With a heavy heart I've renewed my season ticket

And this is the letter I enclosed...

Dear Board of Directors

This letter was enclosed with my season ticket renewal application. I write to make it clear that I am not renewing my ticket as a gesture of support for either Nigel Worthington or as a sign of approval for the actions of the board of directors over the last year and a half.

If NCFC were any other type of business I would not continue to be a customer of yours. However, as I hope you will appreciate, you have a monopoly of the NCFC 'brand' and, because of the emotional component of being a football supporter, your customers have very little choice but to continue to be 'brand loyal'. To put it more simply it's not a realistic option for your customers to go elsewhere if they are not happy with your product.

Despite the club's attempts to portray the large and increasing number of unhappy supporters as some kind of lunatic fringe there is great dissatisfaction with the way things have been going on (and more recently) off the pitch. I won't go into detail about the specifics of questionable player transfers, the extent to which the players seem undermotivated or some of rather odd tactical decisions made by the manager. Instead I want to focus on two areas - the football club business' responsibilty to employ staff who can produce an acceptable product and the club's response to customer dissatisfaction.

In the last year and a half of football we have had, at most, two or three months of success on the pitch. The other twelve months or so have featured far too many abject displays by the football team.

Why does the football club continue to employ a person who has clearly lost the ability to produce results on the pitch? I'm not seeking a 'quick fix' by asking this question - Nigel Worthington has been the football manager for five years but for the last year and a half - and given the considerable resources at his disposal has not produced a team that wins its fair proportion of matches.

I undertand that in times of trouble the club has both to satisfy supporters and to support its employees. To that end, even though I have disagreed with much of what Neil Doncaster and Roger Munby have said, I feel that they have expressed their opinions in a balanced and courteous manner. However, I cannot say this about Barry Skippers' recent intervention. At best his comments have been mischievous. What evidence does he have that fan demos have any negative effect on families who come to games? Where on earth did he get the idea that dissatisfied supporters believe that, in business terms, the club is in a worse position than it was in the Chase era? Mr Skipper does his cause no credit by misrepresenting (without evidence) the opinions of people with whom he does not agree. In fact by doing so he has polarised supporter opinion even further.

For me the most hurtful element of Mr Skipper's recent comments relates to the way he has airbrushed out of history the involvement of the fans in the recent success of the business. In particular, he seems to have forgotten that it was the purchase of shares in the club that financed the arrival of Darren Huckerby and many of those shareholders' decisions to not take their dividends which enabled Dean Ashton to come to the club. The board may own the club but it belongs to all of its supporters.

An apology, or at the very least a correction of the facts, from Mr Skipper would be very welcome.

Posted By: slater, Mar 3, 15:24:32