Club meeting Kassam - 28th May

[Banbury2018]

If we scuffed around in the championship for a couple of years, losing most weeks, we’d get no more v Boro than we did against Portsmouth this year. If we had a new or Improved ground, new owners, big marketing effort, new rail halt, etc we’d fill the place in League 1

What capacity are you talking about to fill the place and only if winning but then if you don’t get promotion then no progress means dropping gates.

 

[Banbury2018]

Yes definitively. But.... that is where the 4th stand is needed.
Safe standing in new Stand and give OM stand to the away supporters . At the moment we only give 1700 tickets to away teams and a number of Championship clubs would bring far more than that. So unless we give half of the North Stand to away supporters or Kassam let's us have a 4th stand (?), then the away support would be much lower than it could be.

Quite agree

 

[yellowbow]

I’m not really sure where this thread is going. Are people suggesting that we should just stagnate and forget any ambition as we’re now at the level our size dictates? Brentford fans are probably glad their club were a bit more forward thinking. So too Bournemouth and Burnley’s fans. There’s huge amounts of work to be done on and off the field but it’s the dream of surpassing expectations that makes supporting your club through thick and thin so worthwhile surely?

 

[werthersoriginal]

I’m not really sure where this thread is going. Are people suggesting that we should just stagnate and forget any ambition as we’re now at the level our size dictates? Brentford fans are probably glad their club were a bit more forward thinking. So too Bournemouth and Burnley’s fans. There’s huge amounts of work to be done on and off the field but it’s the dream of surpassing expectations that makes supporting your club through thick and thin so worthwhile surely?

I’m saying that it needs more than just promotion, there has to be good work behind the scenes to run things well. Brentford and Bournemouth don’t get much bigger gates than we do

 

[yellowbow]

I’m saying that it needs more than just promotion, there has to be good work behind the scenes to run things well. Brentford and Bournemouth don’t get much bigger gates than we do

Yep I agree with that. The question of what’s going on behind the scenes is definitely the million dollar one.

 

[Marked Ox]

From what I remember, 14,500 in 84/5, think there was around 14,000 for the Everton game in 83/4. Then we had work done down the Osler in the summer of 85, along with the installation of a fence which was so big it would have made Trump blush. This dropped the capacity down to 13,000ish I think it was.

I was watching highlights from the Oxford/Liverpool match from 1985 the other day and those fences! I reckon any Prison would have been proud to have them.

 

[PottersRightBoot]

Yes, we are bigger, certainly, but we’re in a pretty small city and don’t have a massive heartland of fans that go back generations. Potentially big, maybe.

Said this many times before but look at what Reading have achieved. No reason why we can’t emulate those plastics.

 

[PottersRightBoot]

Our fan base has never been massive. I had a look at defining seasons over the years and our average attendances that season.

95/96 (Promotion to what is now the Championship) - 5709
96/97 (Season after promotion) - 7505

09/10 (Conference promotion) - 5730
10/11 (First season back in the football league) - 7182

15/16 (League 2 promotion year) - 7289
16/17 (Highest the club have played since 2001) - 7403

Last game at the Manor - 7080

To think we would suddenly get over 10000 week in week out for home games in the league above is pushing it a bit. Unfortunately Oxfordshire isn't the most passionate football county in the country.

Disagree! Times have changed. Interest in football has never been higher.

 

[LondonRoader]

If we scuffed around in the championship for a couple of years, losing most weeks, we’d get no more v Boro than we did against Portsmouth this year. If we had a new or Improved ground, new owners, big marketing effort, new rail halt, etc we’d fill the place in League 1

Why new owners?
Improving the current ground is not out of the realms of possibility, there is also a future train station earmarked for the science park, marketing is the easiest to achieve.
We desperately need an experienced CEO at the club to make some of these things happen, the current set up is micky mouse and I'm struggling to see how we can move forward with it, good man that he might be can anyone envisage NM running the club and helping move the club forward as we would all like, bring someone in who knows how to run a club day to day, stand up to the owners when required but have their respect that they trust you know how to do the job properly, NM was a DE appointment and I really can't see if Tiger & Co were serious on taking this club forward they would leave him in control, I'm not saying NM hasn't a part to play but I think we need a more experienced person in the hot seat.
At the recent "meeting" at the Doncaster game, there was a lot of high powered football people there, I'm told the CEO's of DC United and Inter Milan were there, I can't imagine NM being jetted around the world to give his advice on the running of a football club.

 

[Banbury2018]

Why new owners?
Improving the current ground is not out of the realms of possibility, there is also a future train station earmarked for the science park, marketing is the easiest to achieve.
We desperately need an experienced CEO at the club to make some of these things happen, the current set up is micky mouse and I'm struggling to see how we can move forward with it, good man that he might be can anyone envisage NM running the club and helping move the club forward as we would all like, bring someone in who knows how to run a club day to day, stand up to the owners when required but have their respect that they trust you know how to do the job properly, NM was a DE appointment and I really can't see if Tiger & Co were serious on taking this club forward they would leave him in control, I'm not saying NM hasn't a part to play but I think we need a more experienced person in the hot seat.
At the recent "meeting" at the Doncaster game, there was a lot of high powered football people there, I'm told the CEO's of DC United and Inter Milan were there, I can't imagine NM being jetted around the world to give his advice on the running of a football club.

Mark Ashton( came with Eales and Mapp) did a top job for us. We could do with that type of MD again, as you say we need experience of this type of job as owners are out of the country most of the time.

 

[Navegante]

Put Ashton back in charge now and I think we would be disappointed. Ol' Slippery empowered DA with a budget & authority to make decisions on his behalf. It worked.

You sense that under the current regime, all decisions must be approved by Asia. Certainly the purse strings are tightly controlled from there. It's certainly not the most effective way to run a small business IMHO.

 

[Deleted member 462]

Put Ashton back in charge now and I think we would be disappointed. Ol' Slippery empowered DA with a budget & authority to make decisions on his behalf. It worked.

You sense that under the current regime, all decisions must be approved by Asia. Certainly the purse strings are tightly controlled from there. It's certainly not the most effective way to run a small business IMHO.

Not entirely true, the money is paid over each month, and the md is very much in control of it. Have u ever considered that maybe things could/would have been a lot worse had nmc not been running things and juggling funds?

 

[Foley]

Put Ashton back in charge now and I think we would be disappointed. Ol' Slippery empowered DA with a budget & authority to make decisions on his behalf. It worked.

You sense that under the current regime, all decisions must be approved by Asia. Certainly the purse strings are tightly controlled from there. It's certainly not the most effective way to run a small business IMHO.

Agree that the MD seems to have less autonomy and things do appear to be more controlled from Asia.
Having said that NMc hardly inspires confidence with his comments that often doesn't transpire (the 5 sites being one of a number).
I accept that things must have been very tough especially re the cash flow, but his communication seems to be poor.

 

[Whingit]

I'd rather the FD had control of the money rather than the MD.

Things lately have been much better on the communication front, so I see nothing wrong in waiting to see if other things start improving behind the scenes. No need for a new MD, imo.

 

[LondonRoader]

I'd rather the FD had control of the money rather than the MD.

Things lately have been much better on the communication front, so I see nothing wrong in waiting to see if other things start improving behind the scenes. No need for a new MD, imo.

The communications have been a joke, why did NM come out on the eve of an important meeting with FK and say the rubbish he did, unless it was contrived it was a really stupid move that would of not helped the overall situation.