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A club detached from its supporters


Dr Balls

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Interesting thread @Dr Balls

However isn't this just a symptom of the modern game too? The poster who made the Man Utd comparison, this isn't a good one but it just seems to me that at decent levels there won't be a great bond, connection.

Feels like a symptom/hazard much like players who don't always run themselves into the ground let's say but get paid handsomely anyway!

Foreign owners, Superagents, Sporting Directors, analytics to name a few. All have positives and negatives but it's a long way from the Sport of football.

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From a business executive  perspective, the communications are now professional and corporate, ticking the business boxes.

From a supporter perspective, they’ve become dull, inward, no substance and disconnected.

Given we are a business and a passion and each mutually reliant on each other, it’s obvious the balance our larger media and comms team is offering is wrong?

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I get the impression that much of this relates to some poor signings and appointing a manager that did not fit with the social media groupthink. Better facilities, decent catering, good pre-match facilities, plenty of social media communication, the ST refunds well handled, even the ticketing for the 4 games in Dec/ Jan was fair and well handled.

It’s not really that bad, just needs a priority system for away tickets so that the few hundred regulars are given priority for popular trips. That’s my only complaint.

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I think the fact we are so poor on the pitch is exaggerating everyone’s feelings at the moment, the fact we feel so detached from the club has been happening for a while, since social media exploded players can’t do anything without someone uploading a video, taking things out of context or writing outright lies, hence why they tend to keep themselves to themselves in the main and have detached themselves, i can’t say i blame them either. The other thing we see now is the completely bland and cliched interviews. They are all media trained and give you nothing. I barley listen to them these days, there are hardly any personalities (that we get to see) anymore. It’s why i like listening to Darragh Mcanthonys podcasts as he offers good insights in to the game. 

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The club has had poor communication skills with us fans for as long as i can  remember. It’s not something that’s due entirely down to Mark Ashton.

Fair play to SL for speaking to us recently - he didn’t actually have to but it is was his responsibility as owner to bring us up to date with all the recent happenings. I’m delighted he did rather than delegated MA to do it - that would have gone down like a lead balloon!

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I think it was a massive mistake to replace Adam Baker and his team. Lisa Knights, Peter Trego and Downsy. They’re just all wrong. They’ve changed the match day music, made it very sterile. The ST fiasco a couple of years ago regarding disabled fans and children... SL telling fans to put up or shut up...

They’ve actively commodified the match day experience, which is necessary in some respects but have forgotten the emotional tie that people have to their football club.

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2 hours ago, Robbored said:

The club has had poor communication skills with us fans for as long as i can  remember. It’s not something that’s due entirely down to Mark Ashton.

Fair play to SL for speaking to us recently - he didn’t actually have to but it is was his responsibility as owner to bring us up to date with all the recent happenings. I’m delighted he did rather than delegated MA to do it - that would have gone down like a lead balloon!

Sad indictment that the owner had to come out to protect the CEO.  Says a lot in my book.

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1 minute ago, Davefevs said:

Sad indictment that the owner had to come out to protect the CEO.  Says a lot in my book.

Hmmm.....with the rumours around MA, Ipswich Town and an American takeover maybe the writing is on the wall................:cool2:

We can only hope.

 

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34 minutes ago, Sheltons Army said:

Gut feeling is still Ashton will be gone in Summer , especially if Pearson stays 

Think Ashton may well go, but I'm not 100% sure Pearson will stay even though he will have the fans backing. Still think Ryan Lowe may come in for the long haul.

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19 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Interesting thread @Dr Balls

However isn't this just a symptom of the modern game too? The poster who made the Man Utd comparison, this isn't a good one but it just seems to me that at decent levels there won't be a great bond, connection.

Feels like a symptom/hazard much like players who don't always run themselves into the ground let's say but get paid handsomely anyway!

Foreign owners, Superagents, Sporting Directors, analytics to name a few. All have positives and negatives but it's a long way from the Sport of football.

This is the Modern World and I think you're spot on, it isn't just us. I suspect fans of most Championship and Premier league clubs feel less connected now than ever with their respective clubs.

It's just that when you're flying high you push it into the background and focus on the now. But if you've lived through the sort of abject season we have had, you will naturally look at every negative aspect you can find, and compare and contrast with the times when we did it better.

Modern Life Is Rubbish. 

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3 minutes ago, City Rocker said:

This is the Modern World and I think you're spot on, it isn't just us. I suspect fans of most Championship and Premier league clubs feel less connected now than ever with their respective clubs.

It's just that when you're flying high you push it into the background and focus on the now. But if you've lived through the sort of abject season we have had, you will naturally look at every negative aspect you can find, and compare and contrast with the times when we did it better.

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Couple of good album titles there!  

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On 21/02/2021 at 12:15, italian dave said:

Being ‘detached from supporters’ always seems a bit of a vague notion that’s easy to accuse clubs of but means lots of different things to different people. Communication - in itself something that covers a whole range of different things and is almost universally something organisations get accused of being poor at. Pricing - but fans want clubs to go out and buy the best, whilst not having to pay the ticket prices or the rip off shirt prices that make it possible. Ownership by rich, foreign, distant people and players who earn amounts fans can only dream about - but again at the same time expecting that level of investment. 
I’m not disagreeing with the proposition but just not sure how any club can get it right. Probably the time I felt most connected to the club as an individual was the Des Williams/Terry Cooper era - but in no small part that was helped by the fact that there were only a few thousand of us fans so much easier to feel part of it. It kind of went with life in the fourth tier and I wouldn’t necessarily want to go back there.

Finally, I’m just not sure that now is the best time to judge how connected clubs and fans are, a year into a pandemic and a year since fans have been allowed anywhere near a ground or a live match. 

I have the horrible feeling that Ashton has worked out that whether we are the Championship or League 1 the loyal core of supporters will turn up. As a pure financial calculation he thinks, is it worth paying for a better coach and better players only to increase the gate by approx. 5000? because to assemble a coach and a team able to compete for promotion and survive in the Prem is beyond any realistic possibility. 

So we talk big to give the fans hope to make us buy season tickets, we sign an affordable manager who attracts average players. We flirt for a while in a play off position then drift back to a comfortable mid table position.

This is probably the safest and most sensible financial model. If we are doing OK and in mid table for get between 19 and 22,000 depending upon away support. If we are challenging for a large part of the season we get 23-25,000.  In my opinion he doesn't see a return on being more than a mid table team.

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