Would you rather the club be in league two but owned by supporters

A lot of what the owners may or may not be up to is conjecture. In the past I've actually thought that ineptitude can often look like a conspiracy.

The one thing that is beyond question is their approach to their ownership of OGC Nice. This is a club where the 20% owner fell out spectacularly with the Chien/Conway consortium after they put in a 20m loan to get their capital out. The terms of which were massively detrimental to the club. Does that look like a long term custodian to any of you?

 

Absolutely spot on. That and poor recruitment on our part.
I totally disagree with the CEO comments, our players are being devalued this season not last.

For instance, Styles was a good championship left wingback last season who we expected to get offers for, now he’s playing in the middle he’s totally lost in probably the weakest midfield in the championship.

Brittain, had a brilliant first season but this season looks out of his depth at times with no cover.

Woodrow was/is a decent championship striker but this season is well below his best and at 27 should be coming into his peak.

Helik, was immense last season but this season looks jaded and leggy.

I could go on but I think these comments could be applicable to most players in the squad

 

I would sooner have ***** owners and be in Championship than have fans own club and be in League 1 or 2!.....here’s hoping!

 

I’ve not seen it but a few have commented on different threads about James was the first to say it on a specific show(can’t remember which) are you saying that definitely didn’t happen?

 

That’s alright until they become less benevolent, Mel Morris style.

 

Me neither. But the club clearly feel differently.

 

When are our next set of accounts due out Archerfield?

 

No, not at all. The James Cryne interview was the first reference to it, but only something that I became aware of much later. The first reference I heard to this was from Khaled's interview. However, there have been a few references recently effectively saying 'the CEO didn't make a comment like this, it was James Cryne'. (NB: not referencing anyone in particular here, just the general tone of some recent thread posts).

It's as if the two separate comments have become merged into one with the passage of time, and it seems to have been becoming increasingly attributable to James Cryne alone, based on what I've read recently. I just wanted to link back to the actual comments made by the CEO, as they very clearly state that last year was our 5th most successful season ever, yet we got no offers for any players prior to referencing making changes to the playing style. More importantly, people can form their own views by listening to the actual quote, rather than relying on anyone else's interpretation of things.

 

The deadline is the end of February for the accounts to be filed. I would expect that there will be a loss for the year despite a modest gain on player sales, most notably Jacob Brown.

If turnover has stood up and playing behind closed doors has been offset by reduced costs the loss could be around £1m to £2m. All guesswork based on previous accounts, we'll know in a couple of months time what it really looks like.

 

Bit of a misnomer on sales. We sold Struber and Val as well as Brown. Transfer market is very depressed because of Covid and FFP or we would have sold others. Just because the owners are not very good at selling players doesn’t mean that’s not their intent.

I’d take lower league status over the current malaise.

 

He said we didn't receive any offers for players, pretty sure that's accurate.

*Edit, more accurate than my spelling!

 

I don't care who the owners are (barring any obvious wrong uns that you wouldn't want for ethical reasons), or where they are from, as long as they run the club well.

That would mean not having a CEO walk out at the end of a contract, having done press interviews and transfer deals the previous month. It would mean not seeing a whole host of backroom staff leaving at the same time. It would mean players turning up for pre-season and being given something to do. Coaching appointments can go wrong, but setting out to completely change the style of play was foolish. Signings sometimes don't work out, but you can forgive that if they make sense at the time. Signing three centre forwards along with two very inexperienced midfielders didn't make any sense given we'd lost our most experienced midfielder and kept our two most experienced strikers.

Add to that the fiascos over visas, West Stand and vouchers. The club just looks like a shambles throughout.

 

Trouble is, you get nothing for £1m now, so rather than go and sign these players, who still need a couple of years development, we should concentrate more on bringing players through the academy.

At the moment, we have 21/22 year olds in the academy. Then we sign a bunch of other 21/22 year olds for the first team, and we just hinder the development of all of them,

 

It goes without saying that if the current people in charge are not going to put cash injections into the club and are incapable of bringing in outside investment which they appear to be to offset that
It will be very difficult and maybe even very unlikely for us to retain or even venture into the championship.

By the way the idea that we had or have a magical data system that nobody else had is itself the stuff of fantasy.
and is not bourne out in the reality of the actual accounts

i have no idea how rich Patrick Cryne was or if he would have been prepared to use his wealth on us
but we were in a 6/7 million pound hole in the finances and only the John stones(home grown player) sell on clause got us out of it.
if it wasn't for that sell on ,who knows what would have happened most likely administration.

i think there is a misconseption about people who are not fans of the present consortium
Nobody wants the club to get into debt they cannot escape from.
what bothers people is being told obvious bull**** by people representing the club as though your that stupid your going to be taken in and believe it
and being told bare face lies to your face.
how can you trust and put your money into those kind of people.


For example at a fan engagement a person asked Dane Murphy if the consortium had put any cash injections ,money into the club.
He answered "all the members of the consortium have put in significant additional funds into the club"
Not only was that not correct but when the accounts were released they had taken significant additional funds out of the club not put additional funds into it .
Maybe he just got mixed up
easily done.

 

A lot of those lads aren't "our own" though. I think Cryne's vision of youngsters all from the boro is achievable if you're willing to sacrifice league status itself. Whose saying how far we'd drop if we played our academy players mixed in with low budget players.

 

We survived long enough in the 2nd division without our current ownership and with a real connection to the fans, so I see no reason why we can't go back to that. Not sure how we navigate from here to there....

 

Thank you as I had not seen the James one but had heard the CEO your post made me wonder if it was another example of people had merged rumour with fact(not you), hence asking.

 

Regarding the original question, I really struggle to get my head around clubs being owned by a collective supporters group. I can't see how it would function effectively.

I've done a quick search of fan owned clubs and none of them fill me with much confidence...

 

If we have a supporter owned club the only way to generate any substantial revenue would be to........wait for it......develop and sell players for a profit.
Any urgent requirements for an input of cash would be highly unlikely to be met. I get that that seems unlikely with the present lot but with PC it felt like there was a safety net.
Quite honestly, even if it was well run by a supporters group I don't see us being any higher than League One at best.
I shudder at the thought of supporter ownership to be quite honest.

 

50+1 should be the model, like with German clubs. This should be a FIFA mandated rule.