wearealldoomed

FFS. Come back when you have an idea what you're talking about. Since 2002-3, our average gate has ranged from 990 to 2100. Apathy set in in the last couple of seasons, but the bigger games have shown that there remains an appetite for senior footbal in the town. Airdrieonians ceased trading 7 years ago, and certainly didn't play in a council owned ground. What this has in common with the Livingston situation is anyone's guess. Airdrie United have no debt. Anthing else you'd like clarified?

No. No businessman will deal with Massone, therefore there is no prospect of a sale while he's there. If the liquidators negotiate a sale, they are the first creditors to be paid. Likewise, any liquidation of the assests will go to the liquidators to settle their fees before any other creditor receives a penny. With each passing day, the liqudators' fees become higher. This renders the club even less attractive to potential bidders whilst reducing the chances of any liquidation of assets covering the fees in full. In short, he wants in and out pronto to ensue he gets paid in full. What are you on about? 1) There never was any plesge to buy season tickets. 1600 fans pleged to support the new club as part of the bid when we lost out to Gretna. In our first few season, the average gate was a few hundred either side of this. 2) The council don't own the ground. 3) We have no debt.

Yep. If Spartans or A.N. Other wanted the league place, thay'd have to buy out Massone and take on the club as a going concern. They'd have to come to an agreement with the various creditors and terminate the lease agreement with WLC for any forthcoming seasons. Plyers' contracts would also have to be honoured. When JB bought the shell of Clydebank, he had to reach a settlement with Morton as Clydebank had signed an agreement to play home games there for the coming season, and perhaps beyond that. Fortunately, Clydebank only had a couple of staff under contract, including Alan Gow, who were kept on at AUFC. If liquidation proceedings begin today, the league membership will lapse.

I'm not sure it would make much diffrence, given the apathy surrounding Airdrie nowadays. In theory, losing a full time club would give the rest a better chance of winning the league, so any drop off in away support would be compensated for by a higher home gate and bigger travelling supports from the other challengers. Our away support is 2 men and a dog nowadays, and there's no guarantee that we'd actually win the league, so I'm not sure that Airdrie being swapped with Cowden would make aby difference to teams' aspirations and income.

Had the evil club murderer Jim ballantyne not had his way, they'd currently be playing in a 30,000 seater with a retractable roof under the shadow of the Titan crane. Such potential.

Still bitter, then? I suppose you could invent a betting scandal to cover up your team's almighty balls-up that year. If you'd bothered to read the posts of a number of Airdrie fans on here, the majority of us DON'T want to be promoted as a result of this. In what way does the club benefit from another season of languishing at the bottom of the division, with supporters disappearing like snow from a dyke as we go? As if by magic, the holier than thou fuckwit appears. I'd also argue that the loss of an automatic relegation place could wreck attendances at the bottom end of the first. That's not a problem in the third, where the bottom few teams are playing for f'ck all each season regardless. Very true.

If you owned an unprofitable company that had ran up a shitload of debt and I offered to buy you out for a quid and assume responsibility for all outstanding debts, you'd bite my hand off. The SFL, SFA and, where appropriate, SPL should insist that some form of financial vetting is carried out whever a club changes ownership. Otherwise, there are plenty other cubs that remain sitting ducks for this kind of mess.

Fucking tell me about it. Familiarity is supposed to breed contempt, but in our case it's take the heat out of a fixture I used to look forward to for weeks on end. According to the BBC, aye. Maybe Massone will take the 25K and f'ck off, but he doesn't seem the type. I wouldn't worry about that. Unless there's serious investment in players, we'll sink without chase.

The Livvy situation. I was actually looking forward to a decent campaign in the second division, but it looks as though an undeserved dour struggle in the first is in order once again. Magic.

Even if the game goes ahead as planned, there should be around 280 left come Sunday then.

In all honesty, I don't really mind. We don't have the fanbase or financial backing to compete as a first division club any more, so promotion by default would have been a disaster. I hope to have a good tilt at the second division title this year, and earn our place in the first by right. Should we go up, it would take an astounding chain of events, or a change in ownersship, to keep us there.

Yep. In our first season as AUFC, the programme and season ticket sleeve featured the phrase "Clydebank FC trading as Airdrie United FC" or similar.

Swap the cod for haddock and the Pedigree for a pint of TT Landlord and we'd have a winner. I had half a roast chicken with some chips. Shall have the other half tonight, will boiled new potatoes.

That depends on the airline. The budget airlines mention in their T&Cs that their flights are intended as a point-to-point means of transport, rather than for connection to onward flights. I imagine they would move you to a later flight for nowt if they could, but they would be within their rights to make you buy a new ticket.

Having worked for CICA for 5 years, that's the only way you can approach such a situation. Others (women especially) would read witness statements, court papers etc and think "What if that were me/my son/my daughter?". There's no way you can look at the evidence with a clear head if you think like that. I can be a cold c'nt, so had no problem disregarding the obvious fact that the alleged victims were real people. In any case, the accounts of drunken fighting gone wrong more than made up for the more grim stuff.

Off topic, however The Scotsman and SoS are dreadful papers. The Herald and Sunday Herald are slighy better, but the standard deteriorates with every passing week.

I too get pocket phoned on occasion by virtue of having a forename that begins with an "A". My phone is always switched off when I go to bed though, so 'tis not a problem.

I wasn't aware that the liqudator was liable for ongoing losses if it traded the company as a going concern. In the case of Airdrieonians, my gut feeling is that it could have been ran, at worst, on a break even basis. If the debts were restructured or written off, the income streams generated by the stadium and a core support (at the time) of 2000 could have supported a half decent first division club, as St Johnstone have shown. With Livingston, no one has manged to stem the flow of losses since the club's inception. With no assets, a handful of players under contact and a shitoad of debt, I con't see any knights in white armour stepping forward. If the debts are written off, they'd be a sitting duck for anyone who fancies league membership, IMO. As I recall, Clydebank's debts were written off by the time we arrived on the csene. JB paid £250k for the "club" and paid off the remaider of Clydebank's groundsharing contract with Cappielow.

Airdrieonians entered provisional liquidation first in 1999 then again in early 2000, when one of David Murray's companies had our gate receipts from the Dundee Utd cup tie arrested over a debt of around £50K. We continued to play under various regimes until mid 2002. As far as I remember, the liquidation process wasn't completed until 2006 or thereabouts. Blair Nimmo/KPMG's incompetence and Barr's intransigence certainly contibuted to the delay.

Not a fucking chance. I don't fancy being called to give evidence in court then receiving a kneecapping as a result. I read enough accounts of folk receiving a bleaching for assisting the polis when I worked for CICA. I'd keep my head down and my mouth shut.

I agree with this. Back in the day *whistles Hovis tune*, almost every second thread degenerated into a mess with around half a dozen unrelated arguments going on at once. This would continue until violence was offered, resignations were posted and cancer/AIDS/death had been wished on many of the protagonists. It was great. That last few weeks have seebn a return to those heady days. Hopefully the season is posponed by a few weeks.

Kilt's browsing S1 Jobs at this very minute.

Once a chocolate cock that doesn't melt is produced, men will be redundant.

Complete the following well worn phrase: "If she were chocolate...."

Did he use a Section B related pseudonym, or mention them in his text?