Clyde vs Queen's Park

[Jack Burton]

I think it's shocking that Clyde ruined the competition for the other clubs in League 2 by having an external source pay for a player they couldn't dream of affording otherwise. Please stop buying leagues and make it fair. 
 

To be fair we've balanced it out by having 10 jobbers play alongside Goodwillie.

How do you know it is an external source paying Goodwillie's wages? I've been a Clyde membership owner in the past and it's never been included in any financial reports.

Either way we've totally wasted having Goodwillie at Clyde. A bog standard league 1 team with Goodwillie up front would be competing for promotion and we are miles away from that.

[clyde_r_us]

23 hours ago, G_&_T said:

To be fair Queens Park have a prestigious history and have cashed in on their biggest asset - Hampden. The cash they're spending is is all theirs, they have simply liquified their assets and are spending the money on redeveloping Lesser and players' wages. There's nothing immoral about that, particularly as they were basically blackmailed by the SFA into selling Hampden. What should they have done with the money?

some teams have struggled mean really struggled when they left their ground, so on to firhell wi ya 

 

[Jack Burton]

What's Willie Haughey interest in QP?

Is he not a well known Celtic fan?

Is there any suggestion of any kind of quid pro quo?

Is his financial support is entirely philanthropic?

Do QP fans care?

He helped get the sale of Hampden over the line by putting up £2.5 million of his own money. The guy is minted and brought up near Hampden so isn't going to miss a couple of million every year.

I'm really not looking forward to Saturday our record against the amateur version of Queens Park was bad enough never mind a full time team.

[bullyweehutch]

Honestly see us either getting steam rolled or shithousing another 2-1 somehow

[Bring Your Own Socks]

11 hours ago, Brian Carrigan said:

Tell you what, I still love that QP away strip.

I think we should have got Marmite to sponsor it rather than Irn Bru. Love it or hate it, it’s unique and clever. 

[Bring Your Own Socks]

1 hour ago, clyde_r_us said:

some teams have struggled mean really struggled when they left their ground, so on to firhell wi ya 

 

We haven’t “left our ground”. Lesser Hampden is ours, lock, stock and two smoking barrels. It’s getting a professional make-over at the moment.

[Bring Your Own Socks]

1 hour ago, Jack Burton said:

The guy is minted and brought up near Hampden so isn't going to miss a couple of million every year.

Actually, he was brought up in the Gorbals where the global centre of his main business now sits. His official title at the House of Lord is Baron Haughey of Hutchesontown. Both areas of course being within walking distance of Shawfield. It’s a funny old world!

[G_&_T]

59 minutes ago, Bring Your Own Socks said:

Actually, he was brought up in the Gorbals where the global centre of his main business now sits. His official title at the House of Lord is Baron Haughey of Hutchesontown. Both areas of course being within walking distance of Shawfield. It’s a funny old world!

Did he no' play for youse?

[BullyWeeStonehouse]

18 hours ago, The Moonster said:

I think it's shocking that Clyde ruined the competition for the other clubs in League 2 by having an external source pay for a player they couldn't dream of affording otherwise. Please stop buying leagues and make it fair. 

 

Do a supporters branch count as an external source?

[The Moonster]

10 hours ago, Jack Burton said:

How do you know it is an external source paying Goodwillie's wages? I've been a Clyde membership owner in the past and it's never been included in any financial reports.

Just what I've heard, it's a reliable source but I acknowledge this is lower league football and it could be shite. 

[Mick1867]

16 hours ago, Charliechurch said:

If he pulls his money for whatever reason, QP will be in big trouble.

We all know this is your wet dream but we already have his money secured for a long time so nae luck. Do you really think we'd enter into such a sponsorship deal without a contract in place?

You're missing my point about club ownership (obviously he has input to our decision making)

Mileson had nothing in place to sustain football at Gretna beyond his funding. We're in the process of putting new systems and structures in place, hence why we have invested less in the playing squad this season (that's why McKinnon left) Haughey's money has given us time to do that.  Once he got involved, Gretna were completely reliant on Mileson's funding for the club to exist at any level.  Now whether we can sustain full time football in 10 years time is another matter but I'm pretty sure we'll be operating at some level.

[haufdaft]

He helped get the sale of Hampden over the line by putting up £2.5 million of his own money. The guy is minted and brought up near Hampden so isn't going to miss a couple of million every year.

I'm really not looking forward to Saturday our record against the amateur version of Queens Park was bad enough never mind a full time team.

It's good to know the profits from his contracts with Glasgow City Council are bearing fruit.

[Bullyweeno1]

3 hours ago, Mick1867 said:

Now whether we can sustain full time football in 10 years time is another matter but I'm pretty sure we'll be operating at some level.

Without external financial backing you wont be operating as a full time club in 10 years.

Like ourselves, you dont have the basic supporter base to operate as a full time club.

[an86]

10 minutes ago, Bullyweeno1 said:

Without external financial backing you wont be operating as a full time club in 10 years.

Like ourselves, you dont have the basic supporter base to operate as a full time club.

We can have a crack at it. Fan base is not the only factor in terms of sustaining full-time football. Livi and Hamilton manage it with not many more than 1000 fans. We’d still need to grow the support to make it work, but it can be done over time. The alternative is simply not trying. Why would we not, when we can? 

[Bullyweeno1]

Just now, an86 said:

We can have a crack at it. Fan base is not the only factor in terms of sustaining full-time football. Livi and Hamilton manage it with not many more than 1000 fans. We’d still need to grow the support to make it work, but it can be done over time. The alternative is simply not trying. Why would we not, when we can? 

As said without an external investor you cant sustain full time football without fan base.

Both Livi and Hamilton had external investors.

You can try to grow support but when we were finishing 2nd and 3rd in championship we only ever attracted about 1000 fans and suspect QP will be the same.

Sure you can have a go....but dont go all Pete Tong like it did for us and ended up with us nearly doing a Gretna.

[BullyWeeStonehouse]

I can never understand why some fans get all arsey when other similar sized lower league clubs get a bit of financial backing and propel themselves up the leagues.
Obviously views will be skewed a bit here because it’s Queens Park but we would all be loving it if it happened to Clyde.

If it works then good luck to QP. We would absolutely all take the same situation if it was offered to us. Football is all about money nowadays, you’re not going to progress without it. Plenty of us having been moaning on here for years about our lack of financial backing every season… 

[Dooflick]

17 hours ago, G_&_T said:

Did he no' play for youse?

WH played for QP boys club which was run by two members of QP. If you were good enough you would be recomended to Eddie Hunter, and if he liked what he saw, you would be signed and play for the QP U/18 team. WH did not quite make it, but he did win a cup final with the boys club and the Daily Mail published a photo of him wearing a QP stripe and holding up his gold medal. Because of this association, he has always had a soft spot for QP, and indeed several years ago he donated £50,000 to the QP youth system.

[haufdaft]

Eddie Hunter could spot a good player. Unfortunately that's something that the entire Clyde recruitment team cannot do.

[ATLIS]

11 hours ago, Bullyweeno1 said:

As said without an external investor you cant sustain full time football without fan base.

Both Livi and Hamilton had external investors.

You can try to grow support but when we were finishing 2nd and 3rd in championship we only ever attracted about 1000 fans and suspect QP will be the same.

Sure you can have a go....but dont go all Pete Tong like it did for us and ended up with us nearly doing a Gretna.

We haven't for a while, we've run at a net even/profit for about 7 or 8 years now. We just run off of what we earn, that goes back to the League 1 win for sure and the following double promotion. We ran as the only FT side in League 1 and did fine, off of about 800 ST holders. It's just that we ended up paying less as a FT side than the higher end PT sides. 

We run off of about a core of 1000-1,200 home fans and it sustains FT football just fine. Obviously helps to have a model of selling players on and playing top flight football. We won the playoffs in the Championship with the second smallest budget, Brechin in their winless season being the lowest.

[Bring Your Own Socks]

7 hours ago, ATLIS said:

We haven't for a while, we've run at a net even/profit for about 7 or 8 years now. We just run off of what we earn, that goes back to the League 1 win for sure and the following double promotion. We ran as the only FT side in League 1 and did fine, off of about 800 ST holders. It's just that we ended up paying less as a FT side than the higher end PT sides. 

We run off of about a core of 1000-1,200 home fans and it sustains FT football just fine. Obviously helps to have a model of selling players on and playing top flight football. We won the playoffs in the Championship with the second smallest budget, Brechin in their winless season being the lowest.

Good post. The selling-on bit was a big part of the decision to change the club’s direction. As an amateur team, every player had a one-year contract which meant every summer the entire squad could just walk away. The process has already started of bringing through some of our youth on professional contracts so that if they are poached by a bigger club at least we get some return from our investment over the development years. And those that stay with our first team can be sure of a future in the game. As this evolves in years to come, the plan is to have more of that and less of the end-of-career/high salary type of player. The plans for an enhanced city-wide community football programme, with a strong bias toward the Southside, are under way too. As well as the entry level for the ladder system, this is potentially a strong revenue stream too. 

It’ll be interesting to see how things go around March. Fans, players and coaches all want to win the league, get promotion etc. As a club though, would we be ready for the Championship? The CEO talks in terms of a decade for development and consolidation. But progress has been rapid this last six months and it’s expected to keep evolving for the rest of this season, at least.

As for humble riffraff like me, all of the future starts with beating Clyde on Saturday. ‘Mon the Hoops!