The Big Queen's Park FC Thread

[Skeletar Spider]

On Davidson, he's best pals with one of my big cousins, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for him, but I think it's a decent enough appointment. Hardly the most exciting, but given what we've had to endure over the first half of the season I'm looking forward to having a manager in charge whose focus is actually on winning games.

As for what St Johnstone fans have had to say about him on here, I intend to employ the same strategy I do when I read negative reviews of something online that I've already purchased: outwardly scoff, deny, dismiss and hope furiously that they're wrong, while silently panicking that they're right.

Edited January 10 by Skeletar Spider

[QPEast]

11 minutes ago, EaglesandSpiders said:

I really hope McKenna signs for Man Utd not just because of the potential money involved but also because of the message it sends to other young talents out there: Come and join Queen's Park. We'll offer you a chance to play & gain experience in a very hard, competition, develop your talents, and in two year's time, you'll be signed by an English Premier League team. 

Surely the fact Robertson exists, means this is already the case.

[Charliechurch]

9 hours ago, Spider1975 said:

Enjoyed reading that
 

Going professional was never going to be easy and certainly there have been significant growing pains, given over a hundred years of being amateur and whilst the playing side, (up until March), seemed to be running on rails, there has and continues to be some angst about how professional the administration of the club has been, (see my post-Airdrie rant). 
 

You’re right that as supporters it seems from the outside very much like the club has/is being run if not by diktat from Mr Haughey, then certainly on the whim of an old boys club.  For that to change will take significant supporter pressure which, given our numbers (in comparison to Mr Haughey’s spend) might be a while off, but the onus is on us to try to apply pressure to change that, if of course as a body of support we decide that the risks and uncertainties of the current set up outweigh the benefits.

Nobody really knows a) exactly how much Lord Haughey has put in to the club, b) what his expected return is or c) what his future plans are out with the 10 year plan. The fact remains that other than ‘I know someone who met someone’s Aunt who told them that the tea lady said Dom Thomas was on x amount’ etc, nobody really knows what the playing budget is, or how much LH’s total outlay is.  What there has been though is significant investment in the infrastructure of the club, (within the shambles of a ‘stadium’ we are led to believe there is first rate gym/player welfare facilities) and significant investment in the youth teams, (anyone that follows club photographer Ian Cairns on X will have seen his post with the youth team last week)  What tends to grate with QP supporters is the constant Gretna comparison, which imho is just a little lazy given we evidently weren’t flush enough this time last year not to accept a minimal fee for Simon Murray and have recruited, almost exclusively, very young, very inexperienced playing staff over the summer……the polar opposite of Gretna. Purely on a supporters income vs team status we are likely to be loss making, however the plan was always for that youth investment to pay dividends; as you rightly say, a couple more finds like McKenna and we’ll be naming the VIP enclosure after Mr Beujker  

 

The player wage budget can be reasonably worked out by looking at the latest audited QP accounts on the Companies House website.

Total staff wages were circa £1.4m up until December 2021 when the club were in League 1. QP haven't filed their audited accounts for over 2 years now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the wage bill has increased to over £2m a year with annual losses ballooning to a roughly similar figure.

Of course, some of the club's employees will be non football staff but the bulk of those staff costs will be players and coaches.

Edited January 10 by Charliechurch

[Sortmeout]

31 minutes ago, Skeletar Spider said:

On Davidson, he's best pals with one of my big cousins, 

I don’t know why but the phrase “big cousin” from an adult made me laugh a bit. I don’t even know why it just read like you were 8.

 

[Aufc]

10 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

Obviously the conversation has long since moved on from this already, but I was looking back to see if there'd been much comment on Davidson before the rumours got into full swing and landed on this.

Much of this being accurate about Morton prior to 2021 (the Rae family operating out of the goodness of their hearts being very much up for debate, and I'm not sure what you're referring to with the £400K loan) doesn't address the underlying point about Queen's Park, or the fact that regardless of the 20 years from 2001-21, the statement you're taking issue with is an accurate summation of what Morton have been doing for the last 2 and a half years.

This isn't a moral judgement obviously, every club in this division has at times lived outwith their means, with everyone in the division other than Airdrie, Arbroath and Morton doing so just now, and inevitably those three clubs will find themselves making losses again in future. As you point out Morton are only recently free from the rich benefactor model and failed to break even for all but one of the 20 seasons the Raes were in charge. Queen's Park are obviously not unique in having a wealthy owner launching money at them.

Fan ownership and sustainability with it didn't just fall into the Morton's supports lap through the benevolence of a wealthy owner though, they had to work for it. Ownership was able to be passed onto the fans because they'd got themselves organised with a fan group being created which had started building a shareholding before the Raes decided to get out, it didn't happen overnight. During the course of the negotiations for ownership it also took the membership fighting for it to ensure the stadium remained in the club's hands rather than being asset stripped by the departing owners too.

That organisation was only founded in 2019 so again, not a moral judgement that we're better than anyone else for this as we'd had 18 years of doing f**k all but watching the debt pile up, but nevertheless proof that fans can make a difference if they organise themselves to do so. Had that organisation not been ready and already built a relationship with the club at the point the Raes decided to go, maybe we would have just been asset stripped before being passed along to some Angelo Massone figure.

I can't claim to know enough about Queen's Park's structure in terms of what the committee actually does and how the membership can influence it to say how much of an avenue for scrutiny that can be, but even if it's not functioning with any sort of transparency at all - it evidently hasn't for the last three years - hopefully you can find some way to start influencing the direction of the club through feedback to them. The departure of Dempster coming at the same time as the appointment of a new manager, so no on-field deflection to coaching staff needing to go as could have been the case if Veldman was still there, could be the impetus to start challenging the running of the club and get some answers about Haughey's long term intentions and/or where you're going to play for the rest of time.

What I would add, bringing it back to the initial point VT made about Queen's Park, is that a huge factor behind the creation of MCT was an awareness that the club was unsustainable on the path it was on in terms of first team spending and that needed to stop, so burying your heads in the hand that spending can't be that high just because it's gone on some total shite isn't going to be helpful: again see the 20 years of Morton you're referring to for proof that making bad signings doesn't mean making affordable signings.

Of course, getting a stupidly large sum of money for Callan McKenna may help smooth things over in any future path to sustainability.

I can’t say for exactly but I’d question whether we are living outwith our means. We have basically same team as we did in league 1, we have performed well in all the cups, we sold justin devaney to Crystal Palace, our crowds are up on last year and our hospo is sold out every home game. I could be wrong!

Looking at QP, from the outside, it’s hard not to question how it’s even remotely sustainable aside from haughey chucking cash in

[Adam Rendall]

Feeling Dom Thomas to thistle is a real possibility. 

[qpfc]

Just now, Adam Rendall said:

Feeling Dom Thomas to thistle is a real possibility. 

Based on ? 

[Zanetti]

40 minutes ago, Charliechurch said:

Of course, some of the club's employees will be non football staff but the bulk of those staff costs will be players and coaches

Not sure about that; you might be massively underestimating how much Beuker and Dempster were earning, not to mention the respective managers too. 

[Adam Rendall]

8 minutes ago, qpfc said:

Based on ? 

Stories don’t seem to going away, maybe just me getting wound up over thistles fans on twitter tbf.

[Charliechurch]

30 minutes ago, Zanetti said:

Not sure about that; you might be massively underestimating how much Beuker and Dempster were earning, not to mention the respective managers too. 

Beuker was part of the football staff, so his wages can't be separated from the wider football budget.

The total player and associated staff costs are running at Gretna levels considering QP have a fan base of about 400 supporters.

If QP were operating within their means, their total football budget would be at Stenhousemuir levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Haughey is now funding a wage bill in excess of the likes of Motherwell and Livingston.

Edited January 10 by Charliechurch

[Stuntiethumper]

38 minutes ago, Adam Rendall said:

Stories don’t seem to going away, maybe just me getting wound up over thistles fans on twitter tbf.

Thistle have little cash to splash and have some good wingers already. Whilst they are better than the chasing pack they do not look like a serious promotion prospect this season. Not sure Dom would get much from a move such as that.

Edited January 10 by Stuntiethumper

[Stuntiethumper]

17 minutes ago, Charliechurch said:

Beuker was part of the football staff, so his wages can't be separated from the wider football budget.

The total player and associated staff costs are running at Gretna levels considering QP have a fan base of about 400 supporters.

If QP were operating within their means, their total football budget would be at Stenhousemuir levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Haughey is now funding a wage bill in excess of the likes of Motherwell and Livingston.

I remember an interview with Owen Coyle who said that in 22/23 the QP budget was exactly the same as it was for the league one season. But the money went further as we operated with a much smaller first team squad (15 players). 

This year most of our higher earners have left and we signed kids. So I would be surprised if there is much difference in this years playing budget. We will find out soon enough after the AGM.

[Stuntiethumper]

26 minutes ago, Charliechurch said:

Beuker was part of the football staff, so his wages can't be separated from the wider football budget.

The total player and associated staff costs are running at Gretna levels considering QP have a fan base of about 400 supporters.

If QP were operating within their means, their total football budget would be at Stenhousemuir levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Haughey is now funding a wage bill in excess of the likes of Motherwell and Livingston.

Multiply those attendances by four and might be accurate.

https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/scottish-championship/attendances

[mcjameos]

21 minutes ago, Charliechurch said:

Beuker was part of the football staff, so his wages can't be separated from the wider football budget.

The total player and associated staff costs are running at Gretna levels considering QP have a fan base of about 400 supporters.

If QP were operating within their means, their total football budget would be at Stenhousemuir levels. I wouldn't be surprised if Haughey is now funding a wage bill in excess of Motherwell and Livingston.

The latest published accounts do not differentiate between football and non football staff. The total staff costs were £1.5m for 73 staff. For the same period Motherwell reported £4.1m in staff costs rising to £5.2m the following year.  Livingston do not publish staff costs. We may be benefiting from external support (like most clubs are or have done) but we are clearly not spending in excess of Motherwell.

[Zanetti]

1 hour ago, Adam Rendall said:

Stories don’t seem to going away, maybe just me getting wound up over thistles fans on twitter tbf.

There's every chance we'd be daft enough to do it, but the most vocal Thistle fans on Twitter are absolute rockets and best ignored. 

[Dave]

3 hours ago, Skeletar Spider said:

But the success Doig, Ferguson, Hickey and Gauld have had isn't relevant here. Ferguson had played 130+ games in the top flight for Aberdeen, Doig had played 60+ for Hibs, Gauld had played 40 odd for United and even Hickey had had a season at Hearts.

The statement I was answering was "no young Scottish players have done well playing abroad". I wasn't attempting to compare McKenna to any of those players.

If I was wanting to draw comparisons I could have said that Josh Doig only played a handful of games for a Glasgow team wearing black and white, but it set him up pretty well for the future...

[velo army]

58 minutes ago, Dave said:

The statement I was answering was "no young Scottish players have done well playing abroad". I wasn't attempting to compare McKenna to any of those players.

If I was wanting to draw comparisons I could have said that Josh Doig only played a handful of games for a Glasgow team wearing black and white, but it set him up pretty well for the future...

I figured it was obvious I was meaning youth players who left before they'd had many first team games, but in retrospect I'd perhaps not made it that clear. 

 

[BigMadMental]

2 hours ago, Zanetti said:

There's every chance we'd be daft enough to do it, but the most vocal Thistle fans on Twitter are absolute rockets and best ignored. 

To be fair, the media are reporting that 3 teams were in for him and that QP were ready to listen to offers.

we know now that United don’t want him and Raith have just signed Turner on loan, so the probability is becoming higher.

Personally, I think the appointment of Davidson might put the kibosh on this one now but we might still try and sign him on a PCA

[mcjameos]

28 minutes ago, BigMadMental said:

To be fair, the media are reporting that 3 teams were in for him and that QP were ready to listen to offers.

we know now that United don’t want him and Raith have just signed Turner on loan, so the probability is becoming higher.

Personally, I think the appointment of Davidson might put the kibosh on this one now but we might still try and sign him on a PCA

Pretty sure there is 18 months left on his contract which would prevent any PCA being used at the moment.

Edited January 11 by mcjameos

[Hampden Diehard]

11 hours ago, Aufc said:

Looking at QP, from the outside, it’s hard not to question how it’s even remotely sustainable aside from haughey chucking cash in

No QP fan has claimed that what we're doing is sustainable. Most clubs in Scotland are propped up by benefactors in an unsustainable way. We're maybe a wee bit more unsustainable than most.

Mind you, if the mad stories about our young goalie going to Old Trafford for a £million are correct, we only need to produce one of these guys every year and we're laughing!