Northampton Town Football Club

KT: The East Stand development adds around a hundred parking spaces. Nothing else changes for now so for the next few years we are better off for the short and medium term and nothing is being swallowed up. We are having conversations and there is the claret car park which is a very large car park which can offer many more spaces and we have a relationship with the owner of the Duston Mill which is another large car park nearby. If any parking was lost then we would of course consider that and we would plan to replace that parking. Nothing is formalised because we don’t need it to be right now but we will have a plan in place should things change.

 

KT: We wouldn’t do anything without consultation with you. If you have a season ticket you won’t be moved mid-season, other than for construction issues which we hope will be kept to a minimum, that is a commitment we can make. We expect the West Stand hospitality seats will stay and people will still enjoy hospitality in the West Stand as well as the addition of the East Stand boxes.

 

KT: From a football perspective I am not a huge fan of expanding just the away end to get more away fans in. If you were purely making a financial decision of course it helps but previous experience tells me it is not always the best thing for the home club and it gives the away team an advantage. Do we want 4,000 or 5,000 away fans in at Sixfields? Financially you might but from a football point of view you might not. We have run the numbers. We had two home sell outs (just about) and five away sell outs this season. We run the numbers and the East Stand offers a much better return on investment for the club ahead of the North and South Stands and that is our priority for now. We are making a big investment to complete the East Stand and we can and will consider the ends later on.

 

KT: We can’t do much about the sun unfortunately. I was at Tottenham a few weeks ago and they had the same problem, the sun was right in my face. It happens unfortunately. The type of glass we use will help and there will be blinds to ensure we comply with the alcohol restrictions and that will also help.

 

KT: They will. Nothing will change in terms of the amount of tickets we can offer away supporters. We need away fans for the atmosphere but you don’t want away fans dominating the attendance at our home games. It is about a balance. 

 

KT: The seats for the West Stand is something we are discussing, about whether we are doing that this summer or next summer but it is in our minds. We have looked at extra storage for the club store and there will be a retail kiosk in the East Stand. A lot of our trade, more and more of it in fact, is now online and we need to look at whether a bigger lounge is needed or whether we need a bigger club store. That is a decision we will make.

 

KT: That is also part of the conversation as are changes to Carr’s Bar. Building the link road will allow us to close to traffic outside the West Stand and to allow us to develop things on the West side. We need to be careful comparing football to rugby, the regulations around football mean we have a much shorter window in which to sell alcohol and we are doing research about how more food choices affect spending. We think it will be better suited to have a fans village area on the west side, given that is how fans arrive at the stadium and the natural bowl the surrounding areas create.

 

JW: There will be more coverage and more games shown live in League One, five games will be chosen every weekend from a combination of Leagues One and Two. The EFL have said they will give notice to fans of any changes, months at a time, and we have been told to expect a game will be moved for live TV on average every 6 weeks for a club in League One and there will be a fair spread of coverage across the clubs in the league.

 

KT: We have recruited good players before so we hope we can do it again. We think both players are looking to play in the Championship. We would buy Marc in a heartbeat if the numbers quoted in the media were accurate, no question, but he wants to play in the Championship which we respect. We are ambitious but we won’t put the club at risk. We will do what we can within reason. We would never say we are something we are not and we will happily talk to any billionaire waiting in the wings! We are hopeful we can bring that type of quality of player in to the club again next season.

 

KT: I would say we will need to recruit well but I don’t agree that we have struggled or that the fans have not enjoyed this season. We will finish mid-table and that is an achievement in itself. People’s views are very results based. When we lose a game we are terrible, when we win a game we are great. We have to remove the emotion and look at the overall picture and we feel we have had a decent season. We started with a budget this season that we increased a few times as we went along and that won’t go down. We will start the budget next season where we ended this season. Some long term injuries chewed up a lot of the budget this season and that will help. The reality is that the budget is never enough, whatever it is, you always want more. Some clubs are spending more money than us, but we are competing with and sometimes beating those clubs and that is something that Jon and the players deserve huge credit for. We will never be the biggest spenders in this league and nor should we be in the interests of the club’s stability but we will always give our all and compete. Don’t forget that the Marc Leonard and Kieron Bowie we have today are not the same players we signed. Both have improved immeasurably given the time and space and the developing we have done with them and that is a something we should remember. 

 

KT: I disagree with that statement, I think we have a lot of good players contracted to us. Use of the loan system is important to us, as it is to clubs throughout the EFL, that is not unique to us. We have a recruitment team responsible for bringing the players in and we have every confidence in them. They know what they are looking for in terms of attributes and the fact the likes of Leonard and Bowie came back to us shows we are doing something right.

 

KT: The view is the EFL and all clubs were disappointed with the lack of consultation. We understand the pressures on the calendar but this decision should form part of a wider solution that requires consultation across the game involving clubs, fans, leagues and everyone involved. The Football Governance Bill has had a second reading in Parliament which is important. I am not usually a big fan of regulation and football should have been able to sort its own problems out but it hasn’t and we look forward to the implementation of the regulator.

 

KT: It came about through a random conversation at an event. A friend of mine got talking to Nigel and we were put in touch and it went from there. He has been looking at a few clubs and been approached by a few clubs but this felt the right fit. He brings finances to the club, his business acumen is something we will lean on, we have a shared view that anything he gets involved in he wants to make better as do we, and our discussions are getting more in depth. He is a great guy, a very nice man, he knows and loves his football and we will see how it evolves. 

 

JW: The club have invested more over the last few years and playing at Sileby is a big step forward as is playing more games at Sixfields. The team is currently run through the Community Trust but it sits across both the club and the Community Trust we have invested more in the media profile and covering the team, giving them the platform they deserve. They are at a level now that is very competitive and we are looking at that. It won’t be an overnight thing but we want to keep growing and moving forward.

 

KT: We are having conversations about Ian Sampson’s role. He has done a wonderful job of stepping in to Colin’s shoes and we said we would talk about things at the end of the season and that’s what we will do over the next few weeks. In terms of players we want who are out of contract, we will make offers. Some may take them, some may decide to look around, but that’s football. We are relaxed with where we are, we will deal with whatever the summer brings and we will work hard to keep moving forward - that’s natural evolution.

 

KT: No, they are where  they are for now, there is naturally a cost to putting the spaces further away from the stadium. The closer they are to the stadium, the better and more cost effective it is. It is not a cost we want to incur now, we will incur the cost of moving them if we need to for South Stand expansion.

 

JW: Many clubs have stopped producing programmes altogether and that’s a sign of how sales across the game are falling. We want to keep printed programmes going for as long as we can but of course it needs to make sense financially, it would not be sensible to do otherwise. The size of the page this season was slightly smaller, the number of pages remained the same.