Luther Blissett - Jubilee Honours List

I would withdraw the offer if I was the club. I personally don’t think the situation reflects well on anyone involved, Luther included.

Give if to Kelly Smith, the most capped professional footballer born and bred in Watford. 117 England caps, 46 goals for England.

 

What did people think of the mural ?

A worthy representation or could have been better .

 

Don't see how it reflects on Luther. He isn't the one trying to railroad anyone into being a puppet for PR.

 

Don’t think it would help either party, least of all Watford, to withdraw the offer.

Far better to leave it on the table, have a meeting with Luther as requested and lay out exactly what the role you’re proposing entails.

And don’t do anything else like paint murals or make statements about the man in the interim.

It’s really not hard - if Duxbury has found time to speak to Andrew French on a number of occasions to rubbish Leventhal’s stories, I fail to believe he can’t find the time to meet Luther over such a role. After all, he’s always at pains to tell us that’s exactly the type of thing his chairmanship entails.

Only hold-up I can envisage is if Luther is demanding Gino is at any meeting in his role as owner - and Gino, being Gino, won’t make himself available.

 

I doubt very much Luther is making any such demands about Gino being involved.

 

More total disrespect to a living legend in Luther. Yes the mural is top notch but why oh why put the text at the bottom when Luther asked for it not to? What are the club actually trying to attempt here?

 

No attempt about it, sadly. They are succeeding in getting some weirdo fans to turn on Luther for somehow daring to turn down this honour, that he was never consulted about and which clearly comes with implications he's made it clear he doesn't want.

 

Moog, we are often on the same side of things - and our end view on this is the same too I imagine - we want Luther involved and don’t like how the club have behaved.

But it is worth noting, Luther hasn’t turned down the offer. He has stipulated he just wants to meet the club about it - so in that respect, I also don’t think he is aware of any implications it comes with either seeing as he himself has said they’ve not spoken about it.

The clubs error - and it’s a big one when related to this matter in isolation - was to just assume he’d be bowled over by it and that’s that. The statement should’ve waited until he’d accepted - and god knows who thought a mural was a good idea when he clearly had privately been angling for a meeting first.

I don’t like this ownership anymore than yourself - but I don’t believe it was cynical or an attempt to ‘force’ anything. I just think it’s rank incompetence and likely a signal of a boardroom that is terrible at communication with an admin team, who are probably forced to do things on the hoof.

 

I suppose he could have made his point privately, it was six weeks between the press release and this Mondays Muralgate - especially as he has not publicly said he does not want to take up the offer. He could have said yes/no in that time. I doubt GT had much time for Simpson, The Russos and Bassini, but he never thought he was bigger than the club itself. Any criticism was not about how he was treated. Nor was there any thought that an Honourayposition gave you some sort of executive role to deliver change. The club under previous ownership dispensed with Luther as an employee, so it’s not as if prior to the last 24 months the club and Luther have had a continuous love in.

 

Well one of his points was that he didn't want the mural to mislead fans. If the club refused his request to alter the mural then how is he going to speak privately to fans? He made that very clear, why have you ignored that part?

 

I think the real reason is that Gino wanted Luther to look after the safe keys and we know what that leads to.

The club, it's ownership and management aren't what they were when Luther was a player. He's a grown man who can decide if he wants to lend his name or brand to it. If it was me I would want some assurances and control and if that is not forthcoming walk away. It wouldn't affect whether I still support the club or not.

Bare minimum I'd want some explanation as to why the PR & communication has been such a disaster over the recent years, with a firm plan as to how to rectify it.

 

But it isn’t an executive role… it’s literally a honorary title. I accept though as with a knighthood or whatever that if you don’t believe in the institution granting the honour you shouldn’t accept it.

 

The club did a good thing in offering this position but executed poorly. No reason for them to not speak with him about this first to put his mind at rest. If he wanted particular assurances then they could then take a view whether they could give those. I doubt very much he would be expecting to be part of the club decision making, at least not key decisions but it would have brought him closer to the club he loves. As others have said, other owners have treated him very poorly or ignored him. All the Pozzos have done is insult him by comparing Gray to him, and now offer him this honorary position but in a very amateurish way.
There would be nothing to stop him resigning from the position in the future if he didn't want to be associated with the direction the club were moving in and that would have been a powerful statement in itself.

 

Fair enough, but I do believe it was an entirely cynical move by the club to railroad Luther. Just read their initial statement about it. Why on earth would they release a carefully worded piece trumpeting how they had offered Luther the position, despite having not discussed it with him, except to make it look like he was being difficult if/when he did not accept it?

There's no way any business releases that statement unless it's part of a strategy IMO. The club has had poor relations with Luther, but rather than fix them, they try a PR game to outmanoeuvre him.

And you can see on Twitter that it's worked to some extent. People consider Luther to be difficult or ungrateful for not bowing down and thanking the club for this empty gesture.

You're correct that Luther hasn't rejected it, as such, but he's made it clear he doesn't accept it in its current state, so that's semantics IMO.

Luther has a connection with the fans. Most fans. Why would he accept this 'honour' if he felt it was selling out?

 

Nobody should ever question the integrity of Luther. If people do or are they can just **** off.

 

Quite. One the one side you have a club legend, lovely bloke, loyal and bursting with integrity.

On the other you have the likes of Pozzo, Duxbury and Bayat.

Chalk and cheese.

 

Luther was given the choice with his OBE, to accept or reject it. There was no statement from the Palace saying that the OBE had been offered before he was aware of it.

 

He made it clear that he requested they not go ahead with the mural, unless you are accusing him of lying.

GT walked away from his role under Bassini because he didn't trust the man.

Isn't Luther entitled to his own opinion of our current CEO and owner? Is he obliged to follow some protocol when they try to ambush him with what he may see as an empty and poisoned gesture after keeping him in the cold, quite openly, for so long?

 

Guest speaker at Amersham Town Football Club on Oct 8th for anybody interested. Graham Taylor was president of the club for a few years and my dad was chairmen!

 

I know who you are.

 

It’s a cult

 

Exactly, he walked away, told him privately he was doing so and then made a public declaration. - if Luther does not want to be the Life President, he had (and still has) ample time to tell them. The fact that he had not made it clear he does want to be life president. Nor that he does not, after everyone knows the club want him to take up the role. Does reflect badly on him. It does not question his integrity to say he could have made it clear by August if he wanted the position. He could say publicly I would gladly accept it in the future, but not until the situation changes.

Using the OBE analogy, you write in and say yes I want the offer or you decline. You don’t say I have not accepted it but neither have I turned it down, as I have reservations about the state.

I am sure the club want him to be involved for their purposes not his. That must be clear to all. That alone could have led to a definitive answer.

The mural I assumed was commissioned because there was no indication he didn’t want the position. But you are right it should not have been completed until he had made it clear he wanted to accept. That bit reflects very badly on the club, as does making a public statement on the offer before speaking privately to Luther.

Several months have now gone on. Probably best to remove the offer until they have some certainty that he would want to accept it.

The whole thing is a mess.

 

The mess is entirely of the club's making. I'm not gonna speculate what Luther has and hasn't said to the club, but anyone who, given the choice between Luther, Duxberry and Pozzo, decides the latter two are the ones acting with integrity is, frankly, deranged.

I know Luther. I don't personally know Dux or Gino, but I would trust Luther with the lives of my children before I'd trust the other two with a fiver.

See this, this right here is CoG in action. Believing that this was anything other than a cynical ploy by the club to entrap Luther and blame him for not accepting their mean spirited pr stunt.

 

It really is ^ Flavor Aid drinker 2 posts up.

 

Has this legend signed up yet ?

 

Wouldn’t expect him to turn up being interviewed by Nigel Farage!

 

Great watch @wfc4ever thanks for posting it!

 

Nice interview. Farage came over as almost as nice as Luther, which was a bit of a surprise.

 

Trust me when I tell you, he absolutely is not.

 

Luther came across as such a decent person, which is absolutely no surprise. Farage came across quite well, which shows how dangerous he actually is. There is an enormous irony with Farage celebrating Luther’s achievements as a first generation immigrant.

 

Shame he felt the need to take money from an organisation like GB News

 

I believe you!

 

Isn't Luther also quite pally with former hooligan and massive racist Dougie Brimson?

 

Has accepted the role of life president.

“Most of all, I hope Watford fans see my acceptance of this role as an indication that I see change for the better happening at the club, on and off the pitch."

Good to hear!

 

Luther isn't just a club legend from a football perspective but also from the tireless support he's given to the local community. He really is Mr Watford and there's little doubt he wants what's best for the club.

Duxbury, however, has repeatedly shown that he's a cynical manipulator of fan opinion (as well as a tribunal finding he was dishonest in the Tevez saga when he was at West Ham) and I've little doubt that this latest move is motivated in no small part by a desire to say 'look, everything's great again, Luther's onboard, you can stop questioning us now'.

Time will tell if any changes to the way the club's run really have been made.