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Are the whims, eccentricities, vested interests and predjudices of supporters any better than individual owners, or might they be even worse?

Hamburg generate 拢1.5m from their large supporter base every season but couldn't survive on it to buy players. For this they need 拢26m in TV revenue. Some biggish Scottish clubs will slide without investment. How would supporter ownership pay off 拢18m worth of Ibrox debt? How would supporter ownership generate investment in players that Celtic fans continually bleat on about? Would they all only have themselves to blame for failed and failing managerial appointments?

How would our teams compete in Europe on this financial model? League of Moldova anyone?

Supporter ownership is only in Dundee FC because they collectively failed to count the pennies. Have you forgotten that it was supporter ownership that invited Milne to Dundee?

I'm not saying Supporter Ownership is bad only that its not some nice comfy and safe magical nirvana.

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

# 2
You had a go at united in the last blog.You never replied to my reply???It wont take long to have a look back, then you could enlighten us on the mega debt free club thats streets ahead in every department,of everyone else in scotland, that you follow?????????

Hearts fans may be in fan control sooner than we think. Vlad gets the land to pay the debt to his bank.

Having folowed AFC Bournemouths 'fan ownership' experiment I would advise against going down this path. Too many cooks and all that,it doesn't work.The last thing a club needs is a show of hands everytime a decision needs to be made. Bournemouth resembled the Judean Peoples Front at times and was eventually bailed out by a rich business man and just in time I might add.

Jim you have completely missed the point with the photo of Giovanni di Stefano with one of the Marr brothers. As far as I know the Marrs are still Dundee fans and look at the mess they made of that club. The second admin was in part caused by the madness of the first period when they were run by two of their own. Now the club find them selfs owned by the fans and despite attracting home attendances that some SPL sides would like are struggling financially. Where are the Dundee fans going to come up with the cash to pay better wages if they ever make it back to the SPL? Where are the Dundee fans ever going to come up with the money to do something to the South enclosure which looks more and more run down every year and would not be out of place in the 19th century let alone the 20th or 21st.
As the poster above points out the Bournemouth experience shows that while the idea of fan ownership is great on paper does it work, Look at the shambles of the recent Dundee vote to see how quickly things go wrong.
There is one man who can tell you how to run a club, after 25 years Geoff Brown has stepped down as Chairman of St Johnstone. Hopefully he will feature in one of your future blogs as while others have chased a dream i.e Motherwell, Livingston (twice) Dundee (Twice) Gretna we have built up the club over the years. When he bought it in 1986 we were at the bottom of the second division and when he handed it over today we are 4th in the SPL.
The game needs businessmen with an interest in football, not football fans with an interest in business.

Ever get the feeling that Fan Control in Scotland is the option for those clubs who can't attract business investment, or those where investment has failed spectacularly?

Can't believe you are touting Dundee as a model to follow.

Well only in an idiocracy!!

鈥淚s it time for fans to take control of their clubs?鈥�

More involvement? 鈥� certainly. More control? 鈥� God forbid.

Bang! Bang! 鈥� another day, another hammer-blow to Scottish football while the authorities peddle the convenient economic downturn excuse.

Bang! Bang! 鈥� another day, another nail in a coffin that seems well and truly sealed, and not one leader in the game brandishing so much as a crow bar.

51 years since my father took me to see Arbroath play Stirling Albion and how much progress have I witnessed across the game in that time?

Years of knocking heads against the brick wall that is Scottish football finally gets to the point where the wall wins. Fans can only take as well as do so much.

51 years 鈥� well that鈥檚 it for me. I'm out.

Adios, Jim.

Can't agree Jim. Your socialist slip is showing ! The chap from Bournemouth sums it up pretty well. Rule by commitee is usually a disaster.

For every SDM or Mad Vlad there is a Farmer, Desmond, Milne, Thompson or a Brown amongst others. None of these owners will match the ambitions of us unrealistic fans but at least their clubs are in no immediate financial peril as long as they remain.

Jeanfield is spot on. I don't know where the Saints would be without Brown - not in the SPL I'm guessing, but I do know where Hibs would have been without Farmer's intervetion at the time.

#6

Congrats to Geoff Brown he deserves some me time.
We,ve been told for long enough football is big buisness.
Majority of clubs are in the red,some buisness eh ?????
Never spend what yiv no got,Jim McLean used to preach us!
Albert Henderson was boss at arbroath for 18 years,but they then had 14 bosses the following 18 years.Nothing wrong with managers & chairmen having ambition,but not when it puts the whole clubs finances into question.Proabably the reason so many managers could not hack it at Arbroath.The banks, hmrc etc are turning the screw on clubs now.My club united never got a sniff of the goodwille money and rightly so.We have to get back to basics in this country to get our finances in order.This has been greatly highlighted recently with the mess Rangers & Hearts are in.Far too many promising young players are on the scrap heap because clubs opted for 2nd rate foreigners.Fancy names on fancy wages, who are not really any better than our own,whats that all about? This trend is receding thankfully, for the good of our game hopefully.It,s about time the money generated by clubs for youth development,coaches,facilities etc, bore more fruit.Most clubs have taken some fans on board,but i dont think a board full of fans would work.

#8
Iain Jack,
Sorry to hear you,ve given up on the lichties & the game as a whole.
Your one of many, who,ve been goin for years and had enough.
My late pal Davie Redpath is behind the west end goal,he,ll gie them a shout fir yi!!

In principle, there's nothing wrong with what might be loosely called 'community ownership'. If you have a set of benchmark rules (a constitution), regular elections, competent people in executive positions and you don't call for a referendum on every last issue every five mins - but allow the elected representatives to get on with it (for three, four or five years or whatever), in tandem with the professional management/playing staff - then it should guard against loonies taking over the asylum. The downside is that the collective clout of even several thousand individual members is unlikely to mollify bankers in the same way that a telephone call from Tom Farmer or Stewart Milne might. (Vlad Romanov has to call himself in these situations.) Given that Scottish football isn't 'an investment', because of the lack of TV money, then we're really talking about the credibility of indebted clubs and their standing at the bank where the involvement of minted millionaires is concerned. If circumstances changed in Scottish football and it did become 'an investment' then the bank wouldn't care less whether they were dealing with Mr Suburban Home, Mr KwikFit or Properly Constituted Community Organisation With Audited Books. They'd just want a piece of the pie.
Meanwhile, in other news, I see that for all the kerfuffle about Rangers in recent weeks, it's Hearts who seem to have run into trouble with more despatch. Speaking as a casual observer, has Mr Romanov finally thrown the toys out of the submarine because the City of Edinburgh 'Trams R Us' Council can't dip into the council tax payers' pockets to help fund a new stadium?
Finally on the Hearts thing, do we have to endure Chick Young blethering on about it - couldn't the 成人论坛 poach someone like David Conn from the Guardian to do a proper job on the Tynecastle/Romanov saga?

And further to the above, Hearts' spending on wages as a percentage of turnover
2009 - 126%
2010 - 115%

(from the PricewaterhouseCoopers annual report on SPL finances)

arabarber, thanks.
Ghosts are about the only thing that can cope with chilling North Sea gales at Gayfield, but its Tannadice that will miss my gate money the most.

#14
Iain your welcome but there will be a stirring doon behind that west goal.
Davie was a staunch lichtie(QOS on a wed nite etc)who could no be daen wi folk who supported twa teams.I only pick my games now,such is the mediocracy & overpricing of our game.

No many blogs on this one jim zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzlol