Are they still Wycombe's Wanderers? (From Bucks Free Press)

Football Clubs are NOT businesses. When was the last time you heard someone chanting "Come on Sainsbury's"?

But yes, football clubs need to live within their means and that entails not paying excessive fees to players or their agents and fans not demanding that expensive players are brought in. We tried that with Hayes as a sugar daddy and look where we ended up.

Fan owned clubs are the answer, where fans themselves take responsibility for their football club. At the end of the day they are the only ones who truly care.

As for fans proving their 'loyalty', this is beyond rich from the Bucks Free Press who increasingly move WWFC away from their own back page, relegating them in favour of Wasps who have no historic connection with the town. In the meantime, when the town truly needed the paper to stand up for its club, vis a vis the stadium fiasco, the BFP played the 'neutrality' card and sat on the fence until it was clear that the plan was going to fail. Why not lead by example?

Here's one for you Mr Feldberg. Perhaps you could demonstrate your loyalty to the town and its football club by standing up to Steve Cohen next time he moves our match reports off the back page? Actions speak louder than words.

This article is so riddled with factual errors it's unreal. How did this idiot get a job as sports editor of a once-respected newspaper?

Alan Feldberg is and IDIOT !!

This quite a poorly researched article. I certainly don't recall us having any problems selling our ticket allocation at Chelsea. We took 6000 fans to Stamford Bridge that night, which is pretty impressive considering it was also shown live on TV. Also, to hold up MK Dons & London Wasps as an example is bizarre! Both clubs have under performed on the pitch in recent times and been beset by financial problems off the pitch.
Yes it is true that the club is having problems attracting fans through the turnstiles (as are many clubs up and down the country) this however is partly a legacy of the previous owner and the huge hike in matchday prices under his regime, along of course with the current economic crisis. I regard myself as a very keen Wycombe fan, but I've only been able to afford to attend a handful of games this season and I suspect many fans are in the same boat. This I'm sure is a situation the Trust are working hard to rectify. In the meantime, the reduced ticket prices for the Accrington game on Good Friday is the perfect chance for the town to get back down to Adams Park and see for themselves what a wonderful job Gareth Ainsworth is doing with his young team.

Poor article Alan, out of touch and poorly researched.

Since when has it been important to have a team of local boys and a local manager? I don't recall many people being put off getting behind the team lead by the Northern Irish talisman Martin O'Neill and Swindon Town recently had their fortunes turned around by an Italian. The current crop of youth team graduates playing week in week out for WW are the finest crop I have witnessed in my 25 years of supporting and many of these are from London. They are hungry to succeed and wear the shirt with pride. How many of the London Wasps team are from High Wycombe Alan?

People care about results and last year they were poor which is contributing to this seasons drop in attendances. However, things are looking up on the pitch and with the right decisions made in the Summer on pricing we could see more fans back at the games.

The efforts of the Trust to attract more fans and families with a reduced ticket offer for the Good Friday fixture have not been mentioned once in your article Alan, why is this?

I applaud you for trying to bring the debate in the pages of BFP, the club deserves improved coverage from your paper, but it seems this subject is way outside of your comfort zone.

Undoubtedly one of the most poorly written and researched articles I have seen. I don't actually get the point of this, but it is hardly helping. Maybe I'm too busy harking back for the past glory days of the BFP. I shall no longer be buying this trash. 55 pence a week better spent on an end of season donation to the Trust...

What a shockingly poor article from the sports editor of the BFP.
From memory!!
Any journalist worth his salary would have the facts to hand, not from memory.
Facts. Back in the so called good days of season 82/83 as we were crowned League champs only twice did we achieve attendances in four figures, the following season not once did we acheve four figures yet within 10 years the club had achieved league status and taken over 30000 to Wembley, twice.
WWFC will survive their current problems, problems not of the supporters making but that of a deluded owner, and emerge stronger for it.
Woud'nt mind betting the club are still around after the BFP have long gone, overtaken by the internet and aided and abetted by appalling jounalism.

What an absolute pile of trash you have written. Factually incorrect from start to finish and not even a hint of being impartial. Tell me, are you an MK Dons sympathiser or Wasps fan or both? I sincerely hope you'll be printing a full and frank retraction of this entire article both online and in print next Friday. You should be ashamed of yourself. I used to look forward to reading about the club I love in the BFP and now you seem to be sticking the boot in and rubbing your hands with glee as you do so.

The club did not struggle to sell its allocation for the 2nd leg of the League Cup semi final at Chelsea. It was actually sold out well before the 1st leg had been played. But then why should we expect Alan Feldberg, from Milton Keynes, to know anything about WWFC? I'm surprised he doesn't end each article with 'Up the Dons!' Why can't the BFP employ someone who is at least neutral when reporting on Wycombe Wanderers?

I love how (deliberately or otherwise) misleading the photo you've chosen is as well. Since people are sitting on the steps and eating food, I'm guessing that would have been taken at half time, when plenty of people are queuing for the snack bar (yes, that's right we do have enough people to form a queue), in the toilet or out the back having a smoke.

One word for this article..... SHOCKING. Just stick to trying and helping the club not destroying it. Journalism like this is why you are at the BFP and not one of the nationals. As mentioned above I hope you are going to write an apology in the very near future.

Just where do you start shooting this one down in flames? I'm tempted not too as this article is so riddled with untruths it must be some form of wind-up to WWFC supporters.

Perhaps Alan Feldberg could care to explain how we struggled to sell our 6,000 tickets for the Chelsea game? They sold out rapidly.

Next-the headline is misleading- it is a winding up petition, not a winding up order. I don't suppose Feldberg felt it necessary to include Don Woodward's explanation that it is a procedural measure and that the football club will resolve the problem soon, and do not even intend to attend the hearing.

As for WWFC pushing financial boundaries- this is what Hayes did for 7 years, with no mention. Now the club is trying to run itself sustainably, Feldberg chooses to stick the boot in. Bizarre. He clearly has an agenda which has been backed up with lies. This article is shameful.
With the Accrington Stanley promotion game / cheap tickets I thought for once this paper may help drive the club forwards and properly publish it to the town. However, it seems that the agenda of this particular fool is the prevailing one!

Michael Knox,Stuuart Earp,Jim McCann,Clare Nash all fine BFP sports hacks.
Now we have the barely coherent,vindictive and generally hopeless Alan Feldberg.
Hopefully when those sponging egg chasers are run out of town, you will not be far behind them.
And take your chino wearing Puppeteer Steve Cohort along with you.
Wont spend another penny on the Bucks Free Trash !

Is Ivor on holiday? As tis oculd so easily have been written by him...

Garbage

Can’t decide which is the worst reporting, 3CR or BFP – take a leaf out of 3CR books, don’t bother saying anything.
The principle reason I have brought the BFP for the last 35+ years is for news on the Wanderers, with 3CR I just don’t tune in but if this is the new level of reporting in the local paper then at least I can save 55p per week!

Aside from all of the inaccuracies already pointed out, I wonder if you've actually taken any interest or been to any games recently ?
Thought not, or you would have known that former YOUTH TEAM PLAYER Anthony Stewart scored the winner.
Is that not "youth team players champing at the bit" enough for you ?
Shocking.

Feldberg, Cohen and the BFP should be ashamed of this emotionalised, impressionistic hatchet job.
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It's telling that whenever Wasps are in trouble there are no pieces laying into the club hierarchy (e.g. when they were threatened with a winding up order of their own due to unpaid tax bills), yet when Wycombe Wanderers run by the Supporters' Trust have a deadline with the HMRC to pay an outstanding tax bill, suddenly the club are prematurely issued a winding up order from a body that isn't able to do so!
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I'm in agreement that clubs should be run sustainably within their means, and that means supporting clubs that have gone down the supporters' trust route to balance the books, not sniping from the sidelines whilst extolling the virtues of heavily-indebted nomadic franchises such as MK and Wasps. Holding MK Franchise in particular as a model to follow is deeply distasteful and shows the sordid level that Feldberg is operating at. He might have no problem with a club that only came into existance preying on the corpse of the deliberately mismanaged Wimbledon FC whose owners were trying to engineer a move to a more 'profitable' locale, but WWFC is a club that has proudly stayed close to its roots, has fairly and squarely earned its place in professional football, and can rightly claim to be the town and district's football club.
Feldberg may be keen to see WWFC disappear so that Wasps have more column inches to occupy, but Wycombe Wanderers FC will be around longer than Feldberg will be writing craven hatchet jobs like this, and, if things continue as they are, the Bucks Free Press itself.
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"Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer...."

Very poor all-round article. Seemed to have no prior knowledge of what is actually going on at WWFC financially, it's all just speculative nonsense (WWFC haven't said anything about asking fans to bail out the club). Very disappointing with the coverage so far from BFP over WWFC's finance issues; for a newspaper supposed to be representing the town, they instead seem to revel in worrying fans and criticizing the town. I'm not sure there's been one positive comment so far on this article... Just rewards for an article written by someone with no story to tell. Don't bother next time Alan (Rio Ferdinand-like sarcastic applause).

Thanks Lads, you've said it all.
It reminds me how unpopular a previous visitor to the Town called Alan made himself.

ChilternsBlue wrote:
Football Clubs are NOT businesses. When was the last time you heard someone chanting "Come on Sainsbury's"?

But yes, football clubs need to live within their means and that entails not paying excessive fees to players or their agents and fans not demanding that expensive players are brought in. We tried that with Hayes as a sugar daddy and look where we ended up.

Fan owned clubs are the answer, where fans themselves take responsibility for their football club. At the end of the day they are the only ones who truly care.

As for fans proving their 'loyalty', this is beyond rich from the Bucks Free Press who increasingly move WWFC away from their own back page, relegating them in favour of Wasps who have no historic connection with the town. In the meantime, when the town truly needed the paper to stand up for its club, vis a vis the stadium fiasco, the BFP played the 'neutrality' card and sat on the fence until it was clear that the plan was going to fail. Why not lead by example?

Here's one for you Mr Feldberg. Perhaps you could demonstrate your loyalty to the town and its football club by standing up to Steve Cohen next time he moves our match reports off the back page? Actions speak louder than words.

The inverted commas round 'neutrality' was well-advised there. The BFP was very biassed and implicitly in favour of the ludicrously-misnamed 'Community Stadium and Sports Village' in its assumptions, its terminology, its coverage, its editorials, and in the questionnaire it did at the time.

billsheppard wrote:
Feldberg, Cohen and the BFP should be ashamed of this emotionalised, impressionistic hatchet job.
-
It's telling that whenever Wasps are in trouble there are no pieces laying into the club hierarchy (e.g. when they were threatened with a winding up order of their own due to unpaid tax bills), yet when Wycombe Wanderers run by the Supporters' Trust have a deadline with the HMRC to pay an outstanding tax bill, suddenly the club are prematurely issued a winding up order from a body that isn't able to do so!
-
I'm in agreement that clubs should be run sustainably within their means, and that means supporting clubs that have gone down the supporters' trust route to balance the books, not sniping from the sidelines whilst extolling the virtues of heavily-indebted nomadic franchises such as MK and Wasps. Holding MK Franchise in particular as a model to follow is deeply distasteful and shows the sordid level that Feldberg is operating at. He might have no problem with a club that only came into existance preying on the corpse of the deliberately mismanaged Wimbledon FC whose owners were trying to engineer a move to a more 'profitable' locale, but WWFC is a club that has proudly stayed close to its roots, has fairly and squarely earned its place in professional football, and can rightly claim to be the town and district's football club.
Feldberg may be keen to see WWFC disappear so that Wasps have more column inches to occupy, but Wycombe Wanderers FC will be around longer than Feldberg will be writing craven hatchet jobs like this, and, if things continue as they are, the Bucks Free Press itself.
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"Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer...."

Well put Bill.

The excruciating dross Alan Feldberg writes!

Do football clubs deserve to be treated differently to other businesses?

(I thought WWFC had become something like a mutual society once again so it is no longer like a business but otherwise - I’m sure a lot of sports journalists would say ‘God yes of course they deserve different treatment Alan!’)

And:

The argument is that football clubs are an intrinsic part of their communities, a beating heart within a town around which the residents can gather and invest their own hopes and dreams.
For that reason they deserve to be spared financial reality and every measure of preservation should be taken.
But is this still a relevant argument?

That’s not an argument at all - if it ever was – it’s an emotional feeling or wish not very many sensible people have considered.

Only a not very bright sports journalist could write this stuff. Do you remember Feldberg’s impassioned appeal about London Wasps after the Hayes Stadium fiasco in which he imagined current grammar school boys returning as ‘bona fide heroes’ to the corridors they once walked as pupils?

But if the club really does mean so much to the town, then it’s high time the town proved it on a Saturday afternoon.

I felt such shame and embarrassment when I read that –it was as if Alan Feldberg were talking to me personally (such a powerful writer!) and I felt personally guilty of a lack of local patriotism in not proving my Blues support on a Saturday afternoon. I must go there this afternoon and 'invest my own hopes and dreams' there.

Good luck to WWFC and don’t anyone be put off or distracted in any way at all by this earnest guff.

I'm not a football fan and apart from when the then rather dishy Dave Thomas lived 4 doors down the road, some 50+ years ago, when following the Wanders was marginally more attractive to me, I really cannot claim to have ever been a fan. None the less, I would be very sad to see the Wanders go. Surely a huge raffle, a lottery style draw, some sort of house to house whip round could be organised to 'save the day'?

Do they actually need it buser?

Some posters on here have suggested they may simply be having to take their time about paying the tax bill.

Don't know Lawrence but if they did, surely the money could be raised. As the various articles have said, football and football clubs have evolved and changed, like everything else, and the minnows who beat the giants are long gone, guess time will tell if they need 'saving'.

Agree with most of the above about the BFP article.
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Especially as the current situation has been exacerbated through dodgy local politicians supporting the (thankfully departed) ex-owner and fellow speculators and who are still under investigation (allegedly)
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I am also not sure that local taxes should be used to finance this organization.
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And if local people do not like football , they cannot be chastised for not going to watch something they don't see as not of interest to them or they consider not good value.

I, like many others in this town support a team in the Premier League. (hint: It's in West London) However, I do go to watch Wycombe at least three or four times a year and feel proud to have a team in the Football League on my doorstep. When I was younger and not able to afford to attend my 'first' team's games regularly, I was a season ticket holder at WWFC. Although I regard the blues as my second team, I still find this article highly offensive and I can't even begin to imagine how offended those of you are who hold Wycombe so close to your hearts. I find it such a shame that the local paper does not seem willing to get behind the local club at such a crucial time. Surely in the best interests of the paper they should be more willing to report on the team in a positive light as many who buy the paper are fans of the team. I'll be there on Good Friday as my team isn't playing until the Sunday. I hope many others will join me.

bennyfromtheblock wrote:
I, like many others in this town support a team in the Premier League. (hint: It's in West London) However, I do go to watch Wycombe at least three or four times a year and feel proud to have a team in the Football League on my doorstep. When I was younger and not able to afford to attend my 'first' team's games regularly, I was a season ticket holder at WWFC. Although I regard the blues as my second team, I still find this article highly offensive and I can't even begin to imagine how offended those of you are who hold Wycombe so close to your hearts. I find it such a shame that the local paper does not seem willing to get behind the local club at such a crucial time. Surely in the best interests of the paper they should be more willing to report on the team in a positive light as many who buy the paper are fans of the team. I'll be there on Good Friday as my team isn't playing until the Sunday. I hope many others will join me.

.

I find it such a shame that the local paper does not seem willing to get behind the local club at such a crucial time.

Yes indeed and it was completely willing to get behind Hayes and his irrational dead-end ideas.

The worst report ever written in the BFP. time to move this so called reporter off the sports desk before he makes the paper a complete laughing stock.

I attended my first Wycombe wanderers match at Loakes park 35 years ago football and have watched a team go from non league to div 1 an FA cup semi and a league cup semi my son now goes to watch the team. I run a kids football team and wycombe wanderers do much more to promote sport in the local area than the local council. A badly researched article as I write this there is an advert for England v Romania U21s on the site. Wycombe wanderes have given our junior football club 25 free tickets Bucks County Council and the Bucks Free Press have offer no support what so ever. Shame on you Bob Craft

Perhaps if the town (council) had shown some support for the club, rather than shoving them out of the way on the edge of town, at the earliest opportunity, then attempting to push them even further away, at Booker, High Wycombe residents might feel that they have an asset in the club, rather than a liability? Bus station/railway station to Loakes Park was a doddle; who fancies the possibility of a two mile hike, in the rain, both ways now?

WWFC wouldn't be in this situation if they got the go ahead to relocate with Wasps to the proposed sports village in Booker Airfield. They'll be in a worse situation when Wasps go elsewhere.

@everestman Care to back that comment up with facts and figures? This was covered ad nauseum at the time and I, amongst many others, am glad the plans did not go ahead. Financially, the club is now being run sensibly and within it's means and that's something that Steve Hayes never even bothered to pretend to be aiming for. The Booker Stadium plan was just another facet of the mis-management of our football club under Steve Hayes.

I'm not sure if you care about having a league football club in High Wycombe, but if you do, get down and watch them on Good Friday. We need the town to get behind a team we can be proud of. The team is there in the latter part of this season, stuffed full of products of the youth system giving it a right good go. Now we just need the town to follow suit and get down to Adams Park.

everestman wrote:
WWFC wouldn't be in this situation if they got the go ahead to relocate with Wasps to the proposed sports village in Booker Airfield. They'll be in a worse situation when Wasps go elsewhere.

The choice of the name ‘everest man’ – a name redolent of double-glazing - to write in support of a former double-glazing salesman’s discredited plan makes me suspect a wind-up.

everestman wrote:
WWFC wouldn't be in this situation if they got the go ahead to relocate with Wasps to the proposed sports village in Booker Airfield. They'll be in a worse situation when Wasps go elsewhere.

At around the time of the stadium proposal (2010), WWFC's average gate was around 5,000-5,500. Now it's droppd to around 3,800. Are you seriously suggesting that they've decreased attendance by 1,700 per match simply because WDC didn't spend £40M+ of ratepayers money on a nice shiny 17,500 seater stadium???

‘Careful “roloWWFC” and ”gpn01” I suspect a trap – possibly 'everstperson' is a BFP plant designed to get us all slagging Steve Hayes and the ludicrously-misnamed development plane for Booker all over again although it is a dead issue now.’


(Lawrence looks alert and intelligent a bit like Tonto or the Lone Ranger when a Sioux war party is nearby.)

*development plan*

ImpeturbableLawrence wrote:
‘Careful “roloWWFC” and ”gpn01” I suspect a trap – possibly 'everstperson' is a BFP plant designed to get us all slagging Steve Hayes and the ludicrously-misnamed development plane for Booker all over again although it is a dead issue now.’


(Lawrence looks alert and intelligent a bit like Tonto or the Lone Ranger when a Sioux war party is nearby.)

Am aware that this could simply be a stirring-things-up exercise to generate a bit of controvery. That's why I always keep to facts and not emotions or emoticons ;)

A wise policy - particularly with regard to emoticons.

ImpeturbableLawrence wrote:

everestman wrote:
WWFC wouldn't be in this situation if they got the go ahead to relocate with Wasps to the proposed sports village in Booker Airfield. They'll be in a worse situation when Wasps go elsewhere.

The choice of the name ‘everest man’ – a name redolent of double-glazing - to write in support of a former double-glazing salesman’s discredited plan makes me suspect a wind-up.

That wasn't 'double-dealing' by any chance ?
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Some people's backgrounds can be quite opaque (ljust like poor quality double-glazing)
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The ex-owner was a (sub-) prime example of someone who eventually misjudged the Window of Opportunity - to jump through , that is
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It is said that some local politicians nearly got dragged into / through it.
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Would you believe it ? Some people become so self-obsessed as to be virtually clueless. And ultimately useless - even to themselves