Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[steelman1991]

2 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

We play Germany on Friday night .....

Thankfully I don't have the excitement around the National team that I used to. Little more than a passing interest for a long while now.

[Cedrics Mighty Well Army]

1 hour ago, Swello said:

Getting a cast-off training kit from serial relegation outfit Dundee Utd probably means this is our year.

Of course, there was the night at FP when the Arabs had to play in 'well's away kit because they only brought their home one.

Or was it the other way around due to a fire?

My potato's bin bakin' too long, I suggest, but something along those lines did happen.

[eliphas]

That seriously is a shocker of colour choices for the training kit. Caldwell must have been in too late to stop that? Surely. 

Colour joking aside it's a Dundee united kit!

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

On 01/06/2024 at 12:24, capt_oats said:

More new training taps (the 1/4 zip version is on the IG).

I thought this was the new training top colours?

[Handsome_Devil]

Just now, Jim McLean's Ghost said:

I thought this was the new training top colours?

I think that's the working week training top, the thing today is pre-match warm-up. A cynic would call it a money-making exercise but then again we are utterly skint and if everyone doesn't buy both I doubt we'll make the Dutch tour.

[capt_oats]

17 minutes ago, eliphas said:

That seriously is a shocker of colour choices for the training kit. Caldwell must have been in too late to stop that? Surely. 

Colour joking aside it's a Dundee united kit!

@Handsome_Devil has already mentioned the distinction but the United tap is the 'warm-up' match day.

The other tops are the training kit (the one @Jim McLean's Ghost quoted above and the below).

I mean, we've had about 3 different colours in the "training" range pretty regularly so it's not really that out of the ordinary (choice of colour for the match-day stuff aside).

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I don't really get why St Mirren signing Rooney would apparently make them drop their interest in Balmer. Surely you're wanting at least 6, maybe 7 or 8, rightbacks in a first team squad?

[StAndrew7]

56 minutes ago, rowsdower said:

This is like succession, but with free pies at stake.

 

Also, this all seems like the episode where Roman buys The Hearts instead of The Hibs.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

4 minutes ago, StAndrew7 said:

Also, this all seems like the episode where Roman buys The Hearts instead of The Hibs.

 

Erik Barmack was interested in Scottish Football at a very young age

[one m in Motherwell]

Re the training kit.

 

1. Who cares?

2. I quite like it, in a leftfield kind of way.

[Lobby Dossar]

 

Think some on here need a reality check on where we are as a club. Yip fan ownership is great but sorry our fanbase just does not support it. So where does the money come from with the greatest respect to the WS raffles and race nights ain’t going to cut it. Inward investment is essential so who on the Board or WS board can provide that. Energetic amateurs have no chance. 

Let’s look at Hertz as an example 17k members and over 17k season tickets and a philanthropist throwing in couple of million every now and then. 

Apart from us St Mirren and the two cheeks of the same arse every other club in the league now has people willing to put money in. Hell Billy Bowie was prepared to pay Van Veen £5k a week even when McKinnes didn’t want him. 

[eliphas]

48 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

@Handsome_Devil has already mentioned the distinction but the United tap is the 'warm-up' match day.

The other tops are the training kit (the one @Jim McLean's Ghost quoted above and the below).

I mean, we've had about 3 different colours in the "training" range pretty regularly so it's not really that out of the ordinary (choice of colour for the match-day stuff aside).

Yeah, regardless of training/warm up etc it's an absolute shocker and considering we try and sell it, seems to me a spectacular own goal if we could have avoided it. 

[eliphas]

15 minutes ago, one m in Motherwell said:

Re the training kit.

 

1. Who cares?

2. I quite like it, in a leftfield kind of way.

I wouldn't care at all if it wasn't something we try and shift to make some cash. It's just double weird it's the same colour as a 'rival' so I'm guessing it's a macron thing.

[Handsome_Devil]

7 minutes ago, Lobby Dossar said:

So where does the money come from with the greatest respect to the WS raffles and race nights ain’t going to cut it.  

The money comes from where it always does, being generated by the club on an ongoing basis.

If you think it's tight now, just wait till EB or who he sells to is trying to extract value on top...

Apart from McCann in basically unique circumstances at Celtic, can you give me one example of a Scottish club spending money it didn't have as an operational investment turn out well? A rich fan handing over money is a different matter, perhaps, but even then there's few raging success stories in comparison to Boyle, post-Thomson at Tannadice etc.

[craigkillie]

Derek McInnes absolutely did want to sign Van Veen, the chairman is not out there playing fantasy football with signings.

[Busta Nut]

2 hours ago, Vietnam91 said:

Darren Wood was upside down on her for 2 hours till he was rescued .... were you holding his slurpy?

 

2 hours ago, Desp said:

I remember that.  The rescue was laborious from what I heard.

He's still getting free jam pieces cos of that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ropy]

2 hours ago, Lobby Dossar said:

 

 

Think some on here need a reality check on where we are as a club. Yip fan ownership is great but sorry our fanbase just does not support it. So where does the money come from with the greatest respect to the WS raffles and race nights ain’t going to cut it. Inward investment is essential so who on the Board or WS board can provide that. Energetic amateurs have no chance. 

Let’s look at Hertz as an example 17k members and over 17k season tickets and a philanthropist throwing in couple of million every now and then. 

Apart from us St Mirren and the two cheeks of the same arse every other club in the league now has people willing to put money in. Hell Billy Bowie was prepared to pay Van Veen £5k a week even when McKinnes didn’t want him. 

How much inward investment is likely, is it the £300k suggested? 

[well fan for life]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Derek McInnes absolutely did want to sign Van Veen, the chairman is not out there playing fantasy football with signings.

Scottish Football was a much more fun place with Vladimir Romanov in it.

[YassinMoutaouakil]

I think I still prefer the woodshed guy

[Erik Barmack]

Back for Day 2 -- I think I'm going to need more animated gif memes to survive here.  I just want to clarify a few points that may be at least somewhat helpful in this discussion:

(1) The design of our offer was always to give fans 50%+.  Because there were discussions with lots of parties, and the actual governance of the Club isn't the easiest to understand, we landed where we did -- but if the main concern was keeping TWS, specifically, at 50%+, I'm sure smart people (not me) could sit in a room and solve it.  Intention matters here.

(2) There is a moving target, too, on what we, collectively, think the state of the Club's finances are.  I want to repeat that I am not in the gloom-and-doom category of the state of finances, but on any given year, there COULD BE a gap, and those gaps are likely to require outside funding because of FFP requirements.  I personally don't believe that the choices are "TWS goes with the Barmack plan" OR "TWS funds nothing."  I kind of believe that TWS will have to fund some things in the coming years, regardless, and we need to look at the delta of that amount, which is admittedly difficult to do.The intention of our offer was so that planning could be done over several years and with greater predictability.

(3) The intention of the "call option," was so that we were held accountable.   That's the key forcing function.   We think we'd be good at working with TWS, Brian and others, but lots of people think they're good at things and end up sucking.  I don't think that the argument holds that the call option won't be exercisable, because it ignores the fact that player sales, which are extremely likely to occur, will be held in escrow.  Finally, there's snark about "fees" associated with the call option, and just for clarity, those are fees that would involve lawyers and accountants to open and close a business.  (Read: It would suck for us to have the option called.)

(4) On valuation, to be slightly more specific, there are a few thoughts:

    (a) We know that 6-7 offers were made on MFC, and none were deemed better -- that's one point.

    (b) We personally looked at clubs in the SPFL and top clubs in the Championship, and I can tell you that the valuations are all within a range that's not wildly off, though it's also true that football prices change constantly.

     (c) One just playful idea -- Newcastle United does more revenue in total than the entire SPFL, and it sold a few years back for 300m pounds.  If you track revenue within the SPFL, at least 82-85% of it is attributable to the OF, and at least 10% of the remaining chunk is the Edinburgh clubs and Aberdeen.  That gets you to 7 clubs splitting 7-10% of the revenue.  Yes, Newcastle has grown over the last two years, but even if that club is now worth 400m pounds, as a comp, you'd be looking at 7-10% of 40m pounds across seven clubs, and those clubs have different levels of debt/stadiums/etc.  That may not be convincing, but it was helpful to me in combination with a+b.

Still, valuation can be quite subjective.  And little changes (a player sale, a better stadium, a new media rights deal) can completely change things.  So, I'm not asking you to agree with me, per se.  I just want you understand that thought was put into this.

(5) There have been a number of posts about death-star-like machinations to somehow gut the club in year 6, or flip assets.  Here I ask for the intermingling of faith/logic -- there are approximately a gazillion easier ways to make money than through the SPFL, and if there was some plan to strip assets in year 6, it's going to be a terrible one.  The only way we (possibly) ever make money off this opportunity is if the Club grows brilliantly, and someone else wants to engage in a hybrid model of fan ownership.

(6) Finally, I wanted to put a little context behind our negotiations.  This will sound somewhat counter-narrative to this particular board, but the members of the MFC Board were all passionate about our offer because we emphasized that we wanted to balance private and fan-ownership interests.  They were very concerned, too, about long-term stability for MFC and worked selflessly on this deal (I know I'm not making fans here, but that's what I experienced.)  We put the best offer out that we could given the information we had, it was accepted by the Board, and presented to TWS Board several times.  Concerns were expressed, obviously, but nothing to the extent of the dissenting letter that went out yesterday, and that's not a knock on the WS Board -- I believe that they're acting in what they perceive to be the best interests of the Club.  Similarly, and just sharing for transparency, I get tons of emails telling us to hang in there, because the most vocal critics are on message boards/Twitter, and that a larger percentage than this board might think could want "change."  (I''m not sure if that's right, but it's something to consider -- but, on the other hand, I also don't want to be "right," get a deal done, and have Block E holding up signs that read: "Barmacks go home.")

Summarizing, we're not total buffoons, we hope, nor are we the most venal extreme of American capitalists.  We still think what we put forth would make the Club stronger.  If it doesn't, I don't believe MFC is somehow doomed -- it's just a different trajectory.  I still like and respect Derek, Sean, Jason and those who are adamantly against the present deal, and if they have feedback for me, I will always take it.  I don't know if this is helpful, but wanted to lay some of these pieces out for consideration.

E