Freeman's Wharfer

“It’s a clean slate for everybody”. How many times do we hear this from a new manager? And, again, we hear it from Cifuentes today post-match about Faes. When we’ve had the managerial turnover that we have, it’s a problem. I was sat there at half time wondering how we’d somehow turned out a starting XI with the likes of Vestergaard, Soumare, Justin, Skipp and Ayew who have all either contributed to our demise through poor performance, said/shown they wanted out or a combination of both. We then see Daka, Winks and Faes stepping onto the pitch to whom the same applies. Meanwhile Alves, Nelson and others that haven’t had a crack at it are sat on the sidelines. The truth is we’ve had a cancer in this squad for the last few years that has eaten away at the culture and success of the club. And it’s being given new life each time a new manager comes in and utters that phrase. The best we can hope for is that Cifuentes learns quickly about these guys, but it concerns me that any of them are being given a chance to play a part again. Where are our standards? And how can we expect any player who doesn’t take to Cifuentes to think anything other than “I’ll sit this out until the next new manager and clean slate comes round”?

You’d go against your new manager’s wishes and show the rest of your team mates that you don’t want to be part of the group? Remind me never to have you on my team.

Great protest by the Wednesday fans and then a real top away end turned out thereafter. If you’re one of the hundred or so in the seats from kick off, how are you not ashamed of yourself? If you can’t miss 5 minutes of the match when your club’s future is under threat, what is wrong with you?

Straight off down the tunnel at full time when Cifuentes had asked them all to go round. That says all you need to know about him. Anyone claiming he’s our best defender or a top class Championship defender is forgetting the dire stretch he had when we lost form under Maresca. Not sure anyone who was in the away end at Plymouth that Friday night would agree with either statement. I don’t think anyone questions the ability he has in his feet, but, like Soumare, the problem isn’t his feet, it’s his head.

I’m still maintaining that the biggest problem with digital ticketing is the number of turnstiles at our stadium. Out stadium was built for manned turnstiles and that means in L1, for example, there are just two turnstiles for people to enter via for the whole section (as you’d previously have had to pay someone to operate it). Modern stadiums are built with several turnstiles and when you rock up to an away end that holds 3,000 or whatever then you have the option to enter via many more turnstiles (as the stadium was built knowing you don’t have to pay someone to sit on them). Entry is not as quick as a human pressing a pedal to release the turnstile because people have to scan and wait for the tech to recognise the ticket, add up that extra 1-2 seconds and multiply it by hundreds/thousands and you have long queues. Even more so when the tech doesn’t work at first or the person doesn’t know where they need to scan etc. I think the only thing stopping absolute carnage today is that we all know how useless this could be and many will purposefully get there earlier (something we shouldn’t have to do).

9 could have been left vacant for a year or two. Not retired but gives it a bit of time. Another small example here of how the club don’t make it difficult enough for unwanted players to stay. Wout Faes should have been given something like 53 as a number and re-allocate his 3 to someone more deserving. In the same way we take these guys on tour and keep them in first team training at the lovely Seagrave, letting them keep their preferred numbers is another small missed opportunity to make life a little more uncomfortable so that they might get on the phone to their agent and say “get me out of here asap”.

I understand the point (and FWIW I wasn’t massively keen on that being brought into the game at the time) but that was a case the league decided to support en masse as opposed to an owner determining it was a cause their club was going to be used to back. At least when the league supports something there are the checks and balances that a certain number of people have to be in agreement that it’s a cause to support. The dividing line here with this case seems to be less about the actual conflict (which not many of our fan base will be clued up on) and more whether you’re not ok with the club being used to promote a message of an individual’s choosing, or whether you blindly support it because you think that’s what a supporter does or through some mistaken faith to a multimillionaire owner.

Which military conflict would you like the club be used to support next, mate?

He has precious few years of his career left. Let him know that, if he stays here, his career has ended today. If he wants to eek something out of his final years being able to play professionally, he needs to find somewhere else to do that.

Bit of an acid test for the Fan Engagement Framework. Do they call the Your 90 Minutes session and allow fans to have their say direct? Do the FAB fan reps discuss and drive any change from the survey results? And will the club be able to show by end of August what they have done with this feedback? If the answer is ‘no’ to all of these then the Fan Engagement Framework would be clearly failing at what it’s there to supposedly do. Ball’s in the club’s court now.

It will be unfortunately. Huge section of our fan base with little imagination on chants.

Can we just all make a pact that it doesn’t include “he drinks Estrella” or something rubbish like that?!

Correct

Their crap little captions on photos/Instagram posts are irking me. Just little phrases that make no sense and sound like they’re written by someone who has no idea what they’re saying but are trying to say what they think someone who did would say. Saw one just now with a photo of Luke Thomas near the touchline and it says “down the lines”. What is that meant to mean? What does it add to the post?!

That’s more like it Ryan! Bookmarking this and printing hard copy too To answer your question though, we don’t know if the club will be on the webinar. They are welcome to sign up if they wish to, they know when it is. We do, however, have a meeting with the club to talk through the survey results with them. We’ve insisted that this should be after the webinar (as we want parity for everyone in hearing the initial results and key findings) but given them the chance to meet before the 60+ page results report goes out in-full on Friday 11th July. They have taken up that opportunity.

This Charli XCX is just the bridge between real life music artist and AI. Just shouting things into an auto-tune, gyrating round on stage and the most basic of lyrics. Give it 10 years and it’ll be a robot on stage churning out the same rubbish as this.

People have to be realistic about what the Trust can achieve (and what other fan groups are achieving across the country). If there’s a fan group out there that got a Premier League club from last season to reduce ticket prices behind where they were two seasons ago then the Trust will get in touch with them to find out how! But, although ticket prices in this country are pretty extortionate, and although the club is getting lots wrong at the moment, the introduction of a couple of cheaper categories is - as the Trust says - a step in the right direction. Let me repeat that: a step in the right direction (not a leap, not a huge stride, a step). There’s also a point here on what you want from the club-Trust relationship. Previously there was not much being won, and now, even when the wins are small, people criticise the wins not being good enough! If the Trust continues to hammer the club when there are small wins, how do people expect us as a fan base to get to the big wins?!

It’s not about it being uncomfortable, I just know there are a few people who want to try and channel some positive energy into change that have worked really hard on this end of season survey. The result has been progress. Small steps, but progress. They don’t need a medal or expect a miracle. But probably also don’t deserve people trying to undermine what they’re trying to do because of whatever personal gripes/history they have. Appreciate the luck, and don’t doubt we’ll need it.

Honestly, if you believe nothing can ever change then you might as well just save your energy from ever commenting on it. Because, after all, if nothing will ever change, then it’s not worth getting pent up about, is it? It would be wasted energy to just continually follow round the threads where people are trying to drive change with your pessimism, wouldn’t it?! Shouting into the void. You offered your services to the club, they didn’t want them. You got involved with the Trust rather than the Trust Reform, you got frustrated and quit. I don’t know why these organisations won’t listen to you, but I’m starting to think you might not be able to view either with any kind of objectivity!

3,137 with a couple of days left…

This was one of my biggest takeaways from the article too. Sounds like basically just getting a favourable nod opened up the multi-million empire for Vichai. There’s a still a skill to being in that position and it’s people skills: influence, rapport and networking. He was obviously good at that from what those who encountered him tend to say. But it also points to a potential lack of ability to organically build a business to the size King Power became. And therefore perhaps not much to instill in Aiyawatt and co.

It was a charity football tournament and everyone involved was a volunteer. There should be no gripes. Whether you won it or lost it, there are a million more important things in life. Even getting a trophy as the winners is more than enough, never mind anything for runners up. There was a guy in one of our games swearing at the ref and telling him he’d been bad every game he’d referee’d. There wouldn’t be a tournament without that ref giving up his time. If you get genuinely bothered or upset about any kind of amateur football, your priorities are wildly out of kilter.

Had a team playing in this and it was a great day. Organised really well, plenty there for people that weren’t actually playing and the vast majority of games we played were done so in great spirit as well. Whilst a lot with our club is not right at the moment, in Union FS we have a fan group to be proud of who are doing great things for our community. Decent amount of money raised for Loros yesterday as well as a bit of LCFC fan spirit

Over 3,000 responses on this now

There was a significant enough drop off for the club to notice. It’s just that there were people waiting in the wings to replace non-renewers as they haven’t been able to buy season tickets for the past x number of seasons. But everyone who bought a season ticket this time round because someone else checked out is a lost membership or match day ticket purchaser. There’s an impact somewhere along the chain, even if season tickets show as 100% sold out.