Harrogate Town’s new chairman Jonathan Blezard has spoken for the first time since he arrived at the club about co-owner Simon Weaver’s unusual dual role.

The pair completed their takeover of the National League outfit in mid-October, bringing to an end Irving Weaver’s 15-year tenure as majority shareholder at Wetherby Road.

After more than a decade-and-a-half managing the Sulphurites, Weaver Jr’s new position of first-team boss and co-owner is virtually unique in professional football in this country.

This development has naturally prompted questions among the club’s fanbase regarding accountability for Town’s on-field performance given that the man responsible for that is now answerable to himself.

The subject was arguably the hottest topic of conversation at last week’s fans’ forum, but, both Blezard and Simon Weaver himself spoke at length and in detail to address supporters’ concerns.

And the message from Blezard was clear - Town’s fans have nothing to worry about as far as managerial accountability is concerned, regardless of the new dynamic at the top of the club.

"If I felt like Simon wasn't able to separate his two responsibilities as a board member and first-team manager, I would not have got involved in this situation,” Harrogate’s chairman said.

"In other areas of life, or other businesses, people do wear two hats. Simon has to wear two hats, and it is my responsibility that he is doing a job that the board think is a good job as the first-team manager. And it is my responsibility to make sure that he is separating those two things.

"There is absolutely no problem, as a result of the ownership, with Simon ceasing to be the first-team manager, if that was ever decided, either by Simon himself, or by us underperforming.

“But, I don't see us underperforming to the level that we would be making that decision.”

Addressing questions regarding the mechanism that is in place at board level when it comes to making critical operational decisions, Blezard reassured supporters that both the process and governance Town will adopt will be fairly typical.

"There would be a vote, the same as with anything else,” he said.

“We have absolutely no interest in any sort of structure that isn’t the same as any other good, medium-sized, successful business.

“We will have all the appropriate governance in place to make those decisions and challenge performance. We have set goals [to qualify for the National League play-offs] and we will obviously see how we are tracking against those goals.

“We are definitely going to have a perfectly robust process.”

One supporter in attendance called for greater transparency regarding the process Town plan to implement regarding the decision-making process when it comes to the issue of team performance and managerial accountability.

Blezard was quick to state that he had no intention of outlining those kind of specifics publicly, but went into detail about the hierarchical structure behind the scenes and insisted that, as chairman, he holds the “ultimate decision”.

He said: “I know it's an unusual situation, but I don't think we are going to put out a public statement to the entire fanbase about how decisions are going to be made.

“I don't plan on posting on social media how we are going to run the club.

"There will be a board of people that will form around me. I am ultimately the chair of that board, so I sit at the top of it, and that board would discuss that situation [if the team was underperforming] like any other board.

"It's on me to hold Simon accountable to treat those two roles as a separate thing - as they are.

"Ultimately, the buck stops with me. I am responsible for the board. All of the other directors report to me, as the chairman. I am the chairman of the board, that is what my job title is. We have a board, I'm the chair of it. I hold the ultimate decision.”

Weaver himself was not shy about doubling down on Blezard’s point regarding that “ultimate decision”, but also insisted that his motivation for becoming a co-owner of the club was not to try and safeguard his position as manager.

He explained: "I felt that when I became an investor of the club that it was a commitment to the club, rather than buying a job for life. So I am keen to point that out.

“And I am keen to set up a structure that means that if I'm not doing the job, Jonathan can do the deed, and that's fine. That's 100 percent.”

Another supporter asked whether Town’s new owners had consciously chosen to continue with the same stability-first model that Irving Weaver had seemingly adopted during his time at the helm.

Blezard replied: “One of the key things we want to avoid is ever ending up in a boom and bust cycle, and looking like half of the football clubs all across the pyramid.

“So yes, I think that the headline is that the approach is ‘stability-first’. I would never want to risk the stability of the club to chase success in the short term.

“It’s obviously easy to chase success. It’s quite hard to actually achieve it. And the grass is not always greener on the other side.

“The way to reset and improve and go again doesn’t necessarily mean that change is always a good thing.

“Changing things like that [the manager] is like a hard reset, and starting all over again. And, having worked with Simon over the last 12 months, this club is very, very lucky to have this guy as the manager.”