joozy

He can make whatever joke he wants. And if folk want to call him an arsehole for making it, then they're perfectly within their rights to do so. Nothing worse than these "you can't even make a joke any more" type people who start whining like precious little snowflakes whenever anybody pulls them up for their shit chat.

Have any fans sent abusive texts to family members of the club's directors? Cause if they have they should face a permanent ban from the club and I don't think any reasonable person could disagree with that. Must admit, I'm not aware of this happening. On the other hand, I have seen the abusive message sent from a board member to the family member of a fan he felt was being too critical. Obviously that's perfectly fine.

I'd imagine the journalists that wrote the previous articles in The Scotsman and The Herald (plus others) will be sniffing around this now too. It's a belter of a wee half-page filler I'd imagine for a quiet midweek. From the board that brought you the most hilarious Q&A in ages, there's now a Director sending abusive messages. Not to somebody who's been having a go at him, but to the fella's son calling his old man a shitebag! Then you factor in the industry the director works in... what a story.

0778001000....send message "your dad's a fanny" 0778001001.... Send message "your dad's a twat" 0778001002.... Send message "your dad's a nugget"

I've seen the message, as like Rugster I know both the poster and his son. Not my place to post the content, but given it starts "your dad....." that should address at least one of your questions.

I love the fact that the lesson some board members took away from the Q&A session was that they needed to be more aggressive and insulting when communicating with fans. Yet another PR disaster.

I reckon the magnitude of the damage done to the club in both reputational and financial terms from the other week will only become clearer in the long-run. The insane levels of player and management turnover in recent years already had made us a deeply unattractive destination. Therefore we need to pay over the odds or offer ludicrous 3-year deals to attract total diddies. When you factor in the fact that we're now an international laughing stock with a board that seem quite happy to badmouth ex-players in public..... Jeez, we'll be having to offer Stranraer's sub keeper Messi-esque wages to sign with us before too long.

Bit early in the week to be smoking crack isn't it?

What is your actual point here? That ShaggerG should be more organised in his day-to-day life when it comes to booking tickets? Cause, while the point might be valid, the interest you're showing in him is coming across as pretty fucking weird.

I think I can help here. You're talking to a St Johnstone fan. They may well be the very model of a well-run provincial Scottish football club, and have been for many years, but the concept of something selling out isn't a thing they have to worry about very often.

I once got a visit from the police because of something I posted on One F back in the day. It was around 2004/05 I think, and IIRC there was some political shenanigans going on with the council. People were chatting about boycotts of councillor's businesses etc and it was all getting a bit silly. With tongue firmly in cheek, I said that we should all stand up, point and boo at them. Then if that wasn't enough we should kick over their bovril and stab them with pie crusts. A couple of weeks later, the local CID were at the door asking me exactly what I meant by "stabbing with pie crusts". I could see the despair in the officers eyes as they had to ask me inane question after inane question - "did i really intend to kick over anyone's bovril?". As they left I said I was sorry that they'd wasted their time, they just said "we have to investigate what we're told to Sir". Pretty sure it was a board member back then who made the complaint and told them who i was. They also asked me if i knew Olaf Thom but i said no... i'm no a grass.

I wouldn't bother responding to someone who is most likely either a board member or a friend of a board member.

I'm doubtful the model would have worked longer term, even if we had fluked a successful season, for a few reasons. We lack the initial advantages that Brentford had when they implemented it. They were lucky in the sense that they were bought by a guy who had a well established football data and statistics business. They could hit the ground running so to speak and clubs at their level in 2012 (League 1) would have had nothing to match that. To build it from scratch internally would take a whole lot of time and money, plus I'd imagine it's easier to find people with the necessary skills to create such a platform in London than Falkirk. I'd imagine there's quite a few third parties that offer these sort of services to football clubs - but their expertise is probably more relevant to a higher level of club than Falkirk. Also, at the levels we'd be looking for players, I'm not sure it'd be easy to get the level of data needed for it to really work. There's just not as many cameras filming non-league, reserve matches etc. Our take on the Brentford model just seemed to rely on the old-school scouting network and watching a player a couple of times. You might get lucky for a bit, but if it turns out we had by some fluke found a 'superscout' it wouldn't be that long before they were headhunted themself. And then you're back to square one.

And to bring all the above back to Falkirk. I don't think that there was anything necessarily wrong on a theoretical level about trying to replicate the Brentford model. The problem was that we did it in a typically cack-handed and brainless way. Brentford apply a whole team of scouts and data analysts to identify the targets they need with a view to either their resale value or the additional value they bring to the squad. They just don't go, "he looked like a player in that game v Blyth Spartans, let's get him in and we'll maybe flog him with a bit luck in a year or two". I suspect, the latter was more in line with Falkirk's approach.

What a weird thing to say, when there clearly is a Brentford model and it's worked wonders for them. The Swiss Ramble (football finance experts) took a look at the net transfer spend of every Premiership and Championship team for the 5 seasons between 2014/15 and 2018/19 and Brentford were the biggest winners with a £35m profit. Since then they've sold Watkins and Benhrama for a combined £63m (combined purchase price £4.5m). The players they've signed haven't just been from leagues above them, they've been from Europe, lower leagues and pretty much anywhere they think they can find undervalued assets. As for the management, the Brentford model isn't just about having a good manager. It's about having a good first team coach who will fit exactly into the Brentford system which has been designed by the owner and football operations team. It's why Warburton never lasted there. Brentford realised that with management being so changeable that it makes sense to have a footballing system in place at the club and to hire a coach that would slot into that, rather than having successive management teams with radically different views on players/footballing styles etc. Brentford have absolutely been pioneers in applying a more data-driven, analytical, 'moneyball' approach to the game. Their success both on and off the pitch has been testament to that. Their clearly is a Brentford model - saying it's just 'hire a good manager and do what other clubs have always done' is, at best, grossly reductive. Now there's a question about how long any advantage can be sustained. In baseball, the early success the Oakland Raiders had with the Moneyball strategy was countered relatively quickly as every other team realised this was the way to go.

There's still something very odd about that Clarke ePos business. They still don't have a functional website and their Facebook page is such a weird mix of stuff. They've been reposting about a garage wanting a new mechanic, covid passports, their huge amount of sponsorship deals, and a new push into commercial water contracts. There isn't much news, though, about any successes they're having in selling ePos systems. Strikes me as a baffling approach to building a business. But if we've been paid, the only risk is reputational I suppose.

It would be harsh, but his track record so far is pretty uninspiring. In his 24 games as manager we've won 9 games beating Luxembourg, Faroe Islands, Czech Republic (x2 although one was against their third XI), Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Cyprus (x2), and San Marino. Excluding the diddy teams and the match against the Czech C team, we've beaten two teams who are around us in the rankings. We've played Israel about a billion times and failed to beat them once over the 90 minutes. During the Euros we had home games against a fairly average Czech side and a good, but not world-beating, Croatian side. In both matches he messed up. For the first match, the starting line-up just wasn't right. Yes, we were unlucky at times but starting with Dykes as a long striker and no Gilmour in the middle was something that was pretty obviously a mistake. His substitutions were his usual tactic of throwing darts at the board and praying something would work. Against the Croatians, you could argue that it might have made more sense to have a Fleck in to replace Gilmour at the base of the midfield as a more like-for-like player than Armstrong. But overall, i don't think many would have argued with it. By half-time, though, it was clear that things weren't working as Croatia were absolutely bossing the game. Clarke did nothing. I can't really recall ever watching a game where Clarke has impressed with his in-game management. He does seem to have generated a good atmosphere in the camp and that's important. I also think you've got to give him a bit more time to see if he can improve. But this current crop of Scotland players does have the potential to be as good a side as we've had in quite some time. It's not perfect, obviously, and we're still lacking genuine quality in one or two positions (goalkeeper and centre half worries me). But a team that can hopefully be built for the next 5-6 years around a core of Tierney, Robertson, Patterson, McGinn, McTominay, Turnbull, Gilmour and Adams isn't too bad. We just need a manager capable of doing what other national team coaches have done and mould it into something that is greater than the sum of its parts. If Clarke hasn't shown that by the end of the World Cup campaign then I think that could be the time to look at making changes.

The one who's not feeling all that additional pressure?

It does seem the fella behind Clarke EPOS is to Ayr fans a bit like Mark Campbell is to Falkirk fans. He was fairly vocal about being keen to takeover Ayr in 2014. The Daily Record covered it by describing him as someone who "made his fortune by forming Restoraroof..." Restoraroof was wound up a year later. It doesn't look like they ever filed any accounts - I can't see any on Companies House. Since then, it's hard to see what he was up to between 2015 and 2020. He doesn't appear to have put anything on his LinkedIn page. Then in August last year Clarke EPOS was founded. They appear to have a fairly perfunctory website at the moment. It's Facebook page seems quite heavy on posts about its various football sponsorships and other businesses with a bit less than I'd expect about EPOS systems or customer testimonials. Tbh, I'm really not sure what to make of it all (certainly seems a bit odd) but if we've got the cash up front then it's not our problem I suppose.

Normally, I'd echo this point wholeheartedly but right now I'm not sure I do agree that engagement with the current board is possible. I know pretty much all of the people involved with the Crunchie Initiative and others who have worked with the club in the past (dating all the way back to the original Back the Bairns). This current board has some of the most disingenuous characters I've ever come across on it. In previous posts, I've talked about how more than one member of the current board has done its best to gaslight both these fans initiatives and the supporters. With regards to the CI specifically, I've had numerous conversations with the people involved where they've told me about what was agreed in discussions with the club and where they felt they were making progress. Then shortly afterwards, members of the board would deny that any such agreement had been made and the people involved with the CI were incorrect in having made such assumptions. I've heard about phone calls where members of the board would yell down the phone only to later fall back upon the line that 'mistakes have been made on both sides'. They've sought to create divisions within the CI by saying they'd no longer deal with certain members who they said they could no longer work with. I've seen emails where the tone fell way below what I would expect from anyone writing in even a semi-professional capacity. All this has exerted a considerable mental toll on some of the people involved in the Initiative. Fans who thought this would be a galvanising experience and something the whole club could rally behind have been left hugely disillusioned. With regards to the fans communications side of things, my posts over the past couple of days have made clear what I think of them. The Season Ticket refund statement was shocking and potentially in breach of trading standards. It was designed to make any fan that asked for a refund feel like they were somehow responsible for any prospective failings on the pitch. The e-mail posted earlier regarding the Q&A was filled with such nonsense it's hard to know where to begin. Again, they have put a club volunteer in an invidious position. It's not enough to just say, "oh we know Lewis and are sure he'll ask us really tough questions". That's a total dereliction of duty towards a de facto employee. I'm sure Lewis will approach it in a professional fashion, and indeed might even be relishing it, but it shouldn't be a decision he had to make. None of this would necessarily means that a complete and radical overhaul is needed (despite some of my earlier 'rip it up and start again' hyperbolic posts ). My initial optimism about the Rawlins' investment has been severely tempered by the dismissive tone which they've dealt with supporters in some of the messages I've seen and the fact they seem to have achieved total control with a relatively small investment and minority shareholding. They really should have given fans more clarity about their intentions by now and would be concerned that the mooted follow-up investment hasn't appeared. I agree with some on here that the proposed fans consortium's initial demands were probably a bit steep, but the follow-up offer detailed by @Back Post Misses appeared eminently reasonable. Arguments that it is incompatible with the Rawlins' objectives seem strange to me when we've not been told what those objectives are. I think the changes they suggested to the BoD were perfectly reasonable. The fact that these were rejected out of hand in a fairly contemptuous fashion, and all my previous points, are why I'm sceptical about the possibility for engagement with the board. I don't think they actually want any - at least not any that causes them any potential difficulty or threatens their positions. Where does that leave us? I'm fairly resigned at this point to the fact we're going to just have to let this play out. I hope it ends up with a successful and stable FFC in the Premier League; I'm worried that any future fans consortium won't be injecting money to support the club but instead to save it.

Who cares about the Hibs thing anyway? I've no reason to believe or have even seen any evidence that he is a Hibs fan (as far as I'm aware he's been a pretty regular ST holder at Falkirk) and, even if he was, the only thing that should matter is his competence as a director. The main focus should be that the email he sent to @Bairn in Exile is a complete and utter minter of a statement. It's just another example of the board trying to gaslight the fans.

Complete and utter bullshit. They're taking us for mugs "Additional costs of doing a webinar" - f**k right off. It's not that expensive. The risks of an open zoom - get a grip. It's not March 2020 when nobody had a clue how to do a Zoom conference. Do they think none of us use these things for work? It's pretty straightforward to arrange a call where a moderator can control who is unmuted and when. Or even have questions submitted via a chat function. Still no answer as to why it couldn't be done live. Even if Lewis does ask tough questions then who is in control of the final edit? The bit about being pre-recorded so fans can watch whenever they want literally makes no sense. If you have a live session it can still be recorded and uploaded for others to watch later. The need for the board to know who is asking the questions? Bullshit. If it's a legitimate question, it's a legitimate question. It doesn't matter whether it's being asked by @disgruntledgoalkeepingcoachtakingtheclubtoatribunal from Twitter or Joe Bloggs who sits in seat E20 in the main stand. And as for Lewis being tough. It's totally disingenuous. Oh sure, it's easy for them to say he can be as tough as he likes but as a de facto insider there's no way of avoiding the internal pressures to ask questions in a certain way. He's being put in an impossible position.

Can we have no more of this sexist pish pls. It's outdated, embarrassing and also very tedious.

Exactly, it's the usual shite. Look at one of the very first lines "We have been asked by a number of fans about the possibility of refunds, or other compensation". Motherwell come out and offer a free season ticket really early doors. FFC gives a strong impression that they'd really rather not have had to issue any statement whatsoever and are only doing it cause some fans are being unreasonably uppity.

Clarke will be wondering if he can start with a back 9 on Friday with big Dykes up front on his lonesome. Same old shit from Clarke. Negative, negative, negative......then when the game is getting away from us a quick switch to panic mode and throwing bodies on left, right and centre.