Developing MCT/GMFC Board Situation

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

Yeah I know, it could of course just be brinkmanship, and it's entirely possible they've just given them a 'deadline' to force their hand. But that's a dangerous assumption to make and I wouldn't want to put it to the test by fannying about and letting it expire without any sort of reaction. So aye, I would buy it just in case they are serious.

I'm not entirely comfortable either with the amount of power and influence they have either, but rightly or wrongly, they could argue they're bought that right. 

Why have you raised GMFC and MCT as the two parties that need 'hounded' for not sorting things out, but not the obvious third party here*?

Do Dalrada's business partners over in Trumpland stick their oar into Dalrada's own boardroom composition, fail to deliver on funding schedules and then (after the latter!) have the brass neck a few months to impose 'deadlines' for settlement? 

It's either a game of ludicrous brinkmanship, or their commitment to community ownership is on seriously dodgy ground. And they've bought no such rights. 

 

 

 

 

*Well them and the Tele, who should be got shot of later for acting as a gormless, unthinking mouthpiece throughout this exercise. 

[Brian Skelton]

Someone has got to tell the 2 boards to get their acts together good on Dalrada.

[dunning1874]

We're now certainly at the not telling the whole truth stage, to be as charitable as possible. Again, if we were to take the public statements made devoid of any ITK hints and tidbits and take them at face value, we have the MCT statement, Tom Tracey's comments to the Tele about his resignation from the MCT board and now Dalrada's statement. If you take everything in good faith, there are no factual contradictions between what MCT said happened and what Tom Tracey said happened, just a difference of opinion about what the right thing to do was.

Nothing Dalrada have said disputes the facts as laid out by others either, but putting the public statements together leaves a huge unexplained gap in the story. MCT's statement has it that they were "officially" told they couldn't have Robinson and Barr leave the board as Dalrada would walk, while Dalrada simply make no mention of this, whether to confirm or deny that their investment is contingent on who's on the board. They say they need MCT to come to the table by Wednesday, but it's unclear what conditions if any they've attached to MCT coming to the table.

No one is covering themselves in glory but it's clear from the public statements without considering any ITK hints that there's someone lying by omission here, and to sway into personal opinion the gap being on Dalrada's side is leading me to them being the untrustworthy ones. If you've not made demands on who MCT's representatives on the GMFC board should be, say that. If you have, explain why you feel that's justified. The continued total silence from the GMFC board is reflecting very badly on them too.

This is too important for innuendo, whispers and ITK forum posts. If the GMFC board have further facts or a different version of events that shed a different light on things, let's hear it. If any of the other allegedly resigned MCT directors have information that's relevant to why they feel MCT have acted inappropriately, put your name to a statement and share it rather than dropping hints on this forum or facebook. We can't have this dragging out for someone to enjoy having their own personal moment of dropping a bombshell at an EGM, if the membership of MCT need to force any sort of action one way or the other then we need to have the facts as soon as possible.

[Brian Skelton]

Question I thought Laird went to the USA weeks ago to sort a contract out with Dalrada????

[SpoonTon]

I think my question at this stage is what's in Dalrada's proposal which requires MCT's input? 

[Cet Homme Charmant]

1 hour ago, vikingTON said:

Why have you raised GMFC and MCT as the two parties that need 'hounded' for not sorting things out, but not the obvious third party here*?

I was talking about the respective Boards, not the actual organisations.

I do believe if they don't do everything in their power to save the sponsorship deal it would be remiss of them in the extreme, especially if it's down to ego, hubris, or personal agendas. I do also accept your premise that it could just be brinkmanship on behalf of the sponsor, but personally I wouldn't take that risk and let the deadline pass without a response, and just hope for the best. So yeah, I would hope and expect that if the club's major sponsor walks away because of in-fighting, then the GMFC shareholders and MCT members immediately demand EGMs to vote on the removal from their respective Boards of those deemed to be responsible.

I also understand that without a shareholding the sponsor doesn't have any actual 'legal' right to exert any influence on the composition of the board, but it would be naive to believe they won't try to do so indirectly. I guess that could be considered either reasonable or blackmail, depending on what side of the fence you're on. I'm not saying that's right, just that it doesn't surprise or shock me that they are. I guess from their point of view they'll claim they're just wanting to protect their investment, irrespective of the actual validity of that argument.

Of course telling them to fuck off and get back in their lane is also an option, but maybe not the wisest one given our current financial situation. 

[vikingTON]

7 hours ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

So yeah, I would hope and expect that if the club's major sponsor walks away because of in-fighting, then the GMFC shareholders and MCT members immediately demand EGMs to vote on the removal from their respective Boards of those deemed to be responsible.

 

 

13 hours ago, vikingTON said:

Really? You're just buying that obvious spin and brinkmanship *so* easily? 

The answer to that remaining 'yes' then. 

Can't think of any other possible reasons why a sponsor with a share price yo-yoing and with a less than pristine track record of keeping their commitments might be looking to shift blame for a partnership ending. But hey the Poundland Pulitzer at the Tele says they're definitely putting up £700k so why bother with some critical thinking? 

[TONofmemories]

Both co-chairs of MCT resign. This is a shit show

[Jamie_M]

25 minutes ago, TONofmemories said:

Both co-chairs of MCT resign. This is a shit show

Graham McLennan and George Wall resigned as has Sandra McGregor adding to Stuart Duncan, Tom Tracey and David McCluskey's resignations last week.

Stuart Duncan has now decided to return as has previous MCT director Chris Samson.

https://www.smry.ai/proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greenocktelegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F25158201.morton-club-together-co-chairs-resign-ahead-dalrada-talks%2F

[irnbru]

43 minutes ago, Jamie_M said:

Graham McLennan and George Wall resigned as has Sandra McGregor adding to Stuart Duncan, Tom Tracey and David McCluskey's resignations last week.

Stuart Duncan has now decided to return as has previous MCT director Chris Samson.

https://www.smry.ai/proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greenocktelegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F25158201.morton-club-together-co-chairs-resign-ahead-dalrada-talks%2F

Can you just decide to rejoin the board? Samson seems to say a lot about marketing and comms but they were just as poor when he was on the board so it's a strange one. 

Whole thing looks like it's falling apart. 

[HamCam]

Is it not amazing that as a fan owned club we know so little about what is happening at Morton? The rumours, tittle tattle and odd fact being whispered around do none of those involved any credit. 

[irnbru]

1 minute ago, HamCam said:

Is it not amazing that as a fan owned club we know so little about what is happening at Morton? The rumours, tittle tattle and odd fact being whispered around do none of those involved any credit. 

Someone must be going to the paper before actually speaking to members. Not a good look. 

[Brian Skelton]

6 minutes ago, HamCam said:

Is it not amazing that as a fan owned club we know so little about what is happening at Morton? The rumours, tittle tattle and odd fact being whispered around do none of those involved any credit. 

I was just thinking the exact same thing quite happy to take our money and don't tell us exactly whati is going on. The  MCT board  act for us they don't own it.

[GiGi]

33 minutes ago, irnbru said:

Can you just decide to rejoin the board? Samson seems to say a lot about marketing and comms but they were just as poor when he was on the board so it's a strange one. 

Whole thing looks like it's falling apart. 

If an EGM is coming (?) then voting on directors should take place then. You don't get to reappoint yourself. 

Again, trying to work it all out with half a story while disgruntled parties talk pish to press. 

Edited May 13 by GiGi

[Dirk Gently]

34 minutes ago, irnbru said:

Can you just decide to rejoin the board? Samson seems to say a lot about marketing and comms but they were just as poor when he was on the board so it's a strange one. 

Whole thing looks like it's falling apart. 

No, you can't.  But you can put yourself forward for the board, and existing board members can co-opt you to fill any vacancies if there aren't enough elected board members.

[dunning1874]

Assuming that McLennan, Wall & McGregor have essentially had to go as they supported the removal of Robinson & Barr then Dalrada's stance has forced them to back down and shown them to have no power in reality, I can accept that it's necessary to have some sort of board in the interim for MCT to function. If so co-opting previous directors was unavoidable despite being extremely regrettable.

The permanent filling of director positions should come to a vote of the membership quickly though, with every candidate making their views on (and in some cases role in) the farce of the last fortnight clear. Has the attempt of some MCT directors to carry out a purge of the GMFC board simply led to those who did so walking away when that effort failed, or is this now effectively a coup against the MCT board at the behest of the GMFC board and/or Dalrada? Hopefully the new MCT board will have a statement out imminently to explain their own stance.

[Alibi]

I really cannot follow what the fuck is going on.  I have very little interest in matters of corporate structure but if the fans own Morton FC, why is the entrire Morton board not elected directly by the fans? For example who appointed Laird as the chairman?  I don't remember ever being asked for my opinion on that.

[CM48]

Sad to hear, well...all of this, but I always thought Graham McLennan seemed to be pretty capable of heading up things competently,  and wasn't really driven by ego?

Please don't have a go at me for taking sides, I'm not, I have no idea what's happening, but he's the only one I've ever really had any dealings with.

Echoing a lot of other posts, this kind of uncertainty must be having a pretty bad effect on employees at the club whose jobs might be affected, new contracts for players, and any plans in place for anything to do with the running of the club.

Fingers crossed we hear something clear cut soon, from anyone.

[SpoonTon]

18 minutes ago, Alibi said:

I really cannot follow what the fuck is going on.  I have very little interest in matters of corporate structure but if the fans own Morton FC, why is the entrire Morton board not elected directly by the fans? For example who appointed Laird as the chairman?  I don't remember ever being asked for my opinion on that.

I think issues start to arise with this when a number of decisions are taken which lack a bit of transparency or communication with relevant parties. 

We dropped the catering team on the eve of a match and since then have been stuck with ridiculous queues. We don't really know why we've been given the downgrade. 

We found ourselves with a transfer ban (and came up with a pretty lame excuse about it) and didn't seem to even let the manager know when it happened.

We suspended Millen in October for reasons we don't know about, and seemed to start actions to let him go at the end of his contract directly after the Dunfermline game, again without proper transparency and communication with Imrie. 

All of this without letting MCT know what was going on. I don't really know much about Laird. He keeps a very low profile. But he increasingly gives the impression that he's running a little dictatorship - whether this is accurate or not, this is the impression which is arising. This might all be avoided with a better basic level of communication.

[Jamie_M]

https://x.com/Morton_FC/status/1922313423745892547?t=jfw5BU7NKorEPzKGKOlSJA&s=19