RYM

I feel very much like that lyric TBH. Hard not to I think. It’s pure entitlement but that’s the way the drug of football works. I also think we have turned to shit TBH, when you look where we were, how mismanaged the club is, never a succession plan when we binned Brendan etc etc etc. It all goes back to the club never capitalising on winning the league. Its shit, but it’s our shit 🦊

“if I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor”

I’d like to know a little bit about him for our files…

Terrible subs today Coady unused when you need to defend a lead… bizarre

Both silly tackles PK given after 2 handball shouts Red given after he isn’t sure he should’ve given the PK ref isn’t giving himself time to make decisions and is getting rattled in a pub league derby

Mad really how he was initially going abroad to buy a sports car

This stuff is horrendous. If you’re going down the narcissistic route that’s one thing, if someone is filming it that’s another, if you’re then posting it for the sake of 25 likes and retweets you’re doing it all for the wrong reasons. Blue army and hey Jude couldn’t be more generic either. That moment, like goals belong to the fans not a Wally in a suit. That “rallying” call is a job for a capo, plug the fans in, keep it authentic. We get it so wrong over here really.

What stops you doing more of these? is it ££££? club rules? If so what are those rules and what are the reasons for limiting them?

As has been mentioned the new build gives the chance to refresh. While most of these new seats will be aimed at corporate(?) the club can (and I am sure they will from the remit of the Head of FE role) look to relocate people into the right areas: There will be people who have outgrown the family stand, people in other areas of the ground that may no longer be suited to those areas apart from time spent. The atmosphere is poor for many reasons but no planning when they launched the KP didn’t help. You look at Cardiff when they built their ground. They looked at the fans journey from aged 6 with parents / carers to when they outgrow the family stand and want to become part of the carnival fan groups (how’s that for a corporate term), to having some cheaper corporate offerings for groups of lads and lasses (pool tables, buckets of beers etc) to full on corporate. There was a fan journey and it made sense and worked TBF. Fan focused. We used this Cardiff model to an extent when working with fan groups and supporters with Brentford’s new stadium. We had 10 focus groups covering various aspects of the supporter experience. When I worked at Donny Rovers we had similar issues albeit we had more empty seats and less fans than LCFC but we consulted with all the fan groups, spoke to other clubs, got the singers together, the oldies together, created a great family offering and while the football was shite what we could control worked. It was a long painful process, but we gave the fan “types” ownership of their areas. The UFS equivalent worked well, the end was full, it was theirs, we went unreserved seats, reduced prices, funded flags if they wanted that (but kept it all quiet) relaxed the stewarding and apart from a few grumps who didn’t want to move despite being incentivised to relocate the atmosphere benefited. I genuinely think it’s an exciting time if handled correctly. The club has so much potential for fans and to make a brilliant matchday experience but for that you have to create new behaviours. Realistically you need a City Square equivalent on matchdays, it’s doable but we have to focus on the new generations. Oldies won’t really change from the last minute dash from the pub. Having players like Steve Howard, Elliott et al to meet on matchdays isn’t going to attract anyone not on statins unfortunately (including me) and we seem to focus a lot on what was. I get it to an extent. Anyway I’m on train back to Glasgow. I enjoyed SK1 yesterday as did my boys. Embrace UFS, they are a great bunch and what they want is what football needs 🦊

wrong thread to edited 🦊

The role isn’t just about atmosphere unfortunately. That will come over time as they understand the club, the DNA of the fans and start to meet with supporter groups to understand what fans want exactly. That then has to fit the club strategy and commercial goals. You’ll then have lengthy transitional periods as they (you would hope) put fans in the right places in the ground, get the singing sections together, get the oldies together, make a better family experience etc. It’ll take a while. The role is 100% commercial. Expect your emails to be more targeted so you open them and then they can become a revenue stream, Spotify Wraps round ups with your mileage from your home to games and away games to see how far you’ve travelled over a season, how many goals you’ve seen, how many pies you’ve eaten (creates fun social content and it’s helping you feel valued and part of the club, we did this at Brentford), where there is data there’s content and therefore profit! They’ll be plans to get you in the ground early and to keep you there after, like Brighton (that’ll be the focus with the new stand). It’s all positive stuff really….eventually

Fans work well in SLO roles, that’s probably slightly different at Aberdeen and not on the same level as the HoFE role at LCFC so interesting to see how it evolves. The CEO there is also very fan focussed he was a fan at Motherwell (a Well boi) before working his way up to CEO from a media bod! This Head of FE role will be a blue chip appointment I’m sure. Loyalty programmes, numbers growth, spend per head etc experience / CV. I doubt they’ll be a fan, they may well be from another sport, in some ways you kind of want that as football is stuck in its ways. You’d hope they are in touch with the emotional attachment of a football club but for me the importance of making every fan feel valued, listened to and part of the club is more important than a blue and white scarf.

Based on the UFS findings it seems unlikely that anything is going to change this season, we’ll then be blessed with a promotion which will mean less, if any empty seats. It’s kind of a get out of jail for free for the club really. What you would hope is that the learnings from this means there is a plan for if / when we go down again. Fan groups need to all challenge this constructively to ensure something is in place. It may well already be. Now our bubble has burst we will probably see more “faults” in our systems and on a positive the room for improvements. Conscious of battering @Foxes_Trust but I’d really like to understand what you do if the club says no to you? how do you hold them accountable? do you really challenge the club or just roll over and have your tummy tickled? You claim to • To lobby, publicise and campaign to encourage the Board to take into account the interests of supporters when making its decisions. but what does that look like when they say no? Do you use the FSA and others out there that can help lobby and suggest better ways for the club to operate? Again from my time in football I was regularly challenged and questioned by fans. It’s brutal at times but you need that to grow as a club, to stay relevant. if you’re not challenged then you can hide and many, many clubs do. Lip service is also too easy without accountability and regular agenda driven and minuted meetings. There was a fan centric strategy at those clubs though and they were smaller clubs than LCFC so that can make it easier… but then harder in many ways. Im a big fan of UFS, what they want is great for the next generation of fans, I even moved my ST’s from the family end as my two young lads want to be part of it. I know older fan groups don’t always condone / like what younger fan groups are about but you have to unite to make a difference IF you want the fan base to stay relevant and to grow beyond what happens on the green rectangle. Uniting can mean really uncomfortable conversations with the club, but done properly you can get results or at least reasonings. A question I always used to ask fan groups, staff at clubs et al, if what you are doing isn’t for the benefit of making the fans experience better, then why are you doing it? Keep fighting the good fight 🦊

TBF, no one from the club is going to come on a message board, not at any club with any sense and from experience you don't want to. You can't win and it would be relentless. It's really easy to club bash on here or on other social platforms for sure but in the club's defence they don't need to be on here and shouldn't be. What there should be is an open line of communication from fan groups to the club, regular minuted and published meetings and complete transparency, especially with issues like this. This members /ticketing strategy / issue could well have been communicated to the likes of the Foxes Trust but they may not have shared that information with the masses? either way what are the FT doing? The EFL insist on fan meetings and the FSA will support fans if this isn't happening. It's down to the fan groups to help instigate this and to hold the club accountable if they aren't doing what they say they are / should be doing (they may well be). If nobody in those groups is contacting the club about these issues then the club aren't in the wrong. Are the older fan groups doing what they should be doing and representing the fans? I'm not sure they are? It's really easy to whack on a branded polo shirt, write match reports and get "WOW'd" at the ground once a year but if your job is to represent the fans, to hold the club accountable and to support the club in supporting the fans you need to do it or stop pretending. We have to support the club moving forwards and hope that with an £80k a year head of fan engagement coming in, that the club can focus on these issues at the bottom, improve transparency and communications and hopefully start listening to those groups that really want to make a change to the club and not just their egos. I'm not sure the club has had the right resource to match it's incredible growth to focus on fan engagement / fan comms so with a new strategy (and I would assume someone from a blue chip / Tesco Club card type, loyalty based engagement background) we should see an improvement. Again that is going to take time for them to get it right and along the way of course there will be issues, but clearly the club have seen the need for this change so EPL requirement or not, it's a positive step.

It's quite common for "bigger" clubs to only allow members to games to buy tickets. I worked in football in Fan Engagement for 10 years until 2020 and this kind of policy makes total sense to the clubs and the line of reports should any trouble / inncident occur. You control who comes in, you can ID them, if they cheat the system you've done all you can... Also you can't change the policy for certain games once you've set the policy so if you aim to keep Leeds fans out the home end (for example) then you need to do the same for every team otherwise you are discriminating / profiting. BUT.... that is a great policy (for the clubs) if you are filling the ground or likely to. It's fairly obvious to most this season that as there are so many games a month, as many teams in this league won't sell out away allocations and as most of the fixtures aren't that appealing that a decent resale platform or option for others to buy could be in place. It's too rigid in this league, it should've been addressed as we went down and revised as the season ends. Fan groups (all of them) consulted is your best starting point. Many think the art to filling a ground is just to win games but it's not (clearly), it's about an experience (I know that's a w*nky word but it's unfortunately relevant these days), getting people in early and giving them a reason to stay and unfortunately as someone has already pointed out ours perceived as stale. If you cant guarantee a 1-0 win every week you need a plan and I don't think we have really ever had one. From what I see / have experienced as a club have relied on results, which again is great while you are winning. There will be a new Head of Fan Engagement coming in (a new EPL requirement position) but that is a long burn and the best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago... I think the UFS statement makes sense. Most of what they are about does. They are an unheard voice at times. I'd also like to see the club issue some of these tickets to folk who maybe can't afford tickets, especially at this time of year where there is so much pressure on people to buy stuff and to entertain families. Most of those people won't be able to afford to come back (that could be why we don't) but as a community club, that shouldn't matter in this league. That's just my waffle on the matter!

Eh Up I have a season ticket but rarely go due to work and getting down from Glasgow being expensive! Are there any fans that travel down / lift share from up here at all?

I thought I did post it there ha! Nice one

Hello, this is my first post so I hope it's in the right place! I have a season ticket but rarely go due to work and getting down from Glasgow being expensive! Are there any fans that travel down / lift share from up here at all? (No I'm not Brendan wanting back in)