Alan Whiteley

During the rebranding debate a lot of falsehoods have been allowed to be touted which included the lie that the Malaysians were going to walk away.These views have been fed to us by fans leaders and fans a like yet there was never any truth to them. Why has Alan Whiteley only now come forward and admitted that the Malaysians had no plans to walk away when he could have come out with this statement earlier and scorched some of the false rumour and speculation that was used to influence the pro red argument?

This I believe is the exchange of Q & A you're talking about :

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Q: Dato Chan said plans for a change of colours and badge would be scrapped, but now they are back on. Why?

A: The statement issued reflected a change of mood they had as a result of the abuse and public outpouring of opinion. At no point did they threaten to end their connection to this football club. Certainly, they would have looked at plans again and taken different decisions, maybe looked at new external investment or looked to sell the club on to somebody else.

But I believe what has heartened them over the last three or four weeks is that there has been a considerable mood swing of opinion. People who support this football club have written to them directly, e-mailed directly. Those who have written have asked them not to pull out.

There have been letters and e-mails direct to Malaysia or via the club.

And despite all the conspiracy theories we log every letter, every e-mail. We don’t write them ourselves and we certainly didn’t leak anything. Generally, we do tell the truth whenever we can.’

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I read that as having been very worrying if they had re-thought things through, especially the looking to sell the club on to somebody else point!

I think that entirely justifies the concerns many of us has if the rebranding had not gone ahead.

This I believe is the exchange of Q & A you're talking about :

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Q: Dato Chan said plans for a change of colours and badge would be scrapped, but now they are back on. Why?

A: The statement issued reflected a change of mood they had as a result of the abuse and public outpouring of opinion. At no point did they threaten to end their connection to this football club. Certainly, they would have looked at plans again and taken different decisions, maybe looked at new external investment or looked to sell the club on to somebody else.

But I believe what has heartened them over the last three or four weeks is that there has been a considerable mood swing of opinion. People who support this football club have written to them directly, e-mailed directly. Those who have written have asked them not to pull out.

There have been letters and e-mails direct to Malaysia or via the club.

And despite all the conspiracy theories we log every letter, every e-mail. We don’t write them ourselves and we certainly didn’t leak anything. Generally, we do tell the truth whenever we can.’

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I read that as having been very worrying if they had re-thought things through, especially the looking to sell the club on to somebody else point!

I think that entirely justifies the concerns many of us has if the rebranding had not gone ahead.

But the scaremongering was a little stronger than this though. We were told that they would walk away which is certainly not the case and even the pasted passage you posted only says "maybe looked at". I just think that if some fans had been given the whole truth then a few of them would have not been frightened to reluctantly accept the rebranding because many of them thought that it was accept or die and had no other choice.

But these answers were obviously going to be very carefully phrased.

I'm still convinced having read that article, that if the rebranding had not gone ahead, we could well have ended up in possible liquidation (i.e. if no alternative buyers could have been found quickly), but we'll never know now.

Perhaps I'm misreading it, but that's still my view.

But these answers were obvioulsy going to be very carefully phrased.

I'm still convinced having read that article, that if the rebranding had not gone ahead, we could well have ended up in liquidation.

Either of us could be right. I do agree that it is a big gamble as nothing is certain. But I just think that it suited some parties to tell us that its either red or dead thus limiting fans opinion to beleiving that they had no choice but to accept rebranding.Now that fans are beginning to realsie that that this was not the case then you will now see unrest building.