Nigel Clibbens interview N and S

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In his previous interview, think it was RC, Clibbins said that the POI came after the Lapping deal and the two wernt related. Now, a few weeks later, hes saying it was the same time but the Lapping deal was already dead so it didnt matter either way. Perhaps one of the reason fans are distrustful of the board is that the story keeps changing.

"I think in the eyes of some people, it has been damaging," - I think in the eyes of everyone connected to the club this has been damaging, not just some.

"What we have to have is a strong sense of direction as to what we're trying to do" - Which is what exactly? There's no direction, that's the problem.

Exactly I think it is the rudderless ship we've been on since the board acquired the club for a pound each after the 2007/08 season that is pissing ,most of us off...

Headless chickens comes to mind or even "Ostrich Syndrome"

Blues86 wrote: In his previous interview, think it was RC, Clibbins said that the POI came after the Lapping deal and the two wernt related. Now, a few weeks later, hes saying it was the same time but the Lapping deal was already dead so it didnt matter either way. Perhaps one of the reason fans are distrustful of the board is that the story keeps changing.

"I think in the eyes of some people, it has been damaging," - I think in the eyes of everyone connected to the club this has been damaging, not just some.

"What we have to have is a strong sense of direction as to what we're trying to do" - Which is what exactly? There's no direction, that's the problem.

Aye you need a good memory to be a good liar.

Agree with the above wholeheartedly. Didn't they also, for want of a better term, state that the lapping deal was flawed by figures attributed to investors not adding up?
It's now got to the point where i think everyone doubts a single thing the owners come out with! Can they repair the damage they have caused with there customers? I doubt it. In fact I'm glad I'm not associated with any of them as I wouldn't want to try.

He told me outside the club entrance that the POI was after the lapping deal and had no bearing on the decision

Did his lips move

Correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't John Nixon( TOTH ) appear on BBCRC and claim the Lapping deal was dead DUE to other interest, from what we later learned was the fabled POI?

I'm prepared to let the accounts do the talking-due this week.

The POI is one big sideshow as the offer was so derisory from the charlatan as to make it irrelevant.

My deal was very much alive-I know he didn't agree with the concept of co ownership but of course that is why I was suggesting a CEO and a 'trustee' board to make strategic decisions-something they have subsequently embraced.The guys putting the money up did not want positions beyond what you could describe as VPs-the legal documentation drafted said so.

So in short,my two tier model of accoubtability is being adopted,albeit with the same stakeholders,but of course they have failed to raise ANY money other than yet more debt.

If that is progress, then so be it.

I wonder if they are going to let the accounts do the talking too. However, they may take a lot of explaining!

Laffy.... Why didn't you ask Jenkins to retract his statement regarding your investor list i.e. Your figures not adding up,,, I've always wondered about that!

I.m not even going to bother reading the article

Whats the point ? There simply is no point because you just know he wont have given a straight answer to anything he was asked.

Why RC and ENS even give him the oxygen of publicity is beyond me they should both just call him the [censored] he is and refuse to deal with him as its clearly just a total waste of time on their parts and when his one and only use to the regime is gone maybe Jenkins and co might realise there are much better ways they could be spending the best part of a hundred grand.

I agreed to let them get on with it-they have the list.The issue was what I would call 'committed'-very few of these guys would actually sign a cheque without the DD and legals sorted as they aren't stupid.Thats how it works in the real world when raising money.One of the two nobbled by JN wanted a big chunk,a lot more than I was prepared to give him as I wanted to keep all shareholders in the minority i.e.no overall control.I have all the correspondence to confirm the intent.

As noted before,arguing with your club is not great and frankly I'm happy to let them get on with it on the basis they know best.Two years later,the debt is now £2.5m and growing.My proposal would have been no debt and cash in the bank with a springboard to raising more money from a position of strength,not weakness

I agree that arguing with the club isn't the best thing to do. However if you where in the right and clearly they slighted you name public, i.e. The media I would have thought you'd have put the record straight. Arguing with them IS a good idea as clearly the club needs rid of the cancer it suffers from !

NORTHERNSOUL wrote: I.m not even going to bother reading the article

Whats the point ? There simply is no point because you just know he wont have given a straight answer to anything he was asked.

Why RC and ENS even give him the oxygen of publicity is beyond me they should both just call him the [censored] he is and refuse to deal with him as its clearly just a total waste of time on their parts and when his one and only use to the regime is gone maybe Jenkins and co might realise there are much better ways they could be spending the best part of a hundred grand.

Wish I hadn't bothered reading it. Your assertions are right, most pointless interview I've ever read.

And the gripping part 2 tomorrow!

How do repair the damage you ask Nigel. You can't! Too much has happened. You can only repair the damage when Jenkins, Nixon and Pattinson no longer have any association with this football club.

but what part has a third partys influence got over the running of the club. FS wrote off the million but owns the on the viaduct land where the new stadium was going to be built until the floods stopped it in it's tracks.

Well I happen to think that holding the now and future to account is more important.

The Club is deep in debt Nigel-how are you going to resolve that with an aging Board who have presided over x years of at best mediocrity and how do you intend to make the Club an unvestable proposition?These are the fundamental questions now he has buried the POI crap and given the Trust a position on the holding board-achievements in themselves.

Losing £2m in benevolent AJ money is laudable but should not be confused with success or progress.

pugwash wrote: but what part has a third partys influence got over the running of the club. FS wrote off the million but owns the on the viaduct land where the new stadium was going to be built until the floods stopped it in it's tracks.

The land where the Ground was proposed was owned by Tesco and/or Carlisle City Council...

I think that now the saga has ended, we need to see the meat on the bones of the offer, what was the exact figure offered? Where the Custodians offered money for their shareholding?
There has been too much hiding behind confidentiality, and now we may have PD becoming more of having a say in the running, supporters need to be informed more.
Lastly any future for the club must be under new control. We all know that the Custodians have made irreparable damage in supporter relations on all levels.

Reading that was a bit like watching us attack on Saturday. Slow and aimless, safe in the knowledge it wasn't actually gonna go anywhere.

The same things some of us have been complaining about for the last 10 or 15 years are the same things that are still wrong now.

What year did Story give these lot the club again?

If the board were serious about moving the club forward then they need a vision and they need to sell that to the fans.

If we are aiming for the Championship - how are we going to try and achieve that? What things are we putting in place to enable the team to be successful on the pitch, in a way they haven't over the past number of years? What changes are being made?

What are the plans for BP? Its not Championship standard. How does the club intend to deal with that problem if our aim is the Championship?

How is the club going to modernise itself in order to compete with others?

How do the club plan to increase revenue? Again we need this to compete as many other clubs have better match day revenues and outside revenues from the stadium e.g. hotels etc.

How are they going to stop the decline in attendances and bring them back up?

How are they going to bring disillusioned fans back on side?

What is the future for CUFC over the next 5-10 years?

The problem is, and as tash says, since the custodians took charge, they dont have any serious proposals for any of those things. Or if they do its top secret, NDA, need to know only. They talk and waffle and say nothing. We have embarrassing episodes like Blue Yonder and Billionairgate which anyone with half a brain can see are never going to happen. All the while we are going backwards as a club and will continue to do so until these issues are sorted.

The boards plan seems to be to just plod along and hope. That management style has seen our attendances drop from 7/8k to 4/5k, us drop from L1 playoffs to L2 lower/mid table and get millions into debt. Doing nothing, or the bare minimum to survive, is not a vision. Season after season of it drains any excitement out of fans and leaves apathy and a core of die hards. Pretty much what we have seen over the last ten years.

If Clibbins and Co are serious, then what are they actually doing? Why arnt they trying to address these issues, communicating with fans etc? They can say they are doing those things all they want but anyone who has followed the club over the past 10 years can see its just empty words or failing badly, one or the other.

They are in charge, they are responsible for the direction of the club. Get it sorted or get out.

THIS! ⬆�

Every answer from now on. - Until we get the legal position clarified

There are a couple of points that are in the same timeline of Part 1 of JC's interview with Clibbens and i feel need to be explored in the context of the overall saga. Firstly, the trust agreed the terms and finances of the Lapping deal. Why was it rejected by the BoD?Secondly, not long after Jenkins appeared to throw his teddies out of the cot and demanded £250k from the trust as part of a new share issue. I recall there was an unsavoury undertone in the BoD motives for this. What exactly happened to this aspect?

Read it ...none the wiser, just going over old ground.

Oh and laffy please hit the space bar after a comma and a full stop ......ta very much!

Will do

Mush wrote: What year did Story give these lot the club again?

And why did he give that lot the club?

Mush wrote: What year did Story give these lot the club again?

Summer 2008. Just after we bottled the play offs.

Part 2 up. Somehow calls the owner's ambitious

Bliar was a puppet of Bush, Sturgeon is a puppet of Salmond, And Cribbins is a puppet of Nixon/Jenkins, All puppets have got to have a puppet master to pull the strings...

Clibbens says United's directors are "ambitious", eager to get out of League Two - Ambitious? HOW? We have got worse in all measurable areas as a club. Just saying you're ambitious doesn't make it so.

Clibbens demurs when asked if he has seen a clear, written-down mission statement at Brunton Park since arriving last summer. He does, though, claim the directors have a "clear view" of what they want to achieve - Would the board mind sharing with us what that 'clear view' exactly is?

Generally the crowds are still up. - From 7/8k - 4/5k. How does he equate a near 50% drop with 'crowds still being up'?

Are they at a level that's sustainable in the long run? No. This is where we have to be honest with everybody. - So what is the plan to deal with this problem?

Do those deficits, seen regularly under this nine-year regime, mean the club has been poorly run? "I wouldn't say so. Not from what I've seen. - Yes, any business that loses half a million a year, year after year is obviously well run.

To tar them with a brush that they work in an organisation that's been badly managed I think is disrespectful." - How is it disrespectful to say the club staff are great but those in charge are not? Its disrespectful that despite their hard work we are still going backwards due to no fault of their own.

How about badly led, though? The journey from brink of Championship in 2008 to scrambling in League Two today suggests a decline. This was another question asked by protesting fans at the recent Luton home game. Clibbens' response? "I think there was a lot of repair work to be done after previous regimes. I think Mr Story [Fred, owner from 2004-8], from what I understand, played his part, but the directors had a number of issues to deal with, like the Story loan and the charge [on Brunton Park] that has recently gone away. - The loan was interest free i believe. So how does that have any bearing on us loosing money, losing fans and dropping down the league? Story is to blame?

"It's not an easy one for me to answer. Andrew has invested a huge amount of money and continues to support the club. John [Nixon] has provided more or less full-time time and management free of charge over a number of years, to try and make the club better. - So good intentions gives them a free ride to constantly under perform? CUFC isnt a social club where doing your best is good enough. Id rather we paid someone who actually did a good job.

Mush wrote: What year did Story give these lot the club again?

2008 and it has been a decline ever since which could have been arrested in league 1 as it was pointed out often enough

Clibbens is no more than a mouthpiece for the BOD. Slimy toad springs to mind. JC has as much chance of getting truthful answers out of him as I have of flying to the moon.

Obviously the interest free loan from Story, which was only repayable in years where we made enough profit to make a payments was a huge drain on the club's resources.

loser wrote:

Mush wrote: What year did Story give these lot the club again?

Summer 2008. Just after we bottled the play offs.

Cheers loser. So nearly 9 years now. 9 years of hurt!

I wanted to see a new CEO in position. It was well overdue.
I thought we had the right man...until I met him.
He won't remember me because he barely gave me a snapshot of his time even though he was meant to be talking to me.
I was just an ordinary fan at the forum. At the time it was so obvious he was just paying the fans a bit of lip service while trying to talk to others in the room who might help him up a ladder or two.
I'm happy to be proved wrong and I'd love to chat to you again nigel if you read this and don't consider me beneath you.
As for his interviews since, I've never known anyone talk so much without saying anything.
Honest and real gritty answers are needed not passive sweetners in PC speak. I won't hold my breath.

bruntonpete wrote: I wanted to see a new CEO in position. It was well overdue.
I thought we had the right man...until I met him.
He won't remember me because he barely gave me a snapshot of his time even though he was meant to be talking to me.
I was just an ordinary fan at the forum. At the time it was so obvious he was just paying the fans a bit of lip service while trying to talk to others in the room who might help him up a ladder or two.
I'm happy to be proved wrong and I'd love to chat to you again nigel if you read this and don't consider me beneath you.
As for his interviews since, I've never known anyone talk so much without saying anything.
Honest and real gritty answers are needed not passive sweetners in PC speak. I won't hold my breath.

Ha ha funny that because thats exactly what i said about him on the day of his appointment.

Part 3 due today! Will there be anything worth taking on board?
Frankly I think that unless someone comes along and takes over the club we are on a slippery slope. The club is clearly in decline and the current owners seem out of there depth. They treat the fans, there customers, with contempt.
As for NC, I can't really blame him for towing the party line, after all he is an employee and the owners pay his wages.

Part 3 up. All the Clibbens favourites, including smarmy retorts to fans' concerns and a refusal to discuss issues that happened prior to his appointment, saying they should just be washed away and forgotten, as if the past decade or so of utter incompetence from the 3 stooges is not worthy of discussion.

His defence of Nixon is the most annoying part, talking about how much Nixon's done for the club, and how much he's doing now, giving back to League Two clubs. What a joke, Nixon's head is so far up B-Teams' arse it's beyond a joke.

Ooo ooo ooo the flunky Clibbens

........I'm not here to show you how.

I was willing to give Clibbens the benefit of the doubt when he joined as the position of CEO was one that could potentially benefit the club... what a disappointment he has been.... has he added any value to the club at all? Apart from being the BOD patsy that is. He is every bit as bad as the bumbling fools running the club. He genuinely isn't even worth listening to as he never answers a question. He comes across as insincere, slippery and down right untrustworthy... and this is a man talking about repairing damage with fan relationships. What a joke.

Having dealt with hundreds of NDA's on complex, high value business deals I can honestly say I have never come across one that prevents you saying when the NDA ends. An NDA on the end date of an NDA??? Just more lies piled on top of older lies.

As regards the NDA, we know there are only a few people who actually have met or know the name of the POI but, if the name came out, how would they know who spilt the beans? How would they know who broke the NDA if the name just appeared on social media somewhere? How would they decide who to persue through the courts?

Everyone seems to know it was Yahya Kurdi with the agent being Dave McCreery/Newminster. So why bother continuing the NDA farce? Its like one of those super injunctions where everyone knows the crack but the newspapers arnt allowed to print it.

“The level of the budget we have to work with is a moveable thing. It goes up as commercial deals are done and as things like Season Ticket sales, retail operations and commercial activities make more of a contribution.

“There are obviously no windfalls from cup competitions this time round, but increased contributions from the areas we mentioned are balancing that off. That means we’re looking at around the same or slightly below the figures we were dealing with at this time last year, as we speak right now. It will change both up and down as the situation changes over the coming weeks and months, as it always does.�

You don't hear from him for weeks, and then today we are faced with a steaming pile of monotone waffle on the official site.

Nigel, what do you bring to this club?? Unless you are mediating a takeover or are in advanced discussions for a viable Blue Yonder 2, we can't afford you so go.

Bruntonpasty wrote: As regards the NDA, we know there are only a few people who actually have met or know the name of the POI but, if the name came out, how would they know who spilt the beans? How would they know who broke the NDA if the name just appeared on social media somewhere? How would they decide who to persue through the courts?

I.d be quite happy to name him and have Pizza Boy chase me thru the courts