Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[joewarkfanclub]

1 hour ago, welldaft said:

If it is even remotely close to the rumoured sum and expected share of ownership being quoted on here. Then I would not even expect the Board to bother putting it to the Well Society and wider fan base. And even if they do then I would not expect it to be voted through.

Quite simply a few hundred thousand £ per annum is not going to make a material difference to the club. The Well Society and club could probably raise at least half that with renewed focus / fund raising and not hand over any ownership to anyone ! I also think that at that level it would surely draw out other interested parties.

I noted some comments about the fund raising initiative and the Board involvement. Some in my humble opinion are overly harsh and critical unless those that made the comments know exactly what has been happening behind the scenes. 

The Board made it clear that we need outside investment if we are to continue to compete with the majority of clubs in the top flight who do benefit from substantial outside / owner investment on an ongoing basis. That I think we can all agree with. We can debate how much success or otherwise it would bring. Citing examples like Dundee Utd and more recently Queens Park where significant investment has arguably failed to yield any real success. But the fact are we will be one of the very few clubs left that are not subsidised and supported. 

The video was alright. Nothing great but not as bad as many are making out. It did generate interest. And if nothing else the wider football and business community know we are actively seeking investment. I still find it surprising that many clubs have that investment as I would see us a more attractive option. I am naturally biased of course.

If as a result of the video the only real interest for now is Barmack and his offer is as poor as is being quoted then we will continue to be fan owned until an acceptable offer materialises if it ever does. It is as simple as that. 

 

My issue with Dundee United, and reason for citing them is that they appear to be £10m in debt to their investor. Now thats all very well and good as long as the investor doesnt get bored and walk away. But I wouldnt call that a subsidy. These are soft loans.

We owed John Boyle £11m in soft loans when he put us into administration.

I really dont fancy going there again.

[StAndrew7]

13 minutes ago, joewarkfanclub said:

My issue with Dundee United, and reason for citing them is that they appear to be £10m in debt to their investor. Now thats all very well and good as long as the investor doesnt get bored and walk away. But I wouldnt call that a subsidy. These are soft loans.

We owed John Boyle £11m in soft loans when he put us into administration.

I really dont fancy going there again.

This.

It's also been said that any investment we're looking at won't be:

• Anywhere near that amount or "transformational"
• In the form of loans or securities against the club and its assets; it'll be in newly issued shares

I don't think we can compare any potential investment (given our current understanding of what's being discussed) with Dundee United, Hearts, Killie or Queens Park. They're very different models with very different goals and strategies.

From what I can remember, Hearts have something like 25,000 members in the Hearts Foundation and have also spent ~£25 million on their squad over the last 3/4 seasons. 

Edited 7 hours ago by StAndrew7

[Swello]

10 minutes ago, joewarkfanclub said:

My issue with Dundee United, and reason for citing them is that they appear to be £10m in debt to their investor. Now thats all very well and good as long as the investor doesnt get bored and walk away. But I wouldnt call that a subsidy. These are soft loans.

We owed John Boyle £11m in soft loans when he put us into administration.

I really dont fancy going there again.

Agree - debt is debt. We've got one very soft loan from the Scottish Govt but it is still debt repayments - I wouldn't fancy us taking on any more. We had soft loans to Les Hutchinson and John Boyle that we were still paying back up to a couple of years ago - and that was all money that couldn't be spent on the fun stuff. Given the effort to become free from expensive debt was a huge battle since Admin - I would really take some convincing that we would ever go that way again (new stadium mortgage aside I suppose).

3 minutes ago, StAndrew7 said:

From what I can remember, Hearts have something like 25,000 members in the Hearts Foundation and have also spent something like £25 million on their squad over the last 3/4 seasons. 

As you say - Hearts are a poor example for us to look at. They are fan-owned but they are getting £5m/year a pumped in also and commercially are in a different league to us. Killie and St Mirren will always be the best example for us to compare against. I'm not convinced that either of them are doing anything radical compared to us - Bowie has put some money into Killie but nothing silly - they both just seem to be well run and have good football managers in place at this moment in time. Weird KVV signing aside, I'm not getting the impression that either of those clubs are fishing in a different pond to us for players/wages (St Mirren's top striker is Mandron, which is a very similar thing to Bair for example) and either of those clubs' squads could conceivably be ours. 

When clubs are very close in terms of size, it doesn't take much to tip the balance and the stark fact is that us paying for *all* the managers at the same time and filling our squad with all sorts of random, un-needed pish over the past few years has had a far bigger effect on our "competitiveness" than Saints or Killie spending a few quid or lunatics pumping money in the Dundee clubs. I honestly wonder how much making up for a fairly incompetent couple of years is behind the suddenly urgent push for outside money/a legacy project.

[welldaft]

1 hour ago, joewarkfanclub said:

My issue with Dundee United, and reason for citing them is that they appear to be £10m in debt to their investor. Now thats all very well and good as long as the investor doesnt get bored and walk away. But I wouldnt call that a subsidy. These are soft loans.

We owed John Boyle £11m in soft loans when he put us into administration.

I really dont fancy going there again.

I should have made it clear. I was using examples such as Dundee United as not working even with £10m in investment.

My point being that if they cannot guarantee success with that level of spending then we probably will not with substantially less. In fact we arguably have been a lot more successful already with the status quo as fan owned. 

I very much doubt United will ever be in a position to pay that money back nor will Dundee for that matter assuming they also have soft loans.

[StAndrew7]

50 minutes ago, Swello said:

As you say - Hearts are a poor example for us to look at. They are fan-owned but they are getting £5m/year a pumped in also and commercially are in a different league to us. Killie and St Mirren will always be the best example for us to compare against. I'm not convinced that either of them are doing anything radical compared to us - Bowie has put some money into Killie but nothing silly - they both just seem to be well run and have good football managers in place at this moment in time. Weird KVV signing aside, I'm not getting the impression that either of those clubs are fishing in a different pond to us for players/wages (St Mirren's top striker is Mandron, which is a very similar thing to Bair for example) and either of those clubs' squads could conceivably be ours. 

I honestly wonder how much making up for a fairly incompetent couple of years is behind the suddenly urgent push for outside money/a legacy project.

Aye, I'd be inclined to agree with you there.

It'll be interesting to see what Killie's accounts say for this season when they're published. Last year's has them running a first team squad budget of £2.4 million for that period, an increase of around £700k on the previous season. We don't split our accounts out like that from what I've quickly scanned, but we paid out just over £5 million (£200k lower than the previous year) in total staff costs for the same period and Killie paid out £4.1 million. We were paying 222 staff, Killie 178; so average salary is £22.5k and £23k. So aye, Killie are a good benchmark.

As for St Mirren, there's rumours/information that they've not started paying back their COVID loans or some such and might be in a bit more debt as a result of what's going on but I guess their highest ever finish this season will help with leveling that out.

On your last point, it definitely feels like that to some extent; I think either (or both) @Handsome_Devil and @capt_oats and I were discussing this a few pages back. The relative stability that the Burrows/Russell era provided seems cosy in comparison to where we are just now but hopefully that's going to change with or without investment, with Brian Caldwell in place and potentially others to follow, alongside a rejuvenated Well Society starting to publish its business plans/aims for its future role in the club.

[Vietnam91]

We really shouldn't be getting twitchy about teams like St Mirren using our squad from 4 years ago to emulate our league placings/summer tours from 10 years ago which will ultimately lead to a similar financial reckoning that we had 20 years ago. Many clubs will have the same reckoning in the years ahead for their "success" today.

We sought offers of investment not invitations to instigate a takeover. It was supposed to be added means to supplement our turnover, not to cede control.

Many dug deep for a large lump sum to hasten a Boyle exit before a more manageable direct debit was an option and done to realise our own destiny for better for worse. 

With the wrong type of investment accepted we would be potentially facing buying out a rich businessman for the third time within 20 years when we were sold on it being a one time only.

All this talk of 50+1 or 49% is moot and mostly symbolic, the Bois in Block E should be making banners with "MIN 4 EXEC DIRECTORS & CASTING VOTE" as that is much more important.

Edited 4 hours ago by Vietnam91

[StAndrew7]

23 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

We sought offers of investment not invitations to instigate a takeover. It was supposed to be added means to supplement our turnover, not to cede control.

Yes, but that's now not the case though, is it? Both investors as discussed in January either wanted full control, or "close to" 50% of the overall shareholding in the club.

If it were the case that we were looking for investment not a takeover (which I absolutely believe was the plan when the video went out initially) they'd both have been told to GTF there and then by the Exec Board. As it happened, it wasn't and was put to the vote.

The Well Society membership subsequently voted that it would consider offers which remove its majority shareholder status. As @MurrayWell said earlier, it's opened the door to low-balling the value of the club and the situation we're now in.

I have no doubt that the Exec Board think they have/had the best interests of the club in mind when they went out to look for investment. Given how things have gone so far, it's rapidly spiraled to a situation where we could potentially lose control/ownership of the club for a relatively low sum of cash.

I agree with your last point; 51/49 is pointless without the casting vote, or at least an overall majority on the newly structured board.

Edited 5 hours ago by StAndrew7

[Muzz1886]

Some of the valuations of the Club on here are absolutely wild.

[thisGRAEME]

A reminder that Kevin Van Veen has 10 appearances with Kilmarnock for 0 (zero) goals, and 1 (one) assist, thus far.

All things considered, given Vale's contribution compared to Van Veen's, we were absolutely correct not to throw money at him. 

[Vietnam91]

46 minutes ago, StAndrew7 said:

Yes, but that's now not the case though, is it?

Well party through the message of the video not fully hitting the brief marked by JM doing a talking head the next day to set things straight and you can't control who or what interested parties bring to the table. But also as alluded by @Busta Nut and others an underlying mistrust that the WS can competently give direction to the club, some "adults" are needed in the form of a proven business(man).

For what you're saying only works if the exec board believe in and are true to the ideals of fan ownership. I don't believe that is the case, maybe they were but not now. The Aussie bid appears to have been sat on the table for far longer than it should have especially when its contents were so unpalatable. Low ball offers were already on the table before the WS vote, not as a result of it.

The video was made because JM at his own admission dropped the ball. With an exit strategy planned the video was a sticky plaster fix. Driven by not empowering the society or previously implementing improvements in the standard commercial/hospitality/ticketing/advertising revenue streams. Prior to October 2023 it was weakened and hobbled during and in the aftermath of Les moving on for expediency and very much by design. There is a massive disconnect by the architects of that bad faith that they engineered it as thus and it became a self fulfilling prophecy of stagnancy, poor transparency and disconnect from its membership and not a great track record to trade on.

As for the no binding vote, yes it stymied the WS and we are were are. I initially voted yes thinking about how what has happened at Wrexham has transformed them and in all likelihood the fans will get the club back or bobbing along in the championship/div 1 at worst opposed to a slow death spiral in the conference. I didn't want to rule out something like that as its the gold standard of football club investment only vying with the Anderson involvement at Hearts. I changed my vote to no when I actually thought it through and what it meant for us.

If or when the current offer on the table sees light, what we see will have been tweaked numerous times, we need to ask ourselves what it must have been like back in January in its first draft.

Edited 4 hours ago by Vietnam91

[well fan for life]

39 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

A reminder that Kevin Van Veen has 10 appearances with Kilmarnock for 0 (zero) goals, and 1 (one) assist, thus far.

All things considered, given Vale's contribution compared to Van Veen's, we were absolutely correct not to throw money at him. 

Vale's been great value as a January signing. For all we were worried big time about Mika going back to Arsenal I'd say Vale & Bair have more than filled that void. Would love to see him and Gent stick around next season but nae doubt they'll be off on loan elsewhere. 

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

40 minutes ago, thisGRAEME said:

A reminder that Kevin Van Veen has 10 appearances with Kilmarnock for 0 (zero) goals, and 1 (one) assist, thus far.

All things considered, given Vale's contribution compared to Van Veen's, we were absolutely correct not to throw money at him. 

I know some of our January signings haven't contributed much - Elliot, Montgomery and the lad from Sheff Utd for very varying reasons - but our squad on a whole has looked much stronger since the window.

Some people were advocating us blowing most, if not all of the budget on Van Veen and continuing with our bench from the Alloa game of Barry Maguire and a bunch of weans. I'm very glad we didn't.

I'd probably say in our current financial model, there are very few, if any players I would push the boat out for. 

That said, it's funny how Kilmarnock did splash out on him, yet his anonymity hasn't really affected them adversely. It's almost like they just signed him to stop St. Mirren getting him.

[thisGRAEME]

4 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

very varying reasons

[Swello]

8 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

That said, it's funny how Kilmarnock did splash out on him, yet his anonymity hasn't really affected them adversely. It's almost like they just signed him to stop St. Mirren getting him.

I can only assume that was it.

It will be a more interesting debate in the summer if/when he gets paid off by Groningen and is floating about looking for a club with his stock way lower than it was (I'd still be in the "no" camp BTW).

[Allroy for Prez]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

I can only assume that was it.

It will be a more interesting debate in the summer if/when he gets paid off by Groningen and is floating about looking for a club with his stock way lower than it was (I'd still be in the "no" camp BTW).

Agreed, but I’d definitely take Moult back.  

[crazylegsjoe_mfc]

Van Veen was absolutely outrageous towards the end of last season and as a result, rightly deserves to be mentioned up there with our best strikers of recent times. I do think us parting ways this summer was a good thing though, him getting a good contract and us getting a good fee for him at 32. He was never going to recreate last season - his league tally was 2.5x his best ever in the lower leagues in England. 

Like Van Veen, the Moult thing has been done to death. Hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing and you can look back and say he would have been a better option than Obika, Shaw and Wilkinson - but aside from a spell in the autumn, goals from our strikers haven't really been a problem. I'd have welcomed him back more if he was good in the middle of a back three.

[well fan for life]

12 minutes ago, crazylegsjoe_mfc said:

Van Veen was absolutely outrageous towards the end of last season and as a result, rightly deserves to be mentioned up there with our best strikers of recent times. I do think us parting ways this summer was a good thing though, him getting a good contract and us getting a good fee for him at 32. He was never going to recreate last season - his league tally was 2.5x his best ever in the lower leagues in England. 

Like Van Veen, the Moult thing has been done to death. Hindsight is obviously a wonderful thing and you can look back and say he would have been a better option than Obika, Shaw and Wilkinson - but aside from a spell in the autumn, goals from our strikers haven't really been a problem. I'd have welcomed him back more if he was good in the middle of a back three.

Never mind signing another striker. If we'd signed one centre back that wasn't a fucking idiot we'd have cantered this season. The number of shocking individual errors we've lost goals to this season has been almost laughable.

[wellfan919191]

Is there any truth in these Dylan Easton rumours? I know some guy in twitter has been posting about it but doesn't seem very trustworthy with transfers and not heard anything from elsewhere.

[capt_oats]

4 minutes ago, wellfan919191 said:

Is there any truth in these Dylan Easton rumours? I know some guy in twitter has been posting about it but doesn't seem very trustworthy with transfers and not heard anything from elsewhere.

AFAIK the rumours came from here and it wasn't even a rumour. The bold @Handsome_Devil mentioned they'd heard we'd signed a player from the Rovers on a PCA last week and there was a subsequent bout of speculation around which players of theirs are OOC.

Since then it seems to have been taken as being fact with mentions on Twitter and Steelmen.