The City Till We Die campaign group has reviewed the statement issued today (11/11/2013) by Hull City AFC. 

http://www.hullcityafc.net/news/article/201314-club-statement-name-1169297.aspx

We remain puzzled that Dr Allam cannot distinguish between the name of his holding company and the football name of the club he owns.  Until he registers a new name with the Football Association, the club remains Hull City AFC. His belief that we are already called Hull City Tigers, a name ripe for shortening, is therefore spectacularly ill judged and erroneous. 

Our group has already had extensive contact with key figures at the FA, and we anticipate they will take a dim view both of this announcement and of Dr Allam’s rubbishing of our club’s proud history at the meeting we had with him last week. 

Let us be clear – Dr Allam CANNOT change the football name of the club without approval of the FA, who in turn require consultation with fans of the kind promised by Dr Allam when we met. By claiming we are now called Hull City Tigers, he has announced a new name and gone back on that promise – it took him 10 short days.

We have seen the academic paper that Dr Allam has based his name shortening strategy on. He has apparently only read the first page, we have read all 59. The paper is entirely irrelevant in that it has nothing to do with sports businesses and nothing to do with business success.  It is a paper about stock market gaming – apparently stock brokers are more likely to trade shares in companies with shorter names. 

To conclude – we remain eternally grateful to Dr Allam as the saviour of Hull City AFC and the man whose money propelled City to the Premier League. But we believe a man that breaks FA rules, breaks his own promises within days and rides roughshod over our club’s proud history should not go unchecked. We remain determined to do everything we can to retain Hull City AFC as our club name. Our campaign continues – indeed with today’s announcement it is clear that it has only just started.