West Brom news as Mark Miles meets shareholders after what Guochuan Lai expects
New West Brom chief executive Mark Miles met with minority shareholders Shareholders 4 Albion and admitted that majority shareholder Guochuan Lai expects him to maintain an open and transparent dialogue with fans.
The club announced on Wednesday 31 May that the CEO Ron Gourlay would be leaving on 14 June after submitting his resignation in March, with the move being kept confidential.
Since then, there have been ongoing rumours around the Hawthorns regarding the sale of the club with The Athletic revealing on 15 June that Egyptian billionaire Elkashashy and his group along with Chris Farnell were in advanced talks to buy a minority stake bringing an end to Lai’s nightmare majority control.
Albion’s owners are believed to be open to a sale and value the club at a figure which would include paying off the current debts (Express and Star, 22 June).
And in a meeting with S4A, Miles was hell-bent on improving relationships and dialogue with fans which has been expected of him from the Chinese businessman.
Talking via Express & Star (8 July), he said: “I have the autonomy to run the football club and do that without anybody else.
“My role is to communicate on behalf of the football club.
“I’ve already met with both, explained where the position of the football club is. Hopefully, we can have positive relationship. I would be lying to say there are no challenges ahead, clearly, there are. We need to move payers on to be competitive.
“But we’re in a positive place.”
Rich coming from Lai
As new chief executive, Miles is certainly expected to boost and improve the relationship, dialogue and transparency between the club and the fans as it’s been dour and non-existent for some time.
With so much going on within the club right now, especially with regards to a potential sale of the club and manager Carlos Corberan potentially not having enough funds to strengthen his squad and excite the fans again, the supporters and shareholders certainly need to know what is going on behind the scenes.
That is Miles’ job to do, but the fact that Lai expects that from the new chief is so rich given the Chinese majority shareholder has been a rather poor communicator throughout his tenure and has been protested against and lambasted for his dreadful control of the whole club.
How is Miles expected to improve relationships and dialogue if Lai can’t do it himself? Many of the ongoing problems at The Hawthorns right now stem from Lai’s lacklustre leadership and just like Gourlay before him, Miles will be awfully expected to operate with one arm tied behind his back.
In other West Brom news, Nick Powell has rejected the Baggies in favour of a move to Stockport County.