[Official Site] WATCH | Q&A WITH KHALED EL-AHMAD

2 hours and 36 minutes?!
I've already spent 20 minutes reading through 11 pages of comments!

I'll give it a go, but if this turns out to be another Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (a lot of wandering about with bugger all happening), then I'm going to be a bit miffed.

 

Like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic this interview from our CEO. No slight on the fans asking the questions at all though. Thanks to all involved.

 

Really? I thought the playoffs were an outside bet. I thought the fees were too low and we made a mess of not getting them on better contracts earlier.

But given Cryne was content to subsidise here and there, he had a right to choose what he did.

We no longer have a safety net. If we run out of money, we run out of money.

 

I am that pedant, 24 years 257 days. I love numbers

 

Good, let's make sure it happens, keep up the pressure.

 

The play offs were a really outside bet especially after winall had his head turned. If we had kept those 3 missed out on the play offs they all went for nothing and we were never able reinvest in the likes of mowatt pinnock and lindsay then you could say the same. The fees were small but they had 6 months left and winnall basically forced his way out

In hindsight one of the biggest mistakes we made was no replace mowatt sooner i know we paid alot for kane. But we should have gone for whiteman when we had chance.

Agree with the last bit i said when he was here one day we will miss that bloke as a owner. Now is that time.

 

If my auntie had a **** she would be my uncle...

 

If the season continues as expected and we go down without so much as wimper and the off field situations see no change I would say anything around 6k season tickets would be a success.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath. He's too busy doing things like this; eye off the ball doing favours for friends.

https://www.news24.com/fin24/Econom...ers-buying-up-europes-football-teams-20220113

 

I'm halfway through, I feel u may need to steel yourself to be ever so slightly miffed.

 

At least there is a satisfying air of unconcealed frustration bordering on disbelief from both questioners.....well done.

 

Huge thanks to Ben and Gally for taking the time to do this on our behalf. Thanks also to Ben for some excellent challenges, particularly on why the issue of the owners is so important to fans, and also how the 750k would be an issue regardless of what league we are in or position.

It may be an unpopular view, but I like Khaled and believe that he genuinely wants the best for the club. He has answered every question - some were, let's be honest, difficult for him to answer (questions on what Conway thinks; questions regarding things that happened before he arrived etc) - and I do think on the whole he was transparent based on things that have happened during his first 4 months. Except: I still don't buy the reason given for closing the west stand, i think the vouchers were a big fail, and I don't agree with him sticking to the belief that buying young with little experience and relying on them settling in to a Championship team quickly at the start of a season equates to a successful model - it needs more flexibility and we are seeing the on-field damage right now. He is a positive guy however, and I believe he has made mistakes already but is trying his best and is engaging with fans at least and not going into hiding, unlike Paul Conway. Let's hope Conway agrees to a face-to-face next month with fans.

Thanks again Ben and Gally, top stuff.

 

But remember we're making lots of improvements. And we're looking at improvements to our digital strategy. Oh, but if you want an answer to any correspondence send a letter rather than ring or email as we may not answer!

 

No chance of that now it passes Khaled’s safety test!

 

To echo may other posters, @Loko the Tyke and @Gally - thank you for doing this and for your excellent questioning. You didn't let the answers go unchallenged, at times it was clear how uncomfortable and at other times frustrated he was. Not a criticism in any way as you did a far better job than I'd have done but I was willing you to push harder on the West Stand. Whilst he couldn't answer the question about the exact cost of the repairs I thought the next logical question was to ask exactly what repairs were undertaken - which surely he should have been aware of. Interesting that he seemed to place greater emphasis on the closure being for operational reasons this time, which seemed to be in potential conflict with an earlier comment that it was definitely the right decision.

I was delighted that you asked how many Seasonal Membership holders had been lost - I think the answer was 161. He made a further comment about trying to recover those lost supporters/ encourage them to come back (I can't recall his exact phrase). Are any of the 161 on here and if so, can they comment on the nature of these 'efforts' and their effectiveness?

 

Team that lost to Man U in Europa league final 2017 was 22 years.

 

We really are ****** aren't We. Other clubs ambitions will soon make a different and we will fall further behind losing money anyway.

 

I've just finished the CEO session, so I'm videoed out for today. Thanks to you and @Gally for all the effort. I actually enjoyed the latter part, more than the first.

I'll take a look at Redfern's sessions over the next few days.

 

I'm not sure either but that sounds about right. It's hard to say which way it will go and obviously a lot can change between now and then.
If it were right now I would guess at about 5k. Be interesting to see how many people bother to turn up going forward.