Sons' sorrow

[patchh333]

I disagreed with the decision not to offer him a contract. He had personal issues this season which he'll hopefully move on from . Good luck to him.

Yes he'd did, all behind him now I hope and should be back to his best this season, I agree with you that he should have got another year

[Thommo90]

That's a gutter losing Buchanan.

Genuinely would have been my number one to bring back including all loanees.

Hope the reduced budget thing doesn't hump us too much..

[Coventry Saint]

So, good signing for a team chasing promotion?

[The Moonster]

After months of hibernation, during which period we had many good results and secured our safety, wee patch is back out in the world bringing fresh panic to the shores of Dumbarton. Good holiday patch? Any thoughts on Aitken keeping us up or are you just here to greet about his 2 year deal and our players choosing to go full time?

[The Moonster]

Just now, Coventry Saint said:

So, good signing for a team chasing promotion?

Gregor was the one guy I hoped we'd hold on to. He can have a moment or two where his concentration seems to go but on the whole he's been superb.

[patchh333]

Just here to greet

[optimistic]

Wouldn't mind some reasoning behind this reduced budget, if true. Worrying still that we have only one defender signed up

[DumbartonTheSons]

It's no surprise that Gregor has moved on and when any of our players move on to a full-time club, I don't really grudge them it.

He's been excellent for us and a really dependable defender last season. He developed a good partnership with Barr.

I think we always expected him to make the move back to full-time, it was just a matter of when.

It does give us a fairly substantial hole to fill and it does make the decision to release Lang as quickly a bit hasty. I can only trust Aitken has irons in the fire in that respect, which I'm confident he will do.

[The Moonster]

3 minutes ago, optimistic said:

Wouldn't mind some reasoning behind this reduced budget, if true. 

Away supports this season will be lower than any other Championship season we've been involved in, our stadium needs fixed and our pitch relaid, our owners are c***s. There's 3 for starters.

[optimistic]

Pointless laying a pitch if we're supposedly moving, don't imagine attendances will be down that much, we potentially will only lose hibs. Brechin won't bring a large travelling support, but more likely penny pinching from our board 

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, optimistic said:

Pointless laying a pitch if we're supposedly moving, don't imagine attendances will be down that much, we potentially will only lose hibs. Brechin won't bring a large travelling support, but more likely penny pinching from our board 

The pitch was a state, needs to be done. Brechin replacing Raith is a big drop in away support and Ayr brought more than Livi ever have. 

What would our board be pinching pennies for? Where do these pennies go?

[Skyline Drifter]

12 minutes ago, optimistic said:

Wouldn't mind some reasoning behind this reduced budget, if true.

I'm not a Dumbarton fan and I know little about your club's finances but the below was what I posted in reply to someone else questioning it about half a dozen pages ago:

On 24/05/2017 at 09:13, Skyline Drifter said:

I think your away capacity is about 1,000 isn't it? Ignoring for now the number of Rangers fans who bought tickets for the home end on top of that, I presume you probably sold out your away end to Hibs twice last year, and probably 4 times to Hibs and Rangers the year before. Not sure what your visiting support from United was? They brought a large support to us the first time and very few the 2nd time albeit it was the week after the Challenge Cup Final and a midweek home game and they hadn't won in weeks in the League.

I presume Hibs probably made you circa £35k net of VAT (less increased stewarding / policing but that's possible marginal). United maybe something similar if it was busy, maybe half that if they sold 500 tickets. On top of that I would presume Ayr and Raith would bring a lot more than Livingston and Brechin. Inverness will bring less than 100 I'd imagine. And you have increased travel costs to go to Inverness twice (possibly overnight stays) and Brechin twice. It's not difficult to see a scenario where you are worse off by £75k or more on last season. Over £100k on the season before when Rangers were around and even more than that the season before that when you had Hearts too. And that's at Dumbarton where away support is severely limited. Everyone else will be seeing drops bigger than that.

You can't realistically take £100k off your budget (and with the best will in the world I don't suppose Dumbarton can realistically expect to finish any further up the table as a result of those clubs not being there so the League prize money isn't going to be better) and not replace it with anything else and still pay the same wages.

 

6 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Away supports this season will be lower than any other Championship season we've been involved in, our stadium needs fixed and our pitch relaid, our owners are c***s. There's 3 for starters.

They may or may not be, and I'm not getting into the whole stadium debate, it's nothing to do with me, but given they are so far as I am aware not actually taking money out of the club, I don't think that's relevant. They aren't responsible for the external factors that reduce your income by maybe as much as a six figure sum on comparison with the last couple of years and they have no reasonable grounds to expect it to come back up any time soon either so even if they had cash reserves to plough in they would be doing so with no reasonable expectation of getting it back. I don't really think any owner should be required to do that. It's how clubs get themselves in big holes in the first place.

[The Moonster]

Just now, Skyline Drifter said:

They may or may not be, and I'm not getting into the whole stadium debate, it's nothing to do with me, but given they are so far as I am aware not actually taking money out of the club, I don't think that's relevant. They aren't responsible for the external factors that reduce your income by maybe as much as a six figure sum on comparison with the last couple of years and they have no reasonable grounds to expect it to come back up any time soon either so even if they had cash reserves to plough in they would be doing so with no reasonable expectation of getting it back. I don't really think any owner should be required to do that. It's how clubs get themselves in big holes in the first place.

Our owners proposed profit making (for them) move is a major factor in our stadium being in the state it's in. That is directly affecting the budget this season as we have things that can't be ignored any longer. I'll concede that should fall under my second reason given but they are c***s nonetheless.

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

So big Bucky is off to st mirren then, I wonder if the reduced wage offer had anything to do with it, don't think he will be the only one to go as the players who kept the team up should be rewarded rather than given reduced offers. Loyalty has to work both ways.

Yes I agree with what you say, but reduced budget, why then give the manager a 2 year deal. It just shows a total lack of ambition from the board

Well it looks like sons will need to rely on loan players then if there is no cash available, looks like another long hard slog ahead

I hear flembot has a few offers from other clubs and is considering them, now there is s guy who showed loyalty to the club and got nothing in return

What would you rather? we spunked money we don't have just in the name of loyalty? Or we were sensible and lived within our means.

We don't have a magic tree growing on the centre spot where we can pick 10 quid notes, store them in a larder and start dishing out improved offers.

It would probably be for the best if you removed the nonsense from your head and got realistic.

We owe the players nothing and they owe us nothing. They done a job for us and we paid them as well as we could. If they wish to take an improved deal elsewhere we just need to wish them well, thank them for their services and seek replacements.

[patchh333]

More bad news, queens are after Barr

[cedrick1]

Knew Bucky was going somewhere from awards night. Good luck to him

concern ben Gordon already proved championship a level below him. Is this a case of sons fans after their old favourites .

[Jan Vojáček]

Knew Bucky was going somewhere from awards night. Good luck to him

concern ben Gordon already proved championship a level below him. Is this a case of sons fans after their old favourites .

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain Ben was more than decent for both Alloa and Livingston at this level. Hence why he ended up in Renfrewshire. It would be unfair to judge him on a handful of games under Alex Rae and pre-January Jack Ross at St Mirren imo.

 

Wouldn't be surprised if Barr was away. It would explain why Stevie was looking for a leader when he was in for Higgins.

 

[microdave]

What we have in our favour is that the part time players aspiring to go full time will see that at least four of the squad have done exactly that. That has to be a major plus when it comes to signing the best pt players out there. And also players coming on loan will know that they'll be given every chance to prove themselves. We will sign players who can't cut it but Stevie did a good job of cutting the deadwood in the January window.

I think we're an attractive proposition for the best pt players out there.

[BallochSonsFan]

I agree microdave.

We've got a potentially very interesting selling point to signing targets. Do well at Dumbarton and you're more than capable of earning a move back into full time football. That could well be attractive to players who are being released from full time teams and who aren't yet giving up totally on the idea of full time football.

I liked Buchanan. He was a solid, no fuss centre half. You could rely on him far more often than not. I don't grudge him his move to St Mirren - he gave us a great service and deserves his move. Its a shame that we don't have Tom Lang as I think he could have been a very good replacement, but thats done now.

Unfortunately a club like ours will always be held ransom by budget limitations. We've basically got the same 600 or so home fans who come game after game. We either make a bit more or lose a bit depending on who we're playing and what kind of travelling support they bring. We've got 2 chronically underused spaces at the current ground that don't bring us as much money as they potentially could. We can only expect so much from local sponsors unless we can add value to what they get by sponsoring us and offer them something that would attract higher revenue.

We are what we are as a club. Whether or not we need to be, or if we could potentially do things differently (and more effectively) is a different issue - one that perhaps deserves urgent consideration from both our owners and our football club board.

[Boghead ranter]

For those Sons fans who don't Facebook.