What exactly did Swann say about the man who’s been supporting the Iron since 1947?
The guy said he was fed up, that this team was the worst he’d seen in his time and that this year’s season ticket would be his last. Swann’s response was “what can you do”, followed up by defending his position and saying something along the lines of “if you don’t want to buy a season ticket then that’s your choice but be grateful there’s still a club to support”.
Now, despite my views about our chairman, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to his position at the moment. It clearly has been very difficult running a football club at the moment and it must really grate to hear complaints from fans when you know how hard you’ve been working behind the scenes.
However, in what other business would you get the CEO being so publicly dismissive of complaints from customers? It just wouldn’t happen or, if it did, the business would end up going the way of Ratner’s.
What I would have liked to hear was some positivity, no matter how hard that is to find at the moment, some hope for the future, some recognition that complaints might be valid even if you don’t agree with them, some engagement and recognition that the fans are going to be crucial to getting us through this crisis. It doesn’t matter if Swann doesn’t believe that, in situations like this the message is crucial. Especially after just telling us how important it is to get fans through the gates next season!
For example, can you imagine Nigel Adkins talking about the fans in this way? Of course not, he’d have talked for 5 minutes about “controlling the controllables”, “little old Scunny” and by the end of it you’d be convinced we were going to win the league next season in front of 8,000 fans every week. That’s the sort of positivity we need right now!
