Sons' sorrow

[FifeSons]

Christ, Accounting chat isn't half boring.

Edited August 28, 2019 by FifeSons

[Nowhereman]

7 minutes ago, FifeSons said:

Christ, Accounting chat isn't half boring.

Worse than a goalkeeper debate?

[SilverWolfe]

Or a good old drum debate?

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

Christ, Accounting chat isn't half boring.

Everytime I see the name Tartantony this plays in my head...

[Boghead ranter]

40 minutes ago, FifeSons said:

Christ, Accounting chat isn't half boring.

Nope, it's full boring .

[Boghead ranter]

Here's a debate then - who was the best Coyle?

[DumbartonTheSons]

Fans are the largest stakeholders in their clubs and as such are entirely to blame when this happens. The clubs don't just die overnight, there is a build up over many years and there are very clear signs that its going to happen. Accounts are released every year which show mental losses with balance sheets that clearly show liquidity issues. The fans had a choice to either lap up the success the spending provided or actually do something about it and force the clubs to stop spending beyond their means. Football fans are thick as f**k and will always put short term success over long term sustainability and it's about time they took some responsibility.

As for your comment on players being greedy and their wages unwarranted. How so? 15 to 20 players at a football club are largely responsible for the revenue the club generates. Why should they not see a fair cut of it? Football is rare in that it rewards the employees who make the money rather than the fat cats up the stairs. I don't see anything wrong with footballer salaries so long as they are affordable to the club paying them.

This must be a wind up. Not very much effort in this one.

How would you suggest fans ‘do something about it’ in relation to spending and success at their clubs?

I’ll be interested to hear this one.

[microdave]

Here's a debate then - who was the best Coyle?

Joe simply because he was the only one not to end up with the Bankies!

[Silverton End]

1 hour ago, Boghead ranter said:

Here's a debate then - who was the best Coyle?

Wee Joe for me, a very good winger, Tam for his exceptional hirsuteness & Owen was like an emu.

[Supremesons]

Who is everyone’s favourite loanee we’ve had in the last 10 years? Mine would have to be Kane

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

Who is everyone’s favourite loanee we’ve had in the last 10 years? Mine would have to be Kane

1. Paul McGinn
2. Dom Thomas
3. Chris Kane

[BallochSonsFan]

I can't disagree with Tony more strongly here.

Fan's fall in love with football. We don't grow up supporting a balance sheet. Few fans are forensic accountants (although our current financial officer is) and for a lot of fans the idea of reading and digesting club accounts is completely alien. It's a weakness within UK football that fans are still so poorly engaged with what happens in the boardroom but it's part of our football identity. We're late comers to the whole issue of fan representation and fan involvement in the ownership and the running of football clubs. If UK fans aren't as engaged with football business as we need to be in the modern era then that's a reflection of the fact that we've been a professional game for well over 100 years. We've never had that ownership/membership culture.

It doesnt excuse fans who refuse to see what's in front of them. It's taking Sons fans some time to adjust to the realities of relegation and dwindling crowds. We're getting there as a support but only because in recent years we've faced significant concern with regards to our owners and their intentions for the club and with our club's finances. British supporters rarely wake up to the realities of modern football until their club reaches a crisis point.

But what is it that fans should really be taking the blame for? Should fans take the blame for carpetbagging, asset-stripping owners buying clubs on the cheap and borrowing heavily against assets? One of the things that made Bury such a problem was that every asset had a security against it. The stadium had been used to borrow against. Even the car park had been used as security for loans. There's little that supporters can do in those circumstances until a majority shareholder has already done the damage. Do fans expect clubs to spend beyond their means? Yes and no. You see arguments from fans who expect clubs to build the best squad it can and in that regard fans expect clubs to spend. But without ever knowing the details of player contracts, fans are working on limited information. What constitutes value? How can you judge if a club has spent it's wage budget wisely if you don't know the going rate for players in a particular division? 

Players cost more these days. Wages have increased to a level that's unsustainable. In England that's been driven by agents and by TV money. Players and agents knew that there was money to be made when TV started paying over the odds. That clubs capitulated and gave in to player demands is no fault of the supporters. It's a collective failure of football clubs. Had football clubs stayed united then player wages could perhaps have been kept under more control. Unfortunately there's always a rival out there who will break ranks and spend more than the rest. Fans can't do anything about that. Fans can't do anything about the people ploughing money into the game. In Scotland we're seeing stupid money being paid in the Lowland League and even in the West of Scotland juniors. Want to sign a player to give you a fighting chance of competing? If you won't pay the going rate then there's another club out there who will. Players hold far more power here than clubs. Far from being caused by fans having unrealistic expectations, fan expectations are being used by agents to keep wages higher than football can sustain because of the threat of taking their players to a rival who'll pay.

Fans need to be far more realistic with expectations and need to have a far greater awareness of the business side of football but that's only part of the problem. We've got a broken business model. We don't distribute sponsorship money fairly. We don't market the game properly. We don't attract enough sponsors to clubs. We don't attract enough fans to football. Supporters are the single biggest stakeholder group in football and yet we're the least represented. Club owners are reluctant to give up control. Governing bodies rarely take notice of supporters. We have a football association, managers associations and players associations who all have a voice in the game. What voice to the fans have? The SFSA is absolutely the right idea but its only a first start.

Fans are victims in all of this. Clubs that we invest time, money and huge amounts of emotion into are being run by other people and not for our benefit. We're an afterthought. In the English top flight most clubs could play a full season in a closed stadium and still just about break even through sponsorship, media rights and merchandise sales. What power to fans have to affect genuine change in a world where matchday attendance is on the decline, efforts at a continental model of greater fan representation have stalled and those who can spent are continuing to dictate the standards to which those who don't are forced to try to reach for?

Until we see proper change within football in the UK both north and south of the border, the supporters of Bury FC will not be the last group of football fans who will experience the heartbreak of losing their club. That we can do more to enter the 21st century and have a greater understanding of the football business doesnt begin to give us a meaningful voice to actually try to hold the authorities and club owners to any kind of account.

[vikingTON]

20 hours ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

You perhaps unwittingly make my point about club ownership, maladministration and the failure of regulatory oversight.  The fact that Bolton's owner was able to pursue such an unsustainable business model leading to where were are today suggests that the Football League was at best asleep at the wheel, and at worst criminally derelict in the affairs of one of its original member clubs.  As in so many facets of modern British corporate activity, light touch regulation eventually leading to dire financial straits, but very rarely for the reckless speculators.  Pensions scandals, BHS, Capita - need I go on ?  And yet you have a go at the Bolton fans - priceless, even by your contrarian habits..

What are the EFL or any other football body to do exactly - arbitrarily stop people from owning a football club or existing owners from speculating with money they don't have to succeed? There is no credible legal measure to do so and the simple fact is that clubs have been spending and mispending money ever since the game was professionalised. 

So old man yelling at a cloud nonsense then. 

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I see you also reference Dundee and Livingston.  Were the Marr brothers suitable candidates to own and run a football club operating under the auspices of the Scottish football authorities ?  Was Giovanni Di Stefano ?  Was Ron Dixon or Angus Cook ?  Were Dominic Keane and poor John McGuinness and sundry other chancers in the Almondvale Boardroom ?   Was it the fault of the Dens Park faithful that money was spunked out on Cannigia and Ravanelli when a blind man could see what would be the outcome ?

No, is the resounding answer, not forgetting of course the fiver I put in a bucket outside Cappielow when the Chancers Chancer, Hugh Scott Esquire, almost took your own club down the plughole.  

 

'Yes' is in fact the answer: if it was obvious to a blind man that things would go wrong then it was incumbent on Dundee and Livingston fans to either i) prevent such Walter Mitty owners to take over and/or ii) raise funds to empty them from their football club, pay off existing debts and retake control for at least the time required to give it over to suitable custodians.

People who want to abdicate all responsibility on behalf of the fans  and bewail why oh why this could have possibly happened are missing the fundamental lesson to be learned. The onus is on the fanbase to scrutinise chancers and if they can't prevent them from taking over to organise themselves to limit the damage and take responsibility if and when it is required. 

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But what should we expect from the guardians of the UK's national game when we consider, for example, the sponsorship stranglehold the betting industry has on the sport ?

Another irrelevant, old man yelling at a cloud, straw man argument. 

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As for Bosman, are you seriously trying to tell us that the effect on clubs like ours has been largely neutral ?  I’m sorry, I must have missed those latter-day Neil Orrs, Joe McLaughlins, Ian Wallaces and Graeme Sharps departing Clydeside for bigger things. 

The revenue at the second tier in Scottish football is larger now than it has ever been. Provincial clubs like Hamilton and Falkirk have succesfully flogged players for far more money than whatever players were being held against all contractual rights under the sun in your Hovis-themed good old days of football. 

Things have moved on and if some clubs have failed to adapt to that then that's just tough. It's been nearly 25 years FFS. 

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And finally the flippant comment about players’ wages.  In a time not so far away things were different; when Celtic won the European Cup in 1967 Billy McNeill would have been paid at best, say, three to four times the wages of a welder in Yarrows.  Fast forward to 2019 and Leigh Griffiths, for example, will be operating on a ratio of around 20:1.  Grotesque, obscene, unwarranted, greedy - all of the above, and unsustainable too once public interest wanes and televison pisses off to the next big thing.  Not much sign of trickle down from the big boys these days either to our own impoverished outfits, eh ?  

Another irrelevant, old man yelling at a cloud, straw man argument. 

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Yes, the irony of that stupid throwaway closing line coming from a supporter of a Morton club who this season have seriously tightened their cost model.  As has my own club, after too much profligacy in recent years took us to a financial bad place.  Maybe if more clubs were supported and encouraged by the football authorities to operate within their means the game would be in a healthier state. 

I've got nothing against Morton reducing their costs though. What I'm certainly not going to do is flail wildly about how it's somehow the Bosman ruling's fault, or the government's fault, or the betting companies' fault, or the players and their agents' fault that a professional football club has to balance its books like any other business. If its custodians are too incompetent or deluded to do that, then that's just tough. 

[lorenzo71]

4 hours ago, FifeSons said:

Christ, Accounting chat isn't half boring.

Aye and we are none the wiser.Just bla bla bla and Bullshit.No one seems to know anything concrete for sure.What i do know though is that football clubs atttract shady c***s like you wouldnt believe.The simple fact that a near bankrupt Sir Hugh Fraser suddenly bought us in 1985 says it all.If it wasnt to cream off profits then why?We apparently then owed his estate a fortune for his payment of 'drainage work at Boghead'. LOL .f**k me.If it drizzled the pitch was fuckt. Furthermore need i remind Sons fans of Allan Moore gate. Certainly caused Alex Totten to f**k off to St Johnstone while slating Fraser and the directors of that time.

Truth of the matter is that fans are ignorant because they are kept in the dark.Accountants like lawyers can change things around to paint pretty pictures and basically deceive.Football, and i love it, is and always has been a MUGS game.Cynical i know but im afraid its the truth.

 

[mike rankine]

Who is everyone’s favourite loanee we’ve had in the last 10 years? Mine would have to be Kane

Stuart Findlay for me. A class above anyone I'd seen in Sons jersey for many a year.

[Jan Vojáček]

2 hours ago, Supremesons said:

Who is everyone’s favourite loanee we’ve had in the last 10 years? Mine would have to be Kane

Sam Stanton 

[Howlin' Wilf]

I believe it's 10% but that's mostly irrelevant. The EGM point i made was purely in response to a question I was asked by a shareholder who wanted suggestions. You don't need to force an EGM to make a difference and stop the board running a club into the ground. It can be done in many ways.

It’s 25+1 where a 75% majority shareholder is involved. In the case of DFC I’d think that the remaining shares are dribs and drabs other than those held by the Trust. If there were to be any significant input I think it would have to be Trust led. Still wouldn’t be 25+1 even if you managed to corral them all.

[sarti pooh]

Dom Thomas for me.

[FifeSons]

5 hours ago, Boghead ranter said:

Here's a debate then - who was the best Coyle?

What in the name of Dom Thomas is a wing half?

[Howlin' Wilf]

Who is everyone’s favourite loanee we’ve had in the last 10 years? Mine would have to be Kane

Kane and Thomas pretty much neck and neck. Although more than ten years, Dobbie wasn’t bad at all.