https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24056192.oxford-united-stadium-owner-open-club-staying-kassam/
The crux of the story seems to be that the Oxford Mail put to Kassam an accusation from FOSB that that the club hadn’t approached him to discuss staying at the stadium.
He said that the accusation was true.
They don’t appear to have asked him the obvious follow up question of if the stadco had approached the club about the possibility of staying on.
The story also says that “Firoz Kassam has confirmed to the Oxford Mail he is happy for the Yellows to continue playing home games at the stadium in Littlemore.” although there isn’t a quote to back that up, or have any context to explain what the circumstances around that would be, which again - one would think would be a natural follow-up question.
The journalistic standards on display here are very poor, but that’s the Oxford Mail all over these days.
However, there are also questions here for the board. The wording of our various statements around there being no possibility of staying at the Kassam always bothered me. It was always very carefully pitched… it was always stuff like “there’s no option on the table” that always implied the discussions hadn’t taken place. However, I was always fairly comfortable that the club must have had some kind of conversation with Kassam about his intentions/wishes for the ground because otherwise we’d always have been leaving the door open to the possibility of Kassam speaking out and contradicting the club. And it would be naïve in the extreme to think that he wouldn’t.
As it stands though, I don’t think this meaningfully changes anything - it’s not a material planning consideration for Cherwell DC - I suppose it’s possible that OCC would u-turn its decision (nothing has been signed yet) if it felt like the club had intentionally misled or lied, but I think that would prove to be incredibly messy. I do reckon they’ll be asking the club to explain this though. If the club has any sense, it will be proactively contacting OCC about it rather than waiting to be asked.
