'Senior management cannot now be accused of hiding'

"You should be cynical," said Matt Jackson to the room full of Wolves supporters. He had no fear of disappointment there. This was always going to be a tough crowd.

They kept it respectful, though, at the fans forum at Molineux on Tuesday, which you can hear now on BBC Sounds.

There will be credit due to the Wolves hierarchy in the long run for putting themselves through this hair-shirt exercise in public examination. It's the least they could do, you might think, but occasions like this have become somewhat rarer at big football clubs in recent years.

Fans of many teams can go years without hearing from their club chairman or owner in all but the most sanitised format.

Conspiracy theories were not hard to find once the event was announced, but Wolves asked the BBC to handle the ticket ballot so they could not be accused of selecting a friendly audience – although where you would find one of those among Wolves fans at the moment is a tricky thought.

Your correspondent can personally testify that questions were selected by muttering eeny, meeny and picking one of the dozens of raised hands.

In the long run, the substance of the answers may matter less than the fact that they were being aired in such a public forum at all. With their team having been bottom of the Premier League and doomed for months, many fans have already formed an opinion of Rob Edwards and Matt Jackson, although such views are always reversible if fortunes change.

Their messages, and the strategy they aired for preparing for next season, made sense and were firmly delivered. If they are made real with encouraging results in the early part of next season there will be a more sympathetic hearing next time.

It should be recorded that Edwards and Jackson were both engaged in discussion with fans for some time after the end of the recording. Everyone present, ultimately, desires the same thing.

Reports from Nathan Shi's early meetings with fans groups had been encouraging and he engaged nimbly with all enquirers in his most public appearance to date. Like Edwards and Jackson, his reputation will rise and fall according to results – even before next campaign starts, when fans assess the first squad rebuild on his watch.

But the supporters present seemed more encouraged that at least now there was a man at the top who can hear them. Whatever else is said of them over the next few months, the Wolves senior management cannot now be accused of hiding.

What are you feelings from the fans forum? Can the club get back to where they want to be?

Get in touch with your views here

Listen to full commentary of Wolves v Fulham at 3pm on Sunday on BBC Radio WM [95.6FM/DAB/Freeview 714]

And tune into The West Midlands Football Phone-In from 18:00 on weeknights

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