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Or he'll lose a few games, get outcoached by Robinson and Elvis, and the fans will be wanting him out the door!

I see Hibs are following our lead from last year in appointing an unknown foreign head coach / Manager, Marink Reedijk, never played pro football just like AJ. So no doubt it will be no more kick and chase in Leith, we have started a managerial revolution.

I wondered how long it would take you! 🤣🤣, 0.1% almost a compliment 🤪

You are 4.9% out with your calculation.

95%, I do throw in the occasional gem 🤣

Most?

We lost ten million pounds of talent in just Slattery watt Welsh etc We have spent some of that about 1 million as we needed to. We wouldn’t have had a team if we didn’t. These players are finding their feet but probably have the potential to be another 8-10 million They will take time to develop under AJ who needs time to get his ideas over. I think honestly this season is about developing these players and really they should be judged next season. don’t get too high at the wins or low at the defeats.

I watch English games on a Saturday night in the pub or if I’m at home as well as Sunday and Monday night games along with the bbc coverage of the Scottish championship on a Friday if I’m home, me complaining is a bit of a cheek so I’ll just have to accept it.

I appreciate you are "thinking out loud" here @David and you clearly have more expertise/knowledge in these things than I do given the questions you have presented above. Some of the points you raise were covered last night, but I didnt want to go into too much detail for fear of misrepresentation. I think many of the points you raise are absolutely fair. Are you planning on going to the "in person event"? I think there would be value in it for the wider membership. I know that publication of an Active Investment framework in advance of any vote was discussed, and it would certainly benefit from the right people asking the right questions during the consultation process.

Its almost like folk fae Viewpark want to pretend that it doesn't exist 🤣

Having read the feedback above, I think there is quite a lot to be positive about in the direction of travel. Moving away from the idea that the Society exists purely to accumulate an ever-larger rainy-day fund makes sense to me, provided the investment side is properly governed. Loans for specific projects are also clearly preferable to simply transferring money into the club to support annual operating costs. Where I'd probably still like a little more clarity, if it were me, is around the governance framework sitting underneath all of this. For me, the key question isn't really whether Active Investment is a good idea in principle. I think it probably is. The question is what controls are in place to make sure that a sensible idea remains sensible when we're dealing with significant sums of members' money over a number of years. One thing I would distinguish quite carefully is between the Society's cash reserve and money it has lent to the club. If the Society has £1.3m in cash and lends £300k to MFC, it hasn't necessarily "lost" £300k. It now has a loan receivable instead. But from a risk point of view, those two things are not equivalent. The whole purpose of a reserve is that it is available when something goes badly wrong. Unfortunately, the point at which Motherwell FC might most urgently need Society support is also likely to be the point at which the club is least able to repay loans already advanced to it. So I wouldn't personally count £1 of loan to MFC as equivalent to £1 sitting in an accessible Society reserve. That is why I'd probably look for the reserve policy to be expressed in terms of a minimum level of liquid, readily available funds rather than simply total Society assets. I'm also wouldn't be particularly persuaded by the argument that £1.5m will be reached within two years at current subscription levels. That's useful for forecasting, but projected future subscriptions aren't reserves today. I'd much rather see the Society establish what level of liquid protection it believes is genuinely necessary based on the risks facing the club, stress test that periodically, and then invest above that level. That might still produce £1.5m as the right answer, by the way. But it might produce another number. The important thing is that the figure is based on present-day risk rather than simply being inherited from when the Society was created. The second area I'd be interested in is the actual loan framework. Saying money will only be advanced as loans is reassuring, but "loan" covers an enormous range of arrangements. For material sums, I'd expect there to be clarity around purpose, repayment, security, what happens if a project goes over budget, what happens if it is abandoned, whether further drawdowns can be stopped, how performance is reported back to the Society and what happens if the club's financial position deteriorates. None of that needs to be made public in commercially sensitive detail, of course, but it might be worth knowing that there is a consistent framework being applied rather than each project effectively being negotiated from scratch. There is also a slightly awkward governance issue that comes with the Society being both majority shareholder and potentially a significant lender to the club. Normally the interests of the Society and MFC should be closely aligned, but they aren't necessarily identical in a financing transaction. The club will understandably want capital on the most favourable terms possible. The Society Board, on the other hand, has a duty to protect the Society's own assets and make sure members' money is being used prudently. Where individuals have roles or influence on both sides of that relationship, I'd expect there to be a very clear conflicts process. That might mean declarations, recusals in certain circumstances, separate advice, or simply making sure decisions are independently minuted and justified. And don't get me wrong, that isn't about distrusting anyone involved. It's just good governance when related organisations are transacting with one another. The other thing that caught my attention is the language around what the money can be used for. The previous funding consultation talked about investment in specific revenue-generating projects where there was a clear business case and benefit to the club and Society. What is being discussed now, from what I can tell, seems slightly broader and refers to infrastructure projects generally. That may be entirely intentional and perfectly reasonable. There are infrastructure projects which might not directly generate revenue but could still create substantial long-term value for the club. But if the investment mandate is being widened, it might be worth looking for that to be explicit rather than something which happens gradually through interpretation. I also think project selection needs a proper appraisal process. Inviting supporters to suggest projects is a good idea and probably helps make fan ownership feel more tangible. But ultimately projects should be assessed against the same criteria rather than popularity. I'd expect things such as total cost, club contribution, useful life, financial return or savings, sporting benefit, ownership of the resulting asset, downside risk, legal protections and alternative uses of the money all to be considered. One question I'd particularly include is whether Society funding is genuinely additional. For example, if the club was already going to spend £250k of its own money on something and the Society simply substitutes its £250k instead, the Society money may technically be ring-fenced to the project, but economically it has freed £250k of club cash for another purpose. That isn't automatically wrong, but it is something the Society will hopefully understand when it says its money won't be used to support day-to-day operations. The possible conversion of loans into additional shares also makes sense in principle, but I think that needs more structure before significant sums build up. There would need to be an agreed process for valuing the club, deciding how many shares the debt converts into, protecting existing shareholders and handling any conflicts around the transaction. "We'll find a fair way to do it later" becomes much harder once there is £1m or £2m sitting on the table. Overall, it seems the report of the meeting is more positive about Active Investment than negative. I certainly don't think the Society should simply accumulate money indefinitely while the club has sensible opportunities to improve its infrastructure and financial position. But I do think this is the point where the Society starts moving from being primarily a membership and supporter organisation into something that is also acting as a serious capital provider. That requires a slightly different level of discipline. For me, the ideal outcome would be a written Active Investment framework setting out the minimum liquid reserve, what kinds of projects qualify, maximum exposure, approval thresholds, loan/security requirements, conflicts procedures, reporting obligations and how any future debt-to-equity conversion would work. If that structure exists and is robust, members shouldn't need to vote on every individual project. They can instead hold the Board accountable for making decisions within a framework everyone understands. To me, that's probably the more mature version of fan ownership anyway, not members micromanaging every expenditure, but members knowing the rules under which significant decisions are being made and being able to judge afterwards whether those rules were followed.

And thats Viewpark, not Uddingston as he is trying to say 🤣 good video though

Not Sparrow, SOD for me. Everything else i agree with

Attended the online meeting tonight re the Active Investment proposals. Came away feeling re-assured that the proposals have been well thought through and form part of the Society's longer term strategy for fan ownership. Highlights...... As part of the "growing the Well Society" project there has been feedback from some potential members to suggest they may join if they could see tangible benefits to the club rather than just being a "rainy day fund". Hence the "why now". The reserve fund currently sits at £1.3m so even if changes are voted through, the reserve of £1.5m will be reached within the next 2 years at current subscription levels. Plan is that monies will only be given towards specific infrastucture projects in the form of loans. It is envisaged that at some point these might be realised in the form of greater shareholding, but there would have to be a process in place to ensure fairness to existing shareholders. Monies loaned WILL NOT just disappear into the day to day running of the club. The club must balance its books and any Society monies will only be used to improve the clubs finances by investment in specific projects. As part of the consultation process, fans are invited to put forward suggestions for projects to be considered by the club. Re the feasibility study. Work has been ongoing re this for several months with multiple options being explored and further questions asked. It is anticipated this work will continue for some time with any decision on where the club plays its football being a longer term issue. The Society Board were pretty open during the meeting and there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes in terms of the various workstreams that maybe cant be shared right now, but left me feeling that things are heading in the right direction.

I totally get that our game needs a tv deal and we need to try and maximise that as much as possible to stop our league falling further and further behind, but some of these ko times are getting beyond a joke. Who really wants to go to a game of football at 8pm on a Saturday? Who even wants to watch it on tv at that time? Is it any worse than 12pm on a Saturday or Sunday though? I really dont know. Bottom line though is that we arent going to get the good tv slots as they are reserved for the English Premiership and even if we were to switch broadcaster, they are unlikely to want to go head to head with that. Not sure what the answer is, but I agree its just another turn off for the game here.

Team! Paulsen Sparrow Knight Rebel Moorman Williams Hodge Fadinger Lowry Longelo Said Thor

They can shove it up their arse to be honest...the ridiculous kick off times foisted upon the national team seen me draw a line under attending regularly a good while back now, and I'll do the same with club games, as I have absolutely no interest in 8pm kick offs on a Saturday night. The 5.45pm ko against Hibs is borderline and I'll decide nearer the time if I can be arsed with that.

Really good interview. He's been immense since signing. Hope we can make it permanent but worry is other clubs take notice

It's not specific to you, if I'm honest. I hear fans doing that all the time. We're nowhere near the English Premiership. Virtually no league on the planet is. The Premier League isn't just England's domestic football league commercially. It's one of the world's biggest sports media properties. It regularly has something like 1.45 billion live viewers in a season, is broadcast in 190 odd countries and has 2 billion+ followers worldwide. I'm not saying our TV deal is great value, by the way. Scottish football clearly punches miles above its weight. But stadium popularity and global broadcast value are two different things. If you want to argue the SPFL undersells Scottish football, compare our deal with Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Austria or Ireland and look at what broadcasters pay per game and per potential viewer. But anyone comparing a highly successful national football competition with one of the biggest global entertainment products on the planet is mental. And just because they're located down the road doesn't make any difference to that.

I was only giving an opinion

Why are you comparing our TV deal to the English Premiership? It's hardly even the same sport at this point. We're not competing with them. Do you think the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish or Finnish leagues compare their TV deal to the English Premiership?

The money sky pay us compared to what they pay the overhyped English Premiership is ridiculous. The 8.00 Saturday night ones are ridiculous,

There's a simple answer. Knock back any TV deal that wants control over kick off times. However, we'll need to be prepared to see a fairly sizeable reduction in money coming into the game. Can't have both. A TV company pays good money for content, and they deserve to have a say in how the deal is executed.

Thats the aspect of VAR that really annoys me, it was brought in for" clear and obvious errors" only, now every goal is actively checked for reasons to disallow it. If you need umpteen different TV angles, freeze frame, and close up zoomed in still images etc to spot the ball glancing off an arm below the T shirt line etc, its not clear and obvious. The whole thing needs binned, but unless the clubs get together and tell the SFA its a heap of crap, nothing will change.