Newcastle United breaking Premier League rules – One year anniversary since last met fans
On 24 September 2018 the Newcastle United Fans Forum met.
Just the usual nonsense of course when the official minutes were released.
Instead of being open and honest participants in the process, Mike Ashley and his people simply using the fans forum as a means to try and push out their PR propaganda.
The club refusing to allow a stream or video of the Newcastle United Fans Forum to be shown as other clubs do, so all supporters can see what is asked by fans and said in reply by NUFC officials.
Not even a simple true written question and answer record released, just a heavily editorialised club version of some of the conversation.
As I have written before, in September 2017, an official Premier League document laid out what each of the 20 PL clubs were doing in terms of interaction with their fans.
Information was supplied by each of the clubs and this is what Mike Ashley committed to.
The NUFC listing said:
‘Newcastle United
Fans Forum
The Forum meet quarterly and includes 16 fan representatives, most of whom are randomly drawn
from applicants who meet the criteria for each category.
Four groups have permanent representation on the Forum, including the Supporters Trust and the Disabled Supporters Association.
The club are represented by the Managing Director, Head of Marketing & Communications and other senior staff members.’
Since that September 2017 announcement/document from the Premier League, if Mike Ashley and his people had told the truth, it means we should have had at least eight Newcastle United Fans Forum meetings.
Instead, these are the dates when the Newcastle United Fans Forum have met since September 2017:
25 April 2018
24 September 2018
That is it.
Exactly a year to the day since the last Newcastle United Fans Forum.
Indeed it is even worse because before those two meetings, the previous one was held on 29 June 2017.
So in over 26 months there has been two Newcastle United fans forum meetings and it is now exactly a year since the last one.
You would almost think that Mike Ashley and his people had things to hide and didn’t like allowing fans to question them.
Preferring to put out PR propaganda in friendly local and national media.
Why aren’t the newspapers, especially local ones, holding the club to account over the refusal to hold Newcastle United fans forum meetings, instead of just slavishly putting out the club propaganda?
It is not just thousands and thousands of empty seats on matchdays, there are permanently empty seats in the Fans Forum.
As an example of how other clubs do it and follow Premier League rules of having regular interaction with supporters, this is from the official Manchester United website detailing their fans forum meetings.
This is a Manchester United who are constantly under attack from their fans over the way the Glazers run the club BUT they are not scared to meet the fans, in case the rotten way they run the club is further exposed, as is the case with Mike Ashley and Newcastle United.
The Manchester United Fans forum info:
Along with representatives from MUDSA and other outside Fans’ Groups, there are 10 fans from groups that reflect the mix of supporters who attend matches and meet with senior Club officials. They represent Season Ticket holders, members of the Official Membership scheme, MUSC, Executive Club members, the Family Stand, fans aged over 65 and local resident fans.
Supporters can send in questions to be raised at the Forum up to four weeks before a meeting takes place. Each representative has an email address you can use to contact them and discuss issues or raise questions.
The meetings during the 2019/20 season will take place on the following dates, leading up to the noted home fixtures:
– 13 September (before Leicester City)
– 29 November (Aston Villa)
– 21 February (Watford)
– 24 April (Southampton)
Manchester United have had four fans forum meetings since Newcastle had their last one and in the length of time where Newcastle had their last two, Man Utd had nine.
Yet another further disgraceful episode in the life of Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United.
A club so shamefully run, they refuse to even answer questions from fans who they hand picked (rather than elected by other fans) to be on their official Newcastle United Fans Forum.
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