vikingTON

I said investments in competent businesses - as opposed to football clubs, which are incompetent money pits. What examples outside of 'dafties sticking money into professional sports teams' exist of external investors both a) buying shares in exchange for a designated, capital stake and then b) handing over phuree money for absolutely no further influence or value on top of that stake, as the price of being involved Do you think your pension fund or any other professional investor are chucking money into glorified charity buckets, to turn around the fortunes of the businesses that they invest in? Delusional.

I don't think you understand how investment works. If I pay X for Y percent of an actual business - rather than an absolute money pit football club - then I am not required nor even remotely expected to invest Z in the operation of that business. Space X is not rattling around electronic version of charity buckets at their IPO shareholders, nor asking them to fill an existing shortfall in the budget that they signed off on three months ago. The wishful thinking on here about GMFC's status as an investment opportunity seem to be spreading fast. I fear there will be some tears and snotters soon enough when reality returns to the chat.

Scottish football clubs are ten a penny when it comes to investment opportunities - buckshee or otherwise. Hamilton have passed through the hands of about four since 2020 and will be up for grabs again soon enough. But yes, they just can't pass up the opportunity to get involved in a business with literally no assets and is on the brink of insolvency. Can't wait for that 'improved proposal' to pop up alongside the magic consortium.

"Every penny counts as we look to secure the future of our wonderful club." From the MCT statement shared with members today. 1) So why are we signing multiple players to add to a squad that is not small, but rather unbalanced? 2) What other actions are currently being taken to ensure that every penny counts from existing and ongoing revenue? Where are costs being reduced - including the biggest cost of all which is the first team budget? It is frankly risible that we are two weeks since this panhandling operation began and still have no defined and tangible outcomes of the FF.

I'd file this under 'utterly delusional'.

Here's the thing - and an issue that we didn't even discuss at the AGM, because The Statement veered things off into a different direction: It shouldn't actually be a one time only option, because MCT also invests £150k worth of capital, each and every year. Over 5 years, that is £750k of capital investment. Over ten, it's £1.5 million. So a key issue unresolved - or perhaps they did resolve it, as the offending article about new share issues was never actually published! - is how MCT's ongoing capital investment would count towards the share allocation at the club. I'd be happy for an external investor to get a stable 35% stake, or as good as 50-50 split for a set number of years as a gesture of goodwill, but after a certain point, if MCT are still contributing funds then they should receive appropriate new shares. So it isn't a one-time only strategy - if MCT continue to provide its own capital investment, they should recover a greater stake in the business. And can then bring in fresh capital. We need to move beyond the view that MCT just donates money to finance fulllll-time futba. It is capital. Members can split the funds for different purposes now that Dalrada are defaulting on their demands. MCT can provide a source of short term cash by retaining some funds, or can apply to invest in other projects that GMFC may have access to on a preferential basis, but not own. One potential benefit of EFG or another external investor who wants to run the football club is that MCT could then provide a complementary focus on wider infrastructure, community projects etc. Just chucking the lion's share of that capital at Ian Murray's 'warchest', never to be seen again, is no longer a credible approach.

Strange for someone who has tapped out, to then tap themselves back in immediately. Was hoping it would at least be less shite than that effort tbh. You hate to see it happen.

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.