Andy Giddings interview with Khaled

This, as a recorded interview, is for me the best available source for us to form views on Khaled so far.



Still working through the final part of it, but I have some immediate observations:

1) I get the feeling he's being as sincere as we can expect of him in the responses.
2) The £750k payment issue is raised and met directly with "I'm not aware of this". If he's not then he's not been following the hot topics closely enough, so this feels very political as a response. Giving him the benefit of the doubt I would expect this to be a different situation when the Q&A takes place.
3) There's a really interesting comment at about 5:30 in where he's critical of last season's success as there was "not one offer for any player." This is followed further on by a more general discussion about recruitment and generating value from it. To me, this approach is more than the simple 'we're always a selling club' as it points towards a prioritisation of making money from recruitment above all other considerations, including team performance.
4) He openly states that it was his decision alone to close the West Stand and that both the Crynes and PMG side of the board expressed surprise when he told them this.

I highly recommend listening to it to form your own views. I'm still trying to process overall what I think of it, particularly in light of the response regarding the £750k.

 

Lol, I've just heard it. Gets asked a question about Brexit and immigration rules and talks about the issues relating to more financial competition for players and using data analytics and relationships.

I just don't think he's very bright.

 

One additional thought is that he's effectively opened the auction on the January fire-sale, and without any pretence that it isn't going to happen.

"Roll up, roll up, grab them while you can. We've been developing them into ball on the ground, tiki-taka, losing players specifically to increase their value."

 

The entire club is currently built on lies and deception. Folk would get on at John Dennis saying we don't want to go up and that he'd stopped us doing well.

My god, how far we've fallen. The owners of the club pretty much reflects leadership at the highest level in 2021. All lie as regularly as they breathe.

 

The comments on Andy Giddings and Doug O'Kane's twitter posts on the interviews are fairly toxic.

We are not in a good place. Heartbreaking.

 

Terrible interview. Terrible motivation for owning a club. He can bugger off as well.

 

If I were him, I wouldn't bother doing any more interviews, given he'll just be accused of lying anyway.

 

Well if what he’s said is the truth. That performance on the pitch is irrelevant as long as we flog some players at the end of the season then I’d rather he lie.

 

What in particular did you take exception to?

 

The club need to sell players to survive. Time will tell, but if they continue to sell a player a season to make ends meet, I don't have an issue with it. As long as they don't have firesales.

 

the bit where they don’t give a **** about on field success as long as we can ‘develop’ a few players to flog and the reason that we have abandoned a successful formula has nothing to do with footballing success and is all to do with flogging players.

 

Saying he doesn't know and then that's the honest answer doesn't scream telling the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Well done interviewers, good direct questions.

 

Getting relegated will cost us 5 million quid and depreciate player value.

Additionally the club told us in January that they had rejected offers for Woodrow and Helik. Last season clearly added a couple of million into Heliks value so lying then and lying now.

 

Not a great start for him in a new job. Inspires zero confidence

 

They were very good, direct questions. I'd hope they ask him the same questions again in the future (maybe put him on notice now), so he can get the information about the 750k. Sounds like he's not going to get any info on the court proceedings.

We know the club has a value placed on every player. If anyone had bid a certain value for Helik in the summer, he'd be gone. Same for Styles and Woodrow and the rest of them. Those bids didn't come in.

I don't agree with how much of a change of style has been attempted, but I think some change was needed. But let's not be acting all shocked at the news that the club would like to sell high value players. It's not a new thing.

 

Wow! Knowing how litigation conscience Americans are in surprised Dane didn't close the West stand when he was in charge. Not convinced at all in the reasons, we don't have accessible toilets so the whole stand has to close?

 

Maybe the fact that to his employers attempting to maximize player sale value is more important than on field success. I don't know about you but If I wanted to support a retail outfit I'd go stand in the middle of Tesco's on a Saturday afternoon and cheer the checkout staff and shelf stackers. To openly admit that you've changed the style of play to make it easier to sell your players because all the previous style brought you was on field success says to me both he and his employers have nothing but contempt for the fans the club and the town and sadly if James Cryne holds the same view as the rest of the board he is dishonouring his father's legacy and memory.

 

We accept as part of life selling players. Changing from a successful style to one that is clearly failing is not a great idea.

the club said they had rejected bids for those very players. So lying then or now you pick.

You are completely missing the point though. We have abandoned any attempt to put sporting success as our main driver. We would rather get relegated and sell players than challenge for promotion and not. That’s a massive change from needing to sell players.

 

Exactly.