Dear Mr Fenty

Quoted from Ipswin

Rather a curmudgeon that being away with the fairies. Firstly we will never get a new stadium, no one is going to invest in any worthwhile amount purely for the love of the Grimsby community and wanting success is totally different to actually being able to achieve it. For all Fenty's faults not wanting success is not one of them, he craves it as much as we do

I ask the question again, where is the money needed to get success through buying better players going to come from unless we find a mad moneybags investor, not from the Trust running things that's for sure

When we are playing at one or two levels down from the FL because there's no money they are not going to come whether its the Trust, Fenty, you or me running the club

Season ticket sales and match day receipts, which puts us at the top end of the league, despite our continual failures on the pitch. How do other clubs with less fans through the gates keep outperforming us? Why did Mike Parker, who was willing to put a million pounds into the club, walk away so quickly? Why did Lee Mullen walk away and put money into Alfreton instead?

The question has to be asked why we struggle each and every season. Not all clubs have someone pumping in cash to give them a bigger budget than their gates would otherwise allow, so what are they doing, that we are not?

Why did the top goalscorer in living memory end up at Hartlepool along with Toto? Why did Arnold leave and go to Lincoln? Why did Hurst leave us for Shrewsbury, a team no bigger than we are? Why have we not finished above mid table League 2 since 2006? There is way more to this than who is going to pump money into the club, which JF hasn't done for years anyway.

Quoted from Ipswin

Rather a curmudgeon that being away with the fairies. Firstly we will never get a new stadium, no one is going to invest in any worthwhile amount purely for the love of the Grimsby community and wanting success is totally different to actually being able to achieve it. For all Fenty's faults not wanting success is not one of them, he craves it as much as we do

I ask the question again, where is the money needed to get success through buying better players going to come from unless we find a mad moneybags investor, not from the Trust running things that's for sure

When we are playing at one or two levels down from the FL because there's no money they are not going to come whether its the Trust, Fenty, you or me running the club

There is the chance of a new stadium if the club and the council are prepared to bite their tongues and compromise a bit. NELC would love a new stadium somewhere in a regeneration area not especially because anyone there loves the club but because it would be a symbol that would reflect well on them publicly. So in general and political terms it could be done, but there are weaknesses in the idea.

As to Fenty, you could be right Swin, if he went there is no guarantee of more money than the club has now ..... certainly if the Trust is running the show. There is no guarantee of some crackpot millionaire rolling up to back the club. If Fenty went and new money failed to come in then the club might go under pretty fast even if staying at BP.

The club could go down the plug hole and do a York quite quickly and that is where the council might be reluctant to help with a new stadium, because York had exactly the same problem. These things are interconnected. Before NELC would/could agree to public money being involved in a stadium, the council is bound to have preconditions, the biggest being who owns the stadium, and they do not want to be left with a financial white elephant if the club folds. It will not be enough to have some glib phrase about community use, the stadium itself will still need a proper business plan. Therefore in that scenario, Fenty might have to stay at least short term as a guarantor of the club’s solvency because the club would have used its biggest asset of BP as a contribution to the costs of the new build.

If someone else directly replaced Fenty as guarantor, then all well and good, but they would have to show sufficient assets to convince the council about the risks. That could be the weakness of a Trust takeover because NELC is not rich enough to fill that role and will be risk averse to being left with debts if the Trust goes toes up.

On the playing budget, the only way that could increase enough to move the club up the pyramid is if someone is prepared to put money in as a gift in some shape or form and accept that their investment in the club will be a loser .... but in return they get to own a football club. They cannot expect to gain substantial disposable assets or a profit on their investment. The Trust might be able to maintain the status quo but could never generate the sort of income needed to finance promotions and life in a higher league.

I have much sympathy with the view that we should just take the risk and go all out for a new owner. But I do think it is unfortunately a more complex situation than a simple “Fenty Out” and “Someone Else (anyone!) In”. Lots of ducks to get in a row before it will work.

I am going to ask a potentially naive question, in the hope of getting some actual facts back...

What is it that Mr Fenty has actually done wrong?

Clearly we all want more success, exciting football, a new stadium, and the like, and he has an amount of influence in this, as do us fans, the manager, the players, the board, the trust etc, but is this just a case of looking for someone to blame?

We are a league 2, maybe lower league1, sized club, which is fairly unfashionable, in an area that while most of us love it and (still) call it home, many players wanting a large city life wouldn't choose it. The stadium is not attractive (again we love it and would miss it) and the location and investment return potential makes an impressive new stadium all but impossible.

He has appointed at least justifiable looking choices as manager on most occasions (personally Slade 2nd time always looks a bad choice to me). None have been universally agreed on as a poor decision before hand.

We don't have queues of wealthy GTFC fans to buy the club, and looking across the whole country, could we claim to be anywhere near the best opportunity for a wealthy individual or consortium  to invest in a football club in England?

I personally don't believe in the calls to try to spend beyond our means now to see the return in the future. Borrowing now is no guarantee of success, and thats how you get into real trouble.

Mr Fenty isn't an idiot - he has not put money and loans into GTFC to make a profit. He loves the club and has done what he could to support it through tough times. I struggle to see what else he could have done - if he hadn't given and lent the club money and we were in an even worse state, wouldn't that have been worse?

He seems like an honest guy, who is GTFC through and through, who has tried his best, who has and will continue to make mistakes on the way as we all do.

What am I missing? Honest question.

Cue my biggest ever red cross count lol.

Quoted from drbell

I am going to ask a potentially naive question, in the hope of getting some actual facts back...

What is it that Mr Fenty has actually done wrong?

Clearly we all want more success, exciting football, a new stadium, and the like, and he has an amount of influence in this, as do us fans, the manager, the players, the board, the trust etc, but is this just a case of looking for someone to blame?

We are a league 2, maybe lower league1, sized club, which is fairly unfashionable, in an area that while most of us love it and (still) call it home, many players wanting a large city life wouldn't choose it. The stadium is not attractive (again we love it and would miss it) and the location and investment return potential makes an impressive new stadium all but impossible.

He has appointed at least justifiable looking choices as manager on most occasions (personally Slade 2nd time always looks a bad choice to me). None have been universally agreed on as a poor decision before hand.

We don't have queues of wealthy GTFC fans to buy the club, and looking across the whole country, could we claim to be anywhere near the best opportunity for a wealthy individual or consortium  to invest in a football club in England?

I personally don't believe in the calls to try to spend beyond our means now to see the return in the future. Borrowing now is no guarantee of success, and thats how you get into real trouble.

Mr Fenty isn't an idiot - he has not put money and loans into GTFC to make a profit. He loves the club and has done what he could to support it through tough times. I struggle to see what else he could have done - if he hadn't given and lent the club money and we were in an even worse state, wouldn't that have been worse?

He seems like an honest guy, who is GTFC through and through, who has tried his best, who has and will continue to make mistakes on the way as we all do.

What am I missing? Honest question.

Cue my biggest ever red cross count lol.

The simplest answer is that in football you never stand still and you can never have consolidation as your aim or you go backwards. You are in a finite world in competition with all those other clubs, if someone moves up then someone else must move down. The job of the owner and the manager is to see that the club is not one of the latter and has a good chance of being one or the former. Normal business models do not apply. In football you must speculate to accumulate. At its simplest level OP got us a player who saved us from more wilderness years. That achievement is wasted because Mr Fenty does not believe it.

Quoted from drbell

Mr Fenty isn't an idiot -

There's a video on Youtube where he is an absolute idiot. A complete doofus. A recording of him too, being similarly underhand and clueless.
This is him in reality, when, incredibly, he seems to think all is under control and he's succeeding and he can do whatever he wants with the reputation of MY club.

The club is crippled under his tenure.

Quoted from barralad

Not touchy..just resolute

Fair play!  

Ask not what Fenty has done wrong,

BUT

What has he done right.

Quoted from drbell

I am going to ask a potentially naive question, in the hope of getting some actual facts back...

What is it that Mr Fenty has actually done wrong?

Clearly we all want more success, exciting football, a new stadium, and the like, and he has an amount of influence in this, as do us fans, the manager, the players, the board, the trust etc, but is this just a case of looking for someone to blame?

We are a league 2, maybe lower league1, sized club, which is fairly unfashionable, in an area that while most of us love it and (still) call it home, many players wanting a large city life wouldn't choose it. The stadium is not attractive (again we love it and would miss it) and the location and investment return potential makes an impressive new stadium all but impossible.

He has appointed at least justifiable looking choices as manager on most occasions (personally Slade 2nd time always looks a bad choice to me). None have been universally agreed on as a poor decision before hand.

We don't have queues of wealthy GTFC fans to buy the club, and looking across the whole country, could we claim to be anywhere near the best opportunity for a wealthy individual or consortium  to invest in a football club in England?

I personally don't believe in the calls to try to spend beyond our means now to see the return in the future. Borrowing now is no guarantee of success, and thats how you get into real trouble.

Mr Fenty isn't an idiot - he has not put money and loans into GTFC to make a profit. He loves the club and has done what he could to support it through tough times. I struggle to see what else he could have done - if he hadn't given and lent the club money and we were in an even worse state, wouldn't that have been worse?

He seems like an honest guy, who is GTFC through and through, who has tried his best, who has and will continue to make mistakes on the way as we all do.

What am I missing? Honest question.

Cue my biggest ever red cross count lol.

Ok, as a critic of JF I think I should try and back up what I post.

This is purely my opinion by the way.

I think initially John did pull the club out of what was looking to be a pretty dire situation.  I do believe he is (possibly now was) a big Town fan, and did it with the right intentions.

However, for whatever reasons he has now lost most of the reality of the situation and is at the moment detrimental to the running of the Club.  He has alienated the fans on more than one occasion.  To my mind, the biggest recent gaff (one of too many to mention in one reply) was condemning the magnificent efforts of the Trust and the supporters in Op Promotion.  His PR has been shambolic on more than one occasion.  His focus on a new ground has been such that he has let BP fall into a pretty bad state. But not so focused as to get the job (ie a new stadium) done, or at the moment even half done. By my reckoning we are no further to a new ground than when he took over the reins.  Alec King I believe  (I stand to be corrected) said that there would be no new stadium when he left the club and boy has he been proved right.  His managerial appointments is a tough one to be too harsh about. However, we have no real knowledge of who applied when, and whether or not he could have attracted better with the right package.  In terms of investment, people always come out with 'well who else is there?' that was answered by Mike Parker and (to a lesser extent) the Mullins. Both came in full of excitement, both left (relatively shortly) under less than favourable circumstances.!!

As for budgets, another tough one to call. We know we have more than most actually coming through the turnstiles, but I believe our other sources of income are less than most.  But the Bogle money would appear to have been flushed away with nothing to show for it.  The board must have approved the spending at some stage !!

Which brings me to the final point (I should get some actual work done I suppose).  The board !!
We don't really know what goes on in the boardroom as we are not actually there.  But the very strong general feeling is that they are pretty much 'yes men' which is not what you always need with big decision making.  Messrs Day and Marley will say they provide expertise in their field ? possibly questionable, especially in the case of Marley.  But please can someone tell me the input from the horse trainer (whose name I can't even be bothered to google) ???  And I for one would rather not have a Trust member having to agree to board etiquette I'd rather they be a louder voice of opposition, but I may be in the minority on that one.

Overall, we just have to look at what the clubhave achieved (or rather not) under the current regime.  in reality , it's 3/5ths of buggger all.  What do we think we have to look forward to under the current regime?Once again it looks like 3/5ths of buggger all I'm afraid.

There are those who will say we may not be in existence without JF.  I personally don't subscribe to that.
And if him digging us out of the mire all those years ago gives him the right to behave as he does now, well in my book that's a very very high price to pay.

UTM

Civvy

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

The simplest answer is that in football you never stand still and you can never have consolidation as your aim or you go backwards. You are in a finite world in competition with all those other clubs, if someone moves up then someone else must move down. The job of the owner and the manager is to see that the club is not one of the latter and has a good chance of being one or the former. Normal business models do not apply. In football you must speculate to accumulate. At its simplest level OP got us a player who saved us from more wilderness years. That achievement is wasted because Mr Fenty does not believe it.

Meant in the nicest possible way, Im glad you are not in charge of the club (fwiw, Im glad Im not either). Where does that kind of thinking end? We take on extra debt that by its very nature we cannot afford to service/pay off with the status quo. If we have some success, lets say we get to league 1, I presume your attitude would be the same. Therefore we borrow more so we can have more success, again which we could not afford unless we have success. Repeat until we fail, and are left with unmaintainable debt and a club certain for bankruptcy.

I appreciate the answer though. there have been no other attempts to actually give specific examples of mistakes, or what others might have done better.

Quoted from Civvy at last

He has alienated the fans on more than one occasion.
UTM
Civvy

Thanks for the reply. Was interesting reading.

I certainly cant argue about the alienation. I think thats a very fair point -better PR, better handling of various issues, more engagement with fans certainly would have been beneficial off the field, and therefore potentially on it too.

Im not sure we can blame him for the ground. I think had he(and/or the board) not tried to commit to the ground, we would all of been very disappointed. However, it does feel like an impossible task for me, so where we are now is somewhat inevitable.

I have to admit to not really knowing what happened with Mike Parker and the Mullens. Do we actually know what they were offering, and why they ended up not contributing? I'd love to understand this better, because as you rightly say, this might have been the clubs one chance to get some real investment, or maybe it wasn't. I can't help feeling that most of us fans would have stayed and contributed to the club we love no matter what we had to deal with.

The 'board' I agree is a strange one - feels like we would all like to get more incite into the board meetings, and what they are actually doing to further the club.

I guess I just get frustrated with a couple of the approaches I see on here regarding Mr Fenty (though Im not saying you fall into either of these for the record)
1. The get rid of him no matter what? That is pure madness. Even if there was universal agreement he was doing a very poor job, he/the board needs replacing, and getting rid without a replacement lined up that has a considerably better than average chance of improving things would be suicide.
2. The idea that all alternatives to Fenty would be successful. There is a wide spectrum of levels of success that could have come to the club under various leaderships. My suspicion is that our current place is well within the top half of successful outcomes. Other opinions are available.