An Open Letter to Norwich City Supporters Trust

[As my login causes problems [ :o) ] 0]

Dear Committee,

The events of the last three seasons at Carrow Road have led to increasing numbers of Norwich City supporters becoming disillusioned with the way our club is run.

Whatever individual fans may feel about the respective merits of successive managers and players, it is quite clear that the investment required to achieve prolonged membership of the Premier league or indeed to realistically challenge at the top of the Championship has not been there.  Moreover the revenues that have been generated from our short membership of the Premiership, excellent conference facilities and a well spending large fan base appear to have been squandered by the custodians of the club.

It is against this backdrop that a significant number of fans would like to see ownership of the club widened and the control exerted by the majority shareholders subjected to more independent scrutiny.

The logical way to achieve this is through two new director positions: a former top football person and an elected fans representative.

The football person could be drawn from distinguished figures within the game that have an affinity with the club such as Martin Peters, David Stringer, Iwan Roberts or one of the other wonderful servants this club has had.

The elected fans representative should surely come through the Norwich City Supporters Trust and it is time for this body to come out from behind the screens and bring this campaign to the forefront.

We have seen calls on message boards and in the letter pages of newspapers for share issues and elected representatives in the style of the myfootballclub.com campaign, when we actually have a body in place that has already built relationships with the club and exists solely for this purpose.

You cannot carry on in the quiet, and dare I say amateurish, manner this campaign has been in the past.  The time has come for your website to be updated, your statements to be consistent, and above all your recruitment to be more forceful.

£20,100 or £23,000 (even the amount invested is unclear) over the time you have existed is not enough.  This figure needs to be higher, and your media presence more visible.  You cannot avoid interviews and not comment on the club, instead you should question decisions and seek rationale from those who run the club for what they do.

I am already a member but you need more, and more to the point Norwich City Football Club needs you to have more members.

Steady on now''s your chance ... 

David Maidstone

[blahblahblah 2]

A powerful message face, I have to agree that the supporters trust needs to have a more powerful voice.  It can only get this if people join in greater numbers though - The website for the trust is http://www.ncst.org.uk, and it costs a tenner to join, fiver for kids, which is less than a round of drinks these days.  Once I remember my paypal password, I''ll be joining.  If it were possible, I''d like to see the trust do what I had very briefly tried to before getting cold feet, to get fans to committing to club together as they did for the share issue a few years back, I would imagine that (if you didn''t ask them in the run up to Xmas) 20% of our season ticket holders would be happy to club together 50 or 100 pounds each to buy a combined stake, a lot of blokes will spend 50 quid on a night out these days, £50 * 4,000 = 200,000 pounds, £100 * 40 = 400,000, either of those sums would, in my opinion, be enough to make the club think about issuing more shares via an EGM.  Even if this didn''t happen, there is scope to issue more shares next November, and if demand for those shares can be proven, then it would put pressure on the board to make them available at the next AGM.  The 200k-400k guesses are conservative estimates, the club raised 1.8 million from the preference B share issue from a few years back, and didn''t have to give out a place on the board to anyone to get that money, we were given the No. 13 shirt for a couple of seasons though, which was nice*.  On that basis, Mr and Mrs'' Turners'' (and indeed Mr Munby and Mr Doncasters'') places on the board look cheap in comparison to what the fans had already given, however, the role of a director of a football club seems to be to dip into your pocket when your club needs you to, which is every season these days.  If demand can be proven for a yearly whip-round of supporters (and I believe it can, just look at the 20,000 people willing to put 35 quid a year into Ebbfleet, daft buggers think they''re managing a team), resulting in a loan from the trust to the club, which could then be converted into shares at a later date as other directors do, then the trust could extend its'' shareholding quite quickly.  The only proviso I would put on this if I were running the Trust would be to respectfully ask that all money raised went into football investment, as purchasing land / improving offices with supporters'' donations might be considered to be against the spirit of those donations.  To my mind the club can only benefit from a strong supporters'' trust, and should be looking to encourage trust membership.  For some fans, often the most vocal and passionate ones, the club hierarchy feels isolated from its'' support, in comfortable boardrooms and conference facilities.  When I set a thread up to discuss the possibility of a petition to raise funds to buy shares on the official site message board, the upshot of one the responses I had was that the "main flaw of the idea was that the comfortable directors would never allow a peasant into their ivory tower."  It seems to me that the best thing they can do to foster support for themselves with the fan base is to let a peasant in.  It would be good PR.If the trust would like any assistance in setting a form up that emails them with the details of anyone willing to get involved in a whip-round, with the information kept private (which I think is the main reason that people didn''t want to fill my epetition in), I''d be happy to help.What else could the trust do to get its'' name known with the fans ?  Flyers handed out at the turnstiles perhaps ?  * Quite why we don''t get the No.13 shirt now, I''m not entirely sure.  Were we transferred to another club ?

[Mister Chops 7]

I joined three weeks ago.  Even had to chase the person running the organisation up for a "welcome" email - very unimpressed so far.  It seems poorly organised and disjointed.

[Hog 0]

same here, but not even a welcome email for me, whats the point!

[blahblahblah 2]

I guess the more people who join, the more need there is for them to get their act together ?

[Mister Chops 7]

[quote user="Salahuddin"]same here, but not even a welcome email for me, whats the point![/quote]

I''ll forward you mine if you like!

I was hoping they''d be fairly vocal and organised but I get the impression they are neither.  Heigh ho.

[Mister Chops 7]

[quote user="blahblahblah"]

Norwich City Supporters Trust - Don''t complain if you haven''t joined.

[/quote]

Wait until you have joined, then you''ll have something to complain about! :-)

[ca 1]

Could the Supporters Trust not get together with the NCISA to talk over a way forward re the concerns about the board?

[Inch High aka Inchy.. 405]

The supporters trust have already clearly stated their full backing for Delia and MWJ. Needless to say  they will never see any of  my money.

[One Flew Over... 33]

[quote user="o"]

You cannot carry on in the quiet, and dare I say amateurish, manner this campaign has been in the past.  The time has come for your website to be updated, your statements to be consistent, and above all your recruitment to be more forceful.

[/quote]

I think the website looks fine. I''d say it is run in an amateurish way because it is amateur! I don''t think anyone is paid for the work they do, so I assume all monies go towards the shares. I''m sure they''d welcome all the help they can get so offer your services if you feel this strongly.

I''d personally be against having a "director of football" on the board. The manager should have full control, and if the board don''t have confidence in the manager''s decisions then they should sack him. Maybe get someone in to concentrate for overseeing the  academy / scouting / overseas players, but this person shuold report to the manager. A fan''s representative - definitely. The more open internal meetings are the better (except things that would negatively affect the club).

[As my login causes problems [ :o) ] 0]

I''m sorry but being an amateur does not excuse acting in an amateurish manner.

The website is clearly well out of date if you read through the "news" items.  In this day of myspace and facebook many people are updating information several times during a day, is it not reasonable to ask a site marketing an organisation to be up to date and accurate?

On the website we have a figure of £20,100 declared as invested in the club.  In Mike Reynolds'' letter a figure of £23,000 is quoted. To my knowledge following the AGM an investment of £5,000 was made in shares, how do those figures relate?

Amateurs are fortunately involved in running large charitable concerns across the country and give many hours of their time. Whilst not underestimating what the NCST committee members do, it would be hoped that they could manage to a) update the website weekly, b) reply to subscriptions quicker than the above posts appear to show and c) get involved in the wider discussions on the club; within the time that they are able to offer.

To be fair to Mike Reynolds he appears to be the driving force, so where are the others?

On your point on a "director of football", I am not advocating an interfering Avram Grant type post as indeed that would take more time than many of the obvious candidates would be prepared to give.  However someone who''s experience is outside law, chickens, loans, marketing or TV cooking could surely add a different perspective to boardroom discussions and generate questions that maybe should be asked.

I hate to come across as so critical, but I do feel that the climate is right for the NCST to come to the fore and make substantial moves towards their goal, but it needs them to push it forward, and then they can bring about change.

Status Quo were an excellent band, but as a business model the phrase is outdated.

 

[BlyBlyBabes 0]

[quote user="inch_high"]The supporters trust have already clearly stated their full backing for Delia and MWJ. Needless to say  they will never see any of  my money.[/quote]

 

OTBC

 

[Mike Reynolds Trust Secretary 0]

To all those who are taking an interest despite everything, I will get around to providing a comprehensive answer some time over the weekend, despite being semi-retired I do have committments away from my PC. In the meantime a few quick answers:-

The news updates - Like all other Supporters Trusts our original remit is as a fans overseer of the governance of our football clubs hence stories regarding take-overs, other Trusts etc. It was part of our original remit that we would not comment on the playing side of NCFC. I can assure you that I scour the quality press for such stories but we are often reliant on our parent body Supporters Direct for such stories.

The value of the shares - Until the investment of £5100 at the club AGM we held £15000 at a face value of £25 per share. At that AGM the face value of ordinary shares was raised to £30 which I believe increases the worth of the previously purchased shares to £18000. Add the £5100 to that and you get the new figure of £23100.

The website - this was designed for us to replace a site donated by one of our sponsor companies, at least we (I) have administrative and editorial control of it. We have many ideas of making additions but unless they are cheap or preferably free to implement we prefer to stick to our plan to plough as much as we can back into the Club in return for shares. We are all volunteers and calls for involvement from a much younger group of fans has raised little response.

Membership - I have not checked on the delays so do not know if there is a built in delay with PayPal. Where possible i have provided an electronic NCST Share Certificate as soon as I pick up the e-mails from PayPal. It is no excuse but for several reasons we have been out of touch with our Membership Secretary until last week.

NCISA - unfortunately since we set up the Trust in 2002 we have been treated as "outsiders" by both the Supporters Consultative Group and other fans groups over all sorts of "petty" issues such as sponsoring the number 13 shirt, organising the anti-racism pledge, commissioning the video with NNREC. At one stage the Club was forced to get involved. (This is quite common around the country where Independent Supporters Associations are in conflict with Trusts. Arsenal have recently solved their conflict once faced by the wealthy Russian)

Mike Reynolds