The Kraken

Quite clearly a fair few people do care about it DellDays. If you don't, then it's not really an issue that affects you is it? So why bother commenting?

Yeah, because £1,600 a month just gets you nothing at all these days...

So after 8 pages I’ve come to the following conclusion: Pretty much everyone agrees that the club has no obligation to provide an interest/cost free instalment plan. There is mixed opinion over whether the club should provide a payment scheme through a third party. Immaterial of the above, most people agree that the club should have given more notice of the intention to scrap the old payment scheme. No-one can come up with a sensible idea as to why half-season tickets have been scrapped. The club seems to have done too little in the active recruitment of existing season ticket holders. Pretty much everyone agrees (to differing extents) that the club has communicated poorly with the fans over the above issues. And a lot of the resentment felt towards the club by some over these issues could very easily have been solved by the club communicating better. To conclude; two key excerpt from the Supporters Charter read as follows: "I firmly believe that this Supporter’s Charter will be the embodiment of what we stand for and it will target what we deliver year in, year out.” “Within the next few months we will be delivering news of our Supporter Engagement Policy whereby our supporters, specifically our Season Ticket Holders, can actively play a part in dialogue with their club in an effort to shape its destiny, such as pricing policies for ticketing and retail products. We intend this strategy to be ground breaking in football by enabling supporters to build a unique relationship with the Club.” The one common area of agreement within this thread seems to be that the club has fallen down in engaging with the supporters over the key issue of ticketing. And this is such an easy thing to prevent, and indeed to rectify. As supporters we’re not asking for involvement with everything that the club does, and indeed understand that there are a huge amount of decisions which will be made by the club which have absolutely no right being aired in the public domain. We are simply asking for the club to live up to the promises that it made in their own formal published document.

It's not as if publishing ST prices in March is such a hugely innovative step though is it? As a club we've done it plenty of times before. We were massively late in announcing our prices, I believe the 23rd team in our league to do it, which made the news of the scrapping of the installment plan all the more mystifying and frustrating for many.

You need to also consider our net spend as well to see the full context of our spending. Summer 2009 we sold the likes of McGoldrick, Dyer, Surman, Rasiak, BWP, Euell, John etc for a total of £3M. So we effectively lost £3M worth of talent from a side that wasn't very good to begin with. So the money we had to fork our for Lambert, Hammond, Jaidi, Harding, and all of the Xmas arrivals was significantly offset by the incoming transfer fees.

"In a continuing effort to strive for wider access to matches, the club will offer a payment plan for season tickets to make them cost-effective." I read that on the web too.

If that's the case then why suggest in the Supporters Charter that the club would continue to offer payment plans for Season Tickets. Whether or not you think the club SHOULD offer them is immaterial; they said that they would and haven't. Simple really.

Not if the club produce a Supporters' Charter which is very specific in outlining that: Travel is provided for home supporters to travel to away games. All travel is made available at cost price with no profit to the club.

And if we could also add Tommy FourPast to that list we'd be pretty much rid of all the clutter.

Very happy to see all of the dead wood being trimmed; our squad was massively bloated to begin with, and consisted of many players that would never have a chance of first team football. Given that he was now fourth or fifth choice at LB this makes perfect sense. Still would like to see another 4 or 5 players arrive in the next few days and weeks but have full faith in the club that they'll provide AP with the players he wants. Of course we won't hear about it until it happens, but I actually quite like that.

Agreed. I'm all for a bit of speculation about the price and what benefits membership will bring, but complaining about it now without knowing any facts seems a bit retarded.

No, the club have already announced that they are releasing details of the new membership scheme in early July. But yes, the rest of the thread is complete speculation about the cost of the scheme and what benefits it will entail.

As I said, this is all just wanton speculation until the full details are announced.

You'd have to question exactly what you'd get for that much money. £20 in the PL was just about bearable as you got money off the ticket but most importantly it gave you priority for tickets for the sell-out games. In League 1 that's just not going to be an issue, so I'm not sure how they'd justify a similar membership fee unless giving £2 off the ticket price, or it means you don't pay the booking fee. £25/£30 would be a ridiculous price unless the club are going to offer something massively substantial for the privilege of being a member. Anyway, this is all just wanton speculation until the full details are announced.

The sad fact is hypo that the fans' forum is really the only way of getting the club to engage with the customers. Contacting the club directly has had no impact (I have first hand experience of this), and it could be argued that discussions on here have prompted the Echo to run with the stories and directly question the club, which again hasn't had the desired impact. Short of the fans forum, which I have severe doubts will be as open as last year(if indeed they actually have one) I'm afraid it's very much like it or lump it.

But there is a difference between slating him and asking some genuine questions of the club. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty on here (stanley for example) who seem to love taking digs at NC at any given opportunity. However, it would be extremely arrogant of NC to assume that every single decision he makes is going to be the right one. I've no doubt at all he's making decisions with all the right intentions; but he's running a football club for the first time and its only natural that he'll make the odd mistake here or there. As customers it is our right to question the club, especially when they produce a fans' charter and months later decide to ignore it. For the most part NC has been brilliant for the club, and if he's going to run the club his own way then we'll have to just get on with it. However, a football club is so much more than just a business, because the customers feel a massive empathy with the product provided. It would be a shame to see that diminish just because the owner won't adapt to the needs of the customer.

Sorry, but that makes very little sense to me. If the club were going to advertise externallly for season tickets then they would have started when they first went on sale. Why is there "no point" in advertising until 30th June? Season tickets have been on sale to both existing and new customers from 1st June. It would have made much more sense to advertise before now, as you can target new and existing customers in one advertising campaign. Waiting a month to target new customers and thereby ignoring dismissing existing customers makes no business sense at all as you are missing the majority of your target market.

Unfortunately John, I think this statement is going to be a common theme this season. The club just seem to currently have a refusal to communicate properly with their customers. It was true of their reasons for ditching the installment plan. It was true of their reasons for not offering half-season tickets. It was true of their decision to start charging a ticket booking charge. And it is true with the lack of renewal forms. I think we just have to get used to the fact that the club is "Cortese's baby" and he is going to run it his way, and his way alone. If that involves p!ssing off previous customers in favour of a new business model then, apparently, so be it.

I think you're getting confused between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax avoidance is perfectly legal and involves utilising the law to one's advantage to reduce the tax burden. Tax evasion is the illegal avoidance of tax, punishable by law. Besides, you're using a ridiculous generalisation; "rich people evade paying tax", suggesting they don't pay any tax at all. Of course they use every (legal) trick in the book to bring their tax bill down as much as possible, but there's no way around the fact that they still have to pay extremely significant tax sums. And it's not just extremely rich people that do this at all; your average guy on the street will employ all sorts of tax avoidance schemes, just to a less significant scale. As a business owner myself I utilise an accountant whose responsibility it is to reduce the company's and my personal tax burdens as much as the legal system will allow. This doesn't mean I don't pay tax, just slightly less than I perhaps could.

Yes. And I worked you out. All of the Palace fans I know seem genuinely happy that Burley has been appointed. They say that, after having to put up with the general malaise of Warnock's persona and more importantly his appalingly basic football tactics, anything that Burley will bring to the table is a breath of fresh air. I actually think that if he is halfway interested in the job he'll do a decent job for them. Assuming he doesn't have to sell of the best players of course.

You see, I've never got this argument. It's such an easy thing to say "tax the rich, they can afford it". There's a quote from TV show The West Wing which I think sums its up quite well.. "Henry, last fall, every time your boss got on the stump and said, "It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share," I hid under a couch and changed my name. I left Gage Whitney making $400,000 a year, which means I paid 27 times the national average in income tax. I paid my fair share, and the fair share of 26 other people. And I’m happy to, because that’s the only way it’s gonna work. And it’s in my best interest that everybody be able to go to schools and drive on roads. But I don’t get 27 votes on Election Day. The fire department doesn’t come to my house 27 times faster and the water doesn’t come out of my faucet 27 times hotter. The top one percent of wage earners in this country pay for 22 percent of this country. Let’s not call them names while they’re doing it, is all I’m saying." To suggest the "stupidly rich", as you put it, aren't already being massively taxed and doing their fair share is just not true.

I do agree with this. While I very much agree with the sentiment that it's very disappointing the club seem to have cut right back on communication with the fans, and that they absolutely should have sent out renewals, to suggest that its almost impossible for those without internet access to be able to work out that they have to renew is way over the top. What did people do in the past before the boom of the internet? I think even those without internet access are savvy enough to realise that if they haven't got their renewal forms yet, when they renewed before this time last year, they just might either speak to friends who do know what's going on or actually call the club and find out.

I get the feeling that the fans forum will either not happen, or will be a massively watered down version of previous years. For some reason the club have decided to become much more introspective in the way they operate and seem far more unwilling to answer direct questions and concerns from their customers. The sudden retraction and lack of a public statement for the installment plan, the new ticket levy, the ditching of the half season tickets; all of these deserve a much better explanation than we've been given. Yet the club have steadfastedly refuse to elaborate on their extremely limited statements given. Given that I just can't see NC putting himself in the firing line to answer some tough questions; especially when he is obviously unwilling to issue a statement on behalf of the club addressing these concerns.

I bought mine on Thursday and some people were getting names/numbers printed then.

I for one welcome the fact that all of our transfer dealings are done behind closed doors and only announced when they are actually concluded. Yes, we need players. But I'm more than confident, despite the lack of any press releases to confirm it, that the club are doing all they need to do to get AP the players he wants.