Mem meeting tonight anyone there?

My take on it as attended.

Abdullatif spoke extremely well. He came across as competent and actually very funny with a good sense of humour.

There is clear needle between him and gorringe. There is no way gorringe lasts much longer under this regime imo.

There was one comment where someone asked about toilets and abdullatif said I've paid out 150k on 5 new toilet blocks yes where are they tom?

Was very awkward. There were a few little exchanges like this.

What I found interesting was gorringe saying if he had his way he would not have authorised the release of the fruit market video. That means it had to have been wael who authorized it.

Based on the meeting I'm a lot happier about our future but then I get the wool pulled over my eyes quite easily so it may just as easily all end in tears.

Ps. One thing that was ridiculous was him comparing us to man city. We will keep the kids ticket prices the same as man city did that and now they are the biggest club in Manchester. Doesn't work like that at all we don't have billionaire owners to get us there.

Big mistake still imo.

Completely agree. Man City didn't do it 'organically'. Man City would have suffered some extreme losses to get where they are now. I don't think the new owners had the stomach for those losses. Hence as someone else mentioned, an exit I'm the Championship (maybe still owning the quarters).

The Etihad stadium was originally built as an athletics stadium for the Commonwealth games and was used for a year. It was built with government money by the local council.
It was fitted out as a football stadium at a cost of £42 million. £22 million paid by the local council and £20 million by Man City.
Since that time it has remained in the ownership of the City council and the football club lease it.

i thought he was simply suggesting if we can compete with B City in the same league then kids will return to supporting us, rather than him have to bribe them to watch us with free tickets, whether that will be the case or not is anybody's guess but it was a good answer to a tricky question, not sure Wael would have come up with such an answer! 

As I suggested it was a decent answer to a difficult question.

I guess it comes down to what "success" is in Bristol, in Manchester it's winning the title etc, here it could just be playing in the same division and perhaps winning the odd local derby.

About

I am an experienced sports journalist with a strong understanding for media strategy and extensive knowledge of developing long-term plans for developing brands.



I recently returned to employment with West Ham United in an Editorial Executive capacity, having spent 2021 working as the the Editor-In-Chief for Cultaholic, a professional wrestling media outlet which specialised in written, video and audio content pertaining to sports entertainment. In this role, I was in asked to oversee and manage the company's staff and output across editorial, video and social media.



Previously, I was an employee of Premier League team West Ham United, working as the Media Lead for women's football. My former position required me to undertake direct responsibility the development and implementation of a content, communications and marketing strategy for the West Ham United women's team.



Prior to West Ham, I was with football news outlet Squawka in a content production capacity. I worked for Squawka for two years, writing news articles, features, match analysis and unique views with a statistical slant.



I am a graduate of the BA (hons) Journalism degree at Falmouth University where I achieved First Class honours.



In 2020 I was also awarded the NCTJ Level 3 Diploma in Journalism, achieving an overall Distinction with Gold Standard. I was also recognised at the NCTJ Awards for Excellence in Journalism in 2019.

The appointment of a head of media is important and a step in the right direction.

It may take a few weeks but hopefully he will improve communications with the neighbours, get the website sorted and at least improve the Pirate.

A very poor relation to the Keith Brookman days and yet nearly always sold out by 2.15.

I have just read through this thread for the first time, interesting to read some differing points of view. I come at this having attended shareholders annual meetings and Supporters Club meetings for well over 25 years. So I've always tried to form a judgement on the people running Bristol Rovers based on those meetings, down the years got to know some of those people quite well and actually worked with them.

It was interesting that in answering the first question Abdullatif, launched into something of a monologue but some of it just didn't quite hang together I felt. I know some have debated his comments defending the season ticket prices for children above. Trying to argue that Rovers could be like Man City in Manchester and become a better supported club (within the city of Manchester) than United if we became really successful we could do the same, didn't really stack up for my money. "Success would attract children", that seemed to me to be a very fragile argument that was a little naïve and hard to sustain - trying to justify not offering better deals to families and children. This was having argued that rises in ticket prices were necessary for a variety of reasons that we all understood, but for me just to hope that families would suddenly be able to afford to come to football because Rovers were successful seemed fanciful. This was demolished by one supporter later in the meeting who spoke most eloquently about the demise of the Young Pirates and the top table had no answer.

The proposed timescale of the redevelopment seems hard to believe if much of it hinges on the housing development at The Quarters, I can't see that filtering through in two years to be in a position to go out to banks. I hope I am wrong in that assumption.

The one chink of light for me was a most impressive contribution from George Friend, he is no mug and I thought he spoke really well about how he and his team would go about their task. I hope he doesn't become a victim of what I saw as a somewhat confused set of objectives around the upscaling of the academy and trying to achieve almost immediate success for the first team (Championship football within three years whilst rebuilding the stadium). Luton was used as the example that Rovers should follow in terms of moving to a new stadium once the Premier League was in sight. It all seemed like a wish list rather than a clear set of objectives and more importantly what was missing "this is how we are going to do it". When pressed on how it would all be financed the answers reminded me of Wael's initial statements around UWE that "finance wouldn't be a problem". Remember those early heady days, where everything seemed possible? I really hope that they can do it, I really do.

The other thing that I took away from last Thursday is that I feel that the new owners still don't really understand the fanbase and it's diversity in terms of opinion, financial means and what it really means to be a Rovers supporter. It is almost like everything that went before 2016 doesn't really matter or have any relevance. Key employees don't seem to have a clear grasp of the history of the club since the move to the Memorial Stadium, this cannot help the new owners understand where the fanbase is "coming from" and what those of us who supported the club at Eastville went through when the club had to move to Bath? Had the club tapped into some of the knowledge that longstanding supporters have about the history of Rovers move to the Mem, then some of the mistakes that were made in the building of the South Stand could have been avoided. Do they know why the dimensions of the two stands are as they are, there is a reason which might be good to know before they embark on the redevelopment?

It was good to see such a well attended meeting, whilst there was a lot of old stagers such as myself present it was good to see some fresh faces engaging with the Football Club. Someone commented on the age of those present and it's true that most were the wrong side of forty, but it's always been that way. I was in my mid thirties when I started going and many of those people present have grown old with me! That's why the Football Club has to find a way of engaging young people at a time when attention spans are now so short, if they don't do it now the drift away from playing eleven-a-side football at weekends will eventually start to eat into people watching professional football at League One level when there is much to do at a fraction of the price.

Kind regards

John Malyckyj