Mark Palmer

Quoted from essexexile

Hands on day to day clerking is all that is required to keep a business ticking over which is why we are where we are bottom of the league
We haven’t had executive management decisions to propel the club forward in the last 20 years which is why we are bottom of the league
Which is why we are a small business ie corner shop not even a Tesco Express and never likely to be one unless attitudes change and people with em

Exactly!

If those running the club are so good at their jobs, why are we consistently at the ar$e end of the league?

Quoted from Fillipe Noche

Why are you under some sort of disillusion, that just because the legal entity of the business is a PLC, that this means it has to be some kind of grandiose looking and operating environment like an Alan Sugar set up.

Being a PLC means naff all apart from the legal standing and ownership structure. I can set you up a tiny little PLC in an hour if you want one.

The point I’m making is that the club is what it is. From a hands on day to day executive business management point of view, extremely well run by Ian Fleming.

If you want to bring in a different CEO, then he or she needs to be as equally as willing to get their hands dirty every day with pretty ordinary running of a football business. No amount of investment, changing ownership, or even getting into the Championship is ever going to change the role and responsibility of what a CEO does at a small football club business.

I can assure you it will not be business as usual.

The stench of amateurism hits you the minute you walk through the doors of the ticket office on non-match days. Everything a mess, people eating at their desks, empty coffee cups lying around, half-opened boxes of merchandise strewn about, staff deciding whose turn it is to bother going to the counter etc. etc.

No blame attached to employees, it is the lack of respect to fans shown by the owner which permeates every pore of the club from top to bottom.

It is not about getting your hands dirty, it is about a new ethos, a new era, something to be proud of and working much smarter with investment made in every area of the club to improve it.

You can start posting again every 5 minutes, but you just do not understand that things can and will be turned around. I have been to one or two professional clubs in a business capacity and the difference between our bodged operation and theirs was quite startling. The trouble with you and your mate is that because you have made a pig's ear of it you naturally want everyone else to fail so you can say I told you so, but it isn't gonna happen.

You and your mate have failed spectacularly because you have been looking through the wrong end of the lens. Move aside and let people show you how its done.

The facts on the ground would suggest that the “executive business management” is not being extremely well run by Ian Fleming. Off the top of my head, the last couple of years has seen our most valuable player leave on a free despite us having the option on him, season ticket sales decline again, the club Accounts Manager claim that fans were being bullied out of attending Checkatrade games, the club receiving a substantial fine and being in trouble with the authorities after the Port Vale farce, the Stadium Manager having to issue a public apology after claiming that we are “ the one club in the English Football League that people don't want to play” on the eve of the season kick off, the club website/shop continuing to be terrible and the ticketing operation remaining a farce.

It indicates that nobody is accountable to him as CEO for their own performance, as evidenced by the fact that John Fenty has usually issued statements following the above events. Are these the most qualified and best performing staff the club can get? Perhaps we’ll find out with a more professionally run club under the new ownership.

If Fleming is so keen to get his hands dirty, he might want to start with a box of grass seeds on the pitch.

Nosher, you have posted some really deluded sh1te on here in the past few weeks, but calling GTFC ‘extremely well run’ is the best yet. Do you think writing that is going to convince anybody?

Quoted from Fillipe Noche

Why are you under some sort of disillusion, that just because the legal entity of the business is a PLC, that this means it has to be some kind of grandiose looking and operating environment like an Alan Sugar set up.

Being a PLC means naff all apart from the legal standing and ownership structure. I can set you up a tiny little PLC in an hour if you want one.

The point I’m making is that the club is what it is. From a hands on day to day executive business management point of view, extremely well run by Ian Fleming.

If you want to bring in a different CEO, then he or she needs to be as equally as willing to get their hands dirty every day with pretty ordinary running of a football business. No amount of investment, changing ownership, or even getting into the Championship is ever going to change the role and responsibility of what a CEO does at a small football club business.

You have this @rse about face. It is not about bringing in a different CEO per se at all. It is about Palmer’s company recommending a long term staffing structure to go alongside the investment structure, changes to facilities and ultimately a new ground. The club does not have a CEO, it has an Office Manager because all other executive functions were filled by the owner either in person or by proxy. The new owners may be quite hands on but my bet is the recommendation of Palmer will be to have a higher profile head of the non-football side of the club. You may be talking about the club being what it is, they will be talking about what they want it to become.

The one thing that sticks in my mind is Philip Day going to see the council with a blank piece of paper six months after the council had publicly stated that Freeman Street was their preferred choice for a new stadium. A blank piece of paper and still not knowing who owned the land. After six months. Talk about preparation, professionalism and planning. And a self-proclaimed know it all comes on here and claims the club is well run and there's no need for a proper CEO because we've already got one who's on top of every single thing that a club like ours could be doing?

I do hope the new owners come in with a top to bottom overhaul mentality giving present employees and loyal club servants like Ian Fleming the chance to sink or swim. Every single aspect of the way the club is being run needs asseessing and improving, every single aspect of the club needs bringing forward 50 years, the whole infrastructure of the club needs rebuilding from ground zero and why do clubs with less than 50% of our fanbase have a turnover of 50% more than us? Add on top of that the urgent necessity of stadium and training ground relocation, I'd say that's a pretty big inbox for an incoming CEO..I guess Shutes, Stockwood and Pettit could always call Extreme Leisure and Alex May to fill those roles while Ian's "getting his hands dirty" cutting the grass..

To progress, the Club desperately needs a long-term plan for both on and off the field.

We need the leadership and resources to make this plan realistic and achievable. A team working together from top to bottom.

If you don’ t have a destination, why should you make an effort to do anything?  Without a plan you cannot measure progress or identify where adjustments are needed.

We have not had a plan for at least 16 years.  Apart from having so few resources that failure was always the probable outcome.  Having the Chairman fixing floodlights saves a few quid.  However, I  would rather he spent an hour in his office thinking hard strategically about how he could have taken the Club forward.  And how to raise the capital needed.

Lincoln City are a very good role model.  Even if they had a team good enough in the first place for a money-making FAC run to kickstart progress.

Quoted from TheRonRaffertyFanClub

You have this @rse about face. It is not about bringing in a different CEO per se at all. It is about Palmer’s company recommending a long term staffing structure to go alongside the investment structure, changes to facilities and ultimately a new ground. The club does not have a CEO, it has an Office Manager because all other executive functions were filled by the owner either in person or by proxy. The new owners may be quite hands on but my bet is the recommendation of Palmer will be to have a higher profile head of the non-football side of the club. You may be talking about the club being what it is, they will be talking about what they want it to become.

Precisely. There is no need at present for a CEO, for any structure, for any business plan or any other plan; JF decides whether something is needed or not. He knows the cost of everything but the value of absolutely nothing.

Every club which was on its knees but turned it around, has had to embrace a sea change of new attitudes and a much more positive outlook. It is not all about money.

On many occasions in the past, I have politely* pointed out to Fenty on these pages that if he had allowed the club to be run by professional people, accountable to him but who could run things for the long term benefit of all concerned he would have saved himself a lot of grief. This is what the new owners will do - they will get the right people in the right jobs and let them get on with turning us into a community club to be proud of. They themselves will have a vision far into the future and they will expect it to come to fruition.

Fenty is too stubborn, too self-obsessed to realise that his way of doing things may be OK in a fish factory, but it is not OK to run a football club that is precious to so many people.

* Well, fairly politely.

Quoted from ska face

The facts on the ground would suggest that the “executive business management” is not being extremely well run by Ian Fleming. Off the top of my head, the last couple of years has seen our most valuable player leave on a free despite us having the option on him, season ticket sales decline again, the club Accounts Manager claim that fans were being bullied out of attending Checkatrade games, the club receiving a substantial fine and being in trouble with the authorities after the Port Vale farce, the Stadium Manager having to issue a public apology after claiming that we are “ the one club in the English Football League that people don't want to play” on the eve of the season kick off, the club website/shop continuing to be terrible and the ticketing operation remaining a farce.

It indicates that nobody is accountable to him as CEO for their own performance, as evidenced by the fact that John Fenty has usually issued statements following the above events. Are these the most qualified and best performing staff the club can get? Perhaps we’ll find out with a more professionally run club under the new ownership.

If Fleming is so keen to get his hands dirty, he might want to start with a box of grass seeds on the pitch.

This in spades!

What great comments about how the club is/was run. I never blame the indians for the decisions of the chiefs. The club, as a business, needs rebuilding from the indians upwards.

Hursty is trying to do this on the playing side ( It's a mess), but his comment also refers to the clubs structure. Keep the groundfloor staff, sack the rest and start again. If someone comments we might lose experienced people, my answer is they have never gained any experience in Fenty's reign apart from ' Yes Mr. Fenty'.