For today's archive article BN goes back to June 2014. Tommy Agombar had take over at Hereford United from David Keyte and HUST were not very happy with the situation.
Chris Williams has released the following statement:
I am the Chairman of the
Hereford United Supporters Trust. The following comments are made from a
personal perspective and not are not the views of the elected Board of
the Trust, although there may be some Board members who would agree with
them.
In the current turmoil that
is, or perhaps used to be Hereford United, I've had a few moments to
reflect on the current situation and, looking forward to what we can
expect of our football club in the future. I detail these reflections as
follows ...
The present situation the club finds itself in is, undeniably dire.
We have a current position
that can only be described as catastrophic; that is it is the result of
the hand over of our club to new owners from the previous management
regime of HUFC '39. How they could possibly find anyone worse than they
themselves have been is beyond belief and yet this seems to be the case;
if that was their intention then it is the singular most successful
thing they have managed to do over the four years of running our club.
The inquest on how we have arrived at this situation will continue and
we may never get to the full truth but what we do know is that we have
gone from bad to worse.
The probity of the previous
Board is suspect as evidenced by the debts that keep on appearing - as
the current owners (?) whoever they may be, are finding out. I have
been been in a position where I have met the former Chairman and the
current owner on a number of occasions. The former chairman had a
arrogant streak believing that his strategy was right and sought to
blame everyone but himself for the poor decision making and total lack
of responsibility in addressing the problems at the club with due
diligence. The new regime - on the other hand - appear to think that
asset stripping the stadium through lease negotiations for development
profit is the way forward . A previous shambles of a share issue and
Club AGM may still come back to haunt the people involved who really
didn't seem to grasp the situation or know what they were doing.
I've commented previously that
the Board of the football club were offered help but were so arrogant
as to ignore the view of the fans. The Trust even offered the same deal
to the club that been accepted from the new owners - take the debts over
and move the club forward with the fans behind it. I believe the
previous management regime are solely to blame for the position that we
find ourselves and our club in.
I have heard that the previous
Chairman of our Club is poorly and I'm sorry for that and wish him good
health soon but I can not forgive his attitude towards the management
of the club and attitude towards the fans. He didn't seem to know or
understand that when he bought the club, he only bought the right to be
the custodian - not the rights to wreck it by poor management which is
where we seem to have ended up.
With on-going threats of Court
appearances through winding up orders, statements from players telling
the back story, lack of funding against promises made, suspicion about
previous activities in relation to club funding, lease negotiations
taking assets out of the ownership into private holding companies,
Police notices about licensing, using the club as a dormitory for
trialists and debts that according to some sources could be approaching
the £2m mark and a total lack of transparency is it any wonder that the
fans are aggrieved.
No one will come forward to
take on the club in its present state. The only way forward is to
reconstitute the football club with a new community based, supporter led
entity and a completely fresh start. On a personal level I think that
it is more probable than possible that there will be no competitive
football at Edgar Street this season. That is an unacceptable situation.
I call on the present regime to vacate Edgar Street and give us our club back