Morton Club Together Updates

[Cet Homme Charmant]

36 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

We're not in debt, though.

But they did mention an interest-free loan option somewhere in the statement

[TRVMP]

1 minute ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

But they did mention an interest-free loan option somewhere in the statement

Correct, it is for the time being an option.

Right now we're not in any danger, though. At this exact second in time.

[so72]

If Easdale is interested then I'd explore that road before taking loans and risk our future. Regardless, if he/they took over they might provide credit rather than investment. 

 

 

I'm not surprised MCT haven't managed to raise enough subscriptions. Between ignoring the Lithgow concerns, appointing Gus and then the financial situation for individuals (obviously out their control) it hasn't been a fertile breeding ground for cash.

 

 

[Cet Homme Charmant]

1 minute ago, TRVMP said:

Correct, it is for the time being an option.

Right now we're not in any danger, though. At this exact second in time.

Indeed, but the very fact that taking out a loan to cover day-to-day running costs is mentioned as an option on the table should in itself be setting off huge alarm bells

[TRVMP]

Just now, Cet Homme Charmant said:

Indeed, but the very fact that taking out a loan to cover day-to-day running costs is mentioned as an option on the table should in itself be setting off huge alarm bells

We're splitting hairs here a bit but the statement doesn't explicitly say that the loan is for the running costs.

I don't think anyone is not alarmed. This is clearly a serious situation and one that puts our full-time status and Championship status in jeopardy. But that is not the same as saying "we need loans or we cannot physically keep the lights on." The option is more between paying the fixed (yet rising) costs of keeping the lights on and between having a competitive squad.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

27 minutes ago, Greacen2000 said:

I am fine with the investment talks breaking down on the basis of the interested parties wanting to remain anonymous 

I think that would depend very much on their reason(s) for wanting to remain anonymous. There are plenty of possible completely non-sinister reasons for someone wanting to remain anonymous. 

[Cet Homme Charmant]

1 minute ago, TRVMP said:

We're splitting hairs here a bit but the statement doesn't explicitly say that the loan is for the running costs.

I don't think anyone is not alarmed. This is clearly a serious situation and one that puts our full-time status and Championship status in jeopardy. But that is not the same as saying "we need loans or we cannot physically keep the lights on." The option is more between paying the fixed (yet rising) costs of keeping the lights on and between having a competitive squad.

Indeed it's open to interpretation as to the circumstances by which they'd take up the interest-free loan option. As MCT have previously stated (I pretty sure, but may be wrong) that they would never take the club into debt, I've assumed that they would only take this option as a last resort to maintain an operational cash-flow. But yeah, I could have misinterpreted it. 

[port-ton]

35 minutes ago, dunning1874 said:

 

It's worth noting though that anyone who is immediately reacting to this by saying "right, sell up, we need a white knight to takeover and fund us" is effectively asking for the same approach of piling debt on to cover running costs, just with the debt being back to a private owner again in the same shitshow we had under the Raes. That is the death sentence you are asking for when you ask for a private owner to come back to plug losses as fan ownership can only fail.

 

Alternatively a private owner could have the business structure in place to improve income generating departments of the club and be able to run the club sustainably just as well as fan ownership theoretically could. 

At the moment we have a board of volunteer board members with full time jobs, no CEO and a commercial manager who from the outside looks to be trying his absolute best to improve commercial income in to the club but he can't work miracles. What's the path to improving the situation without funds there to improve it? 

It depends if you think there's more risk in not having a club through fan ownership failing or a private owner running up debts again. It pains me to say it but the more I see and hear the more I lean towards fan ownership (in this current model at least) being more of an immediate risk to the clubs future. As grim as that statement was, that was them painting the situation in the best light possible for fans/MCT members. 

[HamCam]

Disappointing but not surprising. Once again MCT over-promised and have under-delivered (the sponsorship deal). While the fans want to hear good news marching them up to the top of the hill to only march them down again does not suggest prudent governance. That said I do appreciate the update and the efforts of all who have volunteered at MCT. On Saturday we had Graham standing in the pissing rain flogging the Imrie t-shirts - I am sure he would rather be just supporting the team like the rest of us. I do though question the idea of MCT directors, who are standing down, retaining a position on the GMFC Board - surely this only dilutes the input of the membership? 

At least we now know the reality of where we are on the footballing side. No more signings unless the donor club picks up 100% of the bill. No point fans, including me, ranting on about the gaps in the squad, we have to get fully behind those in the jersey. Yet again it looks as if it will be a season where we are fighting to survive rather than looking up. Normal service is resumed.

[Greacen2000]

11 minutes ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

I think that would depend very much on their reason(s) for wanting to remain anonymous. There are plenty of possible completely non-sinister reasons for someone wanting to remain anonymous. 

It was agreed at the EGM that once a deal in principle had been reached, the full details of it (including the parties involved) would be disclosed to the MCT membership before a final vote to approve/veto it.

Once the hypothetical deal had went through, the said individuals would have received seat(s) on the board in exchange for their investment.  At that point remaining anonymous would no longer really be an option.

So we can conclude that this desire to remain anonymous is in fact a desire not to be named prior to the MCT membership voting on the deal.  That being the case, anyone who isn't comfortable being named can do one as far as I am concerned

[vikingTON]

45 minutes ago, port-ton said:

Alternatively a private owner could have the business structure in place to improve income generating departments of the club and be able to run the club sustainably just as well as fan ownership theoretically could. 

Why would a private owner spend their time and resources building an entirely new (and assumed to be superior: Golden Casket's certainly wasn't) business structure, at a club with no assets in the middle of a looming economic recession? 

It's fair enough to raise the potential lack of current expertise. It's probably true that we would do better with more professionals (such as having a CEO with a real contract) and fewer amateurs. Although the GMFC board is not made up entirely of MCT officials and many of those officials do have reasonable business backgrounds anyway - we have (so far) done not too bad on this front. In the long term I think that the best model is a 50+1 fan ownership arrangement that gives private businesses and their directors a tangible stake (up to 49% combined) in the club's success. But that's not where we are right now.

The idea that the club could or should instead be handed over wholesale to a Rae mk. II figure is a complete non-starter given the wider economic circumstances. If investors aren't willing to go for a stake on current terms then they're not going to raise their head above the parapet to take responsibility for the club as a whole unless they can get the ground asset as a prize. And if anyone thinks that should be on the table in negotiations then we're in much more trouble than part-time football could ever produce.

Edited July 27, 2022 by vikingTON

[EanieMeany]

2 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Saying they're looking at a proposal for a loan is a massive alarm bell and it's hard to see what loan terms could possibly be acceptable. We didn't get a debt free club just to plunge back into debt by taking out a loan to cover running costs 

It's worth noting though that anyone who is immediately reacting to this by saying "right, sell up, we need a white knight to takeover and fund us" is effectively asking for the same approach of piling debt on to cover running costs, just with the debt being back to a private owner again in the same shitshow we had under the Raes. That is the death sentence you are asking for when you ask for a private owner to come back to plug losses as fan ownership can only fail.

 

I think having no confidence in fan ownership at this stage is pretty reasonable, to be honest. Whilst I think it's too soon to go straight to the "sell up immediately" option,  whether we eventually reach that stage or not is entirely dependant on whether MCT are willing to accept that they've not made a particularly great job of it and be open to totally reforming itself. I posted along these lines recently, below:

On 7/19/2022 at 8:45 PM, EanieMeany said:

I think it's maybe a prudent time for an open conversation/consultation to take place about what the future holds with everything and anything on the table to be discussed. 

It could well be MCT revealing some development or other which is the catalyst for the club to push on as is, it could be the planning and development of some innovative hybrid structure,it could be a realisation that full-time football simply isn't viable and whether or not that can be resolved by anything, or it could just be a damp squib. Who knows? There's nothing to be scared of by listening to the people who care most about the club, and fans en-masse can be a helluva lot more imaginative than a bunch of lawyers in suits cozied up in a boardroom.

...

The early days of fan ownership should be a time for bold new ideas and discussions and exploring ways to move the club forward: fan ownership might not mean fan-run but it certainly should mean fan-propelled (pun entirely unintended) and utilising the knowledge, skills and passion of the support.

If they're not willing to fully engage and to potentially embark on a rapid and radical change of tack that goes beyond the current lack of any real accountability or ingenuity, and they've nothing better to say than asking for loans, then there absolutely has to be a willingness to look for new ownership. 

As a general point, I think it's really quite absurd, frankly, for people to be looking down their noses at "private" ownership. Everybody else seems to be doing not awfully and every single other full-time club has managed to perform far better than us over the past few decades or at least achieve one major thing (cup finals, European football, top-flight football etc), so why exactly Morton should think its above the same ownership models as them when we've achieved precisely fuck all isn't really clear.

I mean, let's be honest: at no point under the Raes outwith the post-administration period, even in the last few years under Crawford, did we find ourselves with a squad as shambolic as the one we do now. There were certainly some rotten ones, but that was down to managers making an arse of it rather than trying to pass off development/reserve players as a huge chunk of the squad.

That's not to say the Rae era was a halcyon one, but let's not try to pretend it ever reached the stage we're at now. Just because that was bad too doesn't mitigate what we have now.

 

1 hour ago, Greacen2000 said:

It was agreed at the EGM that once a deal in principle had been reached, the full details of it (including the parties involved) would be disclosed to the MCT membership before a final vote to approve/veto it.

Once the hypothetical deal had went through, the said individuals would have received seat(s) on the board in exchange for their investment.  At that point remaining anonymous would no longer really be an option.

So we can conclude that this desire to remain anonymous is in fact a desire not to be named prior to the MCT membership voting on the deal.  That being the case, anyone who isn't comfortable being named can do one as far as I am concerned

 

I'm not too sure about this, tbh. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to be going to a football club to invest a lot of money for not much in return and no real power at the club and not be too keen on having a bunch of pearl-clutchers on a message-board debating your character. If it was to actually buy the club then yeah, maybe, but to have a bunch of strangers, the majority of whom wouldn't even look at you if you were in the same room never mind pass comment, thinking their entitled to publicly debate your character so you can whack money into a football team doesn't seem an overtly sinister thing to want to avoid. 

ETA: That's not to say I'd be overly keen on the whole process taking place anonymously, but I don't think somebody withdrawing because of it is proof that there's anything sinister going on. There's simply loads of places where you can put your money, probably a good few where you'll get far more out of it, without getting your reputation taken to bits in public. I'm not sure there's any real way to get round that, but nonetheless I don't think it's unreasonable for people to not want to put themselves in that situation. It doesn't necessarily mean they were hatching some nefarious plan.

Edited July 27, 2022 by EanieMeany

[vikingTON]

21 minutes ago, EanieMeany said:

I think having no confidence in fan ownership at this stage is pretty reasonable, to be honest. Whilst I think it's too soon to go straight to the "sell up immediately" option,  whether we eventually reach that stage or not is entirely dependant on whether MCT are willing to accept that they've not made a particularly great job of it and be open to totally reforming itself. I posted along these lines recently, below:

If they're not willing to fully engage and to potentially embark on a rapid and radical change of tack that goes beyond the current lack of any real accountability or ingenuity, and they've nothing better to say than asking for loans, then there absolutely has to be a willingness to look for new ownership. 

As a general point, I think it's really quite absurd, frankly, for people to be looking down their noses at "private" ownership. Everybody else seems to be doing not awfully and every single other full-time club has managed to perform far better than us over the past few decades or at least achieve one major thing (cup finals, European football, top-flight football etc), so why exactly Morton should think its above the same ownership models as them when we've achieved precisely fuck all isn't really clear.

I mean, let's be honest: at no point under the Raes outwith the post-administration period, even in the last few years under Crawford, did we find ourselves with a squad as shambolic as the one we do now. There were certainly some rotten ones, but that was down to managers making an arse of it rather than trying to pass off development/reserve players as a huge chunk of the squad.

Categorically wrong. That's precisely what happened in 2013/14 - and we picked up the IOU tab to Golden Casket for the privilege anyway, once Novo, O'Connor, Vine and the rest of the panic signings were added after the summer transfer window closed. 

Your previous 'point' is also a complete non-sequitur. We had a daft sweetie merchant flinging money around like nobody's business during that period. So the failure to achieve success rests entirely with the private owner model, not fan ownership. It then left a legacy of a completely unpayable debt, from which GMFC was very, very lucky to escape from intact.

That's why we currently have fan ownership. It's also why the club's asset is ring-fenced to preserve its future from yet another Walter Mitty/daft clown of an owner finishing the club off for good. So the revisionism about the state we were actually in prior to fan ownership won't do.

Edited July 27, 2022 by vikingTON

[port-ton]

1 hour ago, vikingTON said:

Why would a private owner spend their time and resources building an entirely new (and assumed to be superior: Golden Casket's certainly wasn't) business structure, at a club with no assets in the middle of a looming economic recession? 

 

Because I'm not convinced that assetless GMFC going in to administration would make GMFC properties Ltd owning the stadium that much of a barrier to any perspective owners wishing to take over the club. 

I doubt MCT would want the football club to fold under their watch and in the case of administration MCT members would lose all voting rights I assume as the administrator would be running the club while looking for potential buyers. 

You'll be able to correct me if I'm wrong as well but does MCT and its members have any stake in GMFC properties Ltd that would allow members to vote on the sale of the stadium in the event the football club went in to administration, or would it be up to individual board members of GMFC Properties Ltd to negotiate that with administrators and perspective new owners without any recourse from MCT?

[vikingTON]

17 minutes ago, port-ton said:

Because I'm not convinced that assetless GMFC going in to administration would make GMFC properties Ltd owning the stadium that much of a barrier to any perspective owners wishing to take over the club. 

That doesn't make any sense. You were discussing the prospects of a private owner wanting to build a successful business model at Cappielow - now we've jumped to some alternative scenario and theorising about what would happen after administration.

Let's stick to the here and now: why would a private investor spend their time and resources trying to build a successful business model around a football club with no assets in the current economic shitstorm? This is the question that the 'MCT should listen to offers' argument has to address - what offers and why would they be made? 

And while a non-zero chance given the economic challenges across the country right now, I don't see the club sauntering into administration without first transferring to that private ownership. So long as MCT as custodians can maintain their pledge to not burden the club with debt, a budget can pretty much always be set on a break-even basis at the start of each season. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by vikingTON

[Greacen2000]

1 hour ago, EanieMeany said:

I'm not too sure about this, tbh. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to be going to a football club to invest a lot of money for not much in return and no real power at the club and not be too keen on having a bunch of pearl-clutchers on a message-board debating your character. If it was to actually buy the club then yeah, maybe, but to have a bunch of strangers, the majority of whom wouldn't even look at you if you were in the same room never mind pass comment, thinking their entitled to publicly debate your character so you can whack money into a football team doesn't seem an overtly sinister thing to want to avoid. 

ETA: That's not to say I'd be overly keen on the whole process taking place anonymously, but I don't think somebody withdrawing because of it is proof that there's anything sinister going on. There's simply loads of places where you can put your money, probably a good few where you'll get far more out of it, without getting your reputation taken to bits in public. I'm not sure there's any real way to get round that, but nonetheless I don't think it's unreasonable for people to not want to put themselves in that situation. It doesn't necessarily mean they were hatching some nefarious plan.

All of which is entirely reasonable and I do not disagree with you.  At no point however did I suggest that anything sinister was necessary going on - I just said that I wouldn’t be in favour of it happening if the identity of the investors wasn’t known.

 

The reality of the situation is that the MCT articles require any such deal to be approved by the membership, so that’s the landscape that any prospective investors need to navigate.  It was very clear from those in attendance at the EGM that transparency on the identity of the potential investors was an important issue, and I seriously doubt that the amendment would have even passed had there not been a concession to put any deal to a final vote with full disclosure.

 

[port-ton]

6 minutes ago, vikingTON said:

That doesn't make any sense. You were discussing the prospects of a private owner wanting to build a successful business model at Cappielow - now we've jumped to some alternative scenario and theorising about what would happen after administration.

Let's stick to the here and now: why would a private investor spend their time and resources trying to build a successful business model around a football club with no assets in the current economic shitstorm? This is the question that the 'MCT should listen to offers' argument has to address - what offers and why would they be made? 

And while a non-zero chance given the economic challenges across the country right now, I don't see the club sauntering into administration without first transferring to that private ownership. So long as MCT as custodians can maintain their pledge to not burden the club with debt, a budget can pretty much always be set on a break-even basis at the start of each season. 

Only you were talking about them taking over a club with zero assets, at no point was I.  My point to Dunning was that there are scenarios where a private owner could take over and make the club sustainable, and would be in a better position to do so than our board with full time jobs and families and lack of CEO. Just because Douglas Rae ran us in to the ground financially doesn't mean every private owner would. There's obviously a risk that it could happen again which would be a disaster, but I don't buy that we'd automatically be replacing Douglas Rae for another Douglas Rae. 

At the point of sauntering towards administration, why would a private owner purchase GMFC with no assets after looking at the accounts during the takeover negotiations and seeing the fact they're sauntering towards administration, and consider the fact they'd have a much better shot at negotiations with GMFC properties Ltd with a football club that's in administration. For all we know of any of the potential investors who backed out had already got to that stage of the negotiations and know exactly the financial projections for the club right now without any further investment and are biding their time instead. 

 

 

[EanieMeany]

16 minutes ago, Greacen2000 said:

All of which is entirely reasonable and I do not disagree with you.  At no point however did I suggest that anything sinister was necessary going on - I just said that I wouldn’t be in favour of it happening if the identity of the investors wasn’t known.

 

The reality of the situation is that the MCT articles require any such deal to be approved by the membership, so that’s the landscape that any prospective investors need to navigate.  It was very clear from those in attendance at the EGM that transparency on the identity of the potential investors was an important issue, and I seriously doubt that the amendment would have even passed had there not been a concession to put any deal to a final vote with full disclosure.

 

Aye, I was just meaning as a general point, not directed at you personally. Apologies for any confusion there.

I don't disagree with the rest either, it's a bit of an usual scenario with one side of the transaction being hundreds of people, and both perspectives are equally valid: one side wants to know who they're opening the door to, the other wants to chuck money in but not have themselves dragged through all manner of public speculation and what not, especially when they're not really going to get anything out of it. That's entirely fair even if it is unfortunate, but it's probably not the first or last time a similar thing has happened with fan-owned clubs. I guess there's always going to be wee curios like that, so it's what it is really.

Edited July 27, 2022 by EanieMeany

[so72]

1 hour ago, EanieMeany said:

I think having no confidence in fan ownership at this stage is pretty reasonable, to be honest. Whilst I think it's too soon to go straight to the "sell up immediately" option,  whether we eventually reach that stage or not is entirely dependant on whether MCT are willing to accept that they've not made a particularly great job of it and be open to totally reforming itself. I posted along these lines recently, below:

If they're not willing to fully engage and to potentially embark on a rapid and radical change of tack that goes beyond the current lack of any real accountability or ingenuity, and they've nothing better to say than asking for loans, then there absolutely has to be a willingness to look for new ownership. 

As a general point, I think it's really quite absurd, frankly, for people to be looking down their noses at "private" ownership. Everybody else seems to be doing not awfully and every single other full-time club has managed to perform far better than us over the past few decades or at least achieve one major thing (cup finals, European football, top-flight football etc), so why exactly Morton should think its above the same ownership models as them when we've achieved precisely fuck all isn't really clear.

I mean, let's be honest: at no point under the Raes outwith the post-administration period, even in the last few years under Crawford, did we find ourselves with a squad as shambolic as the one we do now. There were certainly some rotten ones, but that was down to managers making an arse of it rather than trying to pass off development/reserve players as a huge chunk of the squad.

That's not to say the Rae era was a halcyon one, but let's not try to pretend it ever reached the stage we're at now. Just because that was bad too doesn't mitigate what we have now.

 

 

I'm not too sure about this, tbh. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to be going to a football club to invest a lot of money for not much in return and no real power at the club and not be too keen on having a bunch of pearl-clutchers on a message-board debating your character. If it was to actually buy the club then yeah, maybe, but to have a bunch of strangers, the majority of whom wouldn't even look at you if you were in the same room never mind pass comment, thinking their entitled to publicly debate your character so you can whack money into a football team doesn't seem an overtly sinister thing to want to avoid. 

ETA: That's not to say I'd be overly keen on the whole process taking place anonymously, but I don't think somebody withdrawing because of it is proof that there's anything sinister going on. There's simply loads of places where you can put your money, probably a good few where you'll get far more out of it, without getting your reputation taken to bits in public. I'm not sure there's any real way to get round that, but nonetheless I don't think it's unreasonable for people to not want to put themselves in that situation. It doesn't necessarily mean they were hatching some nefarious plan.

I agree with most of this. However, the Easdales (I'm guessing thats who you, like all of us, are referencing) are so well known in Inverclyde that discussion of them would be inevitable. They had it at Rangers as well.

[EanieMeany]

20 minutes ago, so72 said:

I agree with most of this. However, the Easdales (I'm guessing thats who you, like all of us, are referencing) are so well known in Inverclyde that discussion of them would be inevitable. They had it at Rangers as well.

I wasn't, but if it was them then just imagine how that discussion would go and the kind of stuff that would get flung about either with or without basis in truth. Is that really something you're going to want to kick off? When there's already plenty of talk about you as it is, why on earth would you invite people to shine that spotlight on your affairs just to put even more money into the club than you already, what good can it possibly do you? And when you're already putting so much money in, why would you agree to it if you're money is good enough the rest of the time? 

Say what you will for them, but you're not going to make the money they have by being that stupid. I doubt very many people at all with enough spare cash to inject it into a floundering football club with no real prospect of a return on it are likely to volunteer for that carry on, to be honest.

If the Easdales are interested in potentially owning the club future, then it'd be even more reason to not get dragged in to a whole stooshy over a relatively minor investment.