Time to deal with some rumours

[PaulGodfrey]

It's a long time since I posted on here but my login still works! Having volunteered to help out with the radio today I should also clarify some of the issues that cropped up in the discussions.

I appreciate that feelings are running high and that nobody is happy with recent results and performances but some of the inaccurate rumours doing the rounds are not exactly helping so here are some answers:

1. CTFC has no kit man
The club has an interim kit man who has been performing all the tasks for a few weeks. Recruitment of a permanent kit man is ongoing but it's important to get the right person. It's common for blood replacement shirts to have no number on them.

2. Michael Flynn has been washing the first team kit
This isn't true. Michael said something in an interview about washing kit but this referred to some of the coaching staff laundering some training kit earlier in pre-season.

3. We didn't get a sell-on fee for Rob Street
We received both a transfer fee and have a sell-on clause in the transfer agreement for Rob Street

4. We need a CEO
CTFC has never felt the need to give anyone the title CEO. We have won numerous trophies and punched well above our weight without one and organisations are about people, not titles. The most pressing thing at the moment is to get the first team football right and giving someone the title CEO won't make any difference to that.

5. Gary Johnson received money for the Ethon Archer transfer
Not true

6. Mike Garlick approached Cheltenham Town two years ago
Mike has been looking at clubs for a while and may well have done some research on us before but no formal approach came from him until earlier this year

I completely understand it. When a team is not doing well people want to know why and they start asking questions but inaccurate rumours are only a distraction. People are fully entitled to their opinions but I'd just like to appeal that during the 90 minutes of the matches everyone gets behind the players to encourage them. Your support for the lads really can make a difference and together we can turn things around.

[Si Robin]

Just to clarify Paul, the Mike Garlick rumour came from his interview with Peter Matthews after the takeover was confirmed 3 weeks ago. I can't remember the exact wording, but he said something along the lines of he made enquiries a couple of years ago and was turned away - nothing about a formal approach or similar.

I find it remarkable that the question of a CEO gets poo-pooed immediately. Is every other club in the Football League and Premier League (give or take a very small minority) wrong? The only argument against it seems to be that we have other people doing the job of the CEO - yet the evidence suggests we don't have people doing the things that the CEO does. Oh, and we tried it once and it didn't work then so there's no need to try it again.

That you've had to come on to the forum to dispel some of these rumours sums up the running of the club at the moment. When JP put his tweet out, it would have taken 5 mins to get a word from the club to rubbish the statement from him - simply posting a tweet. A lot of fans wouldn't have believed it, but it would have been something. Instead, it's taken you coming on here nearly two weeks later - after we've had an explanation provided on the Robins Report by Dave Beesley earlier this week.

[PaulGodfrey]

The trouble is, if you get into the semantics of who said what then it becomes impossible. All I can say is that the first contact we had with Mike was earlier this year.

I still don't get the "everyone else has a CEO and so should we" argument and nobody seems to know what that person would do that is not being done already. Happy to agree to differ, though.

[Si Robin]

That's fair Paul, and I'm not 100% convinced a CEO is the messiah we need.

However, something needs to be don re: communication because it's something that gets brought up time and again. We're told the club know it's an issue, and that it's being worked on, then 6 months later we're having the same areguments again.

[andgarod]

Sorry Paul we have done well without a CEO in the past but things have changed and moved on
We have been falling behind for years
As Si said you coming on here proves the point that there is nobody doing communications etc

So who tells the manager and the coach and the groundsman and the tea lady what they need to do
New broom needs to sweep clean
Perhaps the communication between the chairman and Mr Garlick didnt get to you because he was too busy

Thank you for answering these rumors but they could have been dealt with along time ago if there was someone doing that job
Instead we have armatures who have other things to do supposedly running the club , it may have been good 25 years ago but it aint now

[paperboy]

The trouble is, if you get into the semantics of who said what then it becomes impossible. All I can say is that the first contact we had with Mike was earlier this year.

I still don't get the "everyone else has a CEO and so should we" argument and nobody seems to know what that person would do that is not being done already. Happy to agree to differ, though.

Thank you so much for coming into the lions den Paul.
I'm in the minority I imagine, by agreeing with you regarding a CEO.
DB has probably accurately described you as our De Facto CEO so with yourself and a decent commercial/ marketing person that covers most bases.
Many clubs have hands- off owners so a CEO might then make more sense.
Maybe you should have been given the title of CEO many years ago ( plus a healthy pay rise obviously)


DISCLAIMER.
I am not related to PG and have received no payment for this post.....yet.

[PaulGodfrey]

For the record, I have never wanted to be CEO. It seems such a ridiculously overblown title for a fourth division football club. Ultimately, all the staff know exactly what their jobs are and we don't need to pay another 'boss' to do the holiday rota.

But I know from my interactions on here years ago that there is no sense in getting into a lengthy debate about it. Some people will agree and some people won't.

[TheTownClub]

Whatever people's views on certain topics, the point is we've had two members of the board talking about the management of the club this week and it makes such a difference. Thanks!

[RTB]

The communication from the club is virtually non-existent so this is helpful, thank you.

In respect to point 6, this wasn't a rumour. It was the very first thing the new owner said to the fans via the media. It's less than 20 seconds into the interview - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0lypxch

[Shade]

Thanks for some clarification but if there was some decent communication from the club half the rumours wouldn't need to be addressed! It's the stone silence that allows rumours to grow. The fans are only ever told things when it gets to breaking point. Mike Garlick has been at the club for weeks and all we have had is a brief statement and short post-match radio interview. Rumours should be nipped in the bud immediately. It's not good enough for a professional football league club. But the way things are going, we won't be one this time next year.

[Ihearye]

For the record, I have never wanted to be CEO. It seems such a ridiculously overblown title for a fourth division football club. Ultimately, all the staff know exactly what their jobs are and we don't need to pay another 'boss' to do the holiday rota.

But I know from my interactions on here years ago that there is no sense in getting into a lengthy debate about it. Some people will agree and some people won't.

True, pretty much like a DOF, an unnecessary overhead in times of austerity. From what little information we do get, the interin kit man is 'on loan' from Bristol City. what i personally find odd, is how we had to wait (and apparently are still waiting), for a job advert to go out for the position. This is not a comment aimed at your good self, but, and is linked to the observation re comms, however, we only seem to get communication due to discontent among the supporter base. In that I don't mean the nut jobs on X, but the silent fans who trudge along every other saturday. As I mentioned before / elsewhere, why did we not advertise for a kit man, straight away? It sounded a bit like what we 'heard' earlier in the season, nothing happened while your good self was on holiday. I am very much on the fringe of club critics, but even I find it a bit shambolic tbh

[PaulGodfrey]

Thanks for some clarification but if there was some decent communication from the club half the rumours wouldn't need to be addressed! It's the stone silence that allows rumours to grow. The fans are only ever told things when it gets to breaking point. Mike Garlick has been at the club for weeks and all we have had is a brief statement and short post-match radio interview. Rumours should be nipped in the bud immediately. It's not good enough for a professional football league club. But the way things are going, we won't be one this time next year.

Unfortunately, and again based on my experience over many years, that approach doesn't really work in this situation. It becomes like a game of whack-a-mole: you scotch one rumour and somebody makes up another one.

And then there are people who would much rather believe the rumours because they are a lot more interesting than the rather mundane and repetitive reality of football. One of my favourite examples involves the fan many years ago who berated me because a player he didn't rate was on the extortionate wage of 'three grand a week'. I said: "I can't tell you how much the players earn but if you look at our accounts then some simple maths and deduction will tell you it's nowhere near that" (for info, at the time the player was on £850 per week). But the fan wouldn't have it. I asked him where his information came from and he said he'd "overheard it on the bus" so consider this: here we have a supporter who is convinced that a random bloke on the bus has better information about player salaries than the guy who writes the contracts and does the payroll!

The only way to deal with this stuff is to win football matches. As our former manager John Ward used to say: "win matches and everyone's happy. Lose matches and everyone's grumpy"

[Si Robin]

To be honest Paul, I think it's going to take a bit more than winning football matches now. A large portion of the fanbase won't be happy until certain people are no longer a part of this club.

Regardless of your personal view of Gary Johnson (and I really don't want to put you on the spot here because I don't know what your's is), but it seems an extremely short-sighted idea to bring him in last year. He wasn't well liked when he went in 2018 and his record since leaving us leaves an awful lot to be desired. The bloke is poison and it's hard to see us getting out of the mess we're in whilst he still has a role at the club.

Unless you consider bringing in 2 stone overweight strikers for a medical as best for the club.

[Robin]

Welcome back Paul. It's no secret I've been critical of the way the club has been run in recent years but I fully recognise you are the glue who holds everything together and without you we are in real trouble.

With that said, as much as I appreciate you coming on here and honestly it's really valuable I do have to disagree that it's now just about winning games. There is a massive chasm between the board who from outside seem to believe themselves to be doing a good job and how the fans see things. Gary Johnson is the target for now but it stretches far behind that and has been slowly building for years now. That is not a personal dig just a view because we seem to be so far behind other clubs, even traditionally smaller ones when it comes to the commercial side of the club.

I have never questioned the effort of anyone involved or had a personally criticised any of them but from my vantage we desperately need more full time professional staff who can be assessed on KPIs.

[Horteng]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for coming on and addressing some issues. Something Id like to ask you is what is the status of the club's media?

We get nothing all week to engage us fans and get us excited for the up coming game. Pre match interviews are rushed and the some old questions are asked which get the same old responses. Why does this come out so late on a Friday (Too late in my opinion) when most other clubs do it on a Thursday. We always used to do Thursday press days but from memory I believe this changed was Wade Elliot was manager. People have planned their weekends by Friday PM. An engaging article earlier in the week could attract more attention then people could plan to go and watch a game.

I believe a good media manager would earn his salary ten times over if we had someone a bit more professional and someone that could think outside the box when it comes to engaging content. We all know the power of social media these days and CTFC need to capitalise on it.

Most information comes to us via external media I.E Gloucestershire live/ BBC. Why do the club allow this? Why don't the club break the news first then the external media can feed of the scraps of that and produce their own articles?

Mike Garlick's take over is arguably the biggest story in the clubs history or at least recent history yet we haven't heard a word from him? Any other club would be bouncing off the walls with this news but CTFC are silent. Why?

[CS85]

"Mike Garlick's take over is arguably the biggest story in the clubs history or at least recent history yet we haven't heard a word from him? Any other club would be bouncing off the walls with this news but CTFC are silent. Why?"

This is the frustration,from mid july it was pretty obvious is was all done and dusted and just waiting on the fa clearance. An interview with MG could have been done any time from then and the actual confirmed take over date and be released from day one of it being official.
We're all waiting to hear what he has planned for us,I think the fans deserve to have that,hearing from someone who now has the most influence over their club.

[Shade]

Thanks for some clarification but if there was some decent communication from the club half the rumours wouldn't need to be addressed! It's the stone silence that allows rumours to grow. The fans are only ever told things when it gets to breaking point. Mike Garlick has been at the club for weeks and all we have had is a brief statement and short post-match radio interview. Rumours should be nipped in the bud immediately. It's not good enough for a professional football league club. But the way things are going, we won't be one this time next year.

Unfortunately, and again based on my experience over many years, that approach doesn't really work in this situation. It becomes like a game of whack-a-mole: you scotch one rumour and somebody makes up another one.

And then there are people who would much rather believe the rumours because they are a lot more interesting than the rather mundane and repetitive reality of football. One of my favourite examples involves the fan many years ago who berated me because a player he didn't rate was on the extortionate wage of 'three grand a week'. I said: "I can't tell you how much the players earn but if you look at our accounts then some simple maths and deduction will tell you it's nowhere near that" (for info, at the time the player was on £850 per week). But the fan wouldn't have it. I asked him where his information came from and he said he'd "overheard it on the bus" so consider this: here we have a supporter who is convinced that a random bloke on the bus has better information about player salaries than the guy who writes the contracts and does the payroll!

The only way to deal with this stuff is to win football matches. As our former manager John Ward used to say: "win matches and everyone's happy. Lose matches and everyone's grumpy"

There will always be the odd nut job, or small faction with an agenda, maybe, but the majority of us will believe you if you say something is fact, which would stop the majority of us thinking something is true that isn't, and we'd be able to call out nonsense. If the club says nothing for weeks on end about something, it almost becomes fact.

[art vandalay]

I think the board almost have tunnel vision and just can’t see how things appear from the other side of the fence, hence little desire for change. I believe many of the issues that have been mentioned in this thread would have been highlighted in the independent review that the Trust was pushing a while back, but this offer was refused, the status quo maintained and the can kicked further down the lane.

[RS1978]

Thanks for some clarification but if there was some decent communication from the club half the rumours wouldn't need to be addressed! It's the stone silence that allows rumours to grow. The fans are only ever told things when it gets to breaking point. Mike Garlick has been at the club for weeks and all we have had is a brief statement and short post-match radio interview. Rumours should be nipped in the bud immediately. It's not good enough for a professional football league club. But the way things are going, we won't be one this time next year.

Unfortunately, and again based on my experience over many years, that approach doesn't really work in this situation. It becomes like a game of whack-a-mole: you scotch one rumour and somebody makes up another one.

And then there are people who would much rather believe the rumours because they are a lot more interesting than the rather mundane and repetitive reality of football. One of my favourite examples involves the fan many years ago who berated me because a player he didn't rate was on the extortionate wage of 'three grand a week'. I said: "I can't tell you how much the players earn but if you look at our accounts then some simple maths and deduction will tell you it's nowhere near that" (for info, at the time the player was on £850 per week). But the fan wouldn't have it. I asked him where his information came from and he said he'd "overheard it on the bus" so consider this: here we have a supporter who is convinced that a random bloke on the bus has better information about player salaries than the guy who writes the contracts and does the payroll!

The only way to deal with this stuff is to win football matches. As our former manager John Ward used to say: "win matches and everyone's happy. Lose matches and everyone's grumpy"

There will always be the odd nut job, or small faction with an agenda, maybe, but the majority of us will believe you if you say something is fact, which would stop the majority of us thinking something is true that isn't, and we'd be able to call out nonsense. If the club says nothing for weeks on end about something, it almost becomes fact.

The lack of communication is the issue Paul - if the management/club say very little until the 11th hour (or the clamour from the fans becomes unbearable) then people will put their own spin on things without any evidence to the contrary ( of course Shade made this point far more eloquently that I did ). It also reinforces the notion that the Board is a bit of a closed shop - and getting information out of them is like pulling teeth - which I'm sure is not the image that they want to portray.

Do you not remember the AGM hokey-cokey when DC was there with Mark Halliwell and the "Do you have a plan?" question. I know that this was during a time when we were having a bad season - but this could have been dispelled in a couple of minutes, even prior to the AGM - but it wasn't. If the board want CTFC to be a stable L1 club, where's the plan to achieve it? Do we have a contingency plan if things go wrong and we go down? Why not share it with the fans so they can buy into it as well? Of course there'll always be some dissenting voices with anything - but putting something out there is surely better than silence?

This isn't a dig at you/the board btw - but clear communication gives us fans the impression that everything is under control, and that the board has clear-headed, long-term strategic thinking leading it, or at least a couple of plans in place if everything goes south.

Hell - even the player registration issue when you were off on holiday - I know that it wasn't Roy Keane and Blackburn Rovers/Man Utd level but these small issues get through to the fans with very little context behind it, and people jump to conclusions all over the place!

[PaulGodfrey]

The communication from the club is virtually non-existent so this is helpful, thank you.

In respect to point 6, this wasn't a rumour. It was the very first thing the new owner said to the fans via the media. It's less than 20 seconds into the interview - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0lypxch

Genuinely the first I've heard of it but it's perfectly understandable. Sometimes enquiries about clubs come through intermediaries and the identity of the enquirer doesn't become clear straight away. It's also possible that an enquiry went to the owners at the time, who were not looking to sell.

I've also got no idea what the 'registrations issue while I was on holiday' is about? I've signed players while away in all sorts of places (the most obscure probably being Belarus). All you need is a decent WiFi connection.

[Ihearye]

The communication from the club is virtually non-existent so this is helpful, thank you.

In respect to point 6, this wasn't a rumour. It was the very first thing the new owner said to the fans via the media. It's less than 20 seconds into the interview - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0lypxch

Genuinely the first I've heard of it but it's perfectly understandable. Sometimes enquiries about clubs come through intermediaries and the identity of the enquirer doesn't become clear straight away. It's also possible that an enquiry went to the owners at the time, who were not looking to sell.

I've also got no idea what the 'registrations issue while I was on holiday' is about? I've signed players while away in all sorts of places (the most obscure probably being Belarus). All you need is a decent WiFi connection.

Belarus, is he the big speedy forward we were waiting on ?

[paperboy]

No prizes for guessing who posted this....

Rumours are that Paul G is on holiday so need to wait for him to return to register these new guys. Lot's of names being thrown around but nobody seems to know who they are for certain.

[TheTownClub]

Communications works both ways, so, yes, it would be great if someone from the club could address speculation while it ferments here or elsewhere, but this also suggests the club aren't that engaged with supporter online forums. Ok, it's not the nicest job considering the state of social media these days, but whether you're a community asset or business, or both, you need to be connected to that community or customer base.

[Ihearye]

No prizes for guessing who posted this....

Rumours are that Paul G is on holiday so need to wait for him to return to register these new guys. Lot's of names being thrown around but nobody seems to know who they are for certain.

GJ ?

[Admin]

Paul,

Thank you for taking time out to come on here and try and clear things up.

One thing may I ask? I’m not sure who deals with the club’s social media but they post on LinkedIn and Facebook and don’t respond at all. On LinkedIn I have asked questions on a couple of the clubs posts but nothing back. One post was regarding a competition to win hospitality but there was never any announcement of a winner and it went deadly silent on that front. I’ve tried asking the question but silence.

I also emailed the club regarding sponsorship but heard nothing back so it’s not something I’ve been able to take forwards. I’m not sure if these emails aren’t getting through but I’ve heard from others the exact same thing.

Add to that I have had calls from agencies trying to see advertising boards on behalf of the club but I’d much prefer the money came direct to the club itself rather than some 3rd party.

Thanks Paul

[longmover]

Just because we win football matches doesn't mean all this nonsense (behind the scenes) doesn't go away, its just gets overlooked, its still there.

The frightening thing is the board seem to think nothing is wrong. Have they locked MG in a cupboard somewhere? Where is he? What the hell is going on at this football club, its a total shambles.

Just build some houses on WR and put us all out of our misery.

[horlickfanclub]

Just because we win football matches doesn't mean all this nonsense (behind the scenes) doesn't go away, its just gets overlooked, its still there.

The frightening thing is the board seem to think nothing is wrong. Have they locked MG in a cupboard somewhere? Where is he? What the hell is going on at this football club, its a total shambles.

Just build some houses on WR and put us all out of our misery.

There is a covenant on the land restricting it to sporting use. The football club could allow it to flood in the winter and become a skating rink.