Jimmy1876

I wouldn't be surprised if those costs add up. The mangement team, physios, club doctor, kitman and playing/goalkeeping/striking coaches are expensive. I also think that sum included the academy as well (although fund raisers cover a lot) but that's all the coaches needed for that too. Add in any equipment requirements, training ground hire (to play on grass occasionally) and accommodation for players is definitely a thing that is part of some contracts outwith pay. Its probably not far off.

Sorry going to have to agree to disagree in that case. For me volunteers donating their time is very different to players being paid. Was happy to give the benefit of doubt when there were tech issues in the previous stream and will continue that form going forward.

Ah you're right in those 5 I included games where there was no audio or the picture was so stuttered I switched it off. Fair enough there was a "stream" available though. As I said preseason was confirmed to be a test for the new system, issues of which were resolved from what I noticed? Was at the game last week so don't know about that. But please stop pretending this is outwith the normal and a much worse service when it's been a test for pre season and 1 home game. I get specific complaints, as I said I'm annoyed I can't watch today but pitting the old team vs the new is pretty low in my opinion.

I have no idea? I don't know the new team or Lewis and Stuart either but don't think that changes any of what I said. I think a great idea to have the new guys getting advice from Lewis and Stuart who have more experience. Still don't like this whole Lewis and Stuart vs the new team attitude. As you've said if anything having such dedicated volunteers working together would be the ideal so why make it old vs new?

Have just gone to check because I was sure this happened more often than that as I said I'm quite a regular user. From the old Falkirk TV twitter it happened 5 times at different games last season, one of which required them to use the ParsTV stream instead. I'm really not a fan of people condemning a team when they have really just started. As confirmed by Jamie on the podcast the preseason was used as a test to get the new volunteer (let's all bear that in mind) team set up as well as a new system (due to the costs of the previous platform being increased). Yes there were kinks to sort out but from what I've seen those have been addressed and the stream was great. And today is certainly annoying - I was relying on it to watch. But its not a case of "old versus new" falkirk tv. Its a case of going to away grounds and that occasionally causing issues, regardless of who was running it. Stuart and Lewis were fantastic, no doubt and have been loyal fans of the club who dedicated far more time than most people are capable of. But it's not fair on the new guys to condemn them for issues that were pretty normal for the old streaming service and team as well. We are lucky enough to have a new team willing to dedicate their free time just as much as Stuart and Lewis were... is that not fantastic? And deserving of a little bit of understanding when they really are just getting started up?

It happened at least a few times last season and the one before?

Happened a number of times last season. I regularly watch on FTV because I can't travel often for away games. There was a few instances of the stream quality dropping, being low quality or completely failing mainly seemed to be because of connectivity at away grounds last season.

I agree there may be a very few people that are intentionally inflammatory but you are also undermining other people's concerns in this reply and that is unfair. There are far more people who are concerned with no real history of trying to undermine this board so being vague about who you mean effectively calls into doubt anyone who has posted that doesn't agree. I have been supportive of the board of almost everything up until this moment. Now, I am absolutely rightly concerned by these actions and am in no way attempting to be inflammatory. At best these actions by the board are deeply misguided and I don't think that's inflammatory but I think even just going by the response that is just factual: anything that upsets one of the biggest shareholders is not smart. As I say, at best this is a misguided mistake, at worst it's actively blocked fan ownership which I believe is incredibly serious. And any sign of that I will absolutely call out wherever I can because that is in the interests of all of the fans surely? There are a number of ways this can be solved and I absolutely hope it is done ASAP and as mentioned will not be cancelling any memberships until there is more clarity on what happens next. But that doesn't mean I (and others) can't be very concerned about what has already been done and then voice those concerns with other fans, public forum or not.

I don't see why posting here to discuss with other fans who all care about the club is a bad thing? And why does that mean these concerns have not also been raised privately? If things were not made public and people didn't realise their concerns were shared we end up in situations where things go under the radar and are never called out. Imagine if the Gary Dean's fiasco was never called out publicly? We would never have had the change over in board that we had which has been ultimately for the better. Things being out in the open are in my opinion always better because everyone is then held to account.

Happy to wait before cancelling to hear out FSS. The board action of blocking the shares in my eyes is unjustifiable and can only be resolved by reversing the decision. I will wait to hear what FSS have done or plan to do: have they fought this and been ignored etc? I will decide from there. I hope it is clarified as soon as possible.

Can anyone from FSS also confirm this has no impact on the terms of the government loan? When it was announced it was about supporting clubs having a controlling stake in their clubs as well as for building infrastructure in a community focussed club. FSS has now been blocked from that controlling stake so does that have any impact on the loan?

I hope that's the case. But the reality is the controlling stake, the important stake is the 25%+1 which FSS has been blocked from acquiring. The day to day running of the club I have no qualms with and think the board are doing a great job. But FSS and fan ownership need the 25% to be able to safeguard the future of the club (a phrase used by FSS) and I simply cannot understand the logic of blocking that from happening. All I can think is this is an attempt to prevent FSS having that power and that greatly concerns me. And in the simplest terms, this is what FSS was sold on. I think it's pretty reasonable for people who believed the aim was to own a key shareholding for specific purpose to be upset when that is now being blocked.

That's fair enough if you have thought that and great you are happy with that. However this was never confirmed. In fact the idea of the shares being bought up was never really supposed to happen for years. Because of the government money this has happened faster so now a decision needs to be made about next steps which there will be a consultation about. If it ends up donated with suggestions of how to use it then great! This however is not at all the issue. The issue is that the board and FSS have constantly advertised fan ownership as a means of preventing bad investors coming in on the basis of building up shareholding. Now we have very nearly reached the point where one of the fans groups can actually get to this point, and it's been blocked? In a complete contradiction to everything that's been said before. This has absolutely nothing at all to do with what will or should happen once all shares are purchased as this would have happened anyway. The point here is those shares which the board said were on hold for FSS in the podcast last October, in the meetings last summer that they begged fans to put money in for to save the club have been taken away at the last hurdle. Complete and utter break of trust and I simply feel shocked, confused and dismayed about it. I will wait to understand the role the FSS committee has had whether they agreed already or have had no choice and that will likely make my decision about whether I continue my membership. Again not because I am unhappy with a donation scheme (which I'd be fine with) but because I'm unhappy about how this has come about. I now cannot know if I trust the board to for example sell future shares to FSS if they become available to maintain percentage shareholding or trust the FSS committee to fight on behalf of the fans interests. In one fell swoop I feel that email has undermined everything I thought FSS was standing for.

Again, I admire your positivity here but the action in itself regardless of what the justification is feels like a breach of trust. These shares were held and promised to allow FSS to get 25%+1. Blocking this for whatever reason and leaving FSS to have to find their own way to that shareholding is a massive disconnect from what I have felt we have been told a number of times. New investment would be great, from the Patrons who have supported the club to new potential investors. But taking those shares out of the hands of FSS is absolutely fundamentally wrong in my opinion. If the club is in need of new investment then issue new shares and have all three legs of the stool invest to maintain shareholding. Also this idea of it being seen as new investment has again simply assumed that the FSS fan base will be happy to hand over money for nothing in return when there is still available shareholding. I don't remember there being a consultation on that? The FSS money is being taken for granted.

LatapyBairn I have often agreed with you on many topics and I admire your positivity but if blocking FSS from buying a very important number of shares which were promised time and again to them and instead offering it to the Patrons is not pitting one group against the other I'm not sure what is. I really am confused and do not understand the reasoning behind it but honestly I don't think there is any reasoning justifiable for this action.

Have taken a few days to read over all of this. I have to say I am surprised by this recent action. There seems to be a lot of conversation about once all shares are bought we go to a donation scheme but really this is not the issue with what has happened. There was always going to have to be a democratic decision about the next steps once the shares were bought and how that money continued being put into the club so there is no issue with this simply happening faster. For me the big concern is that the club has seemingly blocked FSS from reaching its 25%+1 target. And fss seem to have agreed to this with no consultation? So far everyone joined FSS knowing the target was to get to a point where they could block special resolutions. From day 1 this has been the selling point. It has also been repeated time and time again by the board themselves that this is why we need fan ownership. And suddenly we have a complete U-turn at the last minute to prevent this very important power being put into the hands of the fans. I don't understand the sentiment of saying maybe someone else is buying the shares either because it actually does not matter. What matters is the foundations of the FSS membership joined on the premise of fan ownership with a target of reaching a percentage that could block special resolutions. This has effectively been a promise from the club to the fans being broken. Some keep saying to wait and see what comes out at the meeting but I am not sure what justification can be provided either from the board or even the FSS committee for agreeing or at least not warning and then consulting about this. The only thing that can really be clarified is what will happen next but the action of preventing these final shares being bought is done already. As I said, I am really surprised and disappointed as it just seems so contradictory to everything that has been said before. I will wait for the meeting to hear if there is indeed any viable justification but in the mean time I will think long and hard about my current membership. Not sure what the point of FSS will be if that crucial share holding is blocked. And if it is blocked now what assurances are there it is not continually blocked? I "donate" to the club in many other ways but I joined FSS for fan ownership.

Also look at almost all of the bigger premiership clubs, their supports have drums. It's not a diddy club thing, it's just more annoying when it's a diddy club because there are not enough people singing along to it so it's just a mind numbing drum beat rather than part of a big fans group singing

Have been to a few motherwell games as a neutral as a friend of mine is a fan.... They have a drum I am sure?

Good update, glad the club are supporting this kind of thing. Have said before drums don't bother me (I am sure I'll get red dots for that) so if the ultras want one happy for them to do that. Especially since they are the ones that "drum up" the majority of the atmosphere. Co-ordinating with the tannoy system sounds like a great idea. The long term plans of having terracing as the 4th stand can't come soon enough. Wonder if there is any way to build something temporary that will last a few years for cheap? No idea if it's possible.

Don't think anyone said that we are stuck at a lowly level because of funding. However being stuck at this level causes a massive funding deficit. Our board have been very public about our finances and confirm that even in the championship we are almost always running at an operating loss and its covered by various levels of investment. At league one level this is the same. When you have more fans you need to buy more kit, buy more hospitality, pay for a bigger stadium etc. To say we are miles ahead financially with the budget is just very wrong when we are barely breaking even every year and have been warned about the potential of having to go part time. So I really do not see the issue of talking about potential future investment. Especially if we want to work towards things like building another stand we need to find investment to be making profit. Everything is scaled up or down and there are few clubs in Scotland making tonnes of profit. Almost every club needs investment, not to have way more money than anyone else and climb to the top but literally just to stay afloat. Specifically, for the budget, when we lose championship money, crowd sizes etc then everything is scaled back down. We might have the biggest budget in the league, I don't know, but it's certainly not like what you are suggesting where we dwarf everyone else in the league. You can see that from the caliber of manager/player/coaching staff that we and everyone else hire. We are dwarfing no one and to compare to the OF is just beyond ridiculous.

This comment of yours that you repeat constantly has been addressed so many times but you continually ignore anytime you are called out on it so I'm just going to repeat myself. "18 new signings" is just not an accurate representation. 14 players were already taking up 60% of the budget at the start of the season as reported by the board on multiple occasions. That means your 18 signings had to be made with only 40% of the budget and several of them were on loans and relying on people going out in January. That is very clearly NOT the same thing as having the budget to sign 18 players from scratch with say 80% of the budget at the beginning of a season. This season he does have that, all his signings are his own and he has designated budget as he has wanted. Use this excuse at the end of the season if we are in the same situation but just reusing the same argument over and over when it's one of the least effective arguments for why McGlynn should be gone is just tiresome.

Don't think this affects what I've said. Would be surprised if budgets are not set based on what the income is estimated to be and when that podcast was recorded we knew who was going to be in the league. So extra season ticket revenue is still going to be topping up the budget that was initially set no?

If I remember correctly didn't Jamie on the Falkirk daft podcast say they were budgeting based on slightly decreased season ticket number although would love to reach the 2300 of last year? We have now exceeded 2340. If we had budgeted for 2100 season tickets (a pretty conservative reduction based on the end of the season) and have now sold 240 above that at say an average £200 per ticket we have approximately £48,000 on top of the budget. Extra player? Maybe two? Or a couple additional loans?

I would have a re-read of the most recent tweet he liked which is the one I was referring to and is very much undermining the management tactically and for team choices. Agree with most of the rest of your post so assume it was not directed at me.

To be fair Burrel has been going around liking tweets criticising McGlynn for not putting him in the team since after the playoffs. If that's not huffy not sure what is and very much in the public domain by the player. Likewise doesn't mean he was always huffy, could just mean him and one manager didn't get along. People don't get on for all sorts of reasons and doesn't mean either of them automatically must have a long term reputation for being difficult. Sometimes personalities clash and players/managers need to move on. Think a bigger deal is being made out of this than necessary on both sides.