vikingTON

Why should 'the Morton name' be attached to some volunteers rocking up at an old folks home with a football to organise a kickabout? What tangible benefit does that offer to the club? If they want to attach the club's prestigious brand to their own daft pet projects then they should be paying a pretty sum for the privilege - just like a local business would be expected to do if they were brazenly ripping off Morton's products or brand to sell their own cheap tat. If they really want to enhance Morton's place in the community and contribute something meaningful, then they should distribute tickets, merchandise etc. to the most deserving members of the community - and pay the club for the privilege. But that solid and obviously beneficial idea just doesn't have the same bleeding heart story or zany ring to it as under-12s gender awareness futsal does, so instead the club gets nothing in return for this total waste of time. Lastly, if everything at the club was good or at very least stable, then this wouldn't be a big issue at all. GMFC however is a failing, midtable, second tier football club, run by a disinterested holding company and with more than £2 million of debt on its books. Indeed the last set of accounts specifically raised concerns about the club's going concern status in the near future. But instead of committing time, energy and fresh ideas to resolving that problem, people are too busy rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic in the hope that it'll look a wee bit nicer when it all sinks to the bottom of the fucking sea. Enough of this nonsense.

I'm in between these points right now. On its own, a minimum £10 a month pledge isn't much at all - and would be something that could gain traction among expat supporters. But when you throw in a ST book for regular supporters, that's £420 a year, compared to less than £200 twelve months ago. That's a huge increase in commitment in an area where most jobs are precarious and wages are lower than the national average. The ST hike was an own goal and will deter uptake of this scheme.

The point is that with this proposal the money pledged would go directly to the running of the football club in exchange for a stake, rather than buying shares already held by a private owner (as SMISA plans to do from Gordon Scott's holdings). So the money raised goes towards running GMFC rather than straight to someone else's pocket or account book. Given the repeated shortfalls and GC no longer issuing IOUs to cover it, I think that is actually the best possible approach in this case and is the major selling point of this scheme (although the current valuation of the club/size of stake is too generous to GC). A legal option of ownership shouldn't be a priority right now. MCT will first have to earn enough trust over the next two years if it is to try another pledge drive from 2021 - if that happens then you can begin taking a serious look at what the long-term aims of the organisation ought to be, fan ownership or otherwise.

^^^ furious that his Frost/Nixon insight on what 'Graham' really thinks convinced absolutely no-one either way

It's not really a question of honesty - it's about competence. Promising what it turns out he couldn't deliver is an established trait with Crawford Rae, so the willingness of people to just run with his placating answer at some Q and A as being GC's officially sanctioned stance towards this investment is bizarre. Wishful thinking serves absolutely no-one in this situation and MCT should be prepared for some serious negotiations rather than a preordained deal. Why would they do that? Crawford Rae's statements cannot bind their future decisions because Crawford Rae does not control GC. Indeed, he has only said what he would recommend to the GC board if MCT or another investment group came in with a viable proposal. Crawford Rae is free to recommend whatever he likes to them - and then they can reject it outright or (I think more likely) negotiate a different proposal to what he puts forward. Because they are in collective control of GC's business concerns and Crawford Rae is not. I see no logical explanation why GC would choose to keep £2 million and responsibility for running a floundering football club for years, only to agree to magically wiping the former off the books for one-fifth of its value just to plug running costs for two years, no other strings attached. And no amount of Crawford Rae's public statements alone are going to change that.

So apart from that time when he didn't actually understand the views of the shareholders, we should still definitely assume that he's got the green light for this. Despite having received no actual formal commitment from GC to do anything or about their general intentions for the management and ownership of the club going forward. Erm no, that's really not how we should be treating this situation at all. MCT should absolutely be trying to raise money but its leaders should be far fewer illusions than yourself about how much leverage they're actually going to hold over GC just because Crawford said so.

Did he speak to the same shareholders before pledging a three year plan to take Morton to the top flight just twelve months ago, only to be told 'nah, that's not happening' and was forced to renege on that vision within the same season? There's as much supporting evidence for GC's willingness to write off the debt as there is for the above plan. Now that doesn't make pledging money to MCT pointless, but this idea that GC is either tacitly bound or has agreed behind the scenes to whatever Crawford wants to tell people right now is truly laughable. We should not trust GC to act in anyone's interests but their own - it's a business, not a fucking charity. And the formal agreements will not be achieved by the support of Crawford Rae alone, but rather by the larger shareholders who actually call the shots.

A: Shan turnstiles and a squad of Dylan Dykes jobbers, because the club has been so chronically mismanaged by GC and their big mate Iron Man that it can no longer afford to do any better. MCT is there to step into the breach and provide a semi-competitive budget - until 2021 of course, when obviously the next James McCarthy comes through, nets us £2 million and we're laughing again.

Except that the two main revenue-increasing wheezes listed by MCT are: - getting more fans through the gate (at a higher price than before, no less) and - selling on youth players for megabucks So as far as it stands then, the money is just plugging a shortfall in the wage budget for two years while GMFC sees whether its own guilt-tripping and Braeside La Masia strategies finally pay off*. It says something that more revenue-increasing investment ideas have been cited on this page of this cesspool of a forum than in that entire fifteen minute vlog entry tbh. *

By transfer funds they mean the wage bill.

Yet again, Crawford Rae cannot actually speak for GC because he does not have a controlling stake in that company. No person or organisation should therefore be relying on Crawford's pinky promises - well-intentioned or otherwise - when the reality of dealing with GC in a hard-headed business negotiation will be another thing entirely.

Having watched the video, I remain concerned that MCT has been knocking back the Rae's Kool-Aid about how current attendances are piss poor and can be brought back to some higher level to solve the current shortfall. ~2000 average gates for a mid-table Morton in the second tier without Sevco, Hibs or even the spoon-burners in the same division are entirely par for the course by any historical comparison. But even if there was scope for doing so, the club's own ST policy directly undermines any drive to boost crowds: you simply cannot raise prices by fully 50% in one year and expect your custom to increase, all other things being equal. That side of the 'profitability in two years' time' plan therefore does not stack up at all. I've said enough already about the other half of GMFC/MCT's vision - a conveyor belt of Braeside La Masia sell-ons - all that needs to be pointed out here is that pinning the bulk of the club's financial recovery on securing healthy transfer fees within the next 24 months is not a credible strategy at all. So what is almost certainly going to happen here is that MCT will underwrite the shortfall (i.e. plugging a gap in the first team budget) while GMFC as a underlying business continues to lose a good sum of money between now and the summer of 2021. Having a group like MCT undertaking that role in tandem with the club is not IMO a bad thing, though I can see why being up front about that prospect would deter some pledgers. But what I think will do much more harm is when MCT have to turn round in two years time, account for why the club is in barely any better shape and convince people to back a new begging bowl pledge when the first one didn't deliver on the set of unrealistic promises it put forward. The organisation should distance itself from current boardroom strategy so that it doesn't see its own reputation tank when the club inevitably changes tack again for about the seventeenth time in the GC era. That's part of what did for the Trust before it.

Note points no. 7 and 8 in this fan's tear-stained diatribe against the board: Which seems strange as only a couple of months ago Falkirk fans were assuring anyone who would listen that their club had done absolutely nothing wrong and that they had definitely 'won' one over The Famous regardless. What a terrible, wee shame for everyone involved with that vile rabble of an outfit*. *

Absolutely fucking sumptuous.

Mind when 'ITK' posters were claiming King Snake had to leave for Grangemouth because Morton were a total basketcase behind the scenes?

Hardly surprising given that they racially abused one of their own players earlier in the season; time for 'the beaks' to step in and impose a points deduction IMO.

There's not going to be an entirely open and democratic form of decision-making at club boardroom level though, that would be a dysfunctional mess. The MCT membership will presumably make any decision based on a set of options as reported to them by its delegate on the board: how those options are framed will depend entirely on private discussions with Crawford Rae, which is where all of GC's leverage can be put to use. That's just how a business negotiation works. It's not cynical at all - I'm not suggesting that MCT's leadership plan to deliberately sell out their membership or anything. There should however be a healthy sense of realism about the power GC will try to wield in any negotiation to write off £2 million+ of debt that they have refused to ever write off before, regardless of whether MCT reaches its £400k pledge target or not. To set out any 'deal breakers' at this stage in the process is foolish and will make any subsequent climbdown all the more damaging to the organisation.

It's all fine and well to talk about 'deal breakers' right now but what is going to happen when MCT's leadership actually enter a Cappielow back room and GC - via their cipher Crawford - starts playing hard ball to protect their interests? Are they seriously going to withhold the funds and walk away unless GC back down? I find that very, very hard to believe given the statements made so far tbh. That doesn't mean that there's no point in buying into this scheme but people should take any claims about what the leadership definitely will and won't do with a lorryload of salt at this stage in the process. There can be no guarantees and they still need to prove themselves.

Stuart Findlay continues to shrug off the crushing blow of having his career written off by Peroni-swilling, egg-chasing loser 'Dr. Z' by earning a place in the senior Scotland squad.

If 'Graham' - I see you're already on first name terms - wishes to clarify his motivation or MCT's position on the club's strategy then he should do so on the organisation's website, and explain why the claims made in the launch and Q and A sessions turned out to be utter bollocks as well. I really couldn't care less what he is willing to tell people in private.

An external investment group that just so happens to support the club's current business model in its entirety, so clearly not 'scunnered' by much at all other than learning from a doe-eyed Crawford a few weeks ago that the IOU money had finally run out. Of course MCT has to work with the current board in practice, no-one is saying that it shouldn't. But there is a difference between forming a working relationship with GMFC and voluntarily declaring everything that the club is already doing to be an integral part of this so-called 'Morton Way' as well. Nobody forced MCT or its leaders to commit to a terrible model of youth-development for sporting success and profit, nor to back fundamentally useless hanger-on groups like the Community Trust. They didn't have to comment on those aspects of club policy at this stage in the process, but chose to do so because their ideas are fundamentally the same as what iron Man has been peddling over the past few years. To be clear, I don't think that entirely discredits what MCT is trying to do - good things can still be achieved now in spite of quibbles with their vision of the club's future - but people need to understand what kind of organisation and leadership they are buying into. And this must be based on MCT's published facts and statements instead of whatever verbal claims that they want to make in private; that's not going to wash I'm afraid.

Oh really? Here is line fucking one of its launch material: So much for being sick of scaremongering stories then: MCT made them front and centre in its initial pledge appeal and also helpfully managed to spray them around in the national press as well. Such as? After all MCT has already established a close relationship with Crawford Rae and has freely declared its support for the vision of 'sutainability' set out by the club - with a Braeside La Masia and the Community Trust's nonsense at the heart of it. The only thing that MCT objects to - going by its public declarations - is the fact that there's not enough money to execute the current board's strategy, hence their intervention. There's no vision of radical change at all. Once again, I'm not interested in hearsay or running commentaries on what MCT or its leadership really think or what their true motivations are. The purpose and claims made by this organisation are far too important to depend on that cliquey, Trust-level form of communication. I am going to rely solely on the statements that they have made in the public domain and are published on their own website. That is the official record of what the organisation stands for and it is on that basis that people should choose whether to invest or not. And there is absolutely nothing there to suggest that the founder of MCT or anyone else in their leadership group are disillusioned with the way that the club has been run, other than the money not being there to see it through.

Here is the evidence from the source itself, from the MCT's initial Q and A on 27 April: https://mortonclubtogether.com/QuestionAndAnswer.html The clear purpose of MCT's fundraising then is to fill in a hole in the first team budget that GC had just so happened to announce just a few weeks prior to its launch. MCT also buys into the current, harebrained idea that youth development is key to the sustainability of GMFC, as well as the claptrap peddled by the Community Trust on a regular basis. Voluntarily, not out of pragmatism. There are no parts of the existing structure that MCT or its leadership have criticised or wish to set aside. And its Q and A handily concludes with a confirmation that: So this scheme is quite clearly the product of someone who is seeking an active partnership with the club and its current custodians to simply do existing policies better, rather 'being totally scunnered' at all then.

Really not sure where you're getting that from, as MCT's vision as stated on its website is all about chipping in to support the club in a scheme drawn up in obvious coordination with Crawford Rae himself. There's no talk of changing ownership, no talk about taking the club in a new direction. That doesn't make the scheme worthless, but there's no evidence that MCT's leadership are 'totally scunnered' with the club at all. They simply want to put in more money to keep the current show on the road.

The natural home for absolute jobbers like him. And rapists.