While Massimo Cellino was busy dodging her latest tribunal hearing, Lucy Ward revealed that the club had offered to re-instate her, and why she turned them down.

At an earlier hearing an employment tribunal found that Ward had been unfairly dismissed, with the judge ruling that Cellino had instructed that she should be sacked, and that she had been the victim of sex discrimination. Ward successfully argued that she had been forced out because she was the partner of Neil Redfearn.

Today the court re-convened to decide on the level of compensation. Cellino was supposed to be there to give further evidence, but decided to give it a miss, and according to his barrister, Lucy Bairstow this was because of the amount of media interest in the case.

“When he came to building he observed the number of press who had attended again in relation to the hearing and he felt unable to give evidence. He was very concerned about all the press attention and effectively, but for the press attendance, would be sitting in here know. He has left the tribunal building. In those circumstance I would simply ask you to tender his statement in evidence.”

Once the hearing had begun it emerged that Cellino had offered to re-instate her, in a letter that apologised for mistakes made by the club. But Ward turned the offer down, as she thought that the apology was "damage limitation" rather than a genuine expression of regret. "It's a toxic environment in there now, I don't think anyone could seriously expect me to go back. He knew what he was putting me through."

It’s disappointing hear this, but since Cellino has been in charge there have been a number of former employees who have made similar comments about the state of the club behind the scenes. This comes at a time when we should be optimistic about the coming season after the appointment of a bright young head coach, but we still have to fear that Garry Monk will be undermined by events off the field.

By all accounts Monk has impressed the playing staff by the way he has gone about his job since he was appointed, but clearly the same cannot be said about the man at the very top. In seems that we need to have one more change in a senior position before the club can really move forward.

Photo: Action Images

Plumbs added 23:08 - Jun 12 If anything was toxic then it was the protest group who attacked one of the present LU staff and ridiculed her just because she was Ken Bates' former PA.Lots of employees at the club are mindful of the job losses when we left the PL,suffered admin because of the financial problems,and who were grateful when Cellino baled GFH out after their brief but disastrous tenure.Easy then to pick up a rather insignificant story and blow it up out all proportion.

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TimWhelan added 17:46 - Jun 15 Hardly an insignificant story when Lucy Ward is one of a number of former employees harshly treated by Cellino. See also Nigel Gibbs, Graham Bean and Richard Naylor, to say nothing of all the sacked managers we've had in his time. If Cellino hadn't come along and paid over the odds for his stake in the club then GFH would have had to take the reduced offer from the Yorkshire consortium, but the club would have kept going and the employees would still have had jobs.

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