A message to ALL football fans, regardless of which club you follow; Blackpool Supporters Trust has recently created a government petition with the following aim; The Government must introduce an independent regulator for English football. We urge the Government to introduce an independent regulator for English football, charged with ensuring the highest possible standards of governance for all clubs. The troubles we have endured at Blackpool FC during the Oyston ownership are well documented and make unbelievable reading, which has culminated in the Oystons being made to pay Valeri Belokon over £30m. Blackpool FC has become a by-word in the football community for mismanagement and crisis, and yet after a period several years, nothing has been done. The EFL shows no sign that it understands what its leadership role in this area should be, and as it clearly can’t - or won’t - rise to the challenge, then we feel that the Government must step in to lead the process of fundamental reform that is clearly needed. Blackpool is not the only club in such circumstances. Other 'crisis' clubs include AFC Wimbledon, Blackburn Rovers, Hull City, Bolton Wanderers, Cardiff City, Sunderland, Charlton Athletic, Coventry City, Fulham, Leyton Orient, Leeds United and many more. Football clubs are too precious and too much a part of the fabric of our national life, to be left to the mercy of unregulated and often unscrupulous ownership. They need the protection of a robust regulatory framework that offers a range of sanctions against wrongdoers, mechanisms that allow problems to be confronted before they become deep-rooted and a governing body that has the desire to use it. As football fans, I would ask that you join us in trying to bring about change within the game and hopefully prevent future owners from loading clubs with debt, asset stripping and running clubs into the ground. We are all fans and we should stick together to ensure the clubs we love are owned and managed properly. The petition can be found here – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/213108 Thank you all for your support and if you have Twitter, please feel free to tweet this or add on Facebook - get this message out there!! If you are a member of your club's fans forum, please post this on there for us to spread the word - we as fans are all in this together. Please let us know if you sign it, or even disagree with the petition by adding a comment/thumbs up. You can also sign the petition if you are browsing as a guest on this forum.
Find it utterly bizarre we're not included on you little crisis list. What do we have to do to qualify? **** Coventry anarl.
TBH, I did add you guys following the first post. I must have missed hitting save once I had edited it. You are on the list now. I could prabably have added most of the EFL clubs, but that would have been overkill.
Pleased its not just me then. I would have included your post as well Brian but dont know how to do this multi quote thing.
I understand the reasoning and the sentiment behind this, but can someone please explain how the hell replacing one set of incompetent arseholes with another set is going to eliminate the problem. I mean what have politicians ever done but line their own pockets and screw anything and everything for everone ?
We can but try. The efl will not be replaced, but an independent body needs to be in place to oversee what they are doing and be more acountable, particularly towards fans' grievances.
If we don't try to get more accountability, more and more clubs are going to suffer in the future. The petition needs everyone's support to reach its target, otherwise football is going to continue to go downhill and fans will become even more marginalised. There have been loads of individual protests against owners and the EFL have done nothing, apart from standing by the owners. Fans are irrelevant to them. We need to show that we have a collective voice and we are the lifeblood of football. Without fans, football is nothing.
For info, a quick update from BST;s website; BST’s petition went live on the parliamentary website last week and will run for six months to 22nd August 2018. It has gained 5,000 signatures in the first week but requires 100,000 people to sign to trigger parliamentary action. What is it that most annoys football supporters? It’s not necessarily a draw or a defeat when they might have hoped for a victory. It’s under-performance, when players don’t give their all to try and turn a situation around. By extension, as fans we all have it in our power to try and make a positive difference in the way our game is run. We can all step up to the challenge. It takes just a few minutes to overcome the apathy, log on to the website and support a petition that could start to turn our situation around. This is the link to the petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/213108 Please support it today and encourage everyone you know to do the same. In parallel with that parliamentary petition, and in addition to our formal communications with the League, the Trust is also supporting the public campaign to put pressure of the EFL to act in regard to fans’ concerns. The EFL has indicated in the last 24 hours that it is willing to hold a meeting with Blackpool fans’ groups, Blackpool MPs and the Gazette newspaper during March to discuss the situation. Apparently ‘attendees will be given the opportunity to raise their concerns and EFL officials will endeavour to provide answers wherever possible and explain its position on a number of matters that have previously been raised in the public domain.’ Today’s planned demonstration outside EFL headquarters in Preston is intended to reinforce for the EFL the principle that fans are vital stakeholders in the game and to show the strength of our dissatisfaction with their response to date when it comes to dealing with rogue owners.. BST encourages all who are available to join this protest against the way that football is currently governed. It is important that the protest is peaceful and law-abiding, that it should make its legitimate point without intimidating either members of the public or EFL employees. There is a train from Blackpool South at 13:48 (the ‘EFL Special’ to Preston) but for those who can't make that train, the plan is to meet at Preston Station for 14.30pm and then to march down Fishergate for the Fans United protest outside EFL House. BST has agreed to be a point of contact/liaison for Lancashire Police, who are happy with the arrangements. BBC TV’s Question Time was broadcast from Blackpool last night. BST members were in the audience and hoping to pose a question about the state of affairs at Blackpool FC and its impact on the town, to get the thoughts of the panel and to give the issue of rogue ownership some national exposure. By the time you are reading this we will know if they were successful. Finally, the Trust is pleased to announce that BST committee member, Tony Wilkinson, has been elected to the board of the Supporters’ Direct England and Wales Football Council for a 3 year term. Congratulations go to Tony. He will do a wonderful job representing football fans everywhere as well as being a great ambassador for BST. Things are starting to move
And me!! ****ing hate Coventry with a passion the cheating scumbags Gil - to multi quote, just click reply on each post you want to quote and it adds it to the bottom of your active post
I appreciate your passion mate, and we're a club in decline at the minute, but, and this may rile a lot of my fellow mackems on here, no one has a god given right to exist. Every business has to live and die by the decisions that they make. If they **** up, the best you can hope for is that someone somewhere recognises the opportunity and takes it on. Football clubs come and go every season. I want to disagree with every word that I've just written, but just ask any Hartlepool fan or any Darlington fan, 2 small northern, previously well managed clubs just a few years before they went tits up how they feel. Where were you when Darlington went out of business? My apologies mate. Its late and I'm many guinnesses in.
No probs Burly That is the aim of the petition, to have more accountabilty from EFL when clubs are obviously in peril of going under - specifically due to mis-management, or in BFC's case, money leaving the club to prop up the owners other businesses/payments to themselves (£11m in one payement alone to Owen Oyston!!). I kid you not, from all the money we received from being in the prem for a year, the only thing the 'footballing' side of the Oyston's business received was ...... sprinklers!!
