John Fenty - The worst chairman in EFL history?

Just for some midweek fun and in slight hope he still can't resist coming on here to read about himself, I've asked myself the question, could he statistically be the worst football league chairman of all time, obviously there will have been chairmen who've driven clubs deep into the none league abyss, but I'm just talking statistically in the EFL specifically.

I've done him a favour and only started from when he had a full season in charge so the 2005/06 season. In 9 and a half seasons of EFL football we've finished outside the bottom half of the bottom division just once, and been in the 3rd round of the FA Cup just once too.
With a seriously impressive 185 defeats, a win ratio of 33% and a goal difference of -113, and our average place in all of the football league being 85th, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone at any of the current league clubs beating that, and any chairman that stayed half as long beating that either. I included this season as if it had finished 2 games ago for your information.

So I hope if he reads this he can feel like he's acheived something other than the second promotion spot in the lowest division we've ever been in, cheers Fenty all the best

I feel we are terrible, I cant face it being statistically true as well

You'd need a lot of spare time and go and prove this definitively, but certainly if correct a win ratio of 33% and a negative goal difference of 113 is pretty shambolic, not least because six seasons of his tenure were massaged by the fact that we had found ourselves as a big fish in the non-league pond. That he will seemingly leave with us again facing such a fate is also a telling indictment.

I've always tempered my criticism of Fenty on the basis that there have been far more ill-meaning characters to have had control of football clubs. What the likes of Bill Archer and David Bellotti did to Brighton & Hove Albion in the 90s was utterly abhorrent, so how can you discuss someone like John Fenty in the same breath? Well, the fact that we were on the cusp of allowing the club into the grubby hands of a professional liar and serially convicted criminal, with a newfound interest in property development makes you wonder whether we could have suffered similar consequences. Rendered homeless. Exiled from our own town (putting to one side that we haven't played home games in Grimsby for over a century). On the brink of extinction.

Brighton are also a shining example of what a resilient fanbase and more importantly sound ownership can achieve. Few fans have shown more resilience than ours in recent years, so perhaps it's now our turn to experience the benefits of competent leadership.

"Worst chairman in EFL history" is a bold statement, and always open to subjectivity. I think the likely answer is that he probably isn't, but the fact he's sat at the top table with some truly unpleasant characters is more than enough to be ashamed of in itself.

I think that point about how bad others are has always protected Fenty a little.

Rightly or wrongly the line of defence has always gone on the lines of 'Well he's not as bad as the Oyston's...'

But as soon as he got into bed with May he pulled that little security blanket away.  Not only have we been absolutely bloody horrendous on the pitch, even worse off it but now we've got that link with a convicted criminal (of course, a crime that no-one was affected by, eh Philip?).   Yeah, he's definitely up there on the wrong 'un list.

Honestly, this is getting a tad boring...

He's made us go backwards, there's no doubt about that.
The recent stories of players etc with contracts is criminal, and we are struggling again, due to this man.

But this isn't achieving anything.
he's agreed to sell, let him go, and lets start making post's about the future of the club instead, and try get some positivity around the fans when we need it most!

I think there’s been a lot worse than him. Ask the supporters of Darlington for a start

Quoted from WHYWONTYOULETMESIGNUP

Just for some midweek fun and in slight hope he still can't resist coming on here to read about himself, I've asked myself the question, could he statistically be the worst football league chairman of all time, obviously there will have been chairmen who've driven clubs deep into the none league abyss, but I'm just talking statistically in the EFL specifically.

I've done him a favour and only started from when he had a full season in charge so the 2005/06 season. In 9 and a half seasons of EFL football we've finished outside the bottom half of the bottom division just once, and been in the 3rd round of the FA Cup just once too.
With a seriously impressive 185 defeats, a win ratio of 33% and a goal difference of -113, and our average place in all of the football league being 85th, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone at any of the current league clubs beating that, and any chairman that stayed half as long beating that either. I included this season as if it had finished 2 games ago for your information.

So I hope if he reads this he can feel like he's acheived something other than the second promotion spot in the lowest division we've ever been in, cheers Fenty all the best

Funnily enough I agree with that analysis.  

The thing is though, however dire those stats are, it only tells a fraction of the terrible Fenty years.

He has gone through the club like a one-man wrecking ball, destroying the club's reputation on and off the pitch to such a degree it will take a total transformation to rebuild the club from top to bottom.

When you look at our Twitter timeline " On this day in...20, 30 and more years ago" you can see the respect the footballing world had for the name of Grimsby Town and what it stood for.

This bloke has destroyed that and we are now seen as perennial bottom feeders who continually struggle to keep its place in the Football league, and nobody in the football family would raise an eyebrow if we went to non-league again.

We the fans put up with it far too long, as we longed for better days and kept giving him our ticket money to waste whilst he was happy to be the big fish and lord it over us all.

In all these years, despite him having full and total control of the football club, we have achieved absolutely nothing, on or off the pitch.

He has been a nightmare for GTFC; luckily if all goes to plan we will be shot of him soon and I for one am looking forward to seeing the restoration of the good name of Grimsby Town.

It is getting a bit boring but apart from the already mentioned George Reynolds at Darlington I give you the chairman of Doncaster Rovers who signed a Sunday League goalkeeper and put him straight in the first team.  (Yeah I know managers SHOULD pick the team). When that didn't cause Donny to implode quickly enough he tried burning down the Belle Vue stadium in order to get his hands on the valuable development land.

Quoted from Jarmo.Is.God

Honestly, this is getting a tad boring...

He's made us go backwards, there's no doubt about that.
The recent stories of players etc with contracts is criminal, and we are struggling again, due to this man.

But this isn't achieving anything.
he's agreed to sell, let him go, and lets start making post's about the future of the club instead, and try get some positivity around the fans when we need it most!

Sorry, but this man is responsible for the demise of a once proud football club over a period of nearly 20 years.  He's taking us to depths we have never sunk to before. He's sat smug at the top of the table as we wallowed in misery, he sat there reminding us that he drives a £80,000 car.  

He's insulted and upset countless fans with his attitude.  He's turned many fan away from the club they loved.  He's also going to walk away from the club with money that he doesn't deserve, despite the fact that the fans have put in so much more than him and at no point have ever asked for it back.  He's now dragged the good name of the club through the mud for his own grubby dealings.

His hands are soaked in the blood of this football clubs demise.

Sorry, if you want to just let bygones be bygones with this man.  But I don't.  The post title was a good indication as to the contents.

The man has trampled over the fans of our club so many times, it's crazy.

Fundamentally, he used GTFC as an ego trip. After that didn't work out, he tried to build a stadium as his legacy and, towards the end, he gave himself that many titles that weren't Chairman in order to make it look like he wasn't pulling the strings.

The appointment of Philip Day being the last attempt to deflect attention away, and, to be fair, the Day months have been so bad as to be Fentyesque.