FORMER St Neots Town manager Dennis Greene has released his own statement after the Southern League club’s chairman Mike Kearns went public with his thoughts following a Twitter spat between the pair.

Kearns published a ‘statement’ on the St Neots website which accussed Greene of being “unprofessional” during his time at the football club and subsequent to his leaving in June last year after two successive promotions.

Greene said: “I just want to put over my point of view so that people understand where I am coming from.

“I have taken advice from my solictor and decided I should release a statement of my own to put over my side of the story. There are two sides to this story.”

Greene, who was visited by Cambridgeshire police last week after an exchange of tweets and texts with his former employer, has sent his statement to The Hunts Post and it can be read in full online here.

STATEMENT OF DENNIS GREENE

1. I am making this statement to put the record straight as to the reasons for my resignation from St Neots Football Club, as the answer to this statement made by Mike Kearns.

2. I started at the Club as Assistant Manager under Steve Lomas in December 2009. I was promoted to Manager after Steve Lomas left in June 2010. I managed the team for the 2010 and 2011 seasons, and the team won the league in 2010/2011 and Hunts cup, got promoted, and then proceeded to win the league and Hinchingbrooke cup in the 2011/2012 season. I was manager for the two most successful seasons the club has ever seen in over 132 years.

3. However, I am sorry to say that from the beginning I had problems with Mike Kearns. The task of a Football Manager is to make decisions as to how the team is constituted, and how the team operates on the pitch. Unfortunately, Mr Kearns insisted on telling me how to do my job and continually interfered with my decision. He would object to my choices of players, even though I was exactly within the budget he had originally set for me. He would change the budget after it had been set and then tell me to reorganise. During matches he would tell me I should send on substitutes rather than letting me manage the team as was appropriate.

4. He even on occasions told me to sack particular team members, including some of our star players. I had to refuse these demands or talk him out of his decisions. If I had not done so then the team would not have succeeded in the way that it did. As an example I have a text message from him where he told me to sack Tolley, who was one of our best players.

5. The final straw came when he told me to dismiss a rising star in the club. He would not listen to my reasons for keeping this player and insisted on the young man being sacked. The young man in question was my nephew: he effectively accused me of nepotism. This despite the fact that I had proved more than once that I made objective judgements. If Aaron had not been up to the position I would not have kept him, nephew or not. It was an indication of the lads skill that he went on trial at Leicester City FC.

6. I felt I could not continue to manage the team when I was no longer being given any control or authority to do the job I had been employed to do. It felt, throughout the time I was with St Neots Football Club, as though Mike wanted to be the manager himself and considered I was in the way.

7. Effectively it came down to a conflict of personalities between me and Mike. I cared passionately about the club and I was devastated at being forced to resign.

8. Following the resignation I talked to Mike and he offered me £3,000.00 as a goodwill gesture. I agreed to this and as a result did not make public my reasons for resigning.

9. However, for his own reasons, Mike started justifying the club letting me go with assertions that I was not qualified to do the job (which was not true: my qualifications were quite adequate for me to manage the team) and saying that there were concerns about my conduct (which had never been raised or hinted at throughout my time as Manager). He also took Umbrage that I had the temerity to talk to the players after I had resigned. He accused me of trying to steal players from the team. This was never my intention at that stage. The team members were friends who deserved respect and I could not have walked away from the team without talking to them.

10. Mike then in his wisdom decided he was not going to pay me the agreed figure. Lee, his son, clearly viewed this as being unjust and Lee paid me £1,500.00 personally, without his father knowing about it.

11. I never received the £3,000.00.

12. I would add that I was never even given a contract, even though Mike plastered it across the webpage that I was on a contract for the next season, I was never given a contract. I suggested they simply gave me the standard FA approved contract but I never even got that.

13. Since leaving the club I have attempted to offer assistance to Mike as I was concerned for how the team was doing, but this has been described as harassment.

14. I very much regret that it is necessary for me to write this statement describing what actually happened but I feel that it is necessary that the record be set straight. It is still my hope that the Club can prosper and return to its glory days.