Foxes Trust Board comment on relegation and the message from the Club’s Chairman

[Sol thewall Bamba]

42 minutes ago, PAPA LAZAROU said:

So are Tottenham and Liverpool out there on a silly ego trip ?

Ahh yes the textbook "everyone else is doing it so it must be a great idea".

Edited 27 July 2023 by Sol thewall Bamba

[Daggers]

6 hours ago, Wymsey said:

If they wish to be 'open', the Foxes Trust should really answer some of the questions in this thread.

 

It's quite disappointing, tbh.

Yeh, but we are where we are.

[PAPA LAZAROU]

53 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Ahh yes the textbook "everyone else is doing it so it must be a great idea".

Or the most obvious reason is you have to be there to even play top teams like Tottenham And Liverpool and it's televised to a very large audience. Better than Playing Peterborough and such like any day.

[Corky]

Massive market leaders 

[Freeman's Wharfer]

Wonder if the Foxes Trust questions included any scrutiny of this pre-season tour. Not that we’ll ever know judging by the radio silence of course.

 

@Foxes_Trust - you said you were having a Teams meeting whilst the club was in Thailand. They’re now in Singapore. Any movement?

[Gamble92]

1 hour ago, PAPA LAZAROU said:

Or the most obvious reason is you have to be there to even play top teams like Tottenham And Liverpool and it's televised to a very large audience. Better than Playing Peterborough and such like any day.

Let's promote what's left of brand Leicester by putting on meaningless matches against 2 teams we have played 40 times in the past decade to significantly bigger audiences in the Premier League and done the genuine promotion for the club.

 

Nothing prepares you for Stoke away like humid Bangkok with your biggest players sipping Chang water on the 74th floor of some Thai building. 

 

Seriously i can only assume you are on the King power/Leicester pay roll at this stage. 

Edited 27 July 2023 by Gamble92
.

[Wymsey]

1 hour ago, Daggers said:

Yeh, but we are where we are.

That quote sounds as if they passively accept the club's current situation to some extent.

[Matt]

You could be mistaken for people having a massive pile-on the club and the Foxes Trust, however neither are helping themselves.

[Foxes_Trust]

4 hours ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

Wonder if the Foxes Trust questions included any scrutiny of this pre-season tour. Not that we’ll ever know judging by the radio silence of course.

 

@Foxes_Trust - you said you were having a Teams meeting whilst the club was in Thailand. They’re now in Singapore. Any movement?

No movement, we will chase a meeting once back in the UK now

 

Pre-season was not one of the questions raised (the trip was arranged many months ago)

[Leicester_Loyal]

23 minutes ago, Foxes_Trust said:

No movement, we will chase a meeting once back in the UK now

 

Pre-season was not one of the questions raised (the trip was arranged many months ago)

I'll try to post this whilst trying to stay relatively polite.

 

I don't know a lot about the Trust but you seem like the clubs lapdogs, genuinely what is the point in the trust if the club just say no? Seems like you are scared to lose any access or rights or to go against the grain of the club.

 

We genuinely need a proper supporters group that can get a decent amount of lads together to make a reasonable change. Myself personally I'm not a huge fan of UFS but they seem to be the ones closest to cracking it, just need to keep on expanding and growing.

[urban.spaceman]

26 minutes ago, Foxes_Trust said:

No movement, we will chase a meeting once back in the UK now

 

Pre-season was not one of the questions raised (the trip was arranged many months ago)

Can you acknowledge the concerns below?

 

On 23/07/2023 at 00:45, urban.spaceman said:

Hadn't actually read the @Foxes_Trust post until now, though I did enjoy the excoriation it got when it was first posted. While I do appreciate the work you've done over the years, particularly when you were first formed, that original post was eviscerated because it simply wasn't good enough. You must have significant influence at the club to have even got a meeting in the first place, and that puts you in a considerable position to get across as many voices of the fans as possible.

 

I want to see that the club is aware of the structural disadvantages within football as outlined in my post in 'the legal action against Everton thread':

On 24/06/2023 at 00:17, urban.spaceman said:

I don't want anyone to take this personally but I feel that not enough people quite understand the ways in which we've been held back since we won the league. It's not just about Everton and Man City's antics - to add to the unlevel playing field analogy we've also quite literally had our arms tied behind our back by a system that treats the "big" with deference and everyone else with nothing but contempt, including us fans as consumers.

 

The TV deal for UK consumers is quite literally the worst in the world for non-"top 6" clubs and consumers. It's what sustains the "big" clubs and prevents smaller clubs from ever developing and breaking into the top 7 places on a long term basis.

 

If you are a British consumer and you want to access every single Premier League match, then you have absolutely no legal right or means to do so.

 

In most other countries you can.

 

In the UK you are expected to subscribe to Sky, BT and Amazon and yet you only get access to 52% of the matches. A rough estimate on my part is that this will cost you £775 per annum, although I can only find a minimum 18 month contract with Sky and 24 month contract with BT.

 

I've said this before, but for the last 6 months of our title winning season I was living in Cape Town then spent 2-3 months living in Botswana and travelling around the region. I could either pay for DSTV/Supersport at £360pa and get access to every single Premier League match, or walk in to any pub to get access to it.

 

My dad lives 8 miles away from the King Power and had absolutely absolutely no legal right or means to watch us play on tv.

 

A few weeks ago there was a gang of Brits jailed for decades for providing access to "illegal" streams for UK consumers.

 

Or to put it another way, the Premier League managed to prosecute people for making their product actually accessible to people who wanted to access it. 

 

-------

 

But here's why it's bad for clubs like us.

 

Football has had a Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout since the 60s, which is why UK based consumers can't watch the games. So matches are selected by broadcasters and moved away from the Saturday 3pm slot to get around that rule. Clubs are given "facility fees" - £1.2m per game as it stands - for every match selected for UK broadcast. They have viewers to attract, so the broadcasters pick the clubs they feel will bring in more viewers, which is what tips the eventual earnings in favour of the biggest clubs.

 

To give you an example, in 2014/15, we were selected for broadcast only 8 times.

 

In 2015/16, we were selected for broadcast 15 times (just 12 in 2016/17). Newcastle 16. Everton 18. Spurs 21. Chelsea 22. Liverpool 23. Man Utd 25. Man City 26. Arsenal 27.

 

In total prize money, we were the 5th highest earners with £93m. Spurs £95m, Man Utd £96.3m, Man City £96.8m and Arsenal £100.8m.

 

That right there is evidence of football not being a meritocracy.

 

And that's before you even get to the extra exposure for sponsors which sends their 'earnings' skyrocketing - Man City have certainly been using it as an excuse to inflate their deals, hence the constant investigations.

 

And that's just part of the issue. One of the FFP measures they brought in in 2013 was called Short Term Cost Control (STCC). It was basically, they said, designed to keep clubs spending within their means {directly controlled, see above} and not have wage bills spiralling out of control.

 

Clubs were restricted from increasing wage bills by more than 7% each season.

 

That in itself is designed to protect the bigger clubs IMO.

 

We won the league with a squad that had been promoted 2 seasons earlier and had finished 14th the previous season. So despite being the actual Champions, we were restricted from spending money {that had already been stifled} on players to compete at the top where we found ourselves.

 

We were the reigning Champions but effectively only had the spending power of 14th place club.

 

(Side note - STCC ended in 2019 which is why Newcastle were able to spend £300m in the last year despite circa £30m the previous)

 

-------

 

In summary, you've basically got a company (the Premier League) colluding with participants (the "big" clubs) and restricting access (via broadcasters) in order to restrain competition (the "other 14") and prices for consumers (us).

 

That, my friends, is the dictionary definition of a cartel:

 

cartel

noun

a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition

 

-------

 

Miguel Delaney did a fantastic article in The Independent in early 2020, about a month before lockdown. It begins:

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

These were the words spoken by a senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs, in the kind of high-end London hotel you can easily imagine.

“Football history suggests fans like big teams winning,” the official continued, to the group of business people and media figures present. “A certain amount of unpredictability is good, but a more democratic league would be bad for business.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

 

That was about 9 months before Man United and Liverpool tried to bring in Project Big Picture, which involved reducing the teams to 18, giving the 9 clubs with the longest time in the league (but in reality allowing 'any six clubs' and we all know who they are) more voting power on competition issues, and especially distribution of broadcast revenues. citation

 

That was 14 months before they announced the European Super League which as we all know would have bankrupted everyone but themselves.

 

-------

 

We absolutely should not have been allowed to win the Premier League. It shouldn't have happened. They let their guard down expecting that one of the six (well, four; Liverpool hadn't won a title in 25 years and Tottenham are, well, Tottenham). They had controlled the finances and fortunes (in every sense of the word) of the competition for so long that a club ACTUALLY WINNING IT ON MERIT was utterly unthinkable.

 

As far as I'm concerned, with our relegation, they got exactly what they wanted. This is our punishment for humiliating them without buying in.

 

Clubs like Manchester City and Newcastle are so wealthy that they are unaccountable. Man City's CEO is literally on record saying he'd rather spend £50m on lawyers suing UEFA than pay a £30m fine. They refused to cooperate with UEFA for years, were allowed to appoint 2 of the 3 CAS judges who - lo and behold - declared that their rule breaks were "time barred". The Premier League spent 2 years investigating Man City before they were even allowed to report on it. Just look at the trophies they've won in just the 4 years they were being investigated.

 

Football is broken to such a level that only government action will fix it. The problem we have with that is that we don't have a functioning government, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is a vocal Man City fan who expressed disappointment after the UEFA ban.

 

Football in this country is beyond broken.

 

And it won't get 'fixed'. Because it already is.

 

-------

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

 

I want to hear that they're aware and taking the necessary action to be ready to take that legal and get what we're owed.

 

I want the Foxes Trust to show they're aware of these issues too and are willing to act, as a supporters trust, in the best interests of the football club and football as a whole.

 

Your very first aim listed on your website states:

 

To lobby, publicise and campaign to encourage the Board to take into account the interests of supporters when making its decisions.

 

I want to see Foxes Trust committing to challenging the status quo at the top of the game which has become utterly toxic for clubs outside the anointed and the richest.

 

I want to see Foxes Trust work with the FSA and other trusts to explore legal action against the Premier League and the broadcasters, as fans and consumers, to get a fairer broadcast deal for fans that is equal to fans and consumers around the world, and that actually distributes the money to clubs in a way that is actually FAIR. 

 

I want to see Foxes Trust to pursue actual justice for our football club and doing what it can to break apart the corrupt cartel that has taken over the game.

 

This is what you exist for. Or what you should exist for.

 

Look at how the Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs. Liverpool and Manchester fans reacted when their clubs set up the European Super League.

 

That's what I want. I want to see action. I want to see anger. I want to see change being forced by fan groups.

 

Basically, as the kids say:

 

Do better. Is that too much to ask?

It's important that @Foxes_Trust has a plan of action on this. Our club has been demonstrably harmed by the structure of the league, moreso than any other club, by a system that takes the absolute piss out of fans, because not a single fan group is aware of it as far as I know.

 

Action on the bit in bold could transform the club's fortunes and create a fairer system for UK fans. Fan groups need to be aware of how badly they're being screwed, and be angry about it enough to force change. Action absolutely needs to happen.

[BlueSi13]

Whatever people think of the Foxes Trust, fundamentally it doesn't matter because the club hasn't changed one bit since last season.  Communication and transparency are still foreign concepts.

 

Starts from the Top (literally), I bet not a single staff member advised him that the Thailand trip was a dumb **** idea after we were bombed out of the PL.

 

Dissent and disobedience will not be tolerated.  Not from his staff and especially from the fans his customers.  How dare we?

 

Fans of King Power FC might be wise to see past the puppy dog face and see Top for what he is.  A billionaire businessman who hasn't a clue and doesn't give a **** either.  

 

If he looked like Mike Ashley I doubt he'd get 10% of the sympathy he bizarrely gets today.

[ozleicester]

14 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

 

TBF.. (and i stand to be corrected) I dont think They have "ends" in Thai promotional friendly football matches.

Unlike UK where, when we played Kettering away and i was back in the UK. I arranged to meet my poppies supporting uncle who i hadnt seen in literally 40 years at the game at half time.

Got my ticket, went along (obviously as an away fan and part of the Leicester high risk army)... half time I wandered over the the gate/fence behind the goal and theres me uncle.... i say to the 'gate guard', in a very broad aussie accent... "can i go through to say gday to my uncle?"... NO!... was his reply, cant let the away fans mix with the home fans.  FFS  

Ended up invading the pitch, killed three stewards, turned over the tea caravan and burnt down half of Newlands... thatll fvcking teach em!

[StanSP]

6 hours ago, Foxes_Trust said:

Pre-season was not one of the questions raised (the trip was arranged many months ago)

Confused about this. 

 

If the trip hadn't been arranged, would you have asked anything about pre-season? 

 

Given the pre-season arrangements were already in place, would this not have been an ideal opportunity to ask about it, and find out the motives and reasoning to persist with it despite relegation and the season starting so close after the return to the UK? 

[PAPA LAZAROU]

12 hours ago, Gamble92 said:

Let's promote what's left of brand Leicester by putting on meaningless matches against 2 teams we have played 40 times in the past decade to significantly bigger audiences in the Premier League and done the genuine promotion for the club.

 

Nothing prepares you for Stoke away like humid Bangkok with your biggest players sipping Chang water on the 74th floor of some Thai building. 

 

Seriously i can only assume you are on the King power/Leicester pay roll at this stage. 

You assume wrong. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

7 hours ago, ozleicester said:

TBF.. (and i stand to be corrected) I dont think They have "ends" in Thai promotional friendly football matches.

Unlike UK where, when we played Kettering away and i was back in the UK. I arranged to meet my poppies supporting uncle who i hadnt seen in literally 40 years at the game at half time.

Got my ticket, went along (obviously as an away fan and part of the Leicester high risk army)... half time I wandered over the the gate/fence behind the goal and theres me uncle.... i say to the 'gate guard', in a very broad aussie accent... "can i go through to say gday to my uncle?"... NO!... was his reply, cant let the away fans mix with the home fans.  FFS  

Ended up invading the pitch, killed three stewards, turned over the tea caravan and burnt down half of Newlands... thatll fvcking teach em!

The journalist that took that photo claimed there was a Spurs end and a Leicester end.

[ozleicester]

16 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

The journalist that took that photo claimed there was a Spurs end and a Leicester end.

fair enough 

[Nod.E]

Just ignore this irrelevant group. Why are people even bothering to put them to task? They're useless and irrelevant, so treat them as such. 

[Foxes_Trust]

23 hours ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

I'll try to post this whilst trying to stay relatively polite.

 

I don't know a lot about the Trust but you seem like the clubs lapdogs, genuinely what is the point in the trust if the club just say no? Seems like you are scared to lose any access or rights or to go against the grain of the club.

 

We genuinely need a proper supporters group that can get a decent amount of lads together to make a reasonable change. Myself personally I'm not a huge fan of UFS but they seem to be the ones closest to cracking it, just need to keep on expanding and growing.

We intend to pursue answers to the questions we have raised

 

The exact timing of those discussions is less relevant as it will not change what has already happened,  its more about establishing what lessons have been learnt

[The_77]

On 27/07/2023 at 15:33, Gamble92 said:

Let's promote what's left of brand Leicester by putting on meaningless matches against 2 teams we have played 40 times in the past decade to significantly bigger audiences in the Premier League and done the genuine promotion for the club.

 

Nothing prepares you for Stoke away like humid Bangkok with your biggest players sipping Chang water on the 74th floor of some Thai building. 

 

Seriously i can only assume you are on the King power/Leicester pay roll at this stage. 

If only we had gone to Thailand to prepare for Bournemouth at home on that blisteringly hot day last season.

[snoopy87]

7 hours ago, Foxes_Trust said:

We intend to pursue answers to the questions we have raised

 

The exact timing of those discussions is less relevant as it will not change what has already happened,  its more about establishing what lessons have been learnt

I can answer that last line for you now, absolutely nothing 

[Vlad the Fox]

7 hours ago, Foxes_Trust said:

We intend to pursue answers to the questions we have raised

 

The exact timing of those discussions is less relevant as it will not change what has already happened,  its more about establishing what lessons have been learnt

Could I suggest giving the club a deadline to answer the questions, stating that once it’s  passed you’ll go public with the questions and answers or state that the club refused to answer them. 
 

I don’t like the bashing you get on here as you’ve done a lot of good but I do feel that you need to be a bit more assertive with the club. If the club freeze you out you may find you’ll have more power being on the outside with a large number of fans backing you than quietly towing the line. You can still ask awkward questions and push for any changes the fans feel are needed while being respectful. 

[Freeman's Wharfer]

On 28/07/2023 at 00:38, Foxes_Trust said:

No movement, we will chase a meeting once back in the UK now

 

Pre-season was not one of the questions raised (the trip was arranged many months ago)

This is really concerning to hear. That the club is ignoring a Trust set up to protect the future of the club and represent the supporter community.

 

As a Trust, I would be interested to hear how concerned you are about this? If the club won’t engage with respectfully submitted questions, from a group that has been unquestioning for well over a decade, at a time like this where there has been horrendous failures, how can you feel confident that you are having any impact whatsoever or fulfilling your purpose?

 

How do you believe you can change that dynamic?

[mozartfox]

In Rudkin’s position, the last thing you would wish to do is answer awkward questions about a gigantic list of failures under your watch.  In reality the Trust will be fobbed off here.  Anyone expecting Rudkin or any other employee of the Club to hold their hands up to any blame, will be very disappointed.

 

 

[Lako42]

42 minutes ago, Freeman's Wharfer said:

 

 

How do you believe you can change that dynamic?

They can't because the club don't give two shits