Jump to content

Coronavirus and the Scottish Championship


Recommended Posts

36 minutes ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

You'd have to imagine QoS would be one of the teams, and ICT's struggles in the last year or so brings them to my mind as well. It's a Keith Jackson article, so hopefully there are some elements of hyperbole in there, don't want any clubs having it this bad.

Imagine all you like. It's not us who made a pile of staff redundant in the summer and announced grim warnings of the situation if the insurance case was lost. I'd look closer to home.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Typical Daily Record article. Lot of speculation and unnamed sources with no facts other than Morton who already publicly admitted they have problems. 3 or 4 clubs "desperately scrambling around"? Broadly hinted to  be the ones overpaying to get promotion. Inverness an obvious possibility for another, they had issues last year already. Otherwise? Dundee maybe? Surely not Hearts or Dunfermline. Ayr said they'd be fine for a year or so I think and were handing out 2 year contracts. Raith? Probably not bracketed as chasing promotion to the premier.

I can think of one unnamed source in the Highlands who was very keen to flap his trap to Keith Jackson in the summer, so have little reason to suspect that they made that part up at least.

There's clearly an element of exaggeration because the clubs and Jackson want funds released as soon as possible. That's not too different to local publicans writing in to the paper complaining about their lack of immediate government support, except for the massive brass neck that these clubs chose to restart operations and build new squads under these circumstances and are still trying to guilt-trip £16 (Morton) for a live stream.

Edited by vikingTON
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, stu2910 said:


Think the continued financing is one of the major issues for fan ownership, depending on the level of the club. In Dundee’s case, despite the larger fan base than many rivals, there is unlikely to be the cash there to sustain unsuccessful promotion challenges or fights against relegation from the top flight. Unless of course there are significant cup runs and player sales.

It can work fine in the first few years where there is a surge of optimism and an acceptance that improvements will take time, but if in 2023/24 Morton find themselves vying with Forfar and Clyde to desperately try to stay in League 1, I would imagine the funding issue will become the focus again. It’s maybe not the most sustainable way to run a club, but we all have ideas of what our club should be and it’s not achieving that then the structure won’t last long.

In the end Dundee were approached by a buyer rather than seeking one out but it’s always a lottery how that will turn out. On the pitch has certainly been interesting in the past 7 years, even if in the end we’ve achieved the square root of diddly squat, at best. Off the pitch though we are probably as well run now as at any point in the past 50 years...admittedly though there isn’t much of a standard to beat.

I fail to see how having a fan ownership and investment model results in less funds for the football club than just asking fans to be customers and buy season tickets/merchandise and f**k off for the rest of the time. If you're milling around the seaside leagues entirely dependent on customer revenue through the gate then you're more fucked than with capital being invested.

There are not many white knights out there looking to prop football clubs up and fanbases should be very careful about what they wish for on that front. Morton are simply now in the final phase of a cycle that all owner-dominated clubs will go through to some extent, and the solution cannot be just 'get another businessman to take over' instead.

Edited by vikingTON
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

I fail to see how having a fan ownership and investment model results in less funds for the football club than just asking fans to be customers and buy season tickets/merchandise and f**k off for the rest of the time. If you're milling around the seaside leagues entirely dependent on customer revenue through the gate then you're more fucked than with capital being invested.

There are not many white knights out there looking to prop football clubs up and fanbases should be very careful about what they wish for on that front. Morton are simply now in the final phase of a cycle that all owner-dominated clubs will go through to some extent, and the solution cannot be just 'get another businessman to take over' instead.

It can. You're perfectly entitled to prefer something else of course but the best you can hope for with fan ownership is the sort of hybrid model referred to with Dunfermline as the most obvious comparable club. It needs credible business people with time and finance to head it up. And as noted, even they've moved away from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

It can. You're perfectly entitled to prefer something else of course but the best you can hope for with fan ownership is the sort of hybrid model referred to with Dunfermline as the most obvious comparable club. It needs credible business people with time and finance to head it up. And as noted, even they've moved away from it.

1200 fans contributing ST, merchandise etc. as customers only v having the exact 1200 customers + 600 investing capital in the club. I fail to see how the latter makes a football club poorer as a result. 

Nobody is suggesting plucking some folk of the terraces to run the boardroom: there of course has to be a degree of expertise at executive level. Yet even within the current boardroom structure at GMFC there are credible outside voices and more of these  sit on the fans' group as well.

The comparison then - for Morton at least - is not between a well-run private model and an unstable and inexperienced fan-run operation. It is rather between shifting the ownership and controlling interest of the club from private to collective hands, while still having a professionally competent board (which wouldn't struggle to do better than the current zoo behind the scenes). That model should still welcome external private investment/oversight where it is merited, but it should not be beholden to the interests of a deceased businessman's extended family which is where we are right now.

Edited by vikingTON
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My point was that 2000 fans with £5k in the bank can’t finance the club in the same way as one guy with £20m, and that inevitably means that in most cases the team on the pitch will be weaker. If that wasn’t the case, most if not all clubs would already be fan owned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Imagine all you like. It's not us who made a pile of staff redundant in the summer and announced grim warnings of the situation if the insurance case was lost. I'd look closer to home.

And yet, the insurance case was won. So still looking at you.

ETA: I know you can be a humour vacuum at times Skyline so just to state, I don't think anyone should be being 'looked at' other than Morton at the moment due to the fact the article was written by Keith Jackson.

Edited by Ludo*1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Skyline Drifter said:

And was being appealed was it not and there were warnings that the funds would take some time to come through. I suggest you look elsewhere.

Supreme Court have given a deadline of January.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Ludo*1 said:

Supreme Court have given a deadline of January.

Uh huh, so not before you have to meet the December payroll then?

Just now, Stag Nation said:

It seems to be working OK for Barcelona and Real Madrid.

That would be an absolutely fantastic point were we posting on a Spanish website and taking about Spanish clubs. As we're not though I'm afraid it completely misses the point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Fan ownership doesn't work and never will work in a proper business environment. It will work for community clubs at a lower league level, probably not even League 1 but League 2 / Lowland. Once bigger money, bigger gates, bigger wages, etc hit the table it doesn't. Clubs like Motherwell and Hearts, even Dunfermline until recently, claim to be "fan owned" but they aren't really. They are a sort of hybrid model where the fans are bankrolling to a major extent but business-people are still running things and propping things up in the background. Even then the likes of Dunfermline and Dundee have moved away from it.

Surely the distinction you're making here is between being fan owned and fan run.

In Motherwell's case although those involved with the day to day running of the club are indeed fans I don't think there's ever been any claim that we're fan run. Burrows was on a podcast recently acknowledging that a fan run model simply wouldn't work and as such the structure of governance at the club is set up to allow things to function fluidly.

That doesn't change the fact that the controlling party is the fans group. By definition we're a "fan owned" club.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

And yet, the insurance case was won. So still looking at you.

ETA: I know you can be a humour vacuum at times Skyline so just to state, I don't think anyone should be being 'looked at' other than Morton at the moment due to the fact the article was written by Keith Jackson.

 

1 minute ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Uh huh, so not before you have to meet the December payroll then?

 

To reiterate. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, stu2910 said:

My point was that 2000 fans with £5k in the bank can’t finance the club in the same way as one guy with £20m, and that inevitably means that in most cases the team on the pitch will be weaker. If that wasn’t the case, most if not all clubs would already be fan owned.

Most clubs at this level cannot count on a £20 million owner and even if they do - what happens next? GMFC spent stupid money on a massively inefficient basis under Douglas Rae for fifteen years, while he wrote IOU cheques to his own company - and here we are now with the club being run into the ground by his extended family. Going back to the well of a private benefactor is neither feasible - there simply aren't enough of them out there to count on this - nor actually a wise choice.

Football clubs need to be sustainable from their own resources in the long run: if that requires capital investment from fan ownership, in addition to cost-cutting measures and limited external investment then so be it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

Surely the distinction you're making here is between being fan owned and fan run.

In Motherwell's case although those involved with the day to day running of the club are indeed fans I don't think there's ever been any claim that we're fan run. Burrows was on a podcast recently acknowledging that a fan run model simply wouldn't work and as such the structure of governance at the club is set up to allow things to function fluidly.

That doesn't change the fact that the controlling party is the fans group. By definition we're a "fan owned" club.

Yes, that's entirely fair, the original post should have been better phrased. Although Motherwell are often mislabelled as "fan run" in other places rather than from Motherwell themselves.

It's also true to say however that Motherwell have not (yet) faced any major cash flow headaches since they became "fan owned" have they? How would the club deal with that as a matter of interest?

6 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

 

To reiterate. 

Your extra two sentences weren't there when I replied. Of course it's Keith Jackson and the Daily Speculation. And VT is absolutely right when he says it's clearly grandstanding to speed things up rather than the case that several clubs are genuinely on the edge of bankruptcy.

Edited by Skyline Drifter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Yes, that's entirely fair, though Motherwell are often mislabelled as "fan run" in other places rather than from Motherwell themselves.

It's also true to say however that Motherwell have not (yet) faced any major cash flow headaches since they became "fan owned" have they? How would the club deal with that as a matter of interest?

Honestly? I'm not sure - other than having reserves in place.

The official handover for fan-ownership happened on 28th October 2016 which was ahead of schedule. Our external debt was cleared 10th February 2020.

Our accounts haven't yet been published for 19/20 but since the handover:

16/17: (£181k)
17/18: £1.72m
18/19: (£436k)

Referencing that podcast Burrows was speaking on we seem to have been in a robust enough position to handle the whole Covid situation although granted that will have been helped by selling 2 assets for £1.5m and £3m respectively.

re: cashflow, in principle the WS (and club) should be building up reserves to mitigate any future issues. The chairman spoke of that in an update after Turnbull was traded:

Quote

"The money we receive for David will allow us in part to build up the strategic reserve, which helps secure and sustain us through such difficult and uncertain times. But this is also an opportunity to invest in the infrastructure, for example our training ground, academy and other facilities, with a view to providing an even-better environment for player development."

Link

On the off chance anyone's interested that podcast I mentioned with Burrows talking about fan ownership, Covid etc is below:

 

Edited by capt_oats
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Uh huh, so not before you have to meet the December payroll then?

That would be an absolutely fantastic point were we posting on a Spanish website and taking about Spanish clubs. As we're not though I'm afraid it completely misses the point.

OK, so maybe you could explain the differences between the Scottish and Spanish business environments?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Typical Daily Record article. Lot of speculation and unnamed sources with no facts other than Morton who already publicly admitted they have problems. 3 or 4 clubs "desperately scrambling around"? Broadly hinted to  be the ones overpaying to get promotion. Inverness an obvious possibility for another, they had issues last year already. Otherwise? Dundee maybe? Surely not Hearts or Dunfermline. Ayr said they'd be fine for a year or so I think and were handing out 2 year contracts. Raith? Probably not bracketed as chasing promotion to the premier.

Far from convinced the Championship share of £10m which is being shared not only among 30 SPFL clubs but also the womens game and presumably Juniors and senior non league sides too is going to be some sort of panacea either. What's that going to be per club? I assume it will likely be based on some sort of average attendance stat. For most of the clubs being hinted at that probably won't cover a month's payroll. Still think the lower Leagues came back far too soon. They would have been better advised to sit still till January.

I'd imagine Dunfermline will be fine given they have their investors who have already said they'll tide them over the pandemic. As you mention, Lachlan Cameron was very assured in the Summer that Ayr didn't need to worry about going under and that they were comfortable handling the situation.  

As for ourselves, we've never been the picture of financial health but there's a few factors to consider. In the Summer, Bill Clark was saying that we would be hoping for fans back in January but that looked like it might have been possible in early Autumn of this year - obviously this was before the clusterfuck occurred with schools and Universities returning back to re-ignite the virus.

 Nobody really knows how much we recouped in the way of legal fees from the Summer's escapades: after arbitration went in our favour everyone moved on and the clubs were required to keep quiet. If we've recouped the legal fees, then it might free up money we had from the crowdfunder in the Summer - that's working very much on assumption that it hasn't already been used to offset the period we didn't play (indeed, it's probably smarter to write that money off as gone already). 

If we're struggling by January, I'd imagine we'd be able to tide things over with potential player sales. Dylan Tait will inevitably leave the club well before his contract expiry in 2024: he's a superb talent and has been attracting attention from several large clubs. I can't recall who said it but seemingly Everton were tracking his progress. I'd hope that if Tait goes, we can get a similar deal to the one we did for Kieron Bowie (£150k + add ons for future). Similarly, clubs might try to poach the likes of Duku, Hendry and Musonda who all have less than 6 months on their contracts and are all looking very assured. 

As ever with Rovers, the picture is hugely unclear. The structure of the club is very complex with numerous holding companies. I'd imagine Stark's Park properties will be fine given the stadium seems to be in constant use - you've got Rovers, Fife Elite, youth teams and occasional teams needing to rent the ground to play games (like Dundonald Bluebell). As for the club itself we can only speculate. The only positive is that worst comes to the worst we have assets in the forms of players who should have some value.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...