New Supporters Committee

A total waste of time. You can't silence the masses.
Podcasters, Jacob and his boyfriends, bedwetting teenagers and die hard fans who refuse to accept that anything is wrong at Watford FC.
Throughout history, all dictators have surrounded themselves with Yes Men.
Pozzo and Duxbury are just going down a familiar pathway. Confidential meetings. Good God! What have we become?

 

Does this make 5, 6 or 7, I am confused.

 

I was giving Watford some credit for putting this event on. However, now I've discovered all clubs have to put on some type of fan forum as part of an EPL directive, it puts it into a totally different light.

I think it's fair to say it's not something they like doing. SD doesn't like fronting fans nor does Gino. Fair enough in Gino's case, although I still think he should give an interview from time to time. No excuse for SD though. Even if he doesn't like speaking to fans, and is not natural or comfortable in doing so, it goes with the job. He is the CEO and Chairman so he has to be a lot more visible and available. I think he prefers to hide away, especially during a poor season.

I've noticed during the first 7 years, when everything was rosy, fans forums were regular events. They knew they will be given an easy ride, and could fend off difficult questions, because there was a lot of good will in the room. But now, once times get tough, they disappear.

I commend the supporter groups for not spilling the beans though. The meeting took place on 31st March and the first anyone heard about it was 8th April. So everyone played by the rules.

However, I do not buy into the statement of Fans Forums are yesteryear. I've never heard anything major to come out of a fans forum that was earth shattering or revealing. Basically the personalities who run the club do not really want to communicate with the fans directly. They never have wanted to, but are now being forced to by the EPL.

I don't get the confidentially it aspect either. If you're going to hold an event for fans, then it has to be a public event. I have no issue of inviting a wide scope supporter groups and keeping the granular details or industrial language out of what was said, but the minutes have to be openly available to everyone. Apparently that will happen, but it's now 11th April, nearly 2 weeks after the event, and still nothing.

The cloak and dagger stuff is second nature to the club, and this is how they prefer to operate, but you cannot exclude fans. We all saw how important fans were during the pandemic. Without fans football is nothing.

The statement the club put out was appalling. There's no other way to put it. It's yet another own goal from the PR team. They told everyone there was a secret meeting and printing a list of attendees, throwing all those who attended under the bus.

Why the need for secrecy? What is there to hide? We are 19th in the Premier League, do they really think anyone outside of the club would be too interested with what is going on? We're not a rival to anyone this season.

You cannot hold an event like this by invitation only. These groups do not necessarily represent me. No one has elected them, so why do they get to have a voice? In a democracy, there should be an elected "supporters group" who have a direct line into the club, if they wish to do something like this. The questions could then be submitted by ALL fans, and I think it will become clear which are the relevant and pertinent ones as those will be repeated numerous times. Those questions can then be put forward for the board to answer, with a follow-up in the next meeting. Everything that was discussed should then be made public. We are all in this together. It cannot be this us and them situation. That's unhealthy and will cause tension, which has already happened since the club statement

You cannot do this type of thing behind a veil of secrecy with cherry-picked individuals. I cannot believe they thought this would play out well, but just goes to show how disconnected they really are with their thinking and that, to me, is very worrying.

 

So which ones pants do we think Richard is trying to get in to?

I'd rather have Cameron Campbell over these two (representing us, not getting in his pants....)

 

Excellent pi

Excellent piece.
I put forward a list of questions via a third party. A reply came back that the nature of the questions were aggressive, argumentative and do not fit in with the desires of the meeting. I think they wanted their backsides kissed.
I had no idea it was a secretive meeting at the time. No date/time or place was given.
I have had zero correspondence from the third party, so guess that they have signed a confidentiality document.
Watford are as far away from the fans as the teams are from staying in the Premier league.
A shameful exercise by the club.

 

Was the last 'fans forum' with Duxbury done in the Hive studio with no audience and vetted questions? Or did his podcast chat with @Jon G and the FTRE lads count as one?

The bloke is terrified of facing the fans because he knows he has no answers for the mess he's got us into.

 

When I first saw that women's group show up on the Watford hashtag and then read who had started it, I genuinely laughed out loud. I thought 'Yep, of course it is'.

Mission accomplished though. Got her a seat at the big table.

 

Lol, doesn't surprise me though. I don't know anything about it other than the tweets that show up on the Watford hashtag. If the ladies feel safer going via that, fair enough. It was just the identity of the founder that made me laugh, as @GoingDown said - "if there’s a bandwagon passing, you’ll see a Lewers on it".

 

I just listened to the DNSYE podcast.

All I heard was that Carl guy continually say ‘I don’t give a f*ck, I’ll say what happened in the meeting, I don’t care…’ - yet not once did he say anything that happened or give any detail despite being asked.

Ucko to be fair to him didn’t make any such promises - the lad is clearly terrified of the club coming after him if he says anything. And let’s face it, they would.

I’m sure there are a number of decent people attached to the groups involved - but sadly they are being tarred with suspicion and none of them have made a stand against the idea/belief that the club have thrown them to the dogs.

They even admit they don’t trust Duxbury and didn’t trust much of what he told them!

 

There's no guarantee Duxbury will tell the truth in these meetings. He could spoon feed all kinds of bull to the YouTubers and allow them to broadcast it afterwards.

 

He already has - you just have to listen to how ‘Carl’ from DNSYE talks about it. He was promised ‘changes’ and that Duxbury said they admit their mistakes - some of them were made just a couple of months ago! Yet this guy has bought it!

 

It's well known (I think...) that Gino is a control freak and wants to be involved in everything, which includes controlling how the fans perceive the club. This reminds me a bit of the Kevin Affleck/WD Sport thing.

Back then, prior to SM becoming the juggernaut it is now, WD Sport was the only publication that offered any kind of comment that wasn't from within the club (as we all know, sadly the Wobby was and still is miles from its Oliver Phillips glory days).

So what did Gino do? He made Kev an 'offer he couldn't refuse' and brought him in to the club. No more 'rogue' opinions reaching the fans.

I think I read on here that Affleck no longer works for the club. Anyone know why? Or what he's up to? He surely must have loads of inside info now? Was he made to sign one of the now infamous non-disclosure agreements when he left? It wouldn't surprise me.

So Gino's new 'problem' became how to control the flow of news and fan perception across social media. Fortunately for him, our fanbase has plenty of social media whores willing to sell themselves for whatever tiny crumbs he offers, such as appearances on the Hive, interviews with players, priority booking for away games, hospitality perks and the big one - exclusive membership to the secret supporters club. All he wants in return is no difficult questions asked, and the spread of news/topics only sanctioned by the stability.

Best of all - unlike Affleck - he doesn't even have to pay them.

There's more chance of us staying up this season than any of those in this cosy club giving up their seat based on principle.

Anything that gains them Watford freebies whilst promoting their own profile is the absolute dream outcome for them.

I'll be amazed if our favourite Hong Kong couple aren't part of it.

 

They are not randomly chosen. They have been chosen as sycophantic, spineless, compliant people who will spread Duxbury's narrative through the fanbase and stamp out dissent. You can see them doing this already by arguing with genuine supporters about the committee, gaslighting fans and to all extents and purposes defending Duxbury. This is exactly what he wants.

Duxbury would never allow a random group of fans to have any standing at Wfc...far too dangerous from his perspective.

 

According to LinkedIn, Kevin Affleck is now a loyal and motivated air conditioning engineer, looking to progress in a role with.......

 

Unfortunately the forum functions as a space for independent minded Watford fans to express their uncensored opinions. This forum is Scott Duxbury's worst social media nightmare. Poor little Scott probably isnt ready to answer questions about money laundering and what happens to the agents' fees after they are paid into the agents' bank accounts.

 

Some of my questions would be 'Did you set up the Hornets Ambassadors knowing full well you were going to deny entry to the player most deserving of being one to further belittle him due to whatever your petty little feud is over? And was this feud also the reason why you allowed the club to produce a video of our worst ever striker making jokes at the expense of our best ever? Do you think Graham Taylor would have approved of these actions?

 

I don’t think GT would approve of much that those in charge have done over the last few years.

 

Something else from the podcasts I listened to earlier….

The other day, Ucko appealed for people to send him questions or thoughts and he would air them…

…but then on DNSYE he said he wouldn’t pass on anything regarding Gino or Duxbury leaving ‘because that’s not what he wants’.

So in closing - he’s admitting he will only pass on messages or questions that are compatible with what he feels. If they all have that outlook, what’s the point anyway?

It’s classic suppression of opinion. And they’ve made themselves fully paid-up members. I have no sympathy for them if the club has thrown them to the dogs to be honest. Anyone sensible would have seen it coming and it shows they aren’t compatible with what they are being asked to do if they didn’t.

This comment was posted on the Watford Observer opinion article and it sums it up well:

My biggest grievance is that nobody who attended the meeting challenged the secrecy surrounding it until they faced a backlash. Surely, if the people representing the entire fan base didnt see how much of a catastrophically bad idea this was then how can we trust their opinions surrounding the future of our football club? To an extent they have been thrown under the bus a little by Scott and Gino here but theyre clearly not the right people if they went along with it.

 

This has just been posted on twitter. Interesting reading

 

Apparently some of the attendees have complained to the club about their handling of the situation. Seems like the club have also lied to them about making information public. What a total **** up this has been.

 

Missed the second tweet of the thread off

 

Nice. Are they pulling out?

 

Do u not think the aim is to divide the fanbase and control the narrative? Over the last 3 years Duxbury has been paid around £3 million to preside over an absolute car crash of a football club making one disastrous decision after another.

In my opinion Duxbury is trying to split the fanbase to save his own skin. His position is completely untenable and yet he is still the CEO of WFC. There's no way the club can move forward until he steps down. The problem is Gino may well replace him with someone equally bad or even worse.

We need a CEO with integrity who isnt a complete kunt and to have a clear separation between the culture of Gino's horse trading and concerning financial practices and the culture and practices of WFC. Having so much overlap between the 2 will only drag WFC further down into the mire.

 

Steady on now, let's not go crazy here.

 

Also...

 

To me it looks like shame at being caught toadying rather than the toadying itself.

These podcasters would have loved being in the secret club as long as the rest of the plebs never found out about it.

 

Can we rename this thread #Committeegate?