Motherwell FC - A Thread For All Seasons

[redstarcvedza]

16 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

Club: "we've got lawyers to f**k over the owners",

Society: "we've got lawyers to make sure the board don't f**k the club"

 

Hibs ..... we're now the banter club of the league by a country mile and you appointed Malky.

And 40% of the board members were on the society board when deal was recommended 

[EK2DK]

I’ve just had the misfortune of reading EB’s response to Twitter questions over what his actual plan is which he answers in 5 points.

Quite frankly… eh?

I’m not even going to address the points. It’s one stage above the random thoughts of a drunken old man in a pub 

“Initiatives and CRM”

”content”

“Global fans”

 

The board have significant questions to answer and this needs to get fired into the sun, pronto.

 

I’ll go as far as to say that the future of the club is at stake with EB. 

[Vietnam91]

2 minutes ago, redstarcvedza said:

And 40% of the board members were on the society board when deal was recommended 

*From the AGM till the 29th of April it was 66.6%

[eliphas]

The best thing, as someone else said, I think, is that we pull the handbrake on this. There is no rush. We don't need to sell right now. 

I think the @Erik Barmack and family bid has a lot of merit in there (I mean for a start there are things in there that Burrows, Grant etc were getting praised for like CRM, Social media initiatives and growing the brand...some people on here loved all that are criticising EB for the same things).

But certain elements don't sit right and will never win the fans over, and the way this has unfolded, WS board resignations, Dickie holding on to his Club board seat, an outgoing chairman, and with such lack of trust between WS and Club board makes this far too risky.

Let's stop. Continue talking. Revisit.

 

 

Edited June 21 by eliphas

[Molotov]

1 minute ago, Vietnam91 said:

*From the AGM till the 29th of April it was 66.6%

[steelmen]

Lots of these ideas are rehashes of John boyle’s ideas but for the digital age… and they all failed and he put in a hell of a lot more money!!

[capt_oats]

5 minutes ago, eliphas said:

But certain elements don't sit right and will never win the fans over, and the way this has unfolded, WS board resignations, Dickie holding on to his Club board seat, an outgoing chairman, and with such lack of trust between WS and Club board makes this far too risky.

On that point surely Feeley should be recusing himself from any discussions.

[Handsome_Devil]

2 minutes ago, eliphas said:

The best thing, as someone else said, I think, is that we pull the handbrake on this. There is no rush. We don't need to sell right now. 

I think the @Erik Barmack and family bid has a lot of merit in there. But certain elements, and the way this has unfolded, WS board resignations, Dickie holding on to his Club board seat, an outgoing chairman, and with such lack of trust between WS and Club board makes this far too risky.

Let's stop. Continue talking. Revisit.

A gazillion times this.

I think Erik is probably an opportunistic, chancing b*****d. Which I don't hold against him actually, and in other circumstances I might even enjoy a pint with him. Nothing personal, just business etc.

But every bit of evidence, ignoring his utter waffle on various platforms, suggests he's an opportunistic, chancing b*****d.

If he's a serious and credible investor, and his words carry the slightest bit of truth, he'll have no problem waiting. He did claim, after all, he doesn't want to end up buying a divided club which is currently - surely! - his current best scenario from a rushed vote in farcical circumstances.

Time to delay.

[Handsome_Devil]

2 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

On that point surely Feeley should be recusing himself from any discussions.

They can suspend him relatively easily but quite frankly it'd be like kicking a puppy...glad it's them and not me.

[eliphas]

3 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

On that point surely Feeley should be recusing himself from any discussions.

100%. I cannot see how Dickie or Feely can be involved in this on behalf of the Society. Which is...of course...meant to be their role on the board.

[David1979]

1 minute ago, capt_oats said:

On that point surely Feeley should be recusing himself from any discussions.

In my opinion, Feely should have tendered his resignation just like Dickie did. What’s even more baffling is that Dickie, I believe, is still occupying a Society seat on the executive board despite having resigned from the Society board.

That alone makes an absolute mockery of any further discussions. There isn't a legitimate business in the civilised world that would accept any of this.

The Chairman of the executive board has made clear his intentions to resign, and there are two executive board members who shouldn’t even be there.

Essentially, the executive board does not have a mandate to negotiate this deal. I hope the legal advice the Society is seeking will provide clarity on that.

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

8 minutes ago, eliphas said:

I mean for a start there are things in there that Burrows, Grant etc were getting praised for like CRM, Social media initiatives and growing the brand...some people on here loved all that are criticising EB for the same things

I mean most people liked the Social Media stuff and we won awards for it.

However at the same time when people looked into the money we were ploughing into entering these awards, I think some of them were into 5 figures people wondered if it was really worth it for the club or were we just puffing up the resume of our media team so they could move on to better things...

And we continue to be one of the better sides at Social Media and producing #Content.

[KirkySuperSub]

"Erik Barmack is typing..."

 

[Vietnam91]

Denziens of the Motherwell thread sitting here seeing "Erik Barmack is typing" for an hour wondering where his post will sit on the Jacob Blythe - Turnbull scale.

[standupforthemotherwell]

A "lengthy statement"

[Lukovic]

I may be pretty wrecked in Cologne right now but I feel bad for the people that will vote for this.

The offer isn't worth salt and I feel that selling away our future is the worst thing that we can do.

Anyone that has been persuaded by the board that we are in imminent danger of folding like an amateur club is easily gotten to is pretty easily gotten to and probably shouldn't be listened to in further advancements in these negotiations.

[David1979]

3 minutes ago, Vietnam91 said:

Denziens of the Motherwell thread sitting here seeing "Erik Barmack is typing" for an hour wondering where his post will sit on the Jacob Blythe - Turnbull scale.

I'm wondering if he's accidentally opened the forum app and is sitting on his phone in his back pocket.

[Erik Barmack]

4 hours ago, David1979 said:

 

1. The WS is required to invest increasing amounts each year (£200k for the first three years and £250k for the next three). What happens if the WS cannot meet its financial commitments in any given year? Does Wild Sheep Sports have the option to cover the shortfall, thereby increasing their shareholding? And if not, what are the penalties? 

2. Why is what you're bringing to the table worth the 47% you're wanting? You're offering £300,000 per year for three years. I assumed that such a low financial outlay would be complemented by a really attractive and solid business and investment plan. I mean, it would have to be, right? There are clubs around us, in the same league, who are offering far less percentage-wise for a lot more money.

But you've offered nothing except vague ideas about using AI, bringing in "Hollywood folks" and wanting to meddle in the actual footballing side of things to convince your friends to get involved.

You've acknowledged that you have approximately 10% of the information required to formulate a competent business plan. Have you genuinely conducted so little research into a potential investment opportunity? Why do you believe that is acceptable?

 

David:

Answers below ...

(1) Remedies typically aren't contemplated in HOTs, but I think it should be made clear that any satisfactory remedy shouldn't change the ownership structure.  (Read: This isn't a backdoor to more shares -- and, in fact, I think this should be explicitly protected to prevent a loophole.) 

(2) I keep seeing the 10% comment in your posts, and I wanted to provide context, as it's something that was used in business plans often at my old job (and maybe it just doesn't land here).  The basic idea was that, over 5 or 10 years, you should be constantly testing the assumptions that drive a business, and that if you knew more than, say, half of what you should be doing over a time period today, you're either not testing enough, overly confident, or the business isn't that interesting.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't be well-informed, but as an example, at Netflix, we had a business plan to do 1-2 shows per territory in Europe, and assumed that audiences would be (mostly) local, but then we launched two shows in Span (Elite, Casa de Papel) that were bigger than Hollywood shows, and we basically completely re-wrote our plans for year 2 and beyond.  Almost 90% of what we thought we'd do changed in less than a year.  I don't know if football would work that way, but I wrote it as a willingness to accept change whereas I think you viewed it as stubborn ignorance.  There's a probably a better way to capture this idea for this group, so your point is taken.

(3) Implicit in this view is that curiosity and humility matter more than any particular strategic decisions.  You're going to be wrong on strategy numerous times anyway -- so you want a culture within a business that respects risk-taking, is practical, and able to pivot based on new info (at least that's the indoctrination I received).

(4) I do feel like it's important to state how the investment proposal came to be: (1) We viewed the video (like everyone else); (2) We quickly realized that co-investment of some sort was the only option that would work in this scenario; (3) this investment would only succeed long-term if we could form a collaborative relationship with the Well Society; and (4) this investment would not be designed for some exit/flip.  It was and is de facto impossible, I believe, to create a business plan in isolation that also satisfies these conditions.

(5) The thesis behind this is also very different than what's presented in most football business plans.  I've had a chance to look at them, and it's either an explicit buyer or seller -- often in short decks -- stating that a huge opportunity exists, usually in the form of a clever player trading model, some stadium upgrade that only an American can realize, or a huge amount of dough can be made upon exit if you're promoted.  Of the ten I read, only two were more explicit than that, and they were for clubs that were already valued at 100m pounds+, written by investment bankers, and basically stating the same points but with highly complicated models that added certainty to investments that was utterly uncertain.

(6) We did present a lengthy deck as part of our proposal, which would not be appropriate to share here, but it basically assumed (and I know I'm repeating myself) that a plan would work if all of the stakeholders were involved in creating it, which is virtually impossible to do as an outsider.  I do not believe, for example, that it would be appropriate to list a bunch of KPIs without consulting the Well Society, and, as a side-note, it would be my preference to NOT have the vote until the Well Society has had a chance to present its business case, too.  (I think they've been working on this since at least March, and it seems like a plan will be released soon.) That way, voters could determine whether some of our ideas and TWS ideas would mix together/be complementary.

(7) As for our ideas, several points listed in our proposal were reiterated on this thread:

I was somewhat surprised that contributors to this forum didn't dive deeper here on a number of these points, and would still do so if it's helpful (and to test which ideas are interesting).  On some posts here, I've seen the same idea -- take AI, and how MFC should have a "smart" database that collates former season ticket holders and e-commerce purchasers -- as both ludicrously expensive/pie-in-the-sky and also painfully obvious.  But it cannot be both.  There are off the shelf programs that can be set up for less than 10k pounds and take roughly ten weeks to set up.  But reaching out to 20k fans intelligently and in a way that records what's been presented already could have a profound impact on the Club.  But that would need to be discussed in greater detail, and could only be effective if done with TWS.  And that, by the way is not a knock on TWS Board -- I believe leaders like Derek and Sean, who I'm guessing are still against this deal, would be interested and powerful in considering this as an area that could be explored with positive potential outcomes.

These are the discussions I would want to have, and which would ultimately inform how you build the right business plan, which is not going to be done by an outsider in isolation (nor am I particularly keen to focus on "Hollywood" or players or "AI").

E

 

 

Edited June 21 by Erik Barmack

[camer0n_mcd]

TL;DR: there's no actual plan so I'm going to pay lip service to an idea that your average punter could come up with.

 

Give me fucking peace man .

Edited June 21 by camer0n_mcd

[steelmen]

21 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

On that point surely Feeley should be recusing himself from any discussions.

To be fair to Feeley, he hasn’t resigned from the society so he is still ‘entitled’ to be one of the society’s club board members. I appreciate he is the only one left of the society board that supports this deal but he’s allowed his opinion.
 

Perhaps when the society put out their statement, he can put a dissenting opinion to explain why he voted for this investment.