Board/Fan Relationship

chicagohammer

At the end of the day, they will be judged on how they perform upon their return, i actuallly think that given the circumstances, the timing of this trip could not have been better.

I think that it would have been truly awful if they had to follow up what happened on Saturday with a cold Tuesday night game away to Grimsby.

chicagohammer

And yes I do recall such a game, it was Grimsby away in the cup, it was a Tuesday evening, it was Valentine’s Day so I was in trouble before we even set off, it rained all the way there and all the way back, we lost 4-0 and when we got back to our car the side window was smashed and the radio nicked.

The only good news was that it wasn’t my car

Happy days

chicagohammer

I am very thankful for this international break, i truly think that the Miami trip is just what the doctor would have ordered.

IronHerb

thornburyiron said:

IH are you suggesting they train 24/7 or just that after training they're locked away in cells with nothing to do.

Should have read no issues.

MIAHammer

I haven't seen the team in South Beach. Maybe they have a strict curfew ;whistle

SuzanneClaret

This isn't the 80s USSR and this isn't Pravda.

Good stuff will get posted, bad stuff will get posted and stuff we couldn't give a stuff about will get posted.

Adjust your bovered meter as to whether you are bovered or not.

Because warm weather training should really be on the not bovered end of that dial.

Kuchinghammer

DoF... I'm confused by the 'he'll be a yes-man' comments, the assumption being that someone in agreement with the Board will be bad for West Ham. Following this train of thought, a goodDoF will be someone who disagrees with the Board and/or is a dictator who does as he pleases with no reference to anyone else. Surely we don't want that. I'm pretty sure that the DoF will agree to a job description, and carry it out. This will include such terms as "consult" and "suggest" and will hopefully have long-term aims rather than short-term targets. It won't be a quick fix, and has nothing to do with the club's present crisis (avoiding relegation), but I think it's a step in the right direction. This isn't a dig at any individuals, just my take on the situation ;wave

OutcastLondoner

I think there’s an in-between Kuching; someone with a vision and long-term plan tries to keep things moving in the same direction. Challenging the board doesn’t mean being their own dictator. They can also focus only on football priorities rather than other things associated with running a club.

Slaven_Cups_His_Beard

thornburyiron said:

I have absolutely no problem with their being on the beach enjoying themselves with some team bonding just so long as they're putting in the hard graft in the training sessions.
They weren't responsible for what happened Saturday and had it not occurred who knows if we may have got back into the game and won it.

So they didn’t miss those chances and then go 0-1 down then?

Out of all the games we’ve gone behind in, we’ve won 1, drawn a few and lost loads, personally 4 fans on a pitch or not I don’t think we’d of come back

They’re responsible all right

Slaven_Cups_His_Beard

billybondsbeard said:

Apparently, they went to Miami because Andy Carrol had complained that he'd already been to Dubai twice so far this year ;wink

He got to choose because it was his turn to hold the “whip” as well

IronHerb

Well, they weren't going to let Hart hold it were they?

Vorselaarhammer

I was just wondering,

Has a player ever missed a game because of sun burn....

Because you know it’s us...

Cuz1

Papers saying the worst shower Miami as seen

thornburyiron

Big police presence inside and outside the ground for the saints game. SAG have said they will not use the restricted or closed ground sanction at the moment but will monitor future games. Any future instances such as last week and they would consider advising the certifying authority to use these measures.
Lets hope future games pass without any reoccurrences.

thornburyiron

More to come out of the meeting

"It is only now that the sheer scale and organisation of Saturday's trouble is becoming apparent.

Rather than the spontaneous uprising against the club's owners it initially appeared to be, it has now been established hundreds of supporters were involved, communicating with mobile phones, and creating small-scale problems, in a concerted effort to get security staff away from their designated areas to leave the directors' box, in particular, vulnerable.

Sixty staff are employed at London Stadium on matchdays with the specific brief to keep fans off the pitch. It has been established that on Saturday, 85% of those attempts were repelled."

OutcastLondoner

Might be true but it also sounds like an excuse for bad stewarding.

Kuchinghammer

Outcast: re. DoF...that's kind of what I was saying. Too many fans are becoming polarised into all against the Board or all against the protesters. Businesses don't work well like that. However, Sullivan backing off and letting a DoF direct the footballing side of things might just create some middle ground.
On stewarding, if the protesters are as organised as the report makes out, then the stewards have no chance of stopping this happening again. IF. It all depends on their aims - tv glory, showing they're so hard, having a revolution by kicking out the Board, closing the ground down (Spurs & Chelsea supporters might think this is clever)... or whether they're genuinely concerned fans who have drawn attention to their grievances and will accept dialogue and step by step progress. Your ear is closer to the ground than me over here in Borneo, what do you reckon?

MrsGrey

thorn, have you got a link for where that report/findings come from, please?

outcast - could be, BUT it sounds pretty certain from the way it is phrased .. 'now been established that' rather than 'though that'....

it has now been established hundreds of supporters were involved, communicating with mobile phones, and creating small-scale problems, in a concerted effort to get security staff away from their designated areas to leave the directors' box, in particular, vulnerable.

thornburyiron

It was on the BBC website yesterday

MrsGrey

Cheers, just catching on on the mornings news, I see the club has also put up a copy of the SAG statement.

I found interesting that the stewards stopped most attempted pitch incursions successfully (so we only saw their failures). http://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2018/march/15-march/west-ham-united-welcome-safety-advisory-group-statement

BBC version here http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43424575

Neither of those have the bit about it being co-ordinated disruption. I'll see if I can find where that part of the story comes form.

Edit: My mistake, it comes from the 'analysis' bit of the BBC article at the bottom...

MrsGrey

Nice to see you keeping an open mind ;wink

IronHerb

I feel there's lot of flannel that report.

No deficiencies appear to have been highlighted.

If the four successful incursions was 15% of the total then that means there were some 25 attempts in all unless they included the mob who came down towards the dugouts at the end.

They are so keen to get the culprits that the stewards escorted them off the pitch and back into the crowd?

Where in the SAG was it reported that it was a well orchestrated piece? Looks like a bit of BBC spin at this point.

MrsGrey

IronHerb said:

They are so keen to get the culprits that the stewards escorted them off the pitch and back into the crowd?

This is ridiculous - it was a serious failing, imo.

Hopefully the stewards will have been told to up their game in the event of any recurrence.

MrsGrey

IronHerb said:

No deficiencies appear to have been highlighted.

They are referred to though... 'Whilst some issues in the security regime were identified'.
That's the statement put out after the mtg - not the minutes (where actually instances might be listed). Are the minutes public, do you know?

IronHerb said:

Where in the SAG was it reported that it was a well orchestrated piece? Looks like a bit of BBC spin at this point.

Again - we'd need to see the minutes, I suppose, rather than the statement put out after the mtg.

I assume the BBC reporter is basing his 'analysis' on what he was told by various people present at the mtg, or who were otherwise party to the investigation or its findings. Whether or not they told him the truth, we don't yet know. But if he published it, it shows that he at least was convinced that the claims had foundation.

grey_til_I_dye

There were also no other attempts at a pitch invasion apart from the 4 recorded.

Based on what? Whose evidence is that?

For someone apparently dead keen on 'show me' and 'prove it', I'd have thought it would be important for you to give the source, and why you find them credible.

Assuming you can get a phone signal, you wouldn't need wi-fi to connect to the Internet, as you could do it via your service provider.

Pearces_Left_Foot

You can get a phone signal on match days, its probably on a par with the Boleyn its difficult to check the scores at half time etc due to volume but you can use your phone even if it is a bit slow

SuzanneClaret

thornburyiron said:

More to come out of the meeting

"It is only now that the sheer scale and organisation of Saturday's trouble is becoming apparent.

Rather than the spontaneous uprising against the club's owners it initially appeared to be, it has now been established hundreds of supporters were involved, communicating with mobile phones, and creating small-scale problems, in a concerted effort to get security staff away from their designated areas to leave the directors' box, in particular, vulnerable.

Sixty staff are employed at London Stadium on matchdays with the specific brief to keep fans off the pitch. It has been established that on Saturday, 85% of those attempts were repelled."

This statement has made me very cross ;angry

It smacks of a misunderstanding of the situation and a reluctance to deal with the truth of the matter... which was woeful stewarding.

I watched events unfold from a good vantage point and the gathering under the directors box looked neither organised or stewarded.

All four pitch invaders made it to their destination with no obstruction from any steward.

The stewards that sit on the edge of each stands did not move, not once. Not to move those under the directors box on or to get those four off the pitch.

There have been stewarding issues from the start... It's about time the club and the stadium owners took the issues seriously.

SuzanneClaret

I took this on Saturday at the height of the protest. I took it to deliberately show how many stewards were involved. It doesn't even reach double figures....

SuzanneClaret

This was taken just before kick off. Those stewards at the front of the stand did not move a muscle during any of the 'trouble'.

SuzanneClaret

To me at the game it did not look like anyone else tried to get onto the pitch.

But I doubt anyone can be totally sure.