Since our last update in late July, it’s fair to say it’s been a fairly testing time following the team. While plenty still choose to watch the match with unshakable gallows humour, it is notable how far crowd numbers have dropped. The empty seats and gaps in the standing areas are an extremely worrying sight and emblematic of a quiet protest about the direction of the club.

The football has been pretty dire to watch, apart from a very good comeback against Sutton, but it’s not the first time in our history that we’ve seen this! A bigger concern is the continuing lack of communication. At a time when efforts to communicate a vision for the coming years is most needed, there is near silence and it feels like the club is drifting with no real plan to regain our place in the Football League. Having stated that he wants to pass the club on, Mr. Singh still remains in charge almost two years later, although now he has a board of directors who are supposed to be ‘trying something different’. At the time of writing, none of the directors are registered at Companies House, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

We have previously commented on the proposed Fans Group and a representative from HUST’s board has attended the two meetings held so far. The first of these was to discuss Terms of Reference and Code of Conduct. We made the point that on pitch and financial issues should, as far as practically possible, be discussed and we pressed the need for transparency. It was with this in mind we requested what we saw as sensible changes to the wording of documents to enable this. Sadly, these suggestions were rejected by the club’s board, meaning the forum will only be for discussion of the match day experience. We must make it clear that the people invited to the group are passionate Pools fans, who want the best for the club and made helpful suggestions. Several of these have been acted on by the club. Unfortunately, we still feel that the limitations imposed by the Terms of Reference means the panel falls a long way short of being the genuine, democratic supporter representation that we hope to achieve at our club. With the only supporters’ representative having been hand-picked by the owner, restrictions on what can be discussed, and membership and conduct exclusively in the hands of the club, this seems unlikely to change.
There are still important questions to be addressed by the club and two that we think are particularly important:
• What is the vision for the club over the next three years?
• What funding is being put into the club and is this being treated as debt?
We will continue to push for more open discussion and keep you updated. It is worth mentioning again that the Football Governance Bill is due to be considered in Parliament. If passed it will mandate that club’s consult their fans on ‘off field issues’ and ‘strategic direction’. Existing Supporters’ Trusts are key to reforms with proposed clauses including:
• Persons selected as representing the views of the club’s fans should be appointed through a process that is democratic and independent of club control.
• Where the club’s fans have established a legally registered Supporters Trust, that body should have appropriate representation in the club’s consultation processes.
The key words are Democratic and Independent - we will be keeping a close eye on how this legislation develops.

Mr Walter Mitty Shithead was appointed a director at the club not as a fans representative?
The lack of communication regarding the future of the club has been as bad as at any time I can recollect in well over 50 years. Also I'd say there's been little if any improvement to the matchday experience, ticketing and the ticket offices are still as poor as they have been for years.

Walter Mitty Shithead's not a director either as far as Companies House is concerned
It's all the Wizard of Pools, sat behind a curtain pulling levers and hiding from responsibility.

Yeah, I read that earlier when it was mailed out. The two questions they put are spot on; what’s the plan and financially are we up the creek without a paddle (although put more eloquently!)
I’d have also added who on earth decided to appoint Sarll!?! You’ve got to be pretty gullible to appoint that BS merchant.
That update also paints a picture of the club not really wanting to answer tricky questions. What a surprise.

When peoplie have an EGO bigger than the club, You are in deep water.
And yes i am speaking from experience, We see you for what YOUS are.

Brilliantly put.

Does anyone really care about the matchday experience? All I want is to stand in my usual position, see us play well and hopefully win and then applaud the lads and go home happy.

Shorter queues (although not such an issue at the moment), better beer and food offer (good for fans but also club) - stuff like that is all fine to think about -it’s just not the important thing right now is it? Fans need to have some sense of where it’s all heading, what the plan is, ambition to get back to the league. If that ambition is clear, I think the fan base will get behind it.
Instead though we’re getting absolutely mugged off with season ticket rises, getting 2nd hand club updates via a closed WhatsApp group, an endless managerial turnover. As has been said on other threads this evening, we just kind of feel what’s the point.

We ARE up shit creek. The debt is probably more than the club is worth. Unless Raj sells us for a quid plus debt or writes most of it off we are screwed. Anyone deluded enough to believe he'd do that?

I get why Raj has done this to shield himself...what I don't get is why this Walter Mitty Shithead bloke has gone along with it, if he is by all accounts a massive Pools fan why is he allowing himself to be debased this way?
Literally talking about tannoys and takeaways while the club goes to shit on the field and to hell in a hand basket off it.

It seems like Raj looked at the Trust and appointed a 'fan rep' who would be polar opposite to that--Raj wont be around forever (I know it seems like he will) so not sure what this bloke will do when he's gone especially if it all ends as badly with the club either in a much worse state than now or starting again, as we suspect it will. Is he going to just slink off or come up just wash his hands of it all and deny all knowledge?

Walter Mitty Shithead is absolutely complicit now in anything negative that happens to the club, he has taken the role Singh offered him and seems happy to call himself part of the board without a public cross word against his Lord and Master, so we can only assume he fully backs the way Raj is running the club......despite how the story may change once Singh is gone.

that matchday experiance is all froth that most fans are not arsed about. if there are queues then join em earlier. as for food and drink. if you cannot go through a couple of hours without eating you are the problem not the club unless you need to eat for medical grounds. i always bring a flask or bottled water if its hot and cannot remember the last time i bought any overpriced crap in a football ground. fans will only come to the vic if we are winning games with decent football on show and not if the club wins an award for catering for fans.

Yet the bars and food outlets do a decent trade on matchdays bringing revenue into the club. Also, if you're a casual or not yet committed Poolie you're less likely to come back when not only is the football shite but also ticketing, queuing, catering, programmes, state of the seats, etc etc. We need to consider the future supporters of the club.
The point being that the guy appointed to look at and improve these kind of things doesn't seem to have done much and has certainly stayed under the radar.

you could be right as expectations and requirements of fans has changed over the years and its as much about the so called whole match experiance and not just the game itself. like many things this subject might depend on the age of the fans who attend.

The likelihood is, he may have given Raj a list of things he thought he was brought in to do and make better. Said list is sat in the unread section of a mailbox never to see the light of day - Raj wont spend a penny on anything but the playing squad which is fair enough. But dont bring in someone to do a job and then have us all sat waiting. Walter Mitty Shithead probably between a rock and hard place atm. Cant get what he wants to make improvements - yet cant shout up about not getting it and having a whinge as clearly will be under and NDA or something with Raj. Just about useless to club and supporter atm if you ask me !

I’d be willing to be that Walter Mitty Shithead hasn’t done anything of the sort. His ego is almost as big as Raj’s and he will be lapping up being in this “position” while not having to do an awful lot to justify it. The supporters panel shite is a complete waste of time. We don’t need quarterly meetings or be a director to realise the matchday experience is crap, sadly now the football is equally as bad if not worse

Thought he was sacking and employing managers.

The key is retaining independence whilst having some representation. Fans shouldn't be asked to hand money over and then asked to be quiet. We should have someone representing our side of things but not having to tow the party line. At well run clubs that person is democratically appointed, which as we've debated before isn't perfect but at least they can be booted if they're not communicating effectively.
And no fan should be choosing the manager (unless they also happen to have a load of experience in football of course.)

sounds good but out of over 3,000 regular fans how many would be interested or actually able to do the job needed. finding the right man could be like the club finding the right manager. feel it will be like voting for union officials at work where the one with the loudest voice will be chosen who could be an empty vessel or start to talk like management.

Yeah, I get that Accy. Was thinking about it after I posted and actually it probably has to be a group of fans really but someone with good communication needs to take charge. Point is, however it’s done (and it is at other successful clubs) fans just shouldn’t be an after thought. We need to be part of a vision or pathway back to the league. The season after Covid shows exactly what the fan base is capable of - absolutely tremendous support home and away, spending good money to help move the club forward. Without a fan or fans having direct dialogue with the owners, on behalf of a group‘s membership or wider fan base, we’ll never know where our money went.
The scenario we have now with a director in charge of representing fans, who doesn’t seem capable of communicating and is totally compromised is a joke.

Raj has obviously appointed Walter Mitty Shithead as the fans rep as he knows he’ll be a good boy and toe the party line in exchange for a meaningless title, being spineless when it comes to telling some home truths is a requirement of the role

Well when "Uncle Darren" gets the sack, Guess who will claim it.

Apart from a few lines in the mail bigging up his role in the sarll appointment has this Walter Mitty Shithead joker made any official statements ?

WhatsApp not official enough?!

(And from the screenshots months ago, there was nothing much to report anyway, other than how great everything is.)

The Man who Never Was…….as in the film of the name..

forget the club involved but i heard of one who had a fans rep on the board of directors who had to leave the room once matters of finance came up. they seemed happy with his presence at all other times apart from that. smacks of something to hide as they didn,t want money matters to leave the boardroom as it possibly would have done if the fans rep was doing his job when reporting back to the fans.

Which threads do you go.on?

Pools were the worst club for not having fan representation so his appointment is a sop to to thst. It will tick a box even though none of us voted from.him. He's another one who hated HUST and didn't have the intellectual ability t o understand why it was set up in a time of peril and lack of fan involvement. If he had any guts he'd prove his support by resigning along with Mr Steel and admit it was a mistake. I could respect thst.

He was the orchestrator or the "fuck the trust" nonsense. The only reason being was that he didn't instigate it. Him and his cokehead acolytes arranged anti-trust mobs which included confronting people resulting in several trust organisers being threatened and in one case at least, asssaulted. The bloke is an egomaniac and an arsehole.

Basically a COWARD.

Not a real poolie then, And neither are his BUM chums.

I’m not in any, don’t know how to join and don’t know what the criteria is for joining anyway! People screenshot and put on Facebook or forward on. Random way to communicate!

Bloody hell, it gets worse!

Absolute low life. I was met with ' Fuck the Trust' on Facebook when I suggested fans should look at the Trust. If he had Raj's ear during the last set of negotiations that would explain a lot.

Stop bigging him up Mr.I he is not that good.

At least Sarll helped show up OurBelovedRep for the doyle that he is. And his mates BigBob9 and Waddle.

If that's true, imagine the shitstorm he would have created if the trust had a hand in appointing Sarll.

Believe me, it's true. I was there.