• Further New Features Are Available - Click To Update

  • Join OxVox

    The forum would encourage all members to consider joining OxVox during this important moment in our history. See here for more information.

Ex-Staff Tim Williams

mooro said:
How can I read this without signing up to LinkedIn? Could someone please copy and paste a version into here??
Click to expand...
"So the end of August marked my departure from Oxford United FC after a hugely rewarding, sometimes very challenging and very exciting 4 years.

Four years seems to have gone in a flash but in that time we have achieved a huge amount and I would like to thank the staff and especially the leadership team at the club for what we have done together. It hasn't always been easy. It hasn't always worked, but to achieve you have to push the boundaries sometimes. And we pushed. Hard.

I have been lucky enough to meet some amazing people along the way including many fellow club CEOs who also do incredible work. It's often a relentless, tiring and thankless job and the demands placed on every club CEO are immense. But above all, we couldn't do the job if we didn't care about the clubs we worked for. It's a lifestyle job that commits you to pretty much 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And generally, we love it. But....

...That brings me to the problem. Everything we do gets played out in public. Every decision, every action, every time we choose to speak and to not speak, every signing, every match, every decision. It's probably the biggest shock I had after I had joined the club and often the hardest thing to deal with - the viciousness of the open forum comments and the opportunity to 'pile on' is quite breathtaking. Over the last few days I have been told to 'get out of Oxford and never come back' among many other insults - nice. Football execs seem to be fair game for keyboard warriors and very often it goes way too far.

So please people - think before you type. Give it a day. Give it a week. Or just don't.

Anyway, onwards for me. Thanks to everyone who has helped me on the way and I wish Oxford United, players and staff all the best for the future.

Tim."
 
My advice to Tim would be simply ignore it or do not give them reasons to give you pelters.

Social media is far from social when you get things wrong.

Maybe you just get thicker skin when you have seen the internet develop from pence per minute dial up that kept the riff raff out. :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
 
Honestly, when you read other fans forums and look at the sort of protests they stage, you realise that our fanbase is incredibly tame on the whole. If a CEO of a football club can't put up with a few 17 year olds having a go at him on Twitter, then maybe he's not suited for that role. Many other clubs' fans would've reacted a lot more strongly to some of his f**k ups and the frequent disregard he displayed.

Good riddance.
 
Essexyellows said:
"So the end of August marked my departure from Oxford United FC after a hugely rewarding, sometimes very challenging and very exciting 4 years.

Four years seems to have gone in a flash but in that time we have achieved a huge amount and I would like to thank the staff and especially the leadership team at the club for what we have done together. It hasn't always been easy. It hasn't always worked, but to achieve you have to push the boundaries sometimes. And we pushed. Hard.

I have been lucky enough to meet some amazing people along the way including many fellow club CEOs who also do incredible work. It's often a relentless, tiring and thankless job and the demands placed on every club CEO are immense. But above all, we couldn't do the job if we didn't care about the clubs we worked for. It's a lifestyle job that commits you to pretty much 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And generally, we love it. But....

...That brings me to the problem. Everything we do gets played out in public. Every decision, every action, every time we choose to speak and to not speak, every signing, every match, every decision. It's probably the biggest shock I had after I had joined the club and often the hardest thing to deal with - the viciousness of the open forum comments and the opportunity to 'pile on' is quite breathtaking. Over the last few days I have been told to 'get out of Oxford and never come back' among many other insults - nice. Football execs seem to be fair game for keyboard warriors and very often it goes way too far.

So please people - think before you type. Give it a day. Give it a week. Or just don't.

Anyway, onwards for me. Thanks to everyone who has helped me on the way and I wish Oxford United, players and staff all the best for the future.

Tim."
Click to expand...
What a strange post. While personal abuse is never acceptable, pointing out his professional weaknesses are completely reasonable, particularly given that we were his 'customers '. If he doesn't want things to be 'played out in public', then it sounds as though continuing a career in football isn't for him.
 
He’s looking for a job. 95% of the people that will have seen/read is post will know nothing about how utterly incompetent he is. They’ll have no idea how he oversaw the mismanagement of our club, how he belittled fans, how he showed contempt for those that are the lifeblood of OUFC.

The fact he’s now started blocking people from commenting shows just how think skinned he was. He took no criticism, took no blame, took no suggestions on board and he leaves the club mid table in L1, under a transfer embargo, our most saleable assets going for peanuts and Ed Waldron the only member of the SMT left in the UK.
 
I have mixed feelings about Williams' time here, but none of them particularly good. I do think working here under Thohir would be a bit of a nightmare. This summer for example definitely caught a lot of people cold. I am beginning to think the budget rug pull last summer may have also been a similar situation, likewise the hiring and firing of managers. So I do have some sympathy that making a long term plan may be much harder than it would seem, as it's difficult to know if Thohir is going to wake up in the mood to splash some cash, or whether he's going to force a disastrous pre-season tour or some crap footballers into the squad.

But then on the other hand I have no conviction that Williams would've managed a coherent plan had the opportunity definitely been there. There was nothing he ever did that made me feel he should deserve the benefit of the doubt. Filing our accounts late and forgetting to pay for Matete are definitely things the people working under him should've been across, regardless of whatever mood Thohir was in on that day.

I doubt the replacement will be any better, but that's no reason to have kept Williams. I think it's all a reflection of how Thohir is running the club.
 
carefreeoufc said:
He’s looking for a job. 95% of the people that will have seen/read is post will know nothing about how utterly incompetent he is. They’ll have no idea how he oversaw the mismanagement of our club, how he belittled fans, how he showed contempt for those that are the lifeblood of OUFC.

The fact he’s now started blocking people from commenting shows just how think skinned he was. He took no criticism, took no blame, took no suggestions on board and he leaves the club mid table in L1, under a transfer embargo, our most saleable assets going for peanuts and Ed Waldron the only member of the SMT left in the UK.
Click to expand...

Yes, but pointing that out is a "pile on".

Not blocked, just not commenting so he`ll never know. :ROFLMAO:
 
To be fair to him you don't have to search hard for some pretty unpleasant criticism on here. "An absolute c**t of a man. I hate him." "What an absolute c**t". "I intensely dislike Corporate Timmy ... Slimy, disingenuous". "chuckle brothers". "pair of snakes". "Williams and Ferguson are condescending c@nts". "prick Williams".

I think people on here sometimes forget they're not chatting to mates in the pub and that every word is public and searchable by google.
 
chuckbert said:
To be fair to him you don't have to search hard for some pretty unpleasant criticism on here. "An absolute c**t of a man. I hate him." "What an absolute c**t". "I intensely dislike Corporate Timmy ... Slimy, disingenuous". "chuckle brothers". "pair of snakes". "Williams and Ferguson are condescending c@nts". "prick Williams".

I think people on here sometimes forget they're not chatting to mates in the pub and that every word is public and searchable by google.
Click to expand...
God forbid there are some nasty words on a public football forum. If he wasn't a useless, disingenuous, unlikeable a*****e who did a terrible job maybe he wouldn't see such criticism when he comes to search for it.
 
WE Yellow said:
God forbid there are some nasty words on a public football forum. If he wasn't a useless, disingenuous, unlikeable a*****e who did a terrible job maybe he wouldn't see such criticism when he comes to search for it.
Click to expand...
I disagree that that kind of personal vitriol should be used again and again, which is exactly what he was commenting on. On the other hand I also agree that to take on a senior leadership role at an English football club and not automatically expect to regularly get called a c**t is stunningly naive. Doesn't excuse it really though, does it.
 
Lost a lot of the fans early, he (and loads of things that have happened obviously beyond his control) and the club seem to do everything possible to alienate us fans, he's probably had more appearances on non Oxford United related podcasts than he has meaningful bits of communication towards us fans over these 4 years

And then he comes out with a goodbye post like that...

Good riddance
 
I think Tim has just been part of a bigger problem that is not just his doing. We have our owners, who we have to hold back on because we're so dependant on them for the survival of the club. So all criticism falls on those in the roles below them. For me, without any inside knowledge, t's hard to really distinguish whether Tim, Grant et al just didn't do a great job or whether they are working in tricky and volatile circumstances where money you're expecting just isn't available.

The biggest criticism I'd direct to all of them is that they've always wanted to run the club the way they want to, rather than what the fans want. In any other business that would be terminal to treat your consumers like that, so I feel they've taken advantage of the unique position of a football club. Communication has always been on their terms, issues and problems have always led them to close ranks rather than talking. It then particularly grates on me when you heard Tim on podcasts preaching how to run a good football club.

But don't expect anything to change. Dusan seems as bad, if not worse. Doesn't seem to keep to his word. Leaves a feeling that we don't really know why he's here, what his goals or intentions are. In any other world we'd be criticising ET for employing these guys, but we're a financial basket case so can't bite the hand that feeds us.
 
I get it's not nice but equally he must have gone in with his eyes open, it's hardly a shock that football fans often use industrial language.

Many of the comments on LinkedIn from other corporate types show the complete separation between that 'set' and football.

Football has always been a game of the people and however much the corporates have tried to take over, the game is crap without tribalism, noise and naughty language.

Look at the premier league, so many true fans handing back season tickets due to crap atmosphere with so many tourists. We won't let that happen here.
 
Foley said:
I am a little surprised that there is no positive comment at all about the supporters- only one huge negative.
He wishes players and staff all the best, but supporters totally excluded?
A bit odd?
Click to expand...

And then wonders why he's been vilified. We've been through so many EFL related disasters under him, he's seen fans as customers all while hiding and avoiding communications with said 'customers' as much as he possibly could, is it any wonder why nobody liked him as CEO.

Then to top it all off, he paints the picture of a victim on the cesspit that is Linkedin after gaslighting us with this patronising statement in his exit:

'As you know, I have always acted in the clubs best interests'.

Really Tim? Surely if that was the case you'd have treated fans as fans and left your post sooner after proving largely incompetent in your role.
 
Carpy said:
Amazing to me that someone so out of their depth could walk before being pushed.
Click to expand...
Not sure he did walk, did he? No idea, but why would he? He’s messed up time and time again without consequence so surely he just tried to hang in there as long as possible. Seems he was a bit more sticky to get rid of in Erick’s wipeout but his silence over the summer (while not remotely out of character) was more obvious this time, so I think it’s been a while in coming.

Maybe he thinks the fans brought all the heat on him and that’s why we’re very deliberately chopped out of the statement. He made that cringey error of seeing fans (customers) as problematic when in any business it’s there you will find very quickly where you’re going wrong. He only has himself to blame for his relationship with supporters and ignored all the warnings.

He clearly thinks he’s done a more than acceptable job so with that sort of self assessment and inability to recognise your faults it’s no wonder we bounced from one cock up to the next.
 
Foley said:
I am a little surprised that there is no positive comment at all about the supporters- only one huge negative.
He wishes players and staff all the best, but supporters totally excluded?
A bit odd?
Click to expand...

Probably didn't want to use the 'C' word: customers.

Good to see Chuckle Brothers made the grade as horrible abuse.
 
What a bunch of arseholes we have on this forum, the internet, Facebook, twitter (X).
As TW says, hiding behind their keyboards piling on abuse.

I think some sat in their grey trackies, and others in their suit and tie sneering, with some in between, almost all anonymous.

This is a small company with only a few million or ten of revenue, so not Tesco or BP, and not the royal family, PM or an MP opening themselves to public scrutiny. Just a guy trying to do a job under difficult circumstances. Looks like he wasn't the right guy for the role but the subsequent pile-on is out of order.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar Threads

unification
Media Price of Football Podcast - Interview with Tim Williams 26 July 2024
Replies
29
Views
5K
LowerSouth
LowerSouth
Manorlounger
Current Staff Tim Williams
40 41 42
Replies
1K
Views
110K
jaybeachjump
jaybeachjump
Manorlounger
Ex-Staff Tim Davies - 5 Minute Fans Forum
2
Replies
52
Views
10K
Sarge
Sarge
Whingit
Tim Davies
Replies
7
Views
4K
MJB
MJB
Orkney Islands Yellow
Ex-Staff Chris Williams Leaves
10 11 12
Replies
348
Views
46K
OxfordYankee
OxfordYankee
Back
Top Bottom