:
I never did discover who @marlowchair was. Is he no longer a Gasroomer ?
He left so many clues along the way...............
I remember you asking me, as we were leaving the main stand after either a pre-season Friendly or a tinpot trophy game last year, if I knew who @marlowchair was. I assumed you were asking because you yourself didn’t know, not on the basis of “nudge nudge guess who...” which would clearly have been totally out of character! I’m going to use a word I dislike now and say that you have “piqued my interest “!
I am as clueless as @mooneyman on this one. I suppose that puts me in the same position as @NiceCarrots.
I think opposition to @NiceCarrots and @marlowchair falls broadly into two categories; club insiders who like to control the flow of information and fans who don't like other fans knowing more than them
My frustrations with him were never about his knowledge (he always came over well-informed) but his tendency to make it very personal which to me always got in the way of what he was trying to say.
He’d also go from knowing ‘A’ to concluding ‘C’ without ever really explaining the rationale in ‘B’ which is guaranteed to raise my pique.
But it was a shame he felt driven away
Pretty much my feeling on @marlowchair . The personal and direspectful nature of their criticism of some in the Trust took away from any truth. I always felt the truths were fairly general, much like a fortune teller or medium might be right.
Bottom line for though is that anyone with tgat level of inside knowledge cannot just spout it out on an anonymous forum with questions. I simply don't trust anyone who might do that.
The Ainsworth last game post was a great way to leave the forum though. A proper mike drop
@NiceCarrots said:
I have been posting the same on this board since 2018.
Nothing scares people more than the truth, Marlow Chair clearly got fed up with the dog's abuse he/she received on here and as a result the Gasroom lost it's best contributor.
Shame.
Not sure @NiceCarrots what precisely you have been posting for at least two years that can be categorised as “the same” although I have noticed a disappointing dearth of comments about footballers and football. Nor have you had much (if anything) to say about how lucky we are to have the Couhigs in charge (and how shrewd Trevor Stroud and his fellow Trust Board members were in identifying them as the right people to invite to tender). Their input has been phenomenal.
As I said this morning, despite the clues apparently strewn along the way (cf @AlanCecil’s comment), I never did discover @marlowchair’s identity - not that I tried that hard - but I’m not persuaded by your claim not to know him/her yourself. Your attempt at obfuscation by slipping in a disingenuous “his/her” at one point but categorically referring to “him” in a response to @glasshalffull does rather undermine your assertion.
Finally, I think many on here would take issue with your description of @marlowchair as the Gasroom’s best contributor. What topics in particular do you have in mind in making that assertion?
1) What I was trying (and failing) to explain is that I have posted since September 2018 that I am not Marlow Chair as you can see yourself in the comments section.
2) Couldn't be less interested whether you believe me as to whether I know him/her or not, you're wrong.
3) Calling Marlow Chair him/her is not a masterclass in obfuscation, I don't know 'him' so he might be a 'her' although I agree it is more likely it is a 'him'.
4) We agree about the Couhigs though, trust members have more transparency and communication from The Couhigs as a minority shareholder than we did when we were a 100% trust owned club.
5) Furthermore, I believe we are in a better position relative to our peers than at any other time in our football league history.
6) Didn't "shrewd Trevor and his fellow Trust board members" initially reject the Couhigs' approaches as they were fanstruck by the Dutch bid?
If you think that is shrewd that is your opinion.
And my opinion is that I value Marlow Chair's contribution.
@NiceCarrots said:
1) What I was trying (and failing) to explain is that I have posted since September 2018 that I am not Marlow Chair as you can see yourself in the comments section.
2) Couldn't be less interested whether you believe me as to whether I know him/her or not, you're wrong.
3) Calling Marlow Chair him/her is not a masterclass in obfuscation, I don't know 'him' so he might be a 'her' although I agree it is more likely it is a 'him'.
4) We agree about the Couhigs though, trust members have more transparency and communication from The Couhigs as a minority shareholder than we did when we were a 100% trust owned club.
5) Furthermore, I believe we are in a better position relative to our peers than at any other time in our football league history.
6) Didn't "shrewd Trevor and his fellow Trust board members" initially reject the Couhigs' approaches as they were fanstruck by the Dutch bid?
If you think that is shrewd that is your opinion.
And my opinion is that I value Marlow Chair's contribution.
Point 6
Didnt Trevor and his Peers recommend the Swindon Dodgepots ?? Twice getting members down to a meeting, but these dubious characters failed to show up.
Are some of this consortium currently 'on the run' from the police ?
Mr. Harps is referring to Harry/Henry Kerr ex-M.D. of Avalon with whom the board of WWST was "pleased to announce" that they had signed Heads of Terms, "the board, with the support of the Club directors, unaninmously feels" etc (Source WWST 13th Feb) not only where we not the only club in South Bucks they tried it on with but none of the Trust board appeared to have googled their names (Gary Hooper and Harry Kerr) which seems at best unfortunate and at worst negligent.
Whether the Trust board and the Club board acted in a shrewd manner, given their tag-line was safeguarding our heritage, I'll leave up to the others to discuss.
I am enjoying the less personal posts from @NiceCarrots in recent days. As you say you choose to believe or not and I must admit I read them as part truths from a single view point rather than the true official history.
@Wendoverman said:
Its all kicking off again is it?
It is the international break. We do need something to do.
I must admit i googled a few key names from our recent past and "marlow" but it seems any clues alluded to by Mr Cecil weren't as obvious to the likes of me as to others!
@micra said:
Nor have you had much (if anything) to say about how lucky we are to have the Couhigs in charge (and how shrewd Trevor Stroud and his fellow Trust Board members were in identifying them as the right people to invite to tender). Their input has been phenomenal.
>
This is your view @micra but other viewpoints are available. There are certainly pluses in the Couhigs' column, the new floodlights will come in handy, I'm sure. But most of the improvements haven't really added much yet in the great scheme of things - I'm thinking of the vegan burgers, the new dug outs, the LED advertising hoardings.
Then there are the mistakes - ranging from minor (the cheerleaders, the launch of the new third kit and the ousting from the Woodlands Lounge that you got so excised about), to the more important, such as, in my opinion, falsely advertising season tickets with the expectation that spectators would only miss a few matches; agitating for supporters to return to the ground at the start of the second wave of a pandemic (I see Rob Couhig is still banging that drum). And in my opinion the most egregious mistake of all, telling all staff to look for new jobs at the start of the pandemic as the club wouldn't support them when the govt subsidies ran out. As far as I'm aware no other club in the pyramid did that.
Now that obviously didn't come to pass because of the promotion. There's no doubt the initial Couhig investment helped bring that about but it's Gareth and the footballing staff that made it happen. Any successful bid would have provided the same funds at a minimum, and would also have provided for at least the B team offering we now have (the Dutch bid offered us a Centre of Excellence, as I recall). What did the Couhigs invest of their own money? £500k? They'll recoup all that from our Championship funds, my hope is that they won't take out any more than they put in, but time will tell.
Another potential mistake is not investing enough in the playing squad this summer to give us the opportunity to stay up, time will tell on that one as well. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong. I also have my suspicions the Couhigs' long term plans involve getting outline planning permission for a new stadium then selling us on for a large profit, but I suspect that'll be at least a couple of years into the future. @NiceCarrots points out we have more transparency from the Couhigs then we did from the Trust, which is not a very high bar to leap over. But there's transparency and there's transparency. Allowing a club employee to moderate an online q&a session is not my idea of transparency.
I accept I'm in a small minority, maybe a minority of one, who prefers to treat any custodian of the club with suspicion rather than praise, but I make no apology for that. I'll be delighted to be proved wrong in the long term. Until then, my jury remains out.
@aloysius, without putting it too crudely as such, wasn't "doing us up" and selling us on always the MO of the whole project?
With both sides gaining, with us left in the championship in a much healthier position than they found us in, and them taking a well deserved profit from helping us to achieve such status?
We've got promoted unexpectedly early on the roadmap.
@Malone totally agree. I don't think less of the Couhigs for being hard-headed business people, I just think we should be clear about that rather than treating them like romantics tilting at windmills while on a daring quest.
My bigger issue remains with the Trust. If, as I suspect, we end up with Middle Eastern owners in the end, we will have no say over the terms. If we'd been a bit more transparent about the sale process and done it properly, we might have been able to get better terms or at least better checks and balances installed in the deal.
Comments
Have to say @NiceCarrots that your disclaimer surprised me.
I have been posting the same on this board since 2018.
Nothing scares people more than the truth, Marlow Chair clearly got fed up with the dog's abuse he/she received on here and as a result the Gasroom lost it's best contributor.
Shame.
He left so many clues along the way...............
I was never any good at playing Cluedo!
It was clearly someone who had a close view of the running of the club. But there seemed a lot of personal elements to the comments too.
Very much this! Would have assumed they were very matey.
I must just mention I have actually met who I believe is @nicecarrots, and had a decent length chat at an away once. Seemed a sound enough guy to me.
(Whether some random on a forum (ie me) saying that is any sort of character reference I do not know
)
Is he and his family okay @AlanCecil do you know?
My frustrations with him were never about his knowledge (he always came over well-informed) but his tendency to make it very personal which to me always got in the way of what he was trying to say.
He’d also go from knowing ‘A’ to concluding ‘C’ without ever really explaining the rationale in ‘B’ which is guaranteed to raise my pique.
But it was a shame he felt driven away
Driven away or proved wrong on too many occasions?
Quite clearly driven away.
I think he was treated very poorly by many on here and it reflected badly on the whole Gasroom.
You have to be pretty thick skinned if you’re going to post on here and if you can’t take criticism you shouldn’t dish it out.
I often don't share your perspective but on this I do. The apparently personal nature of his criticisms drove me away from him rather than the reverse.
I remember you asking me, as we were leaving the main stand after either a pre-season Friendly or a tinpot trophy game last year, if I knew who @marlowchair was. I assumed you were asking because you yourself didn’t know, not on the basis of “nudge nudge guess who...” which would clearly have been totally out of character! I’m going to use a word I dislike now and say that you have “piqued my interest “!
I am as clueless as @mooneyman on this one. I suppose that puts me in the same position as @NiceCarrots.
I think opposition to @NiceCarrots and @marlowchair falls broadly into two categories; club insiders who like to control the flow of information and fans who don't like other fans knowing more than them
Pretty much my feeling on @marlowchair . The personal and direspectful nature of their criticism of some in the Trust took away from any truth. I always felt the truths were fairly general, much like a fortune teller or medium might be right.
Bottom line for though is that anyone with tgat level of inside knowledge cannot just spout it out on an anonymous forum with questions. I simply don't trust anyone who might do that.
The Ainsworth last game post was a great way to leave the forum though. A proper mike drop
Here’s another category: people who prefer facts to unsubstantiated rumours and speculation.
Don’t be silly @glasshalffull. No-one on social media prefers facts to unsubstantiated rumours and gossip
That leaves the Daily Wail readers out then @glasshalffull!??
Not sure @NiceCarrots what precisely you have been posting for at least two years that can be categorised as “the same” although I have noticed a disappointing dearth of comments about footballers and football. Nor have you had much (if anything) to say about how lucky we are to have the Couhigs in charge (and how shrewd Trevor Stroud and his fellow Trust Board members were in identifying them as the right people to invite to tender). Their input has been phenomenal.
As I said this morning, despite the clues apparently strewn along the way (cf @AlanCecil’s comment), I never did discover @marlowchair’s identity - not that I tried that hard - but I’m not persuaded by your claim not to know him/her yourself. Your attempt at obfuscation by slipping in a disingenuous “his/her” at one point but categorically referring to “him” in a response to @glasshalffull does rather undermine your assertion.
Finally, I think many on here would take issue with your description of @marlowchair as the Gasroom’s best contributor. What topics in particular do you have in mind in making that assertion?
1) What I was trying (and failing) to explain is that I have posted since September 2018 that I am not Marlow Chair as you can see yourself in the comments section.
2) Couldn't be less interested whether you believe me as to whether I know him/her or not, you're wrong.
3) Calling Marlow Chair him/her is not a masterclass in obfuscation, I don't know 'him' so he might be a 'her' although I agree it is more likely it is a 'him'.
4) We agree about the Couhigs though, trust members have more transparency and communication from The Couhigs as a minority shareholder than we did when we were a 100% trust owned club.
5) Furthermore, I believe we are in a better position relative to our peers than at any other time in our football league history.
6) Didn't "shrewd Trevor and his fellow Trust board members" initially reject the Couhigs' approaches as they were fanstruck by the Dutch bid?
If you think that is shrewd that is your opinion.
And my opinion is that I value Marlow Chair's contribution.
Fully agree with paragraph 4 @NiceCarrots. I think most of the criticism of the Trust arose from excessive secrecy of the Board.
Point 6
Didnt Trevor and his Peers recommend the Swindon Dodgepots ?? Twice getting members down to a meeting, but these dubious characters failed to show up.
Are some of this consortium currently 'on the run' from the police ?
Mr. Harps is referring to Harry/Henry Kerr ex-M.D. of Avalon with whom the board of WWST was "pleased to announce" that they had signed Heads of Terms, "the board, with the support of the Club directors, unaninmously feels" etc (Source WWST 13th Feb) not only where we not the only club in South Bucks they tried it on with but none of the Trust board appeared to have googled their names (Gary Hooper and Harry Kerr) which seems at best unfortunate and at worst negligent.
Whether the Trust board and the Club board acted in a shrewd manner, given their tag-line was safeguarding our heritage, I'll leave up to the others to discuss.
I am enjoying the less personal posts from @NiceCarrots in recent days. As you say you choose to believe or not and I must admit I read them as part truths from a single view point rather than the true official history.
Its all kicking off again is it?
It is the international break. We do need something to do.
I must admit i googled a few key names from our recent past and "marlow" but it seems any clues alluded to by Mr Cecil weren't as obvious to the likes of me as to others!
>
This is your view @micra but other viewpoints are available. There are certainly pluses in the Couhigs' column, the new floodlights will come in handy, I'm sure. But most of the improvements haven't really added much yet in the great scheme of things - I'm thinking of the vegan burgers, the new dug outs, the LED advertising hoardings.
Then there are the mistakes - ranging from minor (the cheerleaders, the launch of the new third kit and the ousting from the Woodlands Lounge that you got so excised about), to the more important, such as, in my opinion, falsely advertising season tickets with the expectation that spectators would only miss a few matches; agitating for supporters to return to the ground at the start of the second wave of a pandemic (I see Rob Couhig is still banging that drum). And in my opinion the most egregious mistake of all, telling all staff to look for new jobs at the start of the pandemic as the club wouldn't support them when the govt subsidies ran out. As far as I'm aware no other club in the pyramid did that.
Now that obviously didn't come to pass because of the promotion. There's no doubt the initial Couhig investment helped bring that about but it's Gareth and the footballing staff that made it happen. Any successful bid would have provided the same funds at a minimum, and would also have provided for at least the B team offering we now have (the Dutch bid offered us a Centre of Excellence, as I recall). What did the Couhigs invest of their own money? £500k? They'll recoup all that from our Championship funds, my hope is that they won't take out any more than they put in, but time will tell.
Another potential mistake is not investing enough in the playing squad this summer to give us the opportunity to stay up, time will tell on that one as well. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong. I also have my suspicions the Couhigs' long term plans involve getting outline planning permission for a new stadium then selling us on for a large profit, but I suspect that'll be at least a couple of years into the future. @NiceCarrots points out we have more transparency from the Couhigs then we did from the Trust, which is not a very high bar to leap over. But there's transparency and there's transparency. Allowing a club employee to moderate an online q&a session is not my idea of transparency.
I accept I'm in a small minority, maybe a minority of one, who prefers to treat any custodian of the club with suspicion rather than praise, but I make no apology for that. I'll be delighted to be proved wrong in the long term. Until then, my jury remains out.
I can confirm that @marlowchair is a ‘he’ (and married) but that is the extent of my knowledge about him
@aloysius, without putting it too crudely as such, wasn't "doing us up" and selling us on always the MO of the whole project?
With both sides gaining, with us left in the championship in a much healthier position than they found us in, and them taking a well deserved profit from helping us to achieve such status?
We've got promoted unexpectedly early on the roadmap.
@Malone totally agree. I don't think less of the Couhigs for being hard-headed business people, I just think we should be clear about that rather than treating them like romantics tilting at windmills while on a daring quest.
My bigger issue remains with the Trust. If, as I suspect, we end up with Middle Eastern owners in the end, we will have no say over the terms. If we'd been a bit more transparent about the sale process and done it properly, we might have been able to get better terms or at least better checks and balances installed in the deal.
Who's to say the MO hasn't changed? I'd gladly have them stick around indefinitely.