Leeds United CEO Ben Mansford spoke yesterday in an interview (below) with BBC Radio Leeds’ Gareth Jones for the station’s ‘West Yorkshire Sport Daily‘ programme.
During this interview, Mansford was quite open on a number of things to with Leeds United: the state of the club, the contract situations with some of its younger players and the intentions as the club moves forward into the coming season.
Gareth Jones’ probed about the sense of bad feeling between the club, where he [Jones] highlighted the issue of the ‘Pie Tax’ and the Time To Go, Massimo (TTGM) campaign. He then asked how Mansford/the club were hoping to overcome the seeming negativity, re-engage with fans and create a sense of openness and transparency between fans and club.
Answering that there needs to be a sense of honesty from the club and “being prepared to admit your mistakes,” Mansford then went on to mention that there will be a fans’ forum before the game against Atalanta this coming Saturday, with future plans aimed at creating a fan engagement forum or fans’ parliament. This new ‘collective’, for want of a better term, would look at monthly meetings with representatives of the bigger fan groups and bigger organisations that are “connected to the club” in order to explain some of the things that are going on.
However, when developing his response to include treatment meted out to owner Massimo Cellino (22:02), the tone of Manford’s response seemed to change slightly. Mansford went on to say that: “I think some of the negativity at times has probably gone too far. I think when you read up on certain instances of certain campaigns against him, I think it’s too much. I think actually it probably cost them any populist support, one or two things going too far.”
Of course here the Leeds United CEO was talking about the fan-led, entirely fan-funded TTGM campaign that included memorable ‘stunts’ such as: projected images of broken Cellino promises, towed posters of broken Cellino promises, a mock funeral for a dead club, a banner fly-by and a ‘Many Man’ march from the city centre to the ground.
Each of these was high-profile enough to draw local, national and international press coverage as TTGM pressed to further their aim of ridding Leeds United of the ‘toxic ownership’ of Massimo Cellino. There were many, including some their own supporters, who thought that their latest escapade was the straw leading to the breaking of the camel’s back. This ‘escapade’ was the publishing of a ‘private’ text message exchange purportedly between Cellino and a TTGM ‘stooge’ reporter. It is likely this that Mansford is referring to in his response when he talks of losing “populist support.”
However, according to Tweets on the TTGM official Twitter feed, the tales of their demise are definitely not true, as the following two Tweets from yesterday (July 26) prove.
https://twitter.com/TimeToGoMassimo/status/757905511438249984
