Demented Zebra Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Rumblings regarding Morton's 1.9 million debt where did that spring up from ? Are none of you guys worried. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 34 minutes ago, Demented Zebra said: Rumblings regarding Morton's 1.9 million debt where did that spring up from ? Are none of you guys worried. The only thing that worries me is that Rae won’t sell the club until any debt owed to Golden Casket is written off. When will that happen? Who knows. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Gaines Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 I've always been worried about Rae's mismanagement of the club. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Demented Zebra Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 There is a rivalry between the clubs which is good for both clubs gate when we play many of us would like to see you win the play off. Hope all goes well with the financial situation. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaggerG Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 1 hour ago, IainMorton said: The only thing that worries me is that Rae won’t sell the club until any debt owed to Golden Casket is written off. When will that happen? Who knows. Who or what is Golden Casket? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scosha Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 1 hour ago, Demented Zebra said: There is a rivalry between the clubs which is good for both clubs gate when we play many of us would like to see you win the play off. Hope all goes well with the financial situation. It’s not news to any of us. We’ve know for years the ‘debt’ we are in due to the Rae’s mismanagement of the club like spending a fortune on Chris Templeman, a stand from St Mirren and letting it rust away, apparently paying Stewart Greacen and Ryan Harding over £1200 a week each in the old Division 2, the list goes on. I think the debt was actually reduced over the past year. Who knows what will happen when the Rae’s finally leave. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scosha Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 59 minutes ago, ShaggerG said: Who or what is Golden Casket? Douglas Rae owns the Golden Casket which owns brands like Millions and Buchanan’s. The Golden Casket has ‘loaned’ us a vast amount of cash over the years. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaggerG Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 1 minute ago, Scosha said: Douglas Rae owns the Golden Casket which owns brands like Millions and Buchanan’s. The Golden Casket has ‘loaned’ us a vast amount of cash over the years. Presumably then he doesn't own it outright or he would be in a position to write the debt off? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 1 minute ago, ShaggerG said: Presumably then he doesn't own it outright or he would be in a position to write the debt off? I’m sure he does own it outright. The only problem is there is no money in Morton to hand back over to GC and he is too stubborn to take it from his own pocket. The sooner he sells us to the Easdale brothers (McGills busses), the better. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShaggerG Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 16 minutes ago, IainMorton said: I’m sure he does own it outright. The only problem is there is no money in Morton to hand back over to GC and he is too stubborn to take it from his own pocket. The sooner he sells us to the Easdale brothers (McGills busses), the better. So he doesn't want to write the debt off then? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 (edited) 20 minutes ago, ShaggerG said: So he doesn't want to write the debt off then? As much as every Morton fan is grateful that he saved the club back in 2003, everyone apart from him and his son can see that we can go no further with the tight financial restrictions that we currently have. As said above, who knows what would happen if someone else owned the club and there was more money being put in. Edited March 19, 2018 by IainMorton 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Millions Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 On 18/03/2018 at 18:49, jimmy boo said: On 18/03/2018 at 16:12, Norrie82 said: What a difference a year makes. Is telegrammonnon or whatever his name is still here? Could you post a portillo pic for me please? Gammy is alright actually. It's Finchy and Virgin who deserve laughed at. 7 hours ago, Demented Zebra said: Rumblings regarding Morton's 1.9 million debt where did that spring up from ? Are none of you guys worried. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gert.T.Fock Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 How many Ton’ fans making the trip on the 2nd last game? Can’t see there being a big away support to be honest... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 1 hour ago, Gert.T.Fock said: How many Ton’ fans making the trip on the 2nd last game? Can’t see there being a big away support to be honest... Considering there is an outside chance of us also winning promotion, I’d hope we take a few thousand through. How many will stay to watch the after party? I'd say none. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Dunning1874 Posted March 20, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted March 20, 2018 This post is going to be fucking massive, apologies in advance. If we go for the viewpoints at either extreme with the Raes and discard any nuance in between, you can look at it either of these ways: 1. Douglas Rae is the benevolent hero who saved Morton from liquidation and continues to save the club. He continues to cover losses every single year and Morton would be right back into financial trouble if he left because the club simply isn't capable of breaking even and we should count ourselves lucky that we have a businessman willing to plug those losses. If he was to turn around and walk away tomorrow the best case scenario would be falling into a spiral the way Clyde did, but we'd be more likely to go the way of Clydebank. 2. Douglas Rae is at best a blithering incompetent who doesn't have the ability to run Morton as a sustainable enterprise or at worst a mendacious megalomaniac who is perfectly happy for Morton to run at loss as it increases his grip over the club due to the increase in debt owed to him, as he hopes to get back the money he feels is owed to him when the club was only making losses in the first place due to his shambolic administration of the club. I've gone for hyperbole with both of those but you get the idea. There are elements of truth in both of them. Regardless of the fact that other businessmen were interested in stepping in and that fan organisations put up money towards it too, the reality is that Morton were in serious danger of liquidation and Douglas Rae was the one who stepped up to prevent it, get Hugh Scott out of the club, get a CVA through and keep us at Cappielow. That will never be forgotten, he will always have goodwill for it and rightly so. However, that entirely merited goodwill doesn't mean he can get off with bad decision after bad decision since. Due to the circumstances of his takeover he was given nothing but adulation and hero-worship in his first few years, and that the attitude towards him has cooled and in some cases turned to outright hostility isn't a cautionary tale about how fickle football supports can be but testament to just how badly the club botched things when Douglas Rae was seen as the messiah who could do no wrong. Every club in financial trouble has fans saying they're just happy to have a club if they make it through it, and it's true. However, this doesn't mean you should be happy to see the club stagnate or go backwards when you know there's no reason they can't be capable of better. When we had a second successive relegation to drop to the fourth tier in Rae's first season as Chairman there were no rumblings of discontent: at that point we really were just glad the club had survived, the fact that a team thrown together in two weeks before the start of the season was utter shite was no surprise and no one's fault really. Fast forward five years from that though and the club is still in the Second Division, having tossed money down the drain on transfer fees and clinging to full-time status while watching part-time teams finish ahead of us time and time again. At that point we're making a loss every year but still no discontent with Rae despite that; he told us that being in the First Division was necessary to break even and it was accepted, even though some could point out that we'd have got there quicker if he wasn't sticking by bad managers and it maybe wasn't entirely necessary to throw around £185K in transfer fees over five years in the third & fourth tiers. Then we get to the second tier where we're going to break even - nope, still six figure losses every year. The answer from the club is that they expected crowds to be higher, with the quite hilarious revelation that we budgeted for an average attendance of 4000 in our first season up in 2007/08. If fans want Morton to be in a better position, it's up to fans to bring a friend. Rae also really struggled to contain his fury with the support in that season when he finally accepted Jim McInally's resignation at the third time it was offered, with the reason given that the fans just weren't going to get back behind the players while McInally remained in charge. He's never forgiven the fans for that and it was around this time that a real us and them mentality between the club and support became entrenched, which if we're being honest has never entirely gone away although it's certainly been less pronounced under Duffy, to his credit. As we continued making six figure losses annually there was a growing feeling that while he should always be thanked for being the man who saved the club, the continued losses weren't down to it being impossible for Morton to ever break even while putting a competitive team on the pitch but instead down to incompetence in the boardroom. If clubs like Raith and Queen of the South could not only break even but do it while finishing above Morton then what exactly was Morton's problem? Neither of them had money rolling in from selling their old ground to a supermarket, they didn't have a new build stadium generating revenue seven days a week and their average attendances were usually smaller. Were there hundreds of thousands of pounds of overheads associated with Cappielow that didn't apply to Palmerston or Starks? Were we paying hundreds of thousands of pounds more in wages than them but showing nothing for it? Morton had gone from being a full-time seaside league club to being a mediocre second tier club never threatening a promotion challenge and we had seven figures of debt to show for it. Why couldn't we have got into that position without a penny of debt? A few years on, a few years of continued losses, we finally threaten a title challenge but end up finishing 11 points behind. For that second place finish we got prize money of £67K. Then we go and get relegated in hilariously awful circumstances with Rae again covering himself in glory with some of his comments throughout the season, but the creation of the SPFL happens and prize money is restructured. When we come back up we're getting £211K for finishing fifth, while we get to quarter finals of both the Scottish & League Cups with TV money and share of the gate at Parkhead, along with our highest average league attendance in more than a decade. Having made an operating loss of £320K in 12/13 while second with our prize money of £67K, none of those cup runs and a considerably smaller average attendance, in 15/16 with those advantages we made an operating loss in 15/16 of... £275K. How do we manage that? Is there some unforeseen cost in the intervening years that has sent the overheads of Cappielow flying up? There is absolutely no chance we were paying nearly as much in wages in 15/16 as we were three years previously, so what has wiped out that massive increase in revenue? When you see it like that, it's easy to see why someone does conclude it suits the Raes to run at a loss. Even last season we've finally, finally made an operating profit - it was £130K. That should be great news and the natural reaction is cautious optimism, but that's come in a season where we made £90K from the League Cup semi-final prize and TV money alone, before considering the four way split of the semi-final gate money, having a televised Scottish Cup tie with a share of the gate at Ibrox, and finished fourth, with £274K in prize money and a playoff tie. We obviously aren't going to get that kind of revenue from the cups every single season and not making it out of the League Cup group stage this season probably wipes out that £130K compared to last season immediately, while we can't guarantee finishing top four either. Are we really going to continue to see the debt increase if we continue getting solid mid-table finishes? It's hard to avoid concluding someone at Cappielow is guilty of gross incompetence if so. Douglas Rae's long-term legacy at Morton should be as the man who saved the club from administration, but he's the one who has jeopardised that. Ultimately if he burdens the club with £2 million of debt with nothing to show for it then he becomes the one jeopardising the future of the club. No one doubts that he really is a Morton fan and wants what's best for the club, but is he capable of seeing when he's harming it or the potential risk in passing it over to his son with that debt still hanging over it? If he wants what's best for Morton he should accept that he's the one who put the club in this position and write it off rather than chasing after 'his' money. 26 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scosha Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Very well put Dunning. I'm very much in the same opinion. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Branch Ton Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Enough of this overwrought knicker wetting. There is more than one way to construct a deal to sell the club, eg all or part of the debt could be coverted into share capital before any sale. The business would no longer have a debt to service or repay. The freehold land etc that consists of the ground is valued in the balance sheet at over £3 million. If DFR puts the club into voluntary liquidation today sale of the ground should enable him to get the £2m back at least. Why on earth should we expect him to give it away? -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colkitto Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Just noticed we had more points on the board when we had Kudus and Scullion in our forward line 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IainMorton Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 1 hour ago, Colkitto said: Just noticed we had more points on the board when we had Kudus and Scullion in our forward line Big sexy Kudus 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rudolph Hucker Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 There's a lot of sense and even-handedness in Dunning's post above. Equally, like it or not there's a lot of sense and a bit more realism in BranchTon's post. None of us are likely to buy a football club outside of computer games, but many or most of us can relate to buying a house. Imagine that years ago you bought a house that was on its last legs. You saved it from demolition, and over the years you and your family spent a lot of money on it. Not all of the "improvements" you made met with the approval of the neighbours, the council or the people who walked past it once every two weeks or so, in fact some of the work was disastrous, but whether it worked or not it was your house and you did it all with the best of intentions. Fast forward to the present. You're getting old and despite the help of family and friends you realise the time is coming when you will have to sell up and move on. You're realistic enough to realise that you're never going to get back all the money you've spent on the house and that you're going to incur an overall loss, but naturally you'll want to get as high a price for the property as you can, and why shouldn't you? Same for all of us. It's oh so easy for those without a financial stake to so "oh, they should just write that money off, their fault for wasting it" - but, back in the real world, would YOU write off a seven-figure sum? Of course not. I've no idea what the Rae family is worth, but I doubt that between one and two million pounds is chickenfeed to them. Equally I don't understand those who talk about the money ploughed into the club as "their" money in relation to the Raes. Of COURSE it's the Raes' money, lent to the club by Golden Casket, the Rae family business, in a series of redeemable loans. Where the hell else did it come from? You don't have to like it, but those are the facts - and it's also a fact that the club could be requested to pay those monies back. Douglas Rae has said in the past that he won't look for repayment in his lifetime; we don't know what will happen after he passes away. Few people buy a football club and make money from it (see TheRangers, Glasgow). And it will be a harder sell with the debt hanging over Morton. I'm sure Crawford Rae knows that he is almost certain to have to write of a large amount of money to facilitate a future sale - but all of it, as Dunning in his otherwise excellent post, and others posters, have suggested? Get real. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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