vikingTON

Fun fact: I halved the quote of your previous, War and Peace level boreathon and yet here you are, with the brassest of necks, trying to complain about meandering posts. Probably for the best that you tapped out then champ. In what way would anyone be 'stopped' from doing so?

1) It's not an excuse but rather the reality of a meeting that went on for the best part of three fucking hours, and which I know for a fact that people left early because they actually had other things to do with their Monday night. You're fooling nobody with this gambit. 2) The Estrella proposal was live and on the table until last Tuesday; the club and MCT's statement combined update on the operating reality was in the middle of July. So quite how the former induced the latter statement is a mystery residing in your mind only. 3) Issuing a statement that standards would be improved before doing precisely nothing in actions to demonstrate that is a risible attempt at PR management. Why should anyone believe what GMFC says now, when the board clearly just fires out statements and doesn't have any serious intention of delivering on them? GMFC should have been transparent with the owners of the organisation about Dalrada's existing default and the impact that this would have. Not least given that everyone and their dug had already heard that Dalrada weren't meeting their payment schedule prior to the season ending. By bullshitting both the fanbase and the ownership, the GMFC board have little goodwill now. 4) If members of the GMFC board accepted the pinky promises of a distant sponsor, already in default and demonstrable financial jeopardy - instead of acting to preserve the going concern status of the club, given they also had the opportunity to largely exposure to Dalrada funds from May onwards - then they should pay for that catastrophic error of judgment by stepping down with immediate effect.

Who are these mythical 1200 people, who would turn up and pay 22 fucking pound in, to watch a team that couldn't score a single goal (until today!) to show their dedicashun? I'm picking on this because it is archetypal of the greater and collective delusion that we badly need to overcome. The vast majority of the Greater Greenock community is not going to traipse out for a fighting fund, just like they never will (and never did) deliver 3,000 or 4,000 attendances for any team in the second tier under the Rates. Niall McGilp's excellent weekend column in the Tele confirms this. In the 1980s, in seasons where MFC had just dropped down from a ten team top flight (!) and were winning about half of league matches to support a return back, the average crowds were no better than they are today, after nearly 40 years solid in the lower leagues alone. It's far past time that people stopped indulging in nonsense about being a Sleeping Giant - if only in adversity - and operated from the reality of being a club with a resolute core support and nothing else worth pinning financial hopes on.

The formation is both completely predictable and utterly toothless. Not saying he is brilliant, but Brophy is being given a thankless task against two centre backs every week, and zero service from three sand-dancers who were hiding while we were in possession too often. The only way to give this team a credible threat is to change formation and go two up front with Savoury or any of our other 18 attacking midfielders playing behind them. Wilson, Cochrane and Gillespie provide the base for us to do something different to this utterly predictable pish. It was a great and well-deserved goal from Black, but we created little else in the game and over the three league games deserved to score at most a couple of goals. While relatively well organised defensively, we cough up soft goalscoring opportunities and set piece goals on a reliable enough basis to sink us. Unless the system is changed it will be a parade of plucky, narrow defeats and so the manager must be changed if he's not willing to do that. As for 'what about the cost?' - stick him on gardening leave and have a senior player take over, the latter of which Arbroath did two seasons ago. To persist with this is to write off the season - in which case we should start moving players on and cutting costs before this month is out.

The 'sponsorship' deal is irrelevant to the 9 or so ongoing first team contracts that Dalrada pledged to offer support to. That's where the black hole is, not because Dunga McClung Ltd missed out on the chance to swoop for the jersey sponsorship.

Given the GMFC board has no alternative mechanism to fill the large shortfall in its operating budget and believes that there is a serious risk of running out of cash by October - never mind May - then so long as the funds are satisfactorily in place then the club board should be open to accepting it. GMFC board members have a responsibility to keep the business operational and not default on its own commitments first and foremost. The statement posted on the GMFC website last Friday was quite clear in communicating the club board's hostility to the EFG proposal, if sadly not on the actual reality of the club's financial position. They cannot have their cake and eat it: either there is a critical situation that needs a cash injection, or there isn't. The MCT board on the other hand does not have to directly consider going concern status on behalf of its owning membership. They have the ability to advise and then the membership have full ability to decide what its best interests are as the owner of the business. A St Mirren fan could offer £10 million tomorrow to turn the club into St Mirren B and no matter what the books say, MCT members are not obliged to accept and are not the body held accountable if the club defaults on its commitments.

1) and 2) If there is a further MCT meeting between now and the next AGM then I'll be glad to either propose or second a motion of no confidence - that you think Monday's event needed yet another 'point of order' would be wild if it weren't just laughably transparent nonsense. 3) A) GMFC pledged in May's end of season statement that the first team performance was unacceptable and that standards would be raised going forward - already knowing and apparently having fully informed EFG too that the key backer underwriting the first team budget was in default on payments. So standards could not possibly be raised while that situation continued - but the fiction/delusion persisted right up until losing to Linlithgow and East Fife necessitated a change in tack to 'poor us' panhandling. I wonder what would have been communicated and when, had the LC group ended in a bog standard 5-6 points and out. B - In last Friday's statement GMFC focused on the concerns surrounding the financial viability of EFG's demands - prioritising these above the promised injection of £200k worth of capital this year, and £600k over three years. Well the phrase 'beggars can't be choosers' springs to mind. The club has no assets to sell and no cash in hand/bank debt facility - so if GMFC faces an immediate and dire shortfall in cashflow, then its board's responsibility to maintain a going concern should have supported a capital investment offer on the table. Instead they came out in opposition, so things can't be too bad for the year. C - Only after clutching their pearls about EFG's statement did anyone connected to GMFC or MCT bother to mention the contact for funding from EFG, or the soft loan to God knows who, or the apparent cash-flow crunch in October (which is apparently vastly different to EFG's disgraceful slur saying that it would run out of funds this month instead). None of the above demonstrate logical consistency in communicating the club's financial situation. As for it being up to the GMFC board to manage what information to communicate: this is not a PR exercise with the Daily Record; this is communicating to the actual owners of the football club. It is not the GMFC board nor in fact the MCT board that are the owners of the club - they are entrusted to their role as executives. The actual ownership is the collective membership of MCT, who were being provided with false and/or partial information from all three interested parties at the AGM and then expected to cast a vote the next morning. If that's the sort of selective communication approach that you find appropriate then that's your view. But in my view it is entirely corrosive to the model of fan ownership, and not much better for the concept of fan capital investment either. Neither EFG nor Golden Casket nor even Dalrada (who didn't even own any shares) would have tolerated being left in the dark - yet Muggins the MCT member is expected to 'trust the guys', 'back the boys', pay £400 p/y and also chip into a Fighting Fund whenever said guys make a roaring cunt of setting a budget.

The 'sponsorship' is not tied to the home shirt as the going rate for sponsoring the Morton home shirt does not in fact get flogged for around £250k - it's just like Golden Casket's status all over again. I fail to understand why you are focusing on such a minor issue when GMFC was gormlessly signing up a raft of players whose contracts were being covered by a debtor who was already in default on payments by April. That is the decision which created a black hole in the finances and that is the decision for which heads must roll.

A different shirt sponsor is irrelevant, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic nonsense compared to the third of a million quid black hole that was yawning open under the GMFC board's watch over the past 6 months. As was the hard luck story of holding back one entire contract worth £40k to 'limit' exposure to Dalrada. The club board knew the potential exposure. They extended that exposure over the summer to the lion's share of its potential total amount. That is a completely unacceptable series of decision-making, never properly disclosed to the club's actual ownership, for which heads should roll immediately.

1) It's possible for Bart to be an effective point of contact for members of the MCT board, while remaining a completely inappropriate representative of the owning membership. As someone else seems fond of saying in every second post at the moment, these things are not mutually exclusive. As a member rather than an MCT board director I want a board room representative who has generated sufficient trust. 2) The MCT AGM that ran for nearly 3 fucking hours and almost descended into a zoo at times? We didn't even cover the Estrella deal within the stated time frame. But aye let's chuck in a motion of no confidence as well, so that we can still be in Regent Street now. Be serious please. 3) You have ample reason to suspect this given the complete lack if transparency by the club and its contradictory statements between Friday, Monday and then yesterday. You choose not to suspect and take the club in good faith because you are acting as a fan. That the club cannot and IMO should not be taken in good faith is an outcome of their persistent lack of transparency in the first place - and the ongoing absence of accountability for their own actions. I'd encourage the renewed MCT board to signal their intent to do better than the latest, all-summer farce to have unfolded at this club, between now and the apparent crunch point in October.

If we binned every single responsible GMFC and MCT board member then it would demonstrate accountability and taking responsibility for failed leadership, which should be a precondition for any new fundraising drive. Throwing more good money at dung leadership and More McKenzie Carse without a serious plan for change is just a daft football fan response rather than a rational one.

Graham Barr was a prime mover in giving Dalrada opportunity to throw their weight around and trashing the club's reputation in the press 15 months ago. Yet despite repeated and frankly self-pitying pledges to resign, he still represents MCT at club board level. This should have been regarded as inappropriate after last May's mess and untenable once their big mates at Dalrada became a bad debtor. It's well past time to go and for a new rep with little such baggage to provide that link between club operations and the owning membership. Have they come clean, or is it just another selective set of disclosures to rebut Estrella, that do not reflect the true operating reality of the club? Why didn't they come clean in last Friday's statement, or the video in July, or their bravado statement about Unacceptable Standards in May. And let's recall that no evidence was actually presented for this 'fine this month, but big problems by October' line. There's no cashflow projection to support this - people are taking this claim on trust alone. Yet there is simply no credible track record of transparency and honesty to support this stance, IMHO. 'Not being Estrella' should not make the other two parties any more credible right now.

You are overlooking the fact which was confirmed last night - and a rumour that was already common knowledge by April 2026 outside of the club - that Dalrada were already defaulting on payments before season's end. So the responsibility for a hole in this season's budget must be shared between the bad debtor and the GMFC board. The latter had the ability to remove the vast majority of its future exposure to Dalrada funding in the close season. They only removed 1 single contract: £40k removed, to cover a projected £340k shortfall if no future payments are met. Who is responsible for that hole in the budget, other than those who set it? And they could also have gone part-time or hybrid over the close season to account for a drastic reduction in the wider player budget, or opted for a combination of the two. They didn't do this though. They instead opted in classic GMFC fashion (over decades) to try and muddle through, preserve their (and a bizarre section of the fanbase's) fixation with full-time football, and hope that a phone call or two to Brian Bonar and asking for hauners from external parties would suffice. Oh and let's not forget their defiant statement in May about how they would be imposing much higher standards in the season to come - knowing full well that their major sponsor was at that time not providing the funds promised. So if anything, they knowingly missold their product to ST holders. The executives on both boards kept the reality of the situation hidden from the actual ownership until a) we started losing to LL teams and then b) had further details smoked out by a hostile Estrella statement in the middle of August. There is not one but a litany of failures at boardroom level here, that should result in a majority of responsible heads rolling prior to any sort of salvage job. In no other business than football would such a detachment between accountability and public bailout be tolerated - take the blue and white specs off.

IIRC Dalrada were fundamentally opposed to this, and made it a working condition of their partnership that MCT capital also go towards the shittest ever attempt at ambishun.

1) Not enough of a concern for joint board members to put a £200k capital investment offer on the table in a disinterested manner to the owners of the club. 2) Not enough to stop them from divesting from all but 1 of fhe Dalrada backed players in the close season, despite the default having already started in spring, and 3) Not enough to stop the signing of a 17th central midfielder less than a fortnight ago. So GMFC turning on and off the concern tap on a daily basis should be treated with contempt, until they can either get their story straight and/or resign for credible leadership to take their place.