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After almost nine years in charge of Hull City, owners Assem and Ehab Allam continue to seek a buyer to end their long reign at the KCOM Stadium.

The father and son partnership have drawn strong criticism from a section of supporters and regularly been the focal point of protests in recent times.

A number of proposed takeover deals have eventually come to nothing and now the Allam family are in charge of a Championship club with falling attendances and a projected income at its lowest level for a decade.

Steps have been taken to address some of the club's problems and Ehab Allam has met with football writer Philip Buckingham for a first in-depth newspaper interview in over 12 months.

Philip Buckingham: We're two months into the season and after a sustained period of falling attendances, you’ve taken the step to offer half price tickets for the visit of Derby County later this month. Why now?

Ehab Allam: The family hasn’t been to a home game for a long time. The divide between ourselves and certain groups of fans is well-documented and that’s been going on for a long time.

We had the England under-21s game (on September 9) that the family attended and you know what, we actually enjoyed the game and it was good to see a decent crowd in the stadium. That was really the catalyst and motivation because it was enjoyable to see a full stadium. Why wouldn’t we want that?

We thought we’d try and do something so we picked the Derby game with it being half-term. Let’s try and get the crowd up, let’s try and build an atmosphere. We want to try and bring a bit back.

How important do you feel it is to generate a feel-good atmosphere around the club again? It’s not had that for two or three years now.

It’s not had it for a while now. There’s been animosity between certain fan groups and ourselves but I think we’ve done quite a lot in the last 12 to 18 months to try and change that. If you look at the crest, the naming, we’re a lot more consistent in the use of Hull City. We’re doing things more in line with what fans want.

We’ve also gone back on the concessions, giving the fans the chance to bring them back.

If you consider what’s been done in that last 12 months, it’s all been positive. We’ve done our bit to try and bring positivity back, reversed a lot of things, and we need fans back to contribute now. It’s time for fans to jump back on board.

But there will still be a lot of sceptical supporters out there who don’t want to hear that. How do you convince them?

Scepticism is talk. You can be sceptical about someone talking when they’re not backing it up. These are things we’ve done. This isn’t talk. This isn’t us saying ‘we’ll do this, we’ll do that’. We’ve done it. What’s there to be sceptical about? You can be negative but not sceptical.

Watch: Huddersfield Town 3-0 Hull City - Philip Buckingham's verdict

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You want supporters to judge you on your recent actions and forget what went on before?

How else do you judge? By words or by actions? We’ve done what we said we’d do. You could be sceptical 18 months ago but not now.

Focusing on the falling attendances, how concerning is the current pattern?

There was a misconception about the old zonal pricing, there was an underlying issue in the local economy. Things are hard at the moment, there’s less confidence in the economy. Even if you do have disposable income, the uncertainty that comes with things like Brexit means there’s people less willing to spend on things like football. It’s not just here, look at the whole of Hull city centre.

But we’ve actually lost members since we’ve gone back to concessions. I always thought it would. The whole idea of the zonal system was to have affordable prices for people who couldn’t afford to come.

The lowest adult price used to be £252 and that’s gone up to over £400. That was a decision made by the fans but it was one we were fully supportive of. We’ve gone back to concessions and now it’s a case of trying to reengage with those that had left previously. We have lost fans in that change.

How much of the fall is down to the club’s actions in the last five years? Are you not culpable?

There is a downward trend in general when a club gets relegated. Or there has been in the history of this club. I know it’s not the case elsewhere. Looking at clubs like Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday, they’ve still got decent attendances after falling into League One. Leeds are the same.

Everything is relative. Their attendance drop might not be as bad as ours but if you look historically, there’s always been significant drops. We’ve changed the way we report on attendances as well.

We don’t give away many free tickets. When we first bought the club there was between 1,500 and 2,000 tickets being given away every game so that gave a false impression of attendances. We don’t do that. That figure is below 300.

But do you not accept that there’s a portion of fans that are staying away because of your continued ownership?

Yes, of course I accept that. You only have to look at newspapers to see what’s gone on over the last few years. But we’ve done a lot to remedy that now. There’s no excuses. It's time to support your team.

You’ve mentioned the things you’ve done to draw fans back – the badge, use of the name, concessions – but there’s still a strained relationship. How does that possibly heal with you in charge?

They say time is a good healer and if you look at our actions we’ve done a lot to try and put things right. There’s not much more we can do. It’s a strained relationship with the ownership but we have done a lot to realign the club with what supporters want.

At least now there’s no barrier between fans and supporting their team. With some fans I don’t think you can ever get that relationship back because of us but we’ve shown we’re open to rebuilding bridges.

I can’t control how other people feel about us but irrespective of that there’s no barrier to supporting your team.

The Hull City Supporters Trust would argue that you've not been open because the biggest group isn’t allowed into Supporter Committee Meetings. Why is that?

Because we wanted to make progress. A lot of the strained relationship with fans was between us and the Supporters Trust. There are other fans groups. There are fans who are not part of any groups. Our relationship with the Supporters Trust ended up affecting what happens with other fans and that’s not fair.

Look at the progress we’ve made since we excluded them from meetings. All this progress has come from speaking to other fan groups and avoiding the Supporters Trust because the relationship with them was negative.

(Image: Jack Harland)

It’s well documented what happen in previous meetings and if you are genuine about wanting to make improvement then you have to be respectful to the people you’re speaking with. You have to look for middle ground. That wasn’t the case with the Supporters Trust. We felt they were disingenuous and had a different agenda to everyone else.

That wasn’t a helpful approach to those meetings. Since they’ve been excluded we’ve made a lot more progress. We now get the chance to understand the fan base and try to work with them to achieve goals. I can’t see the situation with the Supporters Trust changing.

The easiest way to build bridges in relationship is to say sorry for the mistakes you’ve made. Why not apologise to supporters for the mistakes you’ve made?

I’ve apologised before haven’t I? We have apologised in the past and we’ve rectified things.

If you had your time again, what would you do differently? Was the membership scheme a mistake?

The membership scheme, allowing people more affordable monthly payments, is better than doing it one big go. With the zonal system we lost fans because of introducing it and now we’ve lost fans because of reinstating concessions.

I actually think the scheme was a good one but misunderstood. I would still believe in that scheme but the introduction of it and the communication was probably rushed and poor. We could’ve done better there.

We should’ve taken more time to get a better understanding of what fans wanted before introducing it but that’s irrelevant now because we’ve gone back to concessions.

The way you talk about long-term planning is at odds with someone wanting to sell the club. Do you really expect to no longer be the vice chairman a year from now?

No but I don’t think it’s at odds. Everything we’ve ever done is what we’ve thought was best for the club. We don’t get any other benefit from having the club. We are local and have a local business but our business doesn’t benefit from having a football club.

Every decision made here, rightly or wrongly, is for the benefit of the football club. In some cases we have made the wrong decision. If we have made mistakes then we certainly apologise for them. It’s never been our intention.

We care about the club and that’s why we still plan long-term. There’s no conflict. We bought the club for the right reasons and we run the club with the right intentions. That’s for the long-term view.

We might think short-term in regards to an exit strategy but we still want what’s best for the club long-term. That’s why we’ve not sold it yet because we want it to go to the right buyer.

We said at the beginning that we wanted to get out of the boom and bust cycle the club has been in under several ownerships. We don’t want that in the future.

I do feel we’ve been misunderstood in some of the decisions we’ve made but it’s only ever been with the best intentions.

Why do you feel you’ve been misunderstood?

I do accept that our communications and our approach hasn’t been the best at times but you have to move forward. As I said earlier I feel we’re moving back in the right direction. Ultimately we still want what’s best for the club.

There will always be a section of fans that will say they won’t return until you leave. Can you give an update on where you are with your attempts to sell the club? Or are you in it for the long haul now?

We’re still looking for a sale. We’ve got some interested parties at the moment so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

How advanced are discussions with those interested parties?

I’m not in a position to say at the moment. It would be unfair of me to say.

Would you hope the club could be sold in the next six to 12 months?

Yes.

The club has been for sale for over five years now, why do you think a deal hasn’t materialised?

We had a deal that went all the way through to signing the sale documents but that didn’t pass the Premier League test.

The last three years have shown it’s not easy to sell a football club. If you look at Hull and its location, size of fan base, gate receipts, you can see why you might want to go and buy a Sheffield United or Wednesday.

Has your asking price been sensible?

Yes, we believe so. There are ways to value your football club and our valuation has been in line with what you’d expect for a club such as ourselves.

But if you had your house up for sale for five years and it didn’t sell at a certain price then that was the reason why.

Then you have to look at where your house is. Location, location, location. Fan base, fan base, fan base.

But other clubs have sold in the last few years? Barnsley, for example. I’m not sure that’s any more attractive.

Barnsley was the same people who made an offer for Hull City, if you recall that deal (in 2016). We thought a deal was possible but for reasons I won’t go into that didn’t happen.

When you do leave the club, whenever that might be, do you maintain you want it to be left in good hands?

It will be left in good hands with people who can invest and take the club forward. That’s what we’d like and hope for. It’s not necessarily what we’ll end up with but that’s what we’d like.

Last season it was pretty well documented that the asking price for the club was £50m to cover the debts owed to the family…

We do have debts owed to the family but how does anyone value a club? We’ve looked at the valuation and what the squad is worth and we’ve done an assessment. Other people have bought into that which is why we’ve had offers. Whatever valuation we’ve made, we get people matching that.

Whether or not they can come up with the funding is something different. Deals have been proposed but people have pulled out because it's not been a single family ownership. It’s been a consortium with multiple funders.

If one falls through, the whole deal falls through. That’s how it’s been in the past. The Dai family went all the way with one pot of money. The last time something was close one of the two funders fell through. It’s difficult with consortiums to keep everyone together through the due diligence.

Are you able to say what the asking price for the club is now?

No. It’s not really relevant to fans what the asking price is.

But the perception has always been the debt represented what you’d look for as an asking price. Assem Allam has said that previously in an interview.

If you look deeper, the way we’ve managed the club in general is to manage the debt relating to the value of investments. I wouldn’t put £100m into something that was worth £50m. Whatever our investment is or whatever the debt is relates to the value intrinsic within the club.

We haven’t put £100m in and ended up with nothing. Look at the squad and the valuation of what it is this season. The squad value for us is above the asking price. It was last year and it is now.

Your critics would point to the money that’s gone out of the club. They sing “Where’s the money gone?”

We’ve been pretty clear about where the money has gone. The debt has come down from £88m to £50m. The money has been repaying debt.

(Image: Focus)

Why hasn’t it come down more than that given the money that’s come into the club in recent years?

Look at the accounts and look at the wage bill in the Premier League. Look at the investments. You spend a lot of money running a club. Where do you think it goes?

Well, £21m has gone out of the club through interest payments during your time in charge of the club.

Yes because we’ve taken out loans to fund the club and we’re paying the interest on those.

How would you describe the club’s current financial health?

In football terms? Fantastic. Try and find other clubs that have what we have. They’re few and far between.

But there must be challenges ahead now that the Premier League money has gone?

Of course but we’ve been managing that. We feel well-equipped.

You’ve made profit in each of the last three seasons. Is that possible this season given the fall in turnover?

Football is a strange industry. You can almost guarantee your income at the start of the year and you can go up and down accordingly.

At the start of this season we could’ve said ‘Let’s recover more money and sell players’. We could’ve sold Bowen, we could’ve sold Grosicki, sell, sell, sell. We could’ve quickly improved the balance sheet for this season but we made the decision to retain key players to target the top six.

We decided against making a profit to stand a better chance of pushing for promotion.

So you’re prepared for losses this season?

Not big losses but yes. But that gives us an opportunity to be top six. I believe we’re in a much stronger position than a lot of clubs in the Championship.

Coming tomorrow, Ehab Allam on Grant McCann, the exit of Nigel Adkins and the future of City's star names.

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