[Revived Red]

Originally Posted by southernred

When will the penny drop that running a full time football club on gates of 1500 is almost impossible!!

This is a nettle that ASFC must grasp - and grasp very quickly. I have read through and thought about all the posts on this topic. As TM has said, "deja vu", and K-P has expressed a similar thought.

Does ASFC actually want to increase attendances? Or is it content to think that Accrington is a small town between Blackburn and Burnley and therefore attendances will never really improve - so let's just try to survive on what we have? If ASFC does indeed want to improve attendances, does it give consideration to strategies by which this could be achieved? If a tirade from the Chairman against the local population was a strategy, that certainly backfired. So does ASFC consider any positive strategies? If so, surely an up-to-date website would be one of these strategies. There is huge interest in the club outside the town. Rarely a day goes by without me being asked about the ASFC sticker on my car.

Just as importantly, does the club want to keep the fans which it presently has? Again, are strategies discussed at a senior level about how to maintain interest? At a really basic level, why is there not an ever-growing range of goods in the shop?

It has seemed to me that ASFC has no focus; it does not know what it wants to achieve. If that is the case, it will always lack direction. It might be a bit trendy but a good start would be what has come to be called a "mission statement". It would then know what it seeks to achieve (ok, it may be simply survival - but in the Football League or merely as a football club?) and then it would devise strategies to achieve its aim(s). An immediate consequence of that would be to establish a set of minimum standards. As an example, I recently had occasion to contact another Football League club. I received an immediate reply saying that my letter had been received and, in accordance with the club's business standards, I would receive a reply to my specific concern within 7 working days. And I did.

The use of the term "business standards" is important. ASFC is a business - but is it run like a business? I know there is only a small full-time staff, but is there any appraisal of their roles and how they fulfil those roles?

My final point follows from that and takes us back to the website issue. It seems that in recent months, ASFC has established personnel in three new roles. These are General Manager (David O'Neill), Head of Commercial Operations (Gavin Roper), Commercial Manager (Dan Warburton). This information comes from the ASFC website. Is it not possible that one of them, preferably the latter because we are told that he has "experience of marketing", could look after the website?