the_bully_wee

Falkirk FC - thank you!

Sorry, are you actually trying to say that signing a near-33-year-old striker would be better for the club's long-term health than having somewhere to play our games beyond next season?

It's been brought up many times over the past decade or so but each feasibility study on it has pretty promptly concluded with a big red cross. I've not seen it for some years now but the stadium is apparently in a profound state of ruin; it was also hardly a spectator's dream when the club first left. There was also chat of a stubborn elderly owner who was digging his heels in and wanting an unbelievable sum for the stadium/accompanying land, but that was a number of years ago now. Cumbernauld was our best shot but we never immersed ourselves as we should've and this latest furore probably serves as the death knell in terms of ever integrating into the town meaningfully. In saying that, we do have a large number of Cumbernauld area fans, but nowhere near as many as we could and should've if run more astutely since 1994.

The problem you'll have is that, if the sponsorship agreement was negotiated and made by people without the club's best interest's at heart, they could quite easily have negotiated a "you'll get £50k from us if Dumbarton win the title and a pig flies over The Rock on flag day" clause with a base rate of zero for some juicy free publicity. Hopefully these cowboys fail miserably and have to sell the club at a loss in six months!

I don't have any problem with the perceived hypocrisy of the council allowing Goodwillie for five years and then all of a sudden hitting the nuclear launch button like this upon his return a month later, because times change, people change, and for all we know there are new people calling the shots. The big problem I have is if - and I must stress, this is an if - it transpires that NLC did actually have a degree of autonomy over the policies and decision-making processes of NLL, as looks likely from that companies house listing. To then attempt to rewrite history with a tone of "well actually, we've opposed this all along!" would be enormously misleading.

The rape talk and legal stuff has been done to death so I'm reticent to go into it too much more, but unfortunately you need a lot more than convincing character statements to prove rape beyond reasonable doubt, as is the threshold for a criminal conviction. In this instance the evidence would also likely have had to feature a next-day blood sample to be able to determine the victim's blood alcohol levels (and therefore level of cognitive impairment at the time of the offence), alongside rather intrusive DNA samples soon after to prove that... well, you know. I don't profess to know any of the legal ins and outs of it whatsoever but if NLC own the land and building then I don't really see any reason why they couldn't get a legal order, in this instance especially, to prohibit certain individuals from entering the stadium or being present on the land they own. There's definitely a bit of explaining to do on their end, though, as companies house declares NLC as being a party with significant control over North Lanarkshire Leisure Ltd. The logical inference from this would be that NLC likely did have a say over NLL decision-making, contrary to the statement made earlier. With a local council election coming up, their attempts to distance themselves from any harbouring of Goodwillie for the last five years could be a piece of opportunistic politicking.

I don't disagree with the general gist of your post but my reading of the situation is that the board called it spot on in telling Raith, after their initial approach, that they had no interest in having Goodwillie return to Clyde. The outcome of that approach was then communicated to the Glasgow Branch of Clyde supporters - whether that was the result of a board member or Goodwillie blabbing, I've no idea. Upon finding this out, the Glasgow Branch - in their infinite wisdom - started to make a lot of co-ordinated noise, which then brought an independently wealthy, long-time individual backer (and possibly also a club sponsor too) to allegedly threaten to withdraw all future funding of the club if the board didn't make a U-turn. I don't know the timeline of events, but allegedly there were also concurrent threats made to the board that enough membership numbers would be rallied to call for an EGM and force a vote on the board's future. I'd also be surprised if Danny Lennon wasn't very keen for the deal to be done himself, given his general level of job security at the moment and historical statements on Goodwillie. As a result of these factors, the board seems to have been left in an almighty pickle with just a couple of days left of the loan window. I'm not even sure the footballing side of things was a consideration for them. Either they a) stuck to their guns and blocked Goodwillie's return, knowing that move would be harmful financially and very possibly result in their own forcible removal as board members or b) acquiesced, and caused the coming shitstorm. The former obviously looks like the much better choice as things stand, but only those with an inside knowledge of the club will know just how catastrophic that option could also have proved. Because of their being forced to choose between two utterly ruinous and high-risk outcomes, I don't apportion the crux of the blame to the board on this one. They get plenty wrong, but this seems like it was a total no-win scenario in terms of the club's health. If there are people with the relevant skills and the requisite affection and time to join the board, then new blood would of course be welcome - but as I alluded to above, those who know Clyde well will know that the club has struggled in terms of attracting or harbouring quality boardroom assets for many years now. That struggle has just become profoundly more biting. The board's next move is extremely important. I'm not sure whether their best move would be to be totally transparent about the series of events, but a robust and sincere statement has to come very soon, and it has to categorically state that David Goodwillie will never again play for Clyde FC. What happens with NLC will depend on how relations between the parties have been of late. They definitely improved circa 2018 through to 2020, but I suspect the board's decision to re-evaluate (again!) where the club's future lies has fractured the relationship somewhat even before now. We are in a horribly weak position to negotiate now, but we have to secure our future for the coming years so that we have a foundation from which to rebuild and try to gradually repair some of the seismic damage done to the club's reputation in recent years. When Goodwillie initially moved to Raith Rovers, I thought that this task would be tough to accomplish. It'll take some doing now.

Did a bit of digging to make sure I wasn't havering utter shite here, but what I remembered does appear to have been the case - Not to try to deflect any attention away from Clyde or Goodwillie here, but it was entirely needless for NLC to try and exonerate themselves from any kind of responsibility for Clyde's continuing presence at Broadwood. Their statement would've been sufficient without that wild attempt to rewrite history.

I've no idea about the structure of NLC but as I understood it, NLL was essentially a subsidiary of the council which specifically operated Broadwood - in that sense, you'd imagine the council could've pulled a move like this if they ever wanted to. I could be wrong in saying that, but if I'm correct then they could've done better than trying to cover their own backs with that statement. If they could've, it's understandable that they didn't take action before now though - Goodwillie's first spell at Clyde largely flew under the radar and any noise was pretty much strictly confined to those in lower-league circles, so evicting Clyde on that basis wouldn't have made a great deal of sense. The landscape has now changed drastically, Clyde's name is now ubiquitously - and deservedly - caked in the thickest of muck and any sort of public or business association with the club at present is complete PR suicide for all involved. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about any hypocrisies, inconsistencies or the arguments about Goodwillie's suitability to play football - the baseline fact is that the entire game has changed as a result of the Raith move and the sheer body of critical public opinion that followed. That the people who made this return happen didn't see any of this coming is just completely and utterly mind-blowing. It was a complete inevitability.

I can't see him playing for us after this. Unless, of course, someone who chucks in five figures in donations every year demands that Goodwillie plays for Clyde even if it's at Glasgow Green in a Sunday pub league. I hope the decision will immediately be undertaken to terminate the loan agreement before trying to build bridges with the council. Eviction from Broadwood next year would be the end of us in any meaningful sense, unless some moneybags appeared and wished to finance a stadium for us.

That's mental stuff; I wonder how long it'll take these chancers to realise that there's a reason others have failed to pull the fast one they're trying. Hopefully you guys can find a sympathetic benefactor and pursue fan ownership or something similar (without following the Clyde model of fans being able to strongarm a board into objectively horrendous actions) before making any move on your own terms.

We deserved absolutely everything we got from this. I hope each and every person who voiced support for his return, and even more so those who pressured the board into ratifying it, feels proud of themselves this evening! Thank you for putting your love of a rapist on a pedestal above the future of our club.

Can't say I've ever seen a situation like this before. Surely a binding contract was signed which non-payment of funds would breach? Does this company have any discernible links to the latest questionably-intentioned owners?

I actually think we stand a decent chance here. East Fife looked from the highlights as though they could've, with a bit of luck, nicked a win over Falkirk last week. As has been said, Rennie is yet to string two wins together in his spell in charge and he's even started deviating from what seemed like the formation he was keen to implement and stick with. If we field Cunningham and Jamieson up top then I expect their pace and directness to cause a pretty fragile defence some bother. I'd still make Falkirk favourites obviously but I wouldn't be surprised to see us take something from the game.

Might be a good idea to delete this and instead post the screenshot itself with the most egregious parts and the identity of the named party in the post redacted. That post is an extremely cowardly attack on one individual, a fairly prolific Clyde P&B poster who might end up seeing this, if he hasn't already.

This is the same organisation that apparently had a whip round to finance a car for Goodwillie, something that he obviously had no chance of affording himself on £1k a week. Mental.

You do seem to enjoy wasting your own time given your re-appearance every couple of pages to denounce all but a few Clyde fans as rape apologists and scumbags. If you bothered to actually read any of the thread, though, you'd find most active on this site (including myself) speaking out against Goodwillie's signing, and articulating very well why that is. I understand that doing so might not appeal to you as much as sharting out sensationalist blanket statements of condemnation, however.

Nothing creative or bullshittish there at all - just a factual account of why Goodwillie was signed in the first place. Given the lack of noise and impact at the time, it was then easier for the club to keep him thereafter. If you're happy to be ignorant of that and put it down to any Clyde fan who retained support of the club being a rape apologist, then so be it.

You spoke about Clyde fans being scum being the only reason he was signed in the first place, you clueless simpleton. Patently not the case.

Yep, that reason being we needed something (or someone) spectacular to save us from what looked like an inevitable slide into a regionalised fifth tier league, something no relegated League Two club has come close to recovering from. It's fanciful to suggest no other club would have done the same in that very desperate situation.

He's not wrong. The amount of compensation that was ordered to be paid was paid, however Clair never saw any of it due to the extent of the legal fees she had incurred.

For many of those so-called "two faced b*****ds", myself included, the reality is that there isn't much ideological opposition to David Goodwillie playing football. However, the opposition that this has been met with is the result of a variety of very new factors, including: Goodwillie's ultimately successful attempt to force a move away from the club he stated he was in love with and wanted to be at forever The manner in which Raith Rovers quickly became a near-unanimous figure of (inter)national attention and condemnation over his signing The intense financial, reputational and structural damage which the signing did to Raith Rovers - something Clyde were lucky to avoid for so long The fact is that a reasonable proportion of fans who maintained their support of the club throughout his first spell at the club did so in spite of Goodwillie's presence. Not every fan regarded him as a club legend and a personal hero like many do. What good would "whimpering" have done throughout those five years when absolutely nothing would've come of it, given his on-field importance and messianic status among parts of the support?

What are the Keans up to these days? A name change might actually now be a great thing for us given what we've allowed to happen to the current one.

Thing is, NLL/NLC aren't even listed as club "partners" (sponsors) on the website. Per their statement, NLL no longer operates Broadwood and their main shirt sponsorship of us was only in effect last season. To me this can only mean a review of our tenancy agreement at Broadwood, which could end up in complete and utter catastrophe. You're right though, I'm hoping there will be some way out of this dreadful mess but the plaque bestowing our reputation as pariahs of the Scottish game - if not already handsomely secured - has had a few more emphatic nails hammered into it today. It's absolutely crazy that nobody saw how lucky Goodwillie and Clyde were prior to his Raith signing; this was a genuine opportunity to move on and gradually repair our reputation. That chance is now completely gone, because of the comically narrow-minded and short-term thinking of a worryingly large group of individuals.

Unfortunately, as I understand it this is true. I don't know of the second entity but one is an individual who's been a considerable and long-time sponsor of Clyde. It would appear that the board has had to relent here under financial pressure from said sponsors (though who knows how our other ones will all feel now), and also under threat from fans vowing to push for an EGM if Goodwillie's return wasn't secured. We all know how easy it would be for large-scale regime change at the club given our ownership structure, and we all know the sort of characters that would be sniffing around to replace the current board. In this regard, I do have sympathy for the current custodians whose choice appeared to become a toss-up between signing Goodwillie and facing financial and structural crises that would destabilise the club's future - immediate and potentially long-term - enormously. In spite of this, I think the board should've held firm and stuck to their guns. The present - and coming - shitstorm was an inevitability, and quite why the "Goodwillie Legend" brigade thought this wouldn't do serious damage to the club this time around is completely and utterly unfathomable. NLC are now tweeting that they will review "all commercial partnership arrangements" with the club, which is really quite an ominous message given they're not even a club partner. There are folk on Twitter aggressively tweeting the rest of our sponsors, and even digging deep enough to find people who own or are involved with said sponsors to ask for their views. I'm dismayed at how all of this has played out. It's entirely possible that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far today. All this just to placate a number of people with a massive hard-on for a 32-year-old striker who recently demanded a move away from the club they're supposedly diehard supporters of. Deary me.