|
Post by herbiedumplings on Aug 29, 2023 8:26:59 GMT
When do we start the new administration thread? Next time we lose a game? So, Saturday then?
|
|
|
Post by timberwolf on Aug 29, 2023 8:53:06 GMT
If there was any real rumour of MS wanting out and selling the club i could understand the worry. If he is not happy about the situation he could easily turn the money tap down a few turns and not cutting it off fully.
|
|
|
Post by redhatter on Aug 29, 2023 9:58:19 GMT
If there was any real rumour of MS wanting out and selling the club i could understand the worry. If he is not happy about the situation he could easily turn the money tap down a few turns and not cutting it off fully. I don't think there is any suggestion of MS wanting out, but that's not really the point. We are making very large, unsustainable loses and regardless of who the owner is, there will become a point where anyone would get sick and tired of writing cheques for £m+ every year. It is important that the Club is sustainable and grows organically - or at least makes more affordable losses. I'd like to see a clear business plan of what the club are looking to achieve and how the aim to balance income and expediture. I'd like to hear more about our plans for a Centre of Excellence, I would expect the Club would be looking to develop talented young players and sell them on for big money? We've increased off field revenue significantly, but it doesn't come close to matching our expenditure. Can more be done? Summer concerts? With Brendan Elwood it was clear, we recruited very well, but we tended to sell a player for big money each year and the manager was given the funds for replacements. Building the Cheadle End proved to be an excellent investment, which paid for itself many times over. Brendan is reported to have lost around £100k a year and said that if you'd have offered me that, when I bought the Club, I'd have ripped your arm off! At the moment it's very hard to see how the Club is achieving good value? We're recruiting players in their late 20's, on big money, but we're not getting the return. There is a very large structure within the Club, with 200+ employees, this has to pay for itself.
|
|
|
Post by atmosphere on Aug 29, 2023 10:06:22 GMT
If there was any real rumour of MS wanting out and selling the club i could understand the worry. If he is not happy about the situation he could easily turn the money tap down a few turns and not cutting it off fully. I don't think there is any suggestion of MS wanting out, but that's not really the point. We are making very large, unsustainable loses and regardless of who the owner is, there will become a point where anyone would get sick and tired of writing cheques for £m+ every year. It is important that the Club is sustainable and grows organically - or at least makes more affordable losses. I'd like to see a clear business plan of what the club are looking to achieve and how the aim to balance income and expediture. I'd like to hear more about our plans for a Centre of Excellence, I would expect the Club would be looking to develop talented young players and sell them on for big money? We've increased off field revenue significantly, but it doesn't come close to matching our expenditure. Can more be done? Summer concerts? With Brendan Elwood it was clear, we recruited very well, but we tended to sell a player for big money each year and the manager was given the funds for replacements. Building the Cheadle End proved to be an excellent investment, which paid for itself many times over. Brendan is reported to have lost around £100k a year and said that if you'd have offered me that, when I bought the Club, I'd have ripped your arm off! At the moment it's very hard to see how the Club is achieving good value? We're recruiting players in their late 20's, on big money, but we're not getting the return. There is a very large structure within the Club, with 200+ employees, this has to pay for itself. We've just signed 5 young lads for the emerging talent programme, we're definitley trying to find some future stars. Our academy is producing some good young players like Cody Johnson and Ashton Mee who the club are developing. Don't forget we've also sold Scott Holding and Jack Hinchy in the last few summers prior to this.
I reckon if a big bid had come in for Will Collar for example (and it may still do) we'd sell. Challinor said they were a bit disappointed bids hadn't come in for our players considering how well they've done.
We do sign young upcoming players who have resale value. Ethan Pye, Ryan Rydel, Olaofe, Stretton. We mix these with experienced players as we do want to be successful in the here and now too.
|
|
|
Post by timberwolf on Aug 29, 2023 10:17:06 GMT
We are making very large, unsustainable loses and regardless of who the owner is, there will become a point where anyone would get sick and tired of writing cheques for £m+ every year. It is important that the Club is sustainable and grows organically - or at least makes more affordable losses. I'd like to see a clear business plan of what the club are looking to achieve and how the aim to balance income and expediture. I'd like to hear more about our plans for a Centre of Excellence, I would expect the Club would be looking to develop talented young players and sell them on for big money? We've increased off field revenue significantly, but it doesn't come close to matching our expenditure. Can more be done? Summer concerts? With Brendan Elwood it was clear, we recruited very well, but we tended to sell a player for big money each year and the manager was given the funds for replacements. Building the Cheadle End proved to be an excellent investment, which paid for itself many times over. Brendan is reported to have lost around £100k a year and said that if you'd have offered me that, when I bought the Club, I'd have ripped your arm off! At the moment it's very hard to see how the Club is achieving good value? We're recruiting players in their late 20's, on big money, but we're not getting the return. There is a very large structure within the Club, with 200+ employees, this has to pay for itself. The main difference between the two regimes are our bloated number of people employed by the club and our transfer activity. Call it culture or not that second tier football achieved at County was started by danny with the signings of young players like toddy, armstrong and dinning who grew with the club. Rough diamonds like big kev plus eventually getting bretts career back to how it was along with splashing money at top players like bennett and marsden and a few others. Now its all about the latter without any thought of the other type of player that brought us success in the past. The only thing where we have not been good with is the centre of excellence thing where we have never developed players from kids. One thing both me and danny agreed on and that was a waste of time concentrating too much on youth football.
|
|
|
Post by gibbo on Aug 29, 2023 10:19:25 GMT
I don't think there is any suggestion of MS wanting out, but that's not really the point. We are making very large, unsustainable loses and regardless of who the owner is, there will become a point where anyone would get sick and tired of writing cheques for £m+ every year. It's Stott that has decided to invest though and Stott that has set the "Championship in 7 years" target. Considering we were 6 months removed from National League North when he took over, there's going to be no way of achieving any of that without writing out cheques for considerable amounts for a good few years. I could see the concern if we were 10 years or so down the line, but we're only coming in to the 4th anniversary of Stott taking over (and part of that time was wiped out by Covid). It's also not as if Stott has seen no return on his investment in a non-financial sense. We've been Play-Off / Promoted / Play-Offs (which included a Wembley trip) and had some great games along the way (Bolton, Salford), so I doubt Stott's sat there thing "I've spent all this money and what have I got in return??".
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Aug 29, 2023 10:36:53 GMT
I don't think there is any suggestion of MS wanting out, but that's not really the point. We are making very large, unsustainable loses and regardless of who the owner is, there will become a point where anyone would get sick and tired of writing cheques for £m+ every year. It's also not as if Stott has seen no return on his investment in a non-financial sense. We've been Play-Off / Promoted / Play-Offs (which included a Wembley trip) and had some great games along the way (Bolton, Salford), so I doubt Stott's sat there thing "I've spent all this money and what have I got in return??". I bet he will if we're not challenging for the title this season. Harking back to a cup game almost two years ago, no matter how special it was, isn't a great indicator of non-financial ROI. Salford was a great outcome but a pretty poor game. It's only because it was so important it felt special. Since the end of the 21 game run in March 2022, there's probably less than 5 games I could recall where we either really turned it on or played a part in a special game.
|
|
|
Post by gibbo on Aug 29, 2023 10:42:24 GMT
It's also not as if Stott has seen no return on his investment in a non-financial sense. We've been Play-Off / Promoted / Play-Offs (which included a Wembley trip) and had some great games along the way (Bolton, Salford), so I doubt Stott's sat there thing "I've spent all this money and what have I got in return??". I bet he will if we're not challenging for the title this season. And that's when we'll likely see the next set of significant changes coming - Challinor likely going and maybe even Wilson following. That's a bit different though than him deciding "I want out", which is some of the concern that seems to be about at the moment. He's surely sensible enough to know that it's not all going to be plain sailing when it comes to a Football Club?
|
|
|
Post by mat1scfc on Aug 29, 2023 10:50:33 GMT
I feel like we need another fan forum but instead of having the academy coaches and challinor who realistically never gets asked a decent question about are we going to bring a striker in or why are out set pieces useless for 95% of the season.
We need stott there. He was at the first one but he's not been at one since I don't believe
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Aug 29, 2023 11:00:38 GMT
I bet he will if we're not challenging for the title this season. And that's when we'll likely see the next set of significant changes coming - Challinor likely going and maybe even Wilson following. That's a bit different though than him deciding "I want out", which is some of the concern that seems to be about at the moment. He's surely sensible enough to know that it's not all going to be plain sailing when it comes to a Football Club? I don't think there's an immediate concern that Stott is getting bored/is going to walk away/'wants out'. I don't think anybody has ever said that, with reference to it being something that happens in the short term. What people have very reasonably been worried about is the level of expenditure, the fact we were losing £93k a week 12 months ago and our total reliance on Stott. I'm sure some will come back with 'we're not in debt, converting to equity' etc but that doesn't alter the fact he is bankrolling us. Without him, we are totally and utterly f*cked. That is inarguable. Now there's no suggestion Stott is looking to go/turn off the money at all. I don't think he will and he's been good on (nearly) every promise he's made so far so he's got an awful lot of trust/credit. But, as I've said before, we'd be utterly stupid, bordering on negligent, to not consider the long term future because of the huge hole between income and expenditure that he is plugging. We can carry on as if it will never end and he'll continue to plough in millions a year, and maybe he will. But we also need to be asking questions and having conversations about what happens if anything changes; either he does get bored (no sign of that happening atm), he becomes ill (hopefully not), his businesses struggle (no idea how they're performing), there's some force majeure that impacts us (Covid, financial crash similar to 2008, something else completely unknown - it obviously happens) or something else. It's almost as if the last 20 years of decline, caused by financial problems, that saw us finish 14th in the sixth tier, never happened. It did happen, and it can happen again. That's not to say I think it will. But it could.
|
|
|
Post by timberwolf on Aug 29, 2023 11:01:23 GMT
It's Stott that has decided to invest though and Stott that has set the "Championship in 7 years" target. Considering we were 6 months removed from National League North when he took over, there's going to be no way of achieving any of that without writing out cheques for considerable amounts for a good few years. I could see the concern if we were 10 years or so down the line, but we're only coming in to the 4th anniversary of Stott taking over (and part of that time was wiped out by Covid). It's also not as if Stott has seen no return on his investment in a non-financial sense. We've been Play-Off / Promoted / Play-Offs (which included a Wembley trip) and had some great games along the way (Bolton, Salford), so I doubt Stott's sat there thing "I've spent all this money and what have I got in return??". Unfortunetly football is not looked at in this way and not just with us. Its all about winning promotions and remembered games and coming second is not what its all about. In todays world would Danny have lasted as long as he did when he seemed incapable of getting out of the 3rd tier or dave jones had been allowed to go backwards before he went forwards. Just hope MS does not feel that promotions are the one and only thing that really does matter. If the quality of the games improve i for one will not be getting a noose out if we start 2024/5 as a league 2 club again.
|
|
|
Post by timberwolf on Aug 29, 2023 11:09:50 GMT
It's also not as if Stott has seen no return on his investment in a non-financial sense. We've been Play-Off / Promoted / Play-Offs (which included a Wembley trip) and had some great games along the way (Bolton, Salford), so I doubt Stott's sat there thing "I've spent all this money and what have I got in return??". I bet he will if we're not challenging for the title this season. If he does feel that way he should never have got into football club ownership at all. There is no guarentee of success even if we had spent double on what we have done, employeed a magician as manager and have our own private health clinic dealing with players injuries with the top medics from across the world in charge. Then there is the fact of another 23 teams wanting their success and doing the best to stop others having it.
|
|
|
Post by HTC on Aug 29, 2023 11:25:03 GMT
And that's when we'll likely see the next set of significant changes coming - Challinor likely going and maybe even Wilson following. That's a bit different though than him deciding "I want out", which is some of the concern that seems to be about at the moment. He's surely sensible enough to know that it's not all going to be plain sailing when it comes to a Football Club? I don't think there's an immediate concern that Stott is getting bored/is going to walk away/'wants out'. I don't think anybody has ever said that, with reference to it being something that happens in the short term. What people have very reasonably been worried about is the level of expenditure, the fact we were losing £93k a week 12 months ago and our total reliance on Stott. I'm sure some will come back with 'we're not in debt, converting to equity' etc but that doesn't alter the fact he is bankrolling us. Without him, we are totally and utterly f*cked. That is inarguable. Now there's no suggestion Stott is looking to go/turn off the money at all. I don't think he will and he's been good on (nearly) every promise he's made so far so he's got an awful lot of trust/credit. But, as I've said before, we'd be utterly stupid, bordering on negligent, to not consider the long term future because of the huge hole between income and expenditure that he is plugging. We can carry on as if it will never end and he'll continue to plough in millions a year, and maybe he will. But we also need to be asking questions and having conversations about what happens if anything changes; either he does get bored (no sign of that happening atm), he becomes ill (hopefully not), his businesses struggle (no idea how they're performing), there's some force majeure that impacts us (Covid, financial crash similar to 2008, something else completely unknown - it obviously happens) or something else. It's almost as if the last 20 years of decline, caused by financial problems, that saw us finish 14th in the sixth tier, never happened. It did happen, and it can happen again. That's not to say I think it will. But it could.
I think the positive spin on it is that there's also an 'in between' option.
Stott can reduce the spending to the sort of level that enables the club to wash its face, and accepts us being a club that bounces between the 3rd/4th tier with a loyal base of legacy fans, rather than going all out for the Reading (northwest version) club he seemed to be aiming for initially.
Success then becomes 'good cup run / season challenging for promotion to the championship / Cody Johnson sold to Leeds for £7 million', rather than 'Championship in 7 years'
Now we're back in the league, we can be fairly sustainable along those lines, similar to clubs like Grimsby / Tranmere / Doncaster - a backer who is there as a last resort when things go tits up, but not Salford / Fleetwood etc. style throwing money at it.
To be honest, I'd be happy with that.
|
|
|
Post by m14hatter on Aug 29, 2023 11:40:03 GMT
I don't think there's an immediate concern that Stott is getting bored/is going to walk away/'wants out'. I don't think anybody has ever said that, with reference to it being something that happens in the short term. What people have very reasonably been worried about is the level of expenditure, the fact we were losing £93k a week 12 months ago and our total reliance on Stott. I'm sure some will come back with 'we're not in debt, converting to equity' etc but that doesn't alter the fact he is bankrolling us. Without him, we are totally and utterly f*cked. That is inarguable. Now there's no suggestion Stott is looking to go/turn off the money at all. I don't think he will and he's been good on (nearly) every promise he's made so far so he's got an awful lot of trust/credit. But, as I've said before, we'd be utterly stupid, bordering on negligent, to not consider the long term future because of the huge hole between income and expenditure that he is plugging. We can carry on as if it will never end and he'll continue to plough in millions a year, and maybe he will. But we also need to be asking questions and having conversations about what happens if anything changes; either he does get bored (no sign of that happening atm), he becomes ill (hopefully not), his businesses struggle (no idea how they're performing), there's some force majeure that impacts us (Covid, financial crash similar to 2008, something else completely unknown - it obviously happens) or something else. It's almost as if the last 20 years of decline, caused by financial problems, that saw us finish 14th in the sixth tier, never happened. It did happen, and it can happen again. That's not to say I think it will. But it could.
I think the positive spin on it is that there's also an 'in between' option.
Stott can reduce the spending to the sort of level that enables the club to wash its face, and accepts us being a club that bounces between the 3rd/4th tier with a loyal base of legacy fans, rather than going all out for the Reading (northwest version) club he seemed to be aiming for initially.
Success then becomes 'good cup run / season challenging for promotion to the championship / Cody Johnson sold to Leeds for £7 million', rather than 'Championship in 7 years'
Now we're back in the league, we can be fairly sustainable along those lines, similar to clubs like Grimsby / Tranmere / Doncaster - a backer who is there as a last resort when things go tits up, but not Salford / Fleetwood etc. style throwing money at it.
To be honest, I'd be happy with that.
Yeah. I’d settle for that. Not too fussed about the Championship - would take a season to tick a few more grounds off. If people got their knickers in a twist about ticket prices at EP this season wait until Wednesday or Leeds are trying to charge £40-£50 for a game.
|
|
|
Post by suedehead on Aug 29, 2023 11:49:15 GMT
I don't think there's an immediate concern that Stott is getting bored/is going to walk away/'wants out'. I don't think anybody has ever said that, with reference to it being something that happens in the short term. What people have very reasonably been worried about is the level of expenditure, the fact we were losing £93k a week 12 months ago and our total reliance on Stott. I'm sure some will come back with 'we're not in debt, converting to equity' etc but that doesn't alter the fact he is bankrolling us. Without him, we are totally and utterly f*cked. That is inarguable. Now there's no suggestion Stott is looking to go/turn off the money at all. I don't think he will and he's been good on (nearly) every promise he's made so far so he's got an awful lot of trust/credit. But, as I've said before, we'd be utterly stupid, bordering on negligent, to not consider the long term future because of the huge hole between income and expenditure that he is plugging. We can carry on as if it will never end and he'll continue to plough in millions a year, and maybe he will. But we also need to be asking questions and having conversations about what happens if anything changes; either he does get bored (no sign of that happening atm), he becomes ill (hopefully not), his businesses struggle (no idea how they're performing), there's some force majeure that impacts us (Covid, financial crash similar to 2008, something else completely unknown - it obviously happens) or something else. It's almost as if the last 20 years of decline, caused by financial problems, that saw us finish 14th in the sixth tier, never happened. It did happen, and it can happen again. That's not to say I think it will. But it could. I think the positive spin on it is that there's also an 'in between' option. Stott can reduce the spending to the sort of level that enables the club to wash its face, and accepts us being a club that bounces between the 3rd/4th tier with a loyal base of legacy fans, rather than going all out for the Reading (northwest version) club he seemed to be aiming for initially. Success then becomes 'good cup run / season challenging for promotion to the championship / Cody Johnson sold to Leeds for £7 million', rather than 'Championship in 7 years'
Now we're back in the league, we can be fairly sustainable along those lines, similar to clubs like Grimsby / Tranmere / Doncaster - a backer who is there as a last resort when things go tits up, but not Salford / Fleetwood etc. style throwing money at it. To be honest, I'd be happy with that.
Same, more than happy. And I'd think by being that club, we'd probably get a tilt at the Championship every 5 seasons or so. Might not get there, but I think we'd all be happy with that. The one club I look at and think I'd like us to be like (from a fairly clueless outsiders POV anyway) is Peterborough, bouncing between Championship and League One, signing top non-league talent and getting a reputation for being the place to go for those players.
|
|