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The Arbroath Thread


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7 hours ago, clashcityrocker said:

We already have full time players at the club and have done for a few years - the loan players we have train with the club they are signed to during the week and get two days off per week to train in the evening with Arbroath ( correct me if I am wrong on that ) ?

Regarding the part time Vs full time debate, I don't know the financial costs of running a football club ( either full time or part time) - so would be out of my depth to comment, but I had assumed if the club win promotion they would remain part time, but have a bigger squad of players ( but best leave these matters to the people running the club).

I see these two things as being directly related and a good example of how costs can spiral very quickly.

You're spot on - we've got various full time players (side point... do they seem fitter/ sharper than our part time players due to their full time training? Our part time players are just as fit as full time ones IMO). As it is, our full time loan players have the same outgoings as the part time ones - weekly wage within our budget and expenses for training x2 and game each week.

Say those full time players were instead directly contracted to us, what would change? We would be renting training facilities almost daily, we would have their expenses all double overnight, we'd have additional catering costs, additional staffing costs, additional maintenance costs etc. We would have the same players with a higher wage (not just a loan percentage, full whack as contracted to us) higher costs all over the place and for what...... the player to be contracted to us instead of another club? Literally zero difference made on the park by doing this, but hugely inflated costs for the club. Positives - zero. Negatives - many.

The only situation we should ever have full time football players employed by the club is where they also have other roles within the club/ community. We currently have one full time employee at the club, and over time if we were to have 4, 5, 6 full time employees we're far better doing that in areas we don't currently cover, rather than massively increasing our expenditure on players/ costs etc. to become a LESS attractive football club.

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8 hours ago, lichtie23 said:

I’m pretty sure Raith went hybrid a few years back. Don’t think it worked out for them

I don't think you could say it didn't work out, because ultimately it was a means to an end. It was a temporary measure to get us out of League One. 

It's an interesting comparison though, because it's almost the reverse of the dynamic you're currently discussing. I can't remember if it was the owner or McGlynn, but someone was asked about us going either fully part-time or ramping up the number of part-time players, and he said that it wouldn't happen because ultimately our 'default' position is fully full-time, so the more part-time work we do just means more to be undone when we get promoted. 

The Rovers, certainly in the last few years, never truly committed to a hybrid set up. They did a couple of evening sessions in the week instead of daytime, but only with a very limited number of part-time players. Kieran MacDonald was kept on for the Championship last year but that was it. The season before we might've had a couple of others, but only really on the periphery. 

For Arbroath, if your long term ambition is to remain the best part-time club in the country and you get promoted, do you want to spend money bringing in full time players to supplement the squad, or do you spend that same money on the club's infrastructure to really bolster that part-time operation? 

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9 hours ago, lichtie23 said:

I’m pretty sure Raith went hybrid a few years back. Don’t think it worked out for them

It’s been pretty successful for us but McGlynn, being a full time manager, has always wanted a full time squad when finances allow.

In his first spell, we won League One, got to a Scottish Cup semi final and finished 2nd in the Championship with a hybrid squad, albeit the number of part timers decreased every season as we shifted towards completely full time.

In his second spell, due to finances, we went to a hybrid model in 2019/2020 and won League One. Technically we were still hybrid last season as we trained at night twice a week but as Grant Anderson left before the season started, I believe McGurn and Kieran MacDonald were our only part time players and we went back completely full time this season which meant we lost Kieran MacDonald.

So it can be done successfully but hard to say whether it would be the best thing for Arbroath.

It would be a great problem for you to have though and in your current board and the Campbell’s you can be confident that the people you have in charge would make the correct decision for the club. 

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40 minutes ago, SimonLichtie said:

I see these two things as being directly related and a good example of how costs can spiral very quickly.

You're spot on - we've got various full time players (side point... do they seem fitter/ sharper than our part time players due to their full time training? Our part time players are just as fit as full time ones IMO). As it is, our full time loan players have the same outgoings as the part time ones - weekly wage within our budget and expenses for training x2 and game each week.

Say those full time players were instead directly contracted to us, what would change? We would be renting training facilities almost daily, we would have their expenses all double overnight, we'd have additional catering costs, additional staffing costs, additional maintenance costs etc. We would have the same players with a higher wage (not just a loan percentage, full whack as contracted to us) higher costs all over the place and for what...... the player to be contracted to us instead of another club? Literally zero difference made on the park by doing this, but hugely inflated costs for the club. Positives - zero. Negatives - many.

The only situation we should ever have full time football players employed by the club is where they also have other roles within the club/ community. We currently have one full time employee at the club, and over time if we were to have 4, 5, 6 full time employees we're far better doing that in areas we don't currently cover, rather than massively increasing our expenditure on players/ costs etc. to become a LESS attractive football club.

But we wouldn’t be getting guys on loan from other premiership teams. Livingston wouldn’t be giving us a Nouble or a Hamilton they’d be our direct competitors. The only time you ever see loans between Premiership clubs is when someone like a Williamson type player from the OF is going to other sides in the league and even then they can’t play 3 games a season. 
 

Explain how, if Hybrid, it wouldn’t just be a case of having 1 full time coach and hiring out a training facility 2 days a week for 2 hours with the rest of the club carrying on as normal? You could have say 8 full time guys or whatever. The costs associated with that would be minimal in comparison to the revenue you’d be bringing in as a premiership club 

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10 hours ago, SimonLichtie said:

Being the biggest/ best part time team in the country >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> being one of the shittest/ smallest full time clubs in the country. The positives of being/ accepting our aim is being the former far outweighs the latter, regardless of the division we're competing in.

There's many reasons I believe the above, but ultimately the costs of running a full time setup, for it to be better than what we currently have, is about so much more than just employing some full time football players. To have a proper full time setup in that regard would require millions of pounds of investment in facilities to be used on a daily basis/ for the club to be based out of and tens of thousands of pounds every month going out in fixed costs regardless of what happened in the future (i.e. we get relegated/ go back to our 3 digit home crowds).

Obviously I don't think anyone is saying we should do the above, but to do less than that and become full time would be a sideways step, at best. We would then 'boost' ourselves to a Morton/ QotS/ Hamilton level of full time club...... Regardless of what division we're in, doing that wouldn't be in the clubs best interests in the short, medium or long term.

What is in the clubs interests in the short, medium and long term, which can be hugely boosted by our stay in the Championship or a wild promotion to the Premiership, is using the additional income and increase in interest to boost ourselves to a level where we are the part time club in Scotland over a long period of time. The best full time players aim to play for the best full time club they can, our aim should be for the best part time players aim to be to play for the best part time club..... us.

Regardless of the above, take two different random low level Premiership football teams:

Diddy A - Home crowds of 1500ish, a full time club who lose their better players after a year maximum to a bigger club/ better wages. Struggle to make the books balance year after year and if relegated, there will be large cuts in every budget/ area of spending with no other choice due to dependence on Premiership cashflow

Glorious Maroon Machine - Home crowds of 1500ish, a part time club who have kept the core of their team together for a number of years, with all of them being at the highest level they can play due to other interests (work, education/ own business etc.) Easily balancing the books due to significently less outgoings compared to competitors around them and able to easily scale the budgets due to this.

Diddy A is competing for players with 3/4 other full time clubs around them, inflating the wages of all clubs. The Maroon Machine are picking up the best available part time players in the country, who are more than equal to the full time players around them, and competing with other part time clubs wage wise on that basis - £500 is a very good part time wage for a footballer in this country; £1000ish being a bottom end Premiership full time wage.

There's more ambition in becoming the best part time team, by a distance, and over a long period of time, than there is in us becoming a full time football team just waiting for one or two bad seasons on the pitch and suddenly we're in the complete and utter shit.

I firmly believe if you got a squad of the best 22 part time players in this country, who had the attitude and complemented each other, that squad wouldn't be relegated from the Premership. I also believe you'd be on a much smaller budget than the teams around you, allowing for plenty leeway and additional spending on the community/ off the pitch side of things, continued marketing and all round building of the football club. One full time employee on the community side is worth more to us in the short, medium and long term than a full time football player. That's one employee where one didn't previously exist, as opposed to one full time football player replacing a part time one, with no guarantee whatsoever that he'll be any improvement.

There isn't one good argument for Arbroath to be a full time football club in my opinion :)

Good post.

I think that, unless the rise of the cost of living starts to slow a little, then you will start to find more and more Premiership (or Championship)players who would probably be good enough to keep you up. I would guess a lot of the full time fringe/youth players at your lower end Premiership and high end Championship clubs are on £500 p/w as you mentioned earlier.

 

Purely based on current fuel and energy costs if you are earning around £2000 a month you might find yourself a bit tighter financially than you were 12 or 24 months ago (I know that’s the case for me) and as such you might get guys like, just mentioning a random name here, someone like an Nouble deciding it’s better to be part time and pick up another few hundred a week/month on top of a wage at a club like Arbroath.

Edited by Sortmeout
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17 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

But we wouldn’t be getting guys on loan from other premiership teams. Livingston wouldn’t be giving us a Nouble or a Hamilton they’d be our direct competitors. The only time you ever see loans between Premiership clubs is when someone like a Williamson type player from the OF is going to other sides in the league and even then they can’t play 3 games a season. 
 

Explain how, if Hybrid, it wouldn’t just be a case of having 1 full time coach and hiring out a training facility 2 days a week for 2 hours with the rest of the club carrying on as normal? You could have say 8 full time guys or whatever. The costs associated with that would be minimal in comparison to the revenue you’d be bringing in as a premiership club 

The loan point isn't relevant to if we're full time or part time though - it's the case regardless. If we're in the Premiership, we're going to have a smaller amount of loans regardless of FT/ PT, and very few of them if any are going to be internally within Scotland.

Explain how having 1 full time coach and hiring a training facility 2 days a week for 2 days for 8 full time players is of any benefit to us? What would a minority of our squad gain from being full time in that situation? They wouldn't be fitter than what we currently have, they wouldn't have any further 'cohesion' (set pieces, offside trap etc) and they'd cost us more money in expenses. Positives - zero?

I get the concept of being able to then attract players that want to play full time as well as the best of the part time....... but quite frankly if a player is unable to train individually outside of their 2 team sessions each week, they're not the sort of player we want are they? Pretty much all of our, part time, players do their individual stuff outside of the 2 team sessions, which is why we're just as fit as the full time teams around us. If players at low level full time clubs aren't able to do basic training for their wage due to their contract having 'part time' instead of 'full time' beside it, despite paying the same wage, well..... that's on them. Our players train as much as full time players because they're motivated to do so and well paid to do so. If others coming in can't do that, then it's the former they're lacking and they're going to struggle at the club. I'm not interested in us ripping it up and starting to sign some 'names' on a 4 figure wage who is unable to motivate themselves to go for a run and put the work needed in when we can sign players of similar quality on half of that who are extremely motivated and professional with their football.

Spending thousands and thousands of pounds on expenses, facilities, additional coaching, catering etc. for a player to train the same amount our current part time players do, when we could spend that money to properly build the clubs infrastructure/ community side as we've been doing wouldn't be a good use of money IMO.

When you look at what other clubs have done over the past 20 years and how things have gone/ are going for them, it's quite clear that any model other than a part time one for Arbroath is ignoring all mistakes/ difficulties other clubs have had and continue to have. We have to be a sustainable football club, as we most certainly are right now. The majority of clubs around us have have external funding given to them (chairman putting cash in/ plugging losses etc) while right now I'd say we're probably one of the healthiest clubs financially in the entirety of Scotland.

Pissing about with what we have and trying to become something we aren't, while full well knowing the odds are hugely against it working/ being sustainable, would be a very poor decision, both from a football and business perspective.

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There’s way too much to reply to there but it would make sense to do the hybrid system purely so we could attract more players to the club. If we went up. It’s as simple as that, we already have the best part time football players. If you actually wanted to give it a go whilst in the prem you’d need to open the net up wider in terms of getting guys into the club 

 

It’s as simple as that 

Edited by 1320Lichtie
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If the miracle was to happen, I also do not see any advantages going to full time, everything is working for now so dont see any value in ripping up a very successful model and going down a different route. The success in loan players would maybe be an issue in terms of the Livingstons/Hearts not wanting to give us loans but I'd expect us to work around that and still get  a competitive team on the pitch. The hybrid model just seems to really go against what we're about aswel. The team spirit in our camp is there for all to see,  that could go in a minute if you have 8 or 9 boys training during the day and another 8/9 PT players training 2 nights a week, just doesn't work for me and could result in a edge missing in training and poorer sessions and preparation.

Anyway, we need to wait and see where we are with 7/8 games left before we start dreaming, i would still take top 4 right now.

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37 minutes ago, Smokerson said:

If the miracle was to happen, I also do not see any advantages going to full time, everything is working for now so dont see any value in ripping up a very successful model and going down a different route. The success in loan players would maybe be an issue in terms of the Livingstons/Hearts not wanting to give us loans but I'd expect us to work around that and still get  a competitive team on the pitch. The hybrid model just seems to really go against what we're about aswel. The team spirit in our camp is there for all to see,  that could go in a minute if you have 8 or 9 boys training during the day and another 8/9 PT players training 2 nights a week, just doesn't work for me and could result in a edge missing in training and poorer sessions and preparation.

Anyway, we need to wait and see where we are with 7/8 games left before we start dreaming, i would still take top 4 right now.

But say you could sign... Wighton, J Hamilton, C Hamilton, they kind of guys as FT players, say 8 of them. Have them as a group that do 2 training sessions with each other during the day as opposed to with another club like they do now and then train with our solid group of say 14 at night for 2 nights. What’s really the difference? The whole squad would still be training together the same as they do just now. Just that we’d be able to attract some more players with having the option of the FT football and lifestyle available to them. 
 

I do not think for one second we will have to ever face this issue by the way. I’m extremely pessimistic always but just in a hypothetical situation.

Edited by 1320Lichtie
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13 hours ago, SimonLichtie said:

Being the biggest/ best part time team in the country >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> being one of the shittest/ smallest full time clubs in the country. The positives of being/ accepting our aim is being the former far outweighs the latter, regardless of the division we're competing in.

There's many reasons I believe the above, but ultimately the costs of running a full time setup, for it to be better than what we currently have, is about so much more than just employing some full time football players. To have a proper full time setup in that regard would require millions of pounds of investment in facilities to be used on a daily basis/ for the club to be based out of and tens of thousands of pounds every month going out in fixed costs regardless of what happened in the future (i.e. we get relegated/ go back to our 3 digit home crowds).

Obviously I don't think anyone is saying we should do the above, but to do less than that and become full time would be a sideways step, at best. We would then 'boost' ourselves to a Morton/ QotS/ Hamilton level of full time club...... Regardless of what division we're in, doing that wouldn't be in the clubs best interests in the short, medium or long term.

What is in the clubs interests in the short, medium and long term, which can be hugely boosted by our stay in the Championship or a wild promotion to the Premiership, is using the additional income and increase in interest to boost ourselves to a level where we are the part time club in Scotland over a long period of time. The best full time players aim to play for the best full time club they can, our aim should be for the best part time players aim to be to play for the best part time club..... us.

Regardless of the above, take two different random low level Premiership football teams:

Diddy A - Home crowds of 1500ish, a full time club who lose their better players after a year maximum to a bigger club/ better wages. Struggle to make the books balance year after year and if relegated, there will be large cuts in every budget/ area of spending with no other choice due to dependence on Premiership cashflow

Glorious Maroon Machine - Home crowds of 1500ish, a part time club who have kept the core of their team together for a number of years, with all of them being at the highest level they can play due to other interests (work, education/ own business etc.) Easily balancing the books due to significently less outgoings compared to competitors around them and able to easily scale the budgets due to this.

Diddy A is competing for players with 3/4 other full time clubs around them, inflating the wages of all clubs. The Maroon Machine are picking up the best available part time players in the country, who are more than equal to the full time players around them, and competing with other part time clubs wage wise on that basis - £500 is a very good part time wage for a footballer in this country; £1000ish being a bottom end Premiership full time wage.

There's more ambition in becoming the best part time team, by a distance, and over a long period of time, than there is in us becoming a full time football team just waiting for one or two bad seasons on the pitch and suddenly we're in the complete and utter shit.

I firmly believe if you got a squad of the best 22 part time players in this country, who had the attitude and complemented each other, that squad wouldn't be relegated from the Premership. I also believe you'd be on a much smaller budget than the teams around you, allowing for plenty leeway and additional spending on the community/ off the pitch side of things, continued marketing and all round building of the football club. One full time employee on the community side is worth more to us in the short, medium and long term than a full time football player. That's one employee where one didn't previously exist, as opposed to one full time football player replacing a part time one, with no guarantee whatsoever that he'll be any improvement.

There isn't one good argument for Arbroath to be a full time football club in my opinion :)

100 % spot on. 👍

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1 hour ago, 1320Lichtie said:

I do not think for one second we will have to ever face this issue by the way. I’m extremely pessimistic always but just in a hypothetical situation.

I look forward to laughing/ crying about this debate with you when we're in our late 30s, watching us get battered by Cowdenbeath on our way back down to League 2...... ;)

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1 hour ago, SimonLichtie said:

I look forward to laughing/ crying about this debate with you when we're in our late 30s, watching us get battered by Cowdenbeath on our way back down to League 2...... ;)

No chance. Something solid has been put in place here and the clubs reached out and finally grabbed the towns attention 

 

We will have darker days again of course but not as bad as some of the shite me and you have seen 

 

The young young team don’t realise how good they’ve got it, seeing us winning at Rugby Park, Tannadice, Firhill, Caley Thistle etc on league duty. They’ve no idea about the Central Parks and Cliftonhills of the world 😂

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1 hour ago, SimonLichtie said:

I look forward to laughing/ crying about this debate with you when we're in our late 30s, watching us get battered by Cowdenbeath on our way back down to League 2...... ;)

Aye, we all need to just try to enjoy this as much as possible at the moment as we know deep down that the bad days will return.

Hopefully not to the level we were at at our worst but we’ll certainly be kicking around League 1/2 sometime  again in the future.

We will look back on this era as the best in modern times so must endeavour to enjoy every minute.

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A dose of reality in Simon's posts. Without someone with unlimited funds continually pumping money into the club full time football for us is a pipe dream. 

If by chance we were to be promoted I would not expect us to stay up but would hope that when we came back to the Championship we would maintain our position as a worthy Championship side and not spiral down the leagues as history has shown can happen.

  

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1 minute ago, SotesBornalichtie said:

Without someone with unlimited funds continually pumping money into the club full time football for us is a pipe dream. 

  

If we were to make it into the premiership this is simply not true. Premiership prize money and the crowds we would get would make FT football a very comfortable thing for us. I see the benefits of PT they’re massive, we are by far the biggest PT club so we can attract the best PT players. My point personally was IF we went up I think we would have to look at other options and become more flexible in order to give ourselves the best chance of doing well.
 

I don’t think it’ll be a problem we need to worry about and my main hopes for us is a club is establishing ourselves and staying in this division. That means getting 1100 plus season ticket holders AGAIN next year and making sure that this seasons not just been a one off. If we can continue the way we are going off the park we should be good on it. Championship football is a whole lot more enjoyable than L1 it’s a great league for us to be in.
 

FOUR home games coming up in the next 3 weeks too. Spoiled

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Arbroath are currently more viable for full time football than some of the current full time set ups. They've got a bigger support at the moment than Queen of the South for example. They've no need to do anything rash at the moment. Alloa and Dumbarton set a high standard before for part time teams but Arbroath are on a whole different level just now.

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1 hour ago, Broken Algorithms said:

Arbroath are currently more viable for full time football than some of the current full time set ups. They've got a bigger support at the moment than Queen of the South for example. They've no need to do anything rash at the moment. Alloa and Dumbarton set a high standard before for part time teams but Arbroath are on a whole different level just now.
 

I think that says more about other clubs than about us though. All those 'viable' full time clubs around us are propped up by external investment or riddled with debt/ circling the drain every year.

3 hours ago, SotesBornalichtie said:

A dose of reality in Simon's posts. Without someone with unlimited funds continually pumping money into the club full time football for us is a pipe dream. 

If by chance we were to be promoted I would not expect us to stay up but would hope that when we came back to the Championship we would maintain our position as a worthy Championship side and not spiral down the leagues as history has shown can happen.

  

This nails it for me. We are where we are for many reasons, but the main ones are continuity and the positivity surrounding the club, both of which are obviously connected.

We're not going to become some sort of Premiership level club who won't come back down. That's not negative thinking, it's realistic thinking. That means we would at some point come back down, and the odds would be high on it being soonish after going up. When we did, we're suddenly either a - one of the small full time clubs circling the drain or b - a huge overhaul needed from top to bottom club wise as we downsize in every area back to the level we're (unsurprisingly) back at.

Lets just focus on keeping doing what we're doing, it's going pretty fucking well for us at the moment. :) We have a MASSIVE opportunity to establish ourselves as a Championship club, the best part time club in the country and a club that can easily outdo the lesser full time teams regardless of our status. We're in the process of achieving all of this, and if we keep moving forward as we have been over the next few years we will achive it. I'd rather we keep focusing on achieving the above in the medium/ long term than chucking some cash at some full time players on 1 year deals and moving in a direction that contradicts everything we've done in the past 5 years, which has put us in this position.

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