Ad Lib

Bye bye Robbie.

This was a very enjoyable afternoon. Robbie Muirhead. Boing Boing.

Hello@The Thistle Archive I love the website, but I have a question. We're often looking to get stats on former players (particularly things like "how many red cards did they get") or a complete list of matches they've played for Thistle. There's an easily accessible "all goals scored" tab for each player on the website but I can't find the equivalent for matches or things like bookings/red cards. Am I missing something really obvious? Cheers in advance.

The year you are talking about (for St Mirren at least) was the 2021-22 season, which was still Covid-affected. If you read their accounts you will see that exceptional factors significantly influenced the quantum of their losses, including a failed-deadline day player sale (which was supposed to fund the signing of two players) and a substantial overspend on the Ralston Training complex. The auditors indicated that these were exceptional circumstances, were unlikely to recur, and were satisfied that St Mirren could continue trading as a going concern (which it did). The accounts still show strong cash reserves and net current assets. Of course, in the same period, several privately-owned football clubs sustained substantial losses too.

Regardless of the ownership situation it is unsustainable for any football club to run at operating losses. This would be no less true for Thistle if it were fan owned as if it were in private ownership. If a private owner was unwilling to (find a way to) underwrite the overspend, you'd be in exactly the same position. There is a specific issue around the PTFC Trust and its shareholding, which means that a tax charge potentially could apply if the Club does not break even by the tenth anniversary of its creation (ie in 2025). However that's a slightly separate matter.

You will recall that TJF pointed out back in June that, even with our pledge of additional funds to the Club for this season, it would be necessary to generate at least £500k of completely new investment to fully address the cashflow and issues while maintaining a competitive team on the park. Whilst the Club is working on that stream of activity, that new investment has not (yet) been delivered. Fans should not be under the impression that our financial situation has been solved. It hasn't. It has been only partially ameliorated.

And the existence of 7 implies that head-to-head record excludes the penalty shootout.

Absolute fucking roasters. Was pleasing when The Woody decided to stop serving them.

I had heard that he's due or recently had surgery again, so if there's a loan deal to be done, it won't be until January.

The good news is this should hopefully mean that GoogleMaps finally updates it so it's no longer referred to as the Energy Check Stadium at Firhill.

They have already done so. For first, they haven't refused offers of direct financial support. For second, they have facilitated full financial disclosure to two of our directors. For third, they have gone onto bring about substantial financial disclosure to the fans. For fourth, they have been extremely keen to get TJF representation on the interim Club Board. For fifth, their budgeting assumptions for this season are far more realistic than those they inherited. For sixth, we are literally the wet signature on a trust deed variation away from an actual fans group taking a controlling interest in the majority shareholding. Only in the sense that the legal relationship between Club Board and the fan ownership vehicle has not been finalised. But there is a clear roadmap via which this will happen. I am reasonably confident that we will be there or thereabouts ahead of the Club's next Annual General Meeting. But the sequencing of the reforms has to be done right.

Not true. There were those of us who were extremely sceptical from the outset. Another group that, it turns out, had been given certain assurances about the Club’s financial prudence that turned out to be at variance with the actualité. Well the parcel of rogues aren’t on the Club Board anymore, for starters. And for second, we now have proper Jags folk at the table, like Dougie McCrea, and a TJF representative, to oversee phase two of the corporate trustee model. A model whose legal changes, giving TJF a seat at the fan ownership table, will be happening imminently. Has it occurred to you to ask why TJF didn’t simply give this money in February, when the scale of the challenge became apparent to the new Club Board? This hasn’t been done flippantly. It is the fruit of about six months of joint working and an extensive financial exercise to provide a more realistic and deliverable baseline budget for the football club. It has also been timed, very deliberately, to coincide with other progress in the model. Because it’s a completely different set of people in charge of the Club now.

No, I never thought the same about Jacqui Low. Happy to clarify.

You must be living under a rock then. In the last fortnight: (a) TJF AGM unanimously approves the corporate trustee model (b) PTFC Trust conducts an indicative ballot of ST holders on the corporate trustee model (c) TJF representation appointed to the Club Board (d) the last Club Director from the "old board" stepped down This model is far from at maturity, and it isn't as tidy as it should have been. But the fundamentals have changed drastically since the PTFC Trust received the majority shareholding. There is a genuine collaborative process in place, a clear commitment to move towards more permanent arrangements for fan representation and skills-based board appointments, and for the remaining three PTFC Trust trustees to step away from their roles when the new legal and working arrangement is in place. TJF would not be making major financial commitments if its leadership group was not convinced that those on the interim board of the Club are serious about delivering on the fan ownership promise. We are now an indispensable partner that all with influence at Firhill want at the heart of things.

We arrived at the commitment based on what comparable fan groups at other fan owned clubs raise. We circulated our accounts to all our members about 7 months ago, and if anyone wanted to ask how much we currently raise, they could do so and would get a straight answer right there. As of earlier this week we were raising about the equivalent of £80kpa after running costs, with about the same again in cash reserves. Having put £50k into the Club, the cash reserves are a lot lower now, but our monthly pledges have also increased by more than £4kpm in the space of four days. We’ll meet the target. When you consider that Club officials repeatedly denied us due diligence, published a sneering Directors’ statement with the last financial accounts blowing their own trumpet on financial prudence, publicly stated on national radio and in print that we were lying about the finances, and it turns out we were completely correct, you’ll forgive us for hoping they never set foot in Firhill again. The vast majority of Thistle fans agree.

Begrudging respect for Morton's fan ownership journey. I'm just delighted that our own fundraising efforts are now comparable. It's been a tough year but there is a unity at the Club now that there hasn't been in years.

A fan died after the Raith Rovers game. Timing marked his age.

The real stand-out stat for me there is the Goals Against column. Doolan's Thistle has been drastically better at keeping it tight at the back than any of the other teams this season.

Which facts do you think he has failed to give due relevance to? I don't think, against any legal standard, the decision is completely absurd. What matters is whether he reasonably believes that it modifies the law so as to have an adverse effect on reserved law. The issue here is that whether an effect is "adverse" is in the eye of the beholder.

Bad faith is astonishingly difficult to prove to the legal standard.

There are entire books written on intensity of scrutiny and reasonableness/rationality review. This isn't (really) the Clapham omnibus test. That's the legal test about whether "the reasonable person" would reach a particular point of view or do a particular thing. This is essentially a Wednesbury unreasonableness situation. The court will ask whether Alister Jack's grounds for believing the statutory test was met was within the range of responses someone in his position could plausibly have arrived at without taking leave of their senses, taking/failing to take into account relevant/irrelevant considerations, or reaching a decision manifestly in bad faith.

Knowing what is meant legally by reasonableness, it clears the hurdle. As a matter of reasonableness in ordinary parlance: it's riddled with contradictions and reads largely like arguments come up with after the fact to justify a policy position already held.