"I am bewildered he should make a personal attack on me and use the match-day programme to do it," said Mr Rawlins from his American home. "It is not the message to be sending out when everyone needs to pull together and I am only responding now in order to defend my name.
"Even a blind man can see the team needs strengthening and, as owners, it is their responsibility. To criticise my own level of investment is a bit rich seeing as no-one has personally invested more in the club and yet I am the smallest shareholder, with 10 per cent."
"As for having a go at the fans, the one thing going for this club is the loyalty and patience of our support. We need fans behind us and not to be criticising them.
"If I remember rightly, supporters in this country were never given the chance to invest in Stoke Holding (the company owning the club), only small investors in Iceland. Were I ever to own the club, I would give supporters the chance to play a part."
Quotes taken from The Sentinel
Writing in Saturday's match programme, Mr Kristinsson says: "It is also not helpful to have a director, who has not made any financial contributions to the club for more than two years, to go public with the view the team needs strengthening when other shareholders are expected to pay for it.
"In addition to the monies we paid for our stake in the club, we invested a further £2.4m in the takeover season 1999/2000, £1.2m in 2000/01, £700,000 in 2001/02 and we expect to inject up to £1.2m this season. This represents a total of £5.5m invested directly into the club over the three-year period."
He said the consortium remained committed to its five-year plan, but warned the club would have to eventually become self-sufficient.
He also applauded the financial commitment of the several hundred smaller Icelandic investors in Stoke Holding and constrasted this with the failure of Stoke people to yet raise the £180,000 for the Sir Stanley Matthews statue.
He continued: "It hurts when some supporters expect us to pump endless amounts of money in when we have pumped much more than has been invested for many years."