AZ Gull
@SeagullsAcademy Threads: @bhafcacademy
I know Holloway resigned just before Christmas, but know nothing about the circumstances around it.
Why do the fans have such hard feelings towards him now?
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I know Holloway resigned just before Christmas, but know nothing about the circumstances around it.
Why do the fans have such hard feelings towards him now?
I’ll try and make a long story as short as possible. Holloway rocked up at Blundell park on New Year’s Eve 2019, promising to improve the club from top to bottom, help deliver a new stadium and leave a lasting legacy. As well as becoming manager, he joined the board and said he would make a significant six figure investment with his own money.
It was quite surprising to Town fans at the time. We had been managerless for nearly two months, with no one seemingly wanting the job and then all of a sudden here’s Ian Holloway, media darling and twice promoted to the Premier League. Something didn’t stack up at the time, but no one asked any real questions as nobody cared - it was a brilliant and exciting appointment for a struggling and unfashionable League Two club.
Things started off relatively well, and he quickly became a popular figure with Town fans. Then came Covid.
When it was time to restart again, we were shambolic. The board, including Holloway no less, had planned on this season not happening. We allowed our three best players to leave for nothing. Pre-season training began just three weeks before the beginning of the season, and we played just one friendly - a defeat to Cleethorpes Town. Recruitment was haphazard, having started with a basic squad of about 8 players, the squad quickly ballooned to over 30 senior pros, few of them good enough for league football.
It’s unsurprising then that we find ourselves in the League Two relegation zone, with the lowest PPG in the division should the season end as it did last year. Holloway’s management of the team has been appalling, but that’s not the interesting part of the story.
Just before Christmas, an unfamiliar face was spotted by someone at the local rag in our directors box. This man was Alex May, formerly Alick Kapikanya, a serially convicted criminal most recently jailed for a multi-million pound scam which defrauded wealthy elderly people in Cheshire. Naturally, supporters were up in arms about this - we’ve put up with some shite over the years but the notion of such an unsavoury character being involved with our club was a bridge too far.
It then transpired he and our much maligned majority shareholder John Fenty had set-up a company named Town Centre Living Limited. So what did Alex May want? Apparently, he said, in a patently insincere interview by with Radio Humberside, he was being brought on board to finance and oversee the club’s relocation of its stadium and training ground. Sound remotely familiar, Brighton fans? Oh, we’d have been relocated alright, I’ve no doubt about that.
The furore over this breaking story meant that this deal could no longer go ahead, not least because our de facto chairman John Fenty, also a local councillor, hadn’t disclosed the conflict of interest of his new business partnership and was forced to stand down.
So what for Mr Holloway? Days after this deal went kaput, he resigned with a swansong of inconsistent and incoherent statements and interviews that made very little sense. I’m conscious of not saying anything which might be considered libel, so instead I’ll just re-trace the steps:
- Jan-20 - Ian Holloway joins struggling Grimsby, who had failed to attract a manager of worth in the two months prior, in surprise move
- Jan-20 - He joins the board, and promises to invest a considerable amount of his own money into the club
- Dec 20 - Convicted fraudster and conman is outed as lynchpin in the club’s plans to ‘relocate’ its stadium and training ground
- Dec 20 - Said deal becomes unviable, meaning plans to regenerate the club’s existing premises are off
- Dec 20 - Holloway resigns and moves back to Bristol
- Jan 21 - It transpires that Holloway had not yet invested anything, other than the token £500 required for a seat on the board
Make of that you will, but regardless of any potential subterfuge behind the sub-plot, Holloway joined a club embroiled in dreary, mid-League Two mediocrity and left it facing the serious threat of relegation to the conference, a league the fans did so much to get out of, including raising over £100,000 to support the playing budget the season we finally won promotion. We’ve had some terrible managers over the years including Mike Newell, who according to the accounts of ex-players allowed beer at morning training sessions, and the second coming of Russell Slade which was an absolute horror show. And yet now Holloway is unanimously Holloway is regarded as the worst manager in our recent if not before history. That should speak volumes.
Anyway, I’m hoping that it is apt that I am writing this on a Brighton forum. Besides the fact that I just think NSC is a brilliant forum, and far more cerebral than most of its nature, Albion are a club that I have great respect for and have for a long time.
Resilient, resourceful fans who stuck by their club during bleak, bleak times and who earned the opportunity to enjoy better ones. Would you have the Amex if you hadn’t been exiled from The Goldstone? I guess you’ll never know.
Either way, the fallout from this absolute shit show is that Fenty, once deemed the saviour of the club but long since considered a cancer determined to snuff all that is good about it, has been forced to sell up. Inbound is a trio of successful, Grimsby-born businessmen including CEO of the mightily impressive business insurer Simply Business, Jason Stockwood. I don’t believe they have the financial clout of Tony Bloom, but in terms of modern, forward thinking they are absolutely light years ahead of the medieval circus that’s been running this proud club for the last decade and a half.
TLDR? Ian Holloway’s a cúnt, and don’t believe anyone who says he isn’t.
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Ever wished you didn’t ask a question?
Personally, I feel my attempt to make a long story short went well. It was either that, or shag the wife.
My evening has been well spent.
AZ Gull
@SeagullsAcademy Threads: @bhafcacademy
Thanks for taking the time to reply - good luck for the rest of the season and with the new ownership.
AZ Gull
@SeagullsAcademy Threads: @bhafcacademy
Ever wished you didn’t ask a question?
Actually, I found the explanation well-written and comprehensive, what else am I going to do in the last working hour of a Friday before heading off to play squash?
Actually, I found the explanation well-written and comprehensive, what else am I going to do in the last working hour of a Friday before heading off to play squash?
Cheers for that. It’s almost like we’ve got fúck all else to do, innit.
Wouldn’t have happened in 2019.
Actually, I found the explanation well-written and comprehensive, what else am I going to do in the last working hour of a Friday before heading off to play squash?
Agree it’s a good post, a long one but a good one.
Yes Chef
Well-known member
Cheers for that. It’s almost like we’ve got fúck all else to do, innit.
Wouldn’t have happened in 2019.
I thought your reply was excellent, and I wish Grimsby all the very best.
Thanks mate. All the best to the Albion, too!