'The focus now has to be on where the club goes from here' - Robin Sainty

It’s inevitable that a lot of anger and frustration will be vented, but the focus now has to be on where the club goes from here, and that will require a great deal of introspection and soul searching, and the honesty to accept that mistakes have been made and that criticism is justified.

It certainly isn’t a time for nursing fragile egos or defending personal empires because everything should be up for review after a season for which the word disastrous seems barely adequate.

I have no interest in scapegoating individuals because this has been a collective failure, but there are two main areas that concern me off the field.

The first of these is the growing mismatch between the Board’s vision of a friendly community club of which everyone feels a part and the reality of what is actually happening on the ground, with fans feeling increasingly disconnected and unappreciated.

The second, and directly related to the first is the turnover of staff. I note that the Official Supporter Panel, who do an excellent job of representing fans, raised this in their last meeting with the club and were told that departures this year were in line with the national average. However, there is a degree of sophistry in that.

When you consider that those leaving included Ben Kensell, the chief operating officer (and one third of the Executive board as it was then constituted), the head of commercial development, the head of supporter engagement and the head of supporter services, it is clear that what might seem average numbers hide a significant amount of seniority and experience leaving the club, resulting in service vacuums at crucial times.

Those departures, of course, have affected the continuity of supporter engagement with new relationships regularly having to be forged at a time when fan dissatisfaction was growing due to what was happening on the pitch, but also issues like the replacement of face-to-face service in the ticket office by a telephone queueing system that is mind-bendingly labyrinthine.

What’s more, an organisation that is regularly having to restructure internally is going to struggle to maintain full focus on its key objectives.

It is, however, important to appreciate that, despite all that’s gone wrong, there are some excellent people at the club who now have to put together a plan for City to bounce back, not just in terms of success on the pitch, but also by rebuilding bridges with a disaffected fanbase.

However, the primary focus of most fans will inevitably be on what happens on the pitch as Dean Smith finally gets the opportunity to work with his own choice of players.

Smith will have to win over those fans who still mourn the departure of Daniel Farke, but he deserves to be judged on a squad that he wants, rather than inherited, although the pressure will build if City don’t hit the ground running in August.

Inevitably, recruitment will come under close scrutiny, with too many of this season’s arrivals failing to make the necessary impact, although it has to be said that the likes of Christos Tzolis, Milot Rashica, Billy Gilmour and Mathias Normann came with reputations that their performances didn’t live up to.

I’m not suggesting that the recruitment team exactly covered themselves with glory, but the players themselves have to accept their share of the blame as well.

Ultimately, we are where we are and recriminations and demonisation of individuals might provide some short-term satisfaction, but the issue of paramount importance is that the club now moves on from this low point.

To do that it needs both to have a clear strategy and to communicate it effectively to the fans and media so that we can all move on together.