Chairman Grant Ferguson Interview

Is it any wonder the communication with fans hasn't been good enough when, after hearing his interview, the communication between Grant Ferguson and Tim Williams isn't good enough either? It's detrimental to the football club having a chairman who has us extremely far down his priority list, but at least made time for a second interview in the space of year.

Not good enough all round, serious investment still required FOR Des, above Des and across all areas of the non-playing side.

I listened to all yesterday, and thought he was pretty good tbf. He's not a fool and is very credible. He didn't pretend he could answer the questions he couldn't answer and I thought there was very little bs. I am still pretty baffled about the backers' motivation for all this tbh. There are many easier ways to make money than by pumping it into a L1 football club, and building a £100M+ stadium. Even if we think it will be loaded with debt that the club then has to pay back, it makes no sense, as any repayment schedule will take years to get investment monies back. I've read somewhere that Thorir has pretty serious aspirations within FIFA. If so, then this makes more sense, as it feeds a narrative that he is building a club, and will take it through the leagues. Anyway, we have no other option. Robin Herd meant well, but he completely shafted the club when he ran out of cash. I'm sure there have been worse owners/landlords than Kassam, but I'm struggling to think of one.

All you lot moaning about poor communication obviously haven't seen the club's tweets regarding the Matchday Activation for this Saturday's game against Cheltenham.

I couldn't care less about the stadium and who's going to stump up the £100-200m, I just want my matchdays to be activated, and the club are well and truly delivering on that front.

Take a breath before posting and consider the wider picture before posting yet another critical comment about the Senior Leadership Team.

Matchday = Activated.

RyanioBirdio said:

Oxford United Chairman: Well… er… I mean… obviously it’s very expensive building a stadium… er… there’ll be some debt that needs paying off… and… er… yeah… important the club gets full use… errrrrrr… can keep profits above and beyond servicing the unspecified debt… aaaahhhhhhh… might be that there’s no profit but still it sounds good… uunmmmm… certainly not under communicating in my opinion… uuuuuhhhhhhhghgfguyffyhgdg…

Oxford United Fans: I think that went well! Refreshing! He seems like a genuine guy!

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He does, does’ t he? Certainly compared to
the day to day off field boss.

(Oh, you were being snarky, sorry. )

Chairman’s not going to be blurting out real commercial confidences in an interview with Jerome to placate a few grudgy posters on this forum. Unless he’s an idiot.

I agree though with other posters view that there’s more than one chap called Williams whose days are numbered though. Mr Ferguson had to do a bit of fire fighting last week.

Northernyellow said:

I listened to all yesterday, and thought he was pretty good tbf. He's not a fool and is very credible. He didn't pretend he could answer the questions he couldn't answer and I thought there was very little bs. I am still pretty baffled about the backers' motivation for all this tbh. There are many easier ways to make money than by pumping it into a L1 football club, and building a £100M+ stadium. Even if we think it will be loaded with debt that the club then has to pay back, it makes no sense, as any repayment schedule will take years to get investment monies back. I've read somewhere that Thorir has pretty serious aspirations within FIFA. If so, then this makes more sense, as it feeds a narrative that he is building a club, and will take it through the leagues. Anyway, we have no other option. Robin Herd meant well, but he completely shafted the club when he ran out of cash. I'm sure there have been worse owners/landlords than Kassam, but I'm struggling to think of one.

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Interesting re FIFA, have you got a link to the article?

PottersRightBoot said:

Interesting re FIFA, have you got a link to the article?

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Hi- afraid I don't, but I definitely read it somewhere a few years ago- when Thorir was first mentioned. It was something along the lines of he might challenge Infantino one day, and the OUFC project could be part of building up his cred.

Northernyellow said:

Hi- afraid I don't, but I definitely read it somewhere a few years ago- when Thorir was first mentioned. It was something along the lines of he might challenge Infantino one day, and the OUFC project could be part of building up his cred.

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The Indonesian FA chief Erick Thohir has suggested that his country is in talks with Australia to prepare a bid for the 2034 FIFA World Cup.

FIFA opens new office in Indonesia

This AP article suggests that Indonesia has decided to back the Saudi Arabian world Cup bid and stresses how close Thohir is to infantino

Northernyellow said:

I listened to all yesterday, and thought he was pretty good tbf. He's not a fool and is very credible. He didn't pretend he could answer the questions he couldn't answer and I thought there was very little bs. I am still pretty baffled about the backers' motivation for all this tbh. There are many easier ways to make money than by pumping it into a L1 football club, and building a £100M+ stadium. Even if we think it will be loaded with debt that the club then has to pay back, it makes no sense, as any repayment schedule will take years to get investment monies back. I've read somewhere that Thorir has pretty serious aspirations within FIFA. If so, then this makes more sense, as it feeds a narrative that he is building a club, and will take it through the leagues. Anyway, we have no other option. Robin Herd meant well, but he completely shafted the club when he ran out of cash. I'm sure there have been worse owners/landlords than Kassam, but I'm struggling to think of one.

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I'll be honest, this is what I'm confused about as well.

The Kassam cost, what, £15m? And the only reason that made any financial sense for Firoz was because he could get his hands on and flip the Manor for a massive profit.

How could you ever recover the costs of a £100m+ stadium for a League One football club? Only way I could imagine doing it would be to get the club into the Premier League (being in the Championship wouldn't do it). But there's probably 20-30 other clubs thinking exactly the same thing, many of whom are considerably bigger than us even post-new stadium. That's a fanciful dream not a business plan.

It could just about compute if this was just a massive vanity project for Bakrie and Thohir. Wanting to show off their club playing in their stadium in the historic city of Oxford to their billionaire mates. But some of the talk has been about raising the capital for the project from the markets. What on Earth does that pitch look like?

None of this makes a whole lot of sense at the moment. But they are still pressing forward with the planning, and still bankrolling our losses to the tune of millions per season and they are at least partially doing this through share issues rather than loans (presumably to get around SCMP) which is clearly financially worse for them, and something I don't believe that many if any of our previous owners have done. So they're still burning their money to push the club forwards - the commitment is still there. Not sure we have much choice but to wait and see how this plays out (and keep asking for answers, even if we're not going to get them!)

@tonyw I've often thought the same too. What's the end goal for the owners that makes sense for them as investors? It doesn't look like it ever makes financial sense, so why are they throwing in so much sweat, time and most importantly money?

Sarge said:

whats the odds the bulk of what was said gets regurgitated in his 'updates' at the FF ?

thus eating into valuable time that would be better used for taking and answering questions- which is the real point of holding a FF

brings to mind the late great James Brown tune, which for me sums up what GF said on the Dub...

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Based upon that analysis,attendance at the FF will be very low .

LowerSouth said:

Based upon that analysis,attendance at the FF will be very low .

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I hope it isnt - though I believe OxVox/ OUSP will be setting up a live stream of the FF for those who are unable to attend in person

Sarge said:

I hope it isnt - though I believe OxVox/ OUSP will be setting up a live stream of the FF for those who are unable to attend in person

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The by mate this should be a Kassam ff moment

If Grant Ferguson wants to be our chairman then he needs to re locate to Oxford and work at the club on a regular basis.

If he wants to remain abroad, then he should step down.

billyturleyscurlywurly said:

If Grant Ferguson wants to be our chairman then he needs to re locate to Oxford and work at the club on a regular basis.

If he wants to remain abroad, then he should step down.

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What is it that you want him to do that Tim Williams should be doing?

LeftSideLarry said:

What is it that you want him to do that Tim Williams should be doing?

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Support staff around the club.

Put structures in place in all different departments from the sporting side to the marketing side.

It concerns me when people who’ve been here for a long time either feel like they’re being pushed out by Tim/Adam or in other cases feel like they were in a role where they weren’t getting enough support.

We need a hands on chairman, working alongside a hands on CEO with a director in each department (like the one missing in the sporting director role) for us to be top 30.

It’s very rare for organisations to have both an executive chairman and a CEO. Ashton and Eales tried it. It didn’t last.

What we need is a fit for purpose CEO and a Sporting Director.

LeftSideLarry said:

It’s very rare for organisations to have both an executive chairman and a CEO. Ashton and Eales tried it. It didn’t last.

What we need is a fit for purpose CEO and a Sporting Director.

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We have neither ha.

LeftSideLarry said:

It’s very rare for organisations to have both an executive chairman and a CEO. Ashton and Eales tried it. It didn’t last.

What we need is a fit for purpose CEO and a Sporting Director.

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That didn't last for very different and non-professional reasons.