EdinburghBlue

I don’t think our leagues should have clubs which are technically insolvent and where the ‘investment’ is a statement by directors/owners that they will pay the bills if necessary.

Generally agree. One of the challenges is that licensing is a blunt instrument, so we don’t know whether Entry easily upgradeable (e.g. Cowdenbeath fans on here saying that their reduction from bronze to entry was because having a doctor at every game - home and away - was unaffordable outside the SPFL) or requires major expenditure on facilities.

Fine for clubs in the top leagues with large attendances but given how challenging it is to get a GP appointment or how long you have to queue in A&E do we really want a doctor sitting in the stand among a crowd of a few hundred in the lower leagues?

And if you look at Peterhead’s accounts you will see it’s been a financial car crash for them recently.

I’ve been told that the award of a grace period is dependent on showing that the club has started work to address the licensing shortfalls and can show that they will be compliant reasonably quickly. Don’’t think it would be unreasonable to allow an automatic grace period of, say, three years, but either only once or cumulatively, so a club couldn’t get promoted, ignore the requirements, suffer relegation, and then come back for another go.

Shame about this. If my team has to lose their place in the league I’d rather it was to a team that wasn’t financially doped to buy promotion - too many of these already in the SPFL!

Need some Brechin fans on here for their views!

Makes you wonder whether they don’t want promotion but are trying to shift the blame.

Candidate clubs can ask for a short-term waiver

Story that Buckie not being allowed into playoffs for failure to meet licensing conditions. £ast Kilbride to get bye to final.

Interesting that in England Gateshead have been denied access to the promotions playoffs because they don't have a 10-year lease on their ground but in Scotland we find it acceptable to have clubs in the league with shorter ground tenure arrangements.

The size of that fine for Dundee

I assure you we don’t want to be coming to Boness next season

Not necessarily a panacea, as different models have pros and cons. A potential advantage of the share model might be that people who don't live in the immediate area and who can't/see no point in becoming a member see this as a way of putting some money into the club. (Fans, descendants of people who have emigrated from the area, or even people who just fancy having a small stake in a football club.) You are correct about the dilution point on issuing more shares, but if you look at the information on the Companies House website there are clearly a lot of clubs doing this. But two points. First, this need not necessarily be difficult, if with your example you say that the Board has the right to issue up to 200,000 shares or even more when there's demand. Second, it's normal when issuing additional shares that existing shareholders get so-called pre-emption rights, allowing them to invest more if they don't want their share of the business diluted.

The obvious thing would be that the Club would be owned by shareholders rather than in trust by those who pay an annual membership fee. It would also provide an opportunity to recapitalise the Club, although given the nature of football that would depend on finding enough people willing to put insufficient funds to generate a reasonable amount. But people can put in different amounts – for example look at Spartans' information at Companies House showing the different amounts of shares bought by different individuals when it was set up as a company at the beginning of the decade. Recapitalisation isn't just a one off event. There are a number of clubs (companies) that have had money dripped into them in small or large amounts in recent years (Alloa as an example). If set up as an ordinary company, the shareholders could choose to sell in future to address financial problems (Edinburgh City recently, and happens often south of the border.) And if the worst comes to the worst, shareholders aren't liable for the debts of the company, losing only their investment. (This is why when shareholders' funds go negative – the company being 'technically insolvent' – this should be a red flag to anyone thinking about doing business with that company. Look at the long list of people left owed money in previous instances of clubs going bust or into administration.) I said "ordinary company" because there is another type – a Community Interest Company (CIC). I believe this is the structure at Stenhousemuir. Unlike ordinary companies, whose primary purpose is to make profits to distribute to their shareholders, CICs: are designed to benefit the community or pursue social and environmental goals. Their primary purpose is to provide benefits to the community they serve, rather than solely generating profits for shareholders. are required to have an "asset lock," which means that their assets and profits must be used for the benefit of the community. This prevents the assets from being distributed to shareholders. must submit annual Community Interest Company Reports, detailing how they have benefited the community. must reinvest profits in the company's social objectives or use them to benefit the community. There are limitations on the dividends that can be paid to shareholders. A structure worth thinking about? You will probably laugh at the stuff about ordinary companies making money to redistribute to the shareholders. As I've said earlier in this thread there are quite a number of these in Scotland that burn through their shareholders' funds, and then sometimes follow with a cycle of recapitalisation to give them more money to burn through. We either need proper financial fair play rules in Scotland or shareholders willing to hold directors to account for how they run the company, but that almost never happens in football. P.S. to be promoted to the top leagues in Spain it's now a requirement to be a company, although special exemptions were given to long-standing members' clubs that had good financial management - including Barcelona and Real Madrid.

This failure should be relatively easy to sort out. The required form should take no more than five minutes to fill in. But it does suggest that the Board isn't fully on top of things. Dumbarton's accounts aren't due at Companies House until the end of next month.

I see that Companies House have now published an initial notice proposing to strike Clyde of the Register of companies, because of its annual confirmation statement now being months overdue.

I think an opportunity was missed when the West was set up, but I hope in time that this can be addressed. However, I think this would require regionalisation at the very bottom, something we are told that the SFA is against. Teams that are run on a shoestring wouldn't be able to afford to travel between the far reaches of the expanded West footprint, adding even further to the disadvantage that teams based outwith the central belt have in recruiting players from the sparse populations in their localities. This could provide an opportunity to structure around travel time rather than local government boundaries. (From Stranraer, by road it's as quick to travel to Kilmarnock as it is to Dumfries, and faster to Glasgow than to travel to many of the South of Scotland grounds in Dumfriesshire. And even faster for the north Dumfriesshire teams to travel to Lanarkshire and parts of Ayrshire.) In practice this restructuring might be achieved by slotting the top licensed South teams into the top three divisions in the West (and evening of numbers in the leagues over time as has been done in the first few years of the new East/West structures), with the remaining teams slotted into a regionalised structure (for example with the remaining teams from the west of the South competing with teams from Ayrshire). If Stranraer were to end up in the South it would require a massive effort to get back into the Lowland, something which I doubt the club could afford as a member-based club. We are already at a real disadvantage compared to those clubs which can burn through shareholders' funds and then look to sell more shares when money is tight. I wonder also if in due course the pyramid structure is going to lead to the SPFL (and possibly also the Lowland) consisting entirely of clubs in and around the cities.

Something to do with Bob Geldof’s band?

They risk the wrath of HMRC: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/19/football-clubs-minimum-wage-hmrc

Extract from SPFL rules: As at 31 January in each calendar year a Club and the Candidate Club must be, as regards all of its employees, in compliance with the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 and/or any supplementary, variation or replacement regulations or other provisions in force from time to time

Hope you’re not suggesting paying players less than the minimum wage

Playoffs can be strange. Saw both Albion Rovers and Spartans a few times before last season's playoffs and Rovers were the better side by a mile. But they froze in the playoffs. I suspect in some cases this was because players knew they were on their way out and had no real loyalty to the club, in contrast to many in the Spartans side.

Williams' display was an absolute master class in incompetence. A few people round me were discussing whether this was the worst refereeing display they had seen in their 30, 40, 50, 60 years at football. But funniest comment was from a nearby ~5 year old asking parent whether referees need good eyesight and the deadpan reply 'obviously not this one.' Agree with the arrogance comment. We've had other referees who've apologised after the game for getting decisions wrong. If a ref can't do this you wonder whether they should be in this role. But hopefully with Crawford Allan going the SFA will do something to address the fact that refereeing standards are at their lowest in living memory.