It is with regret that the board of Stockport County Football Club announce the departure of Managing Director Keith Agar with immediate effect.

During his time with the club Keith was faced with many difficult tasks and achieved a significant amount of progress on our behalf, for which we remain extremely grateful.

However, a recent disagreement over strategy has unfortunately left the situation untenable. Keith offered his resignation at the recent Board Meeting and it was accepted.

Most particularly Keith’s unhappiness surrounded a recent meeting approved by the Trust Board with Brian Kennedy, a meeting which was set up to identify Cheshire Sports long term-plans for Edgeley Park and to explore ways of bringing forward Stockport County’s opportunity of no longer being the junior partner in our stadium.

Conversations:

The resultant conversations were open and honest and whilst the Board fully appreciates Keith’s hard work it accepted his resignation as it appeared from his comments that his faith in fan ownership was not necessarily as it had appeared.

So far we have found ourselves in the unfortunate position of losing two Chief Executive’s, however, the common theme is that neither have joined us through a normal recruitment process, a process which we will now undertake as it is vital that we go forward with a professional businessman committed to the ethos of fan ownership, which, by the way does not preclude an entrepreneurial and dynamic spirit.

Positive:

Indeed, we have had positive conversations this week with Jim Gannon, where we have discussed the strategic planning of the club’s developments over the next five years, on and off the pitch. Jim will be helping us with those plans and we are exploring various avenues to generate the income to support him in his ambitious plans on the pitch.

Jim speaks of progress and professionalism, and indeed it’s only a professional and progressive business which is prepared to take tough decisions and move forward with a collective will to succeed.

And, with your continued, magnificent support we will succeed.

Let’s hope all our wishes for the football club we all love come to fruition in 2007.

Happy New Year.