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Coronavirus and the Scottish Championship


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2 hours ago, TxRover said:

I think the reality of serious problems is probably being discussed right now across fitba boardrooms after the mention of March. There is no doubting that few, if any, clubs planned for it being this bad, and now the reality of this revenue kneecapping is coming into focus. 

Why on earth did football clubs not  'plan for it being this bad' when they signed off on starting a new season in October just a few months ago? The overwhelming consensus of expert opinion at the time was that there would be i) no widely available vaccine in 2020 and ii) at least some 'second wave' in the autumn/winter. The current situation is merely somewhere in the middle of potential outcomes that SPFL clubs faced at that time then and the fact they gormlessly signed off on a new season and fresh two year contracts all round is damning.

You really have to question with widespread mismanagement like this why the government should send a single penny of taxpayer's money the way of Scottish football clubs. They certainly shouldn't get any support while choosing to charge fans anyway through their streaming options: if clubs choose to restart their trade then clubs should be left to their own efforts to support it. 

Edited by vikingTON
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2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Why on earth did football clubs not  'plan for it being this bad' when they signed off on starting a new season in October just a few months ago? The overwhelming consensus of expert opinion at the time was that there would be i) no widely available vaccine in 2020 and ii) at least some 'second wave' in the autumn/winter. The current situation is merely somewhere in the middle of potential outcomes that SPFL clubs faced at that time then and the fact they gormlessly signed off on a new season and fresh two year contracts all round is damning.

You really have to question with widespread mismanagement like this why the government should send a single penny of taxpayer's money the way of Scottish football clubs. They certainly shouldn't get any support while choosing to charge fans anyway through their streaming options: if clubs choose to restart their trade then clubs should be left to their own efforts to support it. 

Because love is blind...

The reality is lots of people were predicting a nice slow climb back to normalicy and the steadily declining number of case seemed to suggest that people had worked out what to do to contain this virus. With the government stopping the payroll scheme for October, it was natural to decide to start playing them, with planning for no crowds until January. Wishful thinking isn't just present in political circles and such. If you remember those "experts" had already blown several calls, so it was easy to think they were just as likely to be wrong again. Christ, even here in plague central there was a "feeling" that things were getting better and no one wanted to hear the predictions, so your statement about this being the middle course is simply wrong.

Is it mismanagement if you take the Government's predictions, which were far from that bleak, dial their optimism back a wee bit and run with that as your baseline, with a pinch of it might be a bit worse planning thrown in? The term unprecedented comes to mind, and businesses have proven repeatedly that unprecedented events are not something you can effectively plan for. You can have plans for disruptions and interruptions, you can insure for this and that, but you can't run a business assuming that worse than the worst case will always come true.

They have about 10 days to mull this over before they are pretty committed to playing, and I'm pretty sure there's a discussion going on. As for the two year contracts, I know it's your favorite hobby horse, but its irrelevent here.

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The Scottish Government made zero formal predictions about how many restrictions would still be in place in October (despite some idiots assuming that we'd just move forward in lockstep every three weeks). It is not the job of a board of directors to play armchair epidemiologist, assume that things will be okay and start firing out good deals to get that play-off spot next May: it is their job to ensure that their organisation survives a reasonable lower-end scenario of outcomes. Which this isn't even in the ballpark of yet.

It also wasn't 'unprecedented' at all. The disruption to last season was unprecedented. Since then, however, clubs had an opportunity to reassess their financial position, clear their books of deadwood (without the redundancy costs that many other businesses would face) and prepare for a future with absolutely no reasonable expectation for when their largest source of income would return. If they haven't done so then their club quite frankly deserves to fail as it is has not been managed to deal with an entirely foreseeable risk. 

Edited by vikingTON
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1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

So ball park, £58 for every 6 people who went less VAT = about £8 per person assuming a rough mix of one third each of adults, pensioners and kids. It might be slightly higher towards adults and away from kids, I can't be sure your mix exactly but 1/3 each is a relatively common industry standard. If you were averaging 1,900 a week (were you? that's a lot to average) then circa £275k in gate receipts assuming every ticket is paid for and you don't give away swathes to schools, hospitals, etc. Somewhere close to half of Txrover's original guess.

It's still considerably more than the prize money at that level though.

 

Average attendance 1840

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1 hour ago, virginton said:

Why on earth did football clubs not  'plan for it being this bad' when they signed off on starting a new season in October just a few months ago? The overwhelming consensus of expert opinion at the time was that there would be i) no widely available vaccine in 2020 and ii) at least some 'second wave' in the autumn/winter. The current situation is merely somewhere in the middle of potential outcomes that SPFL clubs faced at that time then and the fact they gormlessly signed off on a new season and fresh two year contracts all round is damning.

You really have to question with widespread mismanagement like this why the government should send a single penny of taxpayer's money the way of Scottish football clubs. They certainly shouldn't get any support while choosing to charge fans anyway through their streaming options: if clubs choose to restart their trade then clubs should be left to their own efforts to support it. 

This. 100% this.

53 minutes ago, TxRover said:

Because love is blind...

The reality is lots of people were predicting a nice slow climb back to normalicy and the steadily declining number of case seemed to suggest that people had worked out what to do to contain this virus. With the government stopping the payroll scheme for October, it was natural to decide to start playing them, with planning for no crowds until January. Wishful thinking isn't just present in political circles and such. If you remember those "experts" had already blown several calls, so it was easy to think they were just as likely to be wrong again. Christ, even here in plague central there was a "feeling" that things were getting better and no one wanted to hear the predictions, so your statement about this being the middle course is simply wrong.

Is it mismanagement if you take the Government's predictions, which were far from that bleak, dial their optimism back a wee bit and run with that as your baseline, with a pinch of it might be a bit worse planning thrown in? The term unprecedented comes to mind, and businesses have proven repeatedly that unprecedented events are not something you can effectively plan for. You can have plans for disruptions and interruptions, you can insure for this and that, but you can't run a business assuming that worse than the worst case will always come true.

They have about 10 days to mull this over before they are pretty committed to playing, and I'm pretty sure there's a discussion going on. As for the two year contracts, I know it's your favorite hobby horse, but its irrelevent here.

Really? "love is blind" isn't much of a reason to run to the Govt cap in hand bleating about being unable to afford something they consciously voted for less than 3 months ago. The whole "nobody thought it would be this bad" excuse doesn't remotely wash. The clubs were told to presume no crowds this year and that full crowds were unlikely all season. If they bullishly decided to push on regardless without being able to afford it if that became the reality then they are stark raving mental. I don't believe lots of people, at least not those with any knowledge at all about the area were predicting any nice slow climb back to normality. Experts warned all along that the colder weather would bring it back with a vengeance. If people in charge of football clubs preferred to listen to Facebook memes and not expert medical advice then I'm beyond incredulous.

I think they are well past the point where they are committed to playing. Reversing from it now would be just about as disastrous as playing would be. I'm more hopeful than you that clubs didn't pin their hopes to what Aggie from Glasgow posted on Facebook though and did contingency plan for zero crowds.

Handing out two year contracts, no matter how often Ayr in particular try to pretend it doesn't matter, is NOT irrelevant. It's a conscious decision to assume liabilities outwith the current season and a statement of confidence that they can honour them. It's also a millstone round the neck if things do go much worse than the club handing them out predicted. It's braver than I'd want to be right now. Good luck to clubs who have offered them.

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It is a sad fact of human psychology that it is very difficult to accept certain things and instead people can be willing to make mental leaps that are unwarranted. When the indication was no crowds before Jan and limited crowds after, that became the default planning scenario for most clubs, wise or not (it generally wasn’t). When the decision was made to resume play in October, it was because the clubs said they could make that version of reality work and that 2s at least partially based upon the payroll scheme ending then.

Do you think all the clubs could survive until next July with a complete shutdown? The answer is no, and that provides incentives for a number of teams to agree to play...once some teams decide they have to play, other teams looked at the predictions and said, yea, we can do that...it’s like a snowball. All most all the people in charge genuinely love the game and their teams, faced with the idea of possibly folding or playing in October, they chose playing, wisely or not, figuring it gave them a chance.

Is that mismanagement? One argument is clearly yes, but it’s not black and white, just like the decisions made already. Now the only question is will there be more damage playing or not playing, and is there any way to avoid the loss of some clubs?

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Why is something relatively low risk such as attending outdoor sports events socially distanced not allowed, but attending shops, pubs, restaurants etc indoors or even playing sports indoors and outdoors with far more risk are allowed.

These businesses should be allowed to trade and keep afloat the same as every other sector that's been reopened.
I assume evacuation is an issue as well as getting fans in and out of bottleneck entrances/exits.
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I assume evacuation is an issue as well as getting fans in and out of bottleneck entrances/exits.
It shouldn't be. Immediate threat to life outweighs social distancing and would be the same in an office, airport or supermarket.
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It's possible to plan for difficult or unpredictable circumstances; it really isn't possible to 'plan', in any meaningful sense of the word, for no income at all. That would mean saying 'we're closed for the foreseeable', which isn't planning, it's stopping.

Starting in October was probably the best of a really terrible set of options, even if it now looks like it's going to be a lot tougher than the clubs had hoped.

Bail-out is coming in England from Premier League, designed to offset 'loss of gate receipts' at the lower level; that's more likely to come from government in Scotland than from the top-division clubs... who either don't have the cash or don't give a f**k. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, whatever VT says above about 'taxpayers' money', if the SG can't or won't authorise 15-20% capacity.

We're probably talking three to four million to keep football going in the lower divisions; a very small price to pay compared to the carnage that might otherwise result.

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There absolutely is something wrong with an industry that just had an excellent opportunity to clear their books over the summer but carried on as usual instead, getting the begging bowl out now and pleading for taxpayer's money cos they couldn't possibly know that the pandemic would still be around in October. Compared to the live events industry or other sectors that have had no such opportunity to reduce their costs to prepare for life after furlough, mismanaged Scottish football clubs deserve to be at the back of the queue for public support. If there's not enough money to go round to help them then that's just tough.

Edited by vikingTON
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13 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:
On 22/09/2020 at 18:35, Hammerafc said:
Why is something relatively low risk such as attending outdoor sports events socially distanced not allowed, but attending shops, pubs, restaurants etc indoors or even playing sports indoors and outdoors with far more risk are allowed.

These businesses should be allowed to trade and keep afloat the same as every other sector that's been reopened.

I assume evacuation is an issue as well as getting fans in and out of bottleneck entrances/exits.

Not during the actual evacuation but you do have to identify space for people to socially distance at a fire assembly point once out. I don't think that's a problem for most clubs as it will be on a street

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And that's before we get to the fairness aspect: why should clubs who didn't bother cutting their cloth this summer suddenly get a guarantee - never mind one with public money - of wages and contracts that they could not have reasonably expected to fulfil? It would only be reasonable to continue existing support to contracts in place under furlough and leave the remainder as costs that clubs chose to add in the middle of a crisis and should just have to suck up. I'm not paying taxes to prop up Willie Haughey's jumped-up Gretna outfit on the south side of Glasgow.

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13 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:
On 22/09/2020 at 18:35, Hammerafc said:
Why is something relatively low risk such as attending outdoor sports events socially distanced not allowed, but attending shops, pubs, restaurants etc indoors or even playing sports indoors and outdoors with far more risk are allowed.

These businesses should be allowed to trade and keep afloat the same as every other sector that's been reopened.

I assume evacuation is an issue as well as getting fans in and out of bottleneck entrances/exits.

I presume the test runs in rugby and football were about how crowds are managed for movement around the stadium, food stalls if open and so on. The majority of places we access are controlled and demand face masks at all times, hand sanitiser available and so on.

As for indoor sports my squash club hasn't allowed games - friendly (unless actual family members) or league - since March and still has no time frame. Our game booking system is basically all but empty.

Edited by rainbowrising
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9 hours ago, The Ghost of B A R P said:

It's possible to plan for difficult or unpredictable circumstances; it really isn't possible to 'plan', in any meaningful sense of the word, for no income at all.

There will be income though, albeit significantly reduced.

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5 hours ago, virginton said:

And that's before we get to the fairness aspect: why should clubs who didn't bother cutting their cloth this summer suddenly get a guarantee - never mind one with public money - of wages and contracts that they could not have reasonably expected to fulfil? It would only be reasonable to continue existing support to contracts in place under furlough and leave the remainder as costs that clubs chose to add in the middle of a crisis and should just have to suck up. I'm not paying taxes to prop up Willie Haughey's jumped-up Gretna outfit on the south side of Glasgow.

Who said anything about a ‘guarantee’? Some form of additional subsidy is on its way, which should rise or fall according to how viable it is to admit paying customers. No issue with it coming from the taxpayer.

This isn’t about Charlie Haughey,* Charlie Adam, or some guy at Raith; it’s about survival, pure and simple.

 

* b*****d child of Willie Haughey and Charles Hawtrey, obvs...

Edited by The Ghost of B A R P
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1 minute ago, The Ghost of B A R P said:

Ok... almost no income... very little income... not nearly enough income to support a stadium, staff, and a squad of players.

No, not almost no income, but definitely not enough to make things sustainable.

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