Thatslife
"Decisions are made by those who turn up"
Joined: June 2014
Posts: 669
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Post by Thatslife on Oct 6, 2014 19:57:25 GMT
Must admit to being fed up with people slagging of our Chairman so I thought I would post what I believe (I know I will be slated but I am big enough and certainly ugly enough to take it).
Just bear with me for a minute, if you were down the pub on a Saturday, having a beer before the match and you tell everyone that you are going to the match, you then go outside, start you car and it catches fire, you dont make it to the game, so question is, were you misleading or lying to your mates when you told them that you were going to the game? No of course not, you told them what was true at the time you told them.
I believe this is what happened to our Chairman, he passes on what information he is allowed to and at the time he said it its true, I for one have no doubt it is . Events happen beyond his control i.e Sainsbury's antics, BCC etc etc and any one of the thousand of other things that have to be put in place to make the EWE happen.
Try looking at it from his vantage point, after all he is doing far more than anyone else, including all on this Forum or any other to get the new ground built.
He is doing something, much much more than anyone else is.
Rant over......where's my coat
No I am not his love child, just a supporter who has had a season ticket for 55 years.
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Post by clockendgas on Oct 6, 2014 20:13:55 GMT
you got the brown envelope then, spend it wisely, only joking, when you are at the top you got to take the heat when it gos wrong, and not much has gone right since he took over imho
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 20:17:10 GMT
I get your point. I must say Nick came under fire from many regarding football matters only weeks ago, now as we turn the corner the criticism is directed at his handling of the stadium. Some make and raise good points, others are obviously just haters that hate which is very sad. On another note, someone should start a thread - "What posters have gone missing since we hit form?"
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 20:26:29 GMT
Even with the UWE debacle,he put his trust in people who he thought would do their job. The same with managers appointed. There is no doubt we have gone backwards at an alarming rate since Higgs has become chairman but I think he has been very green regarding the people around him. Certain people who have been at Rovers for years have stood back and made him look a prize one and take the flack away from themselves. Being in the Construction Industry he obviously has come across many types of people as its a hard business but Im sure his dealings with one or two of his fellow board members came as a shock to his system! Ive got a bit of sympathy for Higgs. Not a great deal for other board members.
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Post by onedaytheuwe on Oct 6, 2014 20:31:35 GMT
The truth is no-one knows except a few. However: NH have constantly told us the contract is 'watertight'. Many of us tweeted GT on radio Bristol and asked GT to make sense of things. Despite what some people say GT calls a spade a spade! . He is fair and objective and tries to get answers which is understandable. In his most recent interview with NH he pressed several issues.
NH said " He:s see NO reason why the ground should:t go ahead and the contract is watertight". NH have also said on many occasions the contract is ' legally binding and watertight".
So based on NH judgement we should look forward to a new stadium very soon. So by me questioning NH I am guilty of challenging his authority and undermining his cast iron promises. Therefore : if NH is right I am wrong and will admit that if UWE happens.
However: I don:t think there is such a WORD as misunderstanding. Either we talk the truth or not. It is a recent trend to spin and manipulate words. The British public are fed up with it. Either something is true or is not true.
If NH delivers this stadium like he told us . Then I am wrong and will write to him asking him to accept my apology. All we want is honesty and the strength to admit we are wrong ( including me )
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Thatslife
"Decisions are made by those who turn up"
Joined: June 2014
Posts: 669
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Post by Thatslife on Oct 6, 2014 21:12:07 GMT
The truth is no-one knows except a few. However: NH have constantly told us the contract is 'watertight'. Many of us tweeted GT on radio Bristol and asked GT to make sense of things. Despite what some people say GT calls a spade a spade! . He is fair and objective and tries to get answers which is understandable. In his most recent interview with NH he pressed several issues. NH said " He:s see NO reason why the ground should:t go ahead and the contract is watertight". NH have also said on many occasions the contract is ' legally binding and watertight". So based on NH judgement we should look forward to a new stadium very soon. So by me questioning NH I am guilty of challenging his authority and undermining his cast iron promises. Therefore : if NH is right I am wrong and will admit that if UWE happens. However: I don:t think there is such a WORD as misunderstanding. Either we talk the truth or not. It is a recent trend to spin and manipulate words. The British public are fed up with it. Either something is true or is not true. If NH delivers this stadium like he told us . Then I am wrong and will write to him asking him to accept my apology. All we want is honesty and the strength to admit we are wrong ( including me ) We all take advice whether its from a Doctor, Car Mechanic or Lawyers, we pay people to advise us, we all do at some point in time. The legal team behind the planning application and sale of the Mem, a firm of highly respected London based solicitors who special in complex planning issues, if they tell you its a water tight contract then its a water tight contract, to say any different would be to misrepresenting their opinion, an opinion which has cost a great deal of money.
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Post by onedaytheuwe on Oct 6, 2014 21:23:00 GMT
Not quite like that !. Yes I take advice from professionals but I also digest the information and come to a dual decision. And In this case NH have had a long time to evaluate the professional advice : communicate this information to close partners and reach an informed decision..
The professional advice ( accepting your argument ) along with his expertise forms a judgement. His judgement concludes: the contract is 'watertight' and 'legally binding'.
Therefore : we accept NH judgement ...
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 21:31:31 GMT
I have a degree of sympathy - I work in a job where people are constantly chasing real time information on when to expect our service and it's very easy to give a time and then have it blown out of the water by something unexpected. Then I get it in the neck for getting it 'wrong' when what I said at the time was absolutely true to the best of my knowledge!
On the other hand, I'm responsible for the service delivery so, although I'm battling against all kinds of real life obstacles beyond my control, the overall performance is down to me. If I get it wrong, it has consequences and I have to face up to that and improve.
I'm sure he recognises both sides of this. We should judge him fairly but overall performance is still his ultimate responsibility
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irishrover
Global Moderator
Joined: June 2014
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Post by irishrover on Oct 7, 2014 0:54:43 GMT
I have nothing particularly against Nick Higgs - I have no doubt that he is a decent guy and genuine Rovers fans who is is trying his best and who has to some extent been overwhelmed by circumstances. I also have no desire to see him replaced and generally I have always supported the board. However, I am also absolutely baffled at how surprised and disappointed some people seem to be that a lot (I'd have said most these days) of Gasheads are critical of his leadership. Leadership is about delivery and accountability and, up to this point, he has provided neither.
As far as delivery goes he has achieved nothing at all that I can see. On the field we have been relegated 2 out of 4 seasons and been in decline for the whole period of his tenure as Chairman. Off the field we have seen 1 stadium deal collapse and another run into serious difficulty while running up continual loses every season and alienating a lot of fans with a general sense of drift and an increasing paranoia emanating from the club's dealings with supporters. People were critical of Geoff Dunford at times but there was always an element of allowing engagement and that there was a two way street between fans and the board to a degree (not perfect but efforts were made to make people feel genuinely involved not just cosmetic exercises). You had an idea that fans were more than just customers. Under Nick Higgs we have evolved more and more in the direction of my way or the highway and fans are simply consumers. The attitude is we know best, trust us and everything will be fine; if you have criticism we don't want to hear it, just pay your money and support the team. The trouble with that is that it creates a transactional relationship between the people who run the club and the fans which makes everything about delivery - they haven't really done anything to develop a sense of genuine community in the fanbase, they just want top down easy one way interactions that they can control. This distances a lot of people from the club (particularly young people) and it means that the assessment of their position is purely based on the their ability to deliver and they haven't delivered anything. So I can't see why anyone is surprised that there are so many people out there who are disgruntled and feeling alienated from the club and are critical of the board. If the best you can really say is he's been unlucky it's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
On accountability there is just a shopping list of excuses that have come out of our board under his tenure. The standard is to pass the buck downwards and outwards (to managers, to players, to difficult economic and football environments etc) and a failure to accept that the person/people at the top is ultimately responsible for any organisation's cycle of decline. I have no desire at all to see Nick Higgs go (particularly not now) but I honestly think if he'd presided over such a period of failure and decline at nearly any other organisation he would have been replaced by now and being unlucky (which I'm not at all convinced he really has been on anything other than Sainsbury's) is nowhere near an acceptable answer. I'm sure the boss of Tesco's who was recently sacked thought he was unlucky to have been caught in an era of Supermarket decline and I'm sure it wasn't his accountancy error that led to the descrepancy the other day but he was still made accountable for his organisation; you sit in the big chair then it's your responsibility. Gasheads have had to watch much smaller, much less resourced clubs sail past us on our way down so I think we're entitled to expect some kind of acceptance that we need to fundamentally change what we are doing and it's been very slow coming and very begrudging. It's as if the whole board sits around cursing their luck all the time and believing that they've been doing all the right things but the environment's against them, the City's against them, the supporters don't understand them etc. There's this bunker mentality that is closed off and it's very off putting. What happened to the review for example? It wasn't even that it needed to do a lot - it just needed to reassure fans that accountability was being taken for failure. Generally I am just very frustrated at the club and I don't get the feeling that board have any respect for that frustration among the fanbase at all.
Finally, the mood and atmosphere around the club has just been awful throughout his tenure. I think a lot of people were hopeful that Nick Higgs would actually go someway to healing some of the pointless fractures that had crept into the fanbase since the return to Bristol but instead he's just made things worse with such a closed shop attitude. It's a 'you're either with us or against us' approach and I don't think you can run a club like Rovers like that unless you deliver bigtime success which, to say the least, he hasn't. The club to me feels stuck in a timewarp more than anything else where it desperately wishes it was still 1990 - it feels like we are afraid of the modern world (closing down the forum, running a pretty substandard website compared with most clubs, trying to control all communication with fans etc) and unwelcoming to new ideas or approaches. People say 'it's his club' - fine I'm happy with that but if that really is his attitude (which I don't actually think it is for a moment) then he is welcome to it but why should anyone else care about it anymore? That's what I'm really struggling with here. It's the number of people who have said to me 'I don't care anymore because the club isn't interested in its fans anymore'; so many formerly committed people have said that to me in the last few years I find it tragic really. This isn't ranting and raving people or people who have been personally upset by certain actions or who want someone else to run the club or who go on message boards and abusively rant etc; this is just normal gasheads. That's really my main beef - under Nick Higgs Rovers has felt less like a club to me whether I watch them home or away the atmosphere has been poisonous towards the team, the manager, the board etc.
I really want to support Nick Higgs - I'm not naturally opposed to the board (and I'm still not opposed to them - I think the 'careful what you wish for' people still just about have a point and I was never a supporter of RAFC or any proposals of that nature). But I look at his record and think...blimey, what is his legacy right now? He has placed all our (or his I suppose if you don't think fans have a right to consider it their club anymore) eggs in the Sainsbury's basket and if that doesn't happen then apparently the most charitable thing that can be said is that he was unlucky and the club didn't actually go to the wall under his watch (though it's not as though we've run particularly healthy accounts either so that argument doesn't really stand up to much). Of course if we get the UWE then his legacy could be very different in time; but I see nothing else to go on - either the UWE gets delivered or his tenure will surely be seen as an unmitigated disaster, unlucky or not and I personally think not particularly unlucky. I feel sorry for him I really do, it must be a horrible situation and very stressful. But it needn't have been such an all or nothing situation with a less 'my way or the highway attitude'. As it is so far his whole demeanor is based on 'trust me I'm a straightforward guy with a history of success in business and xxxxx will be delivered' and so far nothing has actually been delivered on any level that matters. I absolutely desperately hope this is about to change, both for Rovers and for Nick Higgs (I can't think why a Rovers fan wouldn't hope this), but I can't help but stay skeptical based on what has happened so far under his watch.
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Post by swissgas on Oct 7, 2014 2:08:50 GMT
I can't quote your post Irish (my computer doesn't have enough gigalbites left ) but I agree with every word of it. Rovers have traditionally been a good natured and good humoured club with the ability to be serious about our football but not take it so seriously that our enjoyment was spoiled when things didn't go to plan. These were the characteristics which differentiated us from the other lot but sadly Nick's reign has seen the introduction of a culture not unlike the one at Ashton Gate which we used to despise so much. Lack of sportsmanship, boasting about our massive fan base and biggest budgets, bullying of those perceived as weaker than us, lack of courtesy to people who try to help and constant blaming of others for our failures. It is not the Rovers way and it has been a disaster for the club. I agree that Nick is doing much much more than anyone else to try to get Rovers a new stadium. But he has also done much much more than anyone else to turn Rovers into a non-league club with a reputation that has been badly tarnished. If this is called "slagging off" the Chairman then I am guilty of it.
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Post by PeterHooper57 on Oct 7, 2014 5:51:11 GMT
Higgsie is a Gashead, loves the club; unfortunately ever since he has been chairman the club has gone from to rack to ruin. Two relegations, the worse team in the clubs history, playing in the conference, spent too much of the clubs money on a stadium project which he can not deliver. IMO he should recoup damages from Sainsburys, who are a professional out fit, who do not give a ***** about Rovers or the people of Bristol, cut his losses and retire in Italy. UTG
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Thatslife
"Decisions are made by those who turn up"
Joined: June 2014
Posts: 669
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Post by Thatslife on Oct 7, 2014 6:22:53 GMT
I am sure that may have crossed his mind, especially after the way some people talk of him. If he were to "cut his losses and retire to Italy" then what do you think would happen to his majority share holding? Could the club run without the presence of its "owner" I think not. Even a proxy director would struggle to make that work, so having said all that, who would be prepared to buy his stake in BRFC?
Its true he loves the Gas and everything Irishrover has written is probably true, but we have what we have, until someone else with the money and drive comes along, once that happens Lake Como would look very inviting.
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2014 7:36:26 GMT
...perhaps someone should start an Independent Supporters Association to get all your great ideas discussed and implemented........
..oh wait...
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dido
Predictions League
Peter Aitken
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 1,883
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Post by dido on Oct 7, 2014 7:39:48 GMT
Everything written is fine but Rovers is not an island. People make up Rovers and people are constantly changing. Rovers reflects football at large and society's drift to "instant-everything". Changes in Football and Society have not increased the number of charming tolerant people. (cf this and any forum and the Troll attitude to other people) I blame rampant Americanisation.
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Post by o2o2bo2ba on Oct 7, 2014 9:01:34 GMT
Must admit to being fed up with people slagging of our Chairman so I thought I would post what I believe (I know I will be slated but I am big enough and certainly ugly enough to take it). Just bear with me for a minute, if you were down the pub on a Saturday, having a beer before the match and you tell everyone that you are going to the match, you then go outside, start you car and it catches fire, you dont make it to the game, so question is, were you misleading or lying to your mates when you told them that you were going to the game? No of course not, you told them what was true at the time you told them. I believe this is what happened to our Chairman, he passes on what information he is allowed to and at the time he said it its true, I for one have no doubt it is . Events happen beyond his control i.e Sainsbury's antics, BCC etc etc and any one of the thousand of other things that have to be put in place to make the EWE happen. Try looking at it from his vantage point, after all he is doing far more than anyone else, including all on this Forum or any other to get the new ground built. He is doing something, much much more than anyone else is. Rant over......where's my coat No I am not his love child, just a supporter who has had a season ticket for 55 years. Hello, That's Life. I think your point is somewhat valid. If taken out of context. The context am referring to is the alienation that most fans/supporters feel and have felt since Mr Higgs tenure. If we turn the clock back some years, I cannot remember such a distance between the fans and the board. It seems Mr Higgs has split the board and split the fans on his watch. That can only have come from his chairmanship. I remember little gestures of acknowledgement over the years regarding our support. For instance transport to Walsall (lost 5-0!), giving GasHeads the shirt, free entry for kids, etc. We had as season ticket holders, received a free pasty at end game of last season! Nice reward for loyal support. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but at a time where some of the football dished up was enough to make me sick.. I'm not saying the board don't care for the club. Quite the opposite. I just think the trust and respect that has to be earned is wearing extremely thin. As is the patience. And get the feeling and tone from the chairman of this club is one of almost contempt. Put up and shut up. So, Mr Higgs may not have intentionally lied, granted, but I think a lack of trust already exists so the situation just gets compounded.
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Post by markczgas on Oct 7, 2014 9:31:23 GMT
Higgsie is a Gashead, loves the club; unfortunately ever since he has been chairman the club has gone from to rack to ruin. Two relegations, the worse team in the clubs history, playing in the conference, spent too much of the clubs money on a stadium project which he can not deliver. IMO he should recoup damages from Sainsburys, who are a professional out fit, who do not give a ***** about Rovers or the people of Bristol, cut his losses and retire in Italy. UTG I agree with pretty much everything Irish Rover has written and I also think Nick should stand down as Chairman. He has presided over four seasons of utter failure but he also comes across so badly in the press/interviews (defensive/dismissive and with a lack of clarity in what he says !!). He also doesn't engage with supporters in a helpful/respectful way ! - any of you who went to the Q & A in July will surely agree with this. In fact, many board members suffer with the "I'm happy to speak but not so happy to listen " mentality/approach. I'm not saying leave the board, if he so wishes (he has the biggest share as we know) but we need a new approach and fresh ideas and one of the key things on the review should have been we acknowledge this and some of us are standing down and we are now welcoming new people on board to revive OUR GREAT CLUB. They are after all only custodians of our club.
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Post by Dr Einstein Von Brainstorm on Oct 7, 2014 11:09:07 GMT
I get your point. I must say Nick came under fire from many regarding football matters only weeks ago, now as we turn the corner the criticism is directed at his handling of the stadium. Some make and raise good points, others are obviously just haters that hate which is very sad. On another note, someone should start a thread - "What posters have gone missing since we hit form?" ""What posters have gone missing since we hit form?" I'm not saying a word...
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2014 12:34:11 GMT
I was never a supporter of RAFC or any proposals of that nature. Maybe read the RAFC document again, there was some good stuff in there.
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brizzle
Lindsay Parsons
No Buy . . . No Sell!
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 4,293
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Post by brizzle on Oct 7, 2014 12:47:11 GMT
I can't quote your post Irish (my computer doesn't have enough gigalbites left ) but I agree with every word of it. Rovers have traditionally been a good natured and good humoured club with the ability to be serious about our football but not take it so seriously that our enjoyment was spoiled when things didn't go to plan. These were the characteristics which differentiated us from the other lot but sadly Nick's reign has seen the introduction of a culture not unlike the one at Ashton Gate which we used to despise so much. Lack of sportsmanship, boasting about our massive fan base and biggest budgets, bullying of those perceived as weaker than us, lack of courtesy to people who try to help and constant blaming of others for our failures. It is not the Rovers way and it has been a disaster for the club. I agree that Nick is doing much much more than anyone else to try to get Rovers a new stadium. But he has also done much much more than anyone else to turn Rovers into a non-league club with a reputation that has been badly tarnished. If this is called "slagging off" the Chairman then I am guilty of it. This is an excellent post in my opinion, swissgas. But the highlighted section is to me, the nub of our problems. Now it's undeniably true that the UWE stadium is important, as is playing our football in the Conference rather than the Football League. But these things (and others) are transient, and should not be confused with what I perceive to be the soul of the club. Now I don't wish to appear to be lecturing, or to be accused of being a ''rosetinter,'' but the whole ethos of the club has fundamentally changed over recent years, and not for the better either. After all it's surely not necessary to have to play our football in a brand new state of the art stadium. I agree that it would be nice, but weren't we happy at Eastville and Twerton, and weren't we relatively successful at both venues? And if the answer to both of those questions is yes, then were the stadiums of critical importance to the supporter? Strangely enough one of my most vivid memories of Eastville is the flower beds behind the goalmouths, and at Twerton it has to be the leak in the roof that soaked anyone that happened to be stood under it when it rained. But people still turned up to watch. As a child I spent as much time at Trashton as I did at Eastville, because at the age that I was at the time football was the all-consuming passion. But that changed because I couldn't stand the constant carping of the C*ty supporters, they seemed to me to be ultra negative about everything . . . including the football that was on offer. Winning was their only goal, entertainment and companionship were seemingly unimportant to them. They never got behind their team except when they were winning, and when they weren't winning then the supporters were very quick to turn against them. Going to Eastville was a welcome relief. Everyone was so friendly, the gallows humour superb, and the players were more than approachable to a young lad. Although we always wanted to see the team win, it was not the be all and end all of the afternoon, the companionship was almost as important as the result. It all added up to an extremely pleasant experience for me, and one which I dived into fully. Now it's true that to the neutral we were always regarded as the second team in Bristol, but that wasn't the point at all to the supporters because we were fundamentally different to the other mob. We may not have been as successful on the pitch as them, but that was not the point at all because we were Bristol Rovers FC. And I'll tell you something else, despite everything that B*FC and their supporters had, they always looked at us with a kind of envy. You see we had something that their Harry Dolman's and Steve Lansdowne's could never give them . . . a club with a soul. And I always found it ironic that it was at the height of our ''Ragbag Rovers'' era that we first began to beat them on a more than occasional basis. I often wonder what our young supporters make of supporting the team nowadays? I really hope that they enjoy it, but I don't think that we have managed to pass the spirit of the club on to them, as well as we might have done. Great shame really, but time and tide eh?
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irishrover
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Post by irishrover on Oct 7, 2014 13:34:09 GMT
I am sure that may have crossed his mind, especially after the way some people talk of him. If he were to "cut his losses and retire to Italy" then what do you think would happen to his majority share holding? Could the club run without the presence of its "owner" I think not. Even a proxy director would struggle to make that work, so having said all that, who would be prepared to buy his stake in BRFC? Its true he loves the Gas and everything Irishrover has written is probably true, but we have what we have, until someone else with the money and drive comes along, once that happens Lake Como would look very inviting. I imagine Lake Como looks very inviting for him right now and I don't blame him one bit for that. But the fact is if all that can be clung to in defence of Nick Higgs is that he may have been a bit unlucky and we should be careful what we wish for it's not really much of an inspiring vision or potential legacy. I don't doubt his sincerity and I want to believe that he can deliver but it's hard to believe based on what has actually happened on his watch. It is impossible ignore the fact that under his leadership the club has dropped to it's lowest status in over 100 years, is financially even less viable as a day to day operation than it was and is perceived (by a large chunk of it's fanbase) to be distant from it's own supporters. That is pretty much failure across the board isn't it? If anything I'm a bit surprised (and relieved really) he doesn't get a bit more stick than he does. If the only defence is that we haven't gone under and haven't sold out to an asset stripper isn't that basically stripped back to the absolute bare minimum requirement of an owner/board? Honestly, I'm not someone who is naturally anti-board and really do have a lot of sympathy for Nick Higgs; but I just want people to tell me what it is about him that should inspire confidence that he can reverse this situation because from the outside looking in I can't see very much to go on. I'm frustrated and depressed at the Board more than I am angry - I want them to do better and learn from what has happened but not much of what has come out of the club in recent months has suggested this. Is that perceived as slagging him off?
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