Leaderboard

The total wage bill for the club is £5 million per year. The player wage bill is far higher than £1.5m per season. As I pointed out the other day we reported a (slightly) higher turnover and wage bill than our new CEO's old club Shrewsbury Town who are midtable in League One in England. It suits the club to have the support thinking we are operating on a shoe string budget but it's not true at all.

So we are underperforming by out massively out performing Dundee United, Dunfermline and Falkirk? You've not been near Fir Park in years but know exactly what the Society are doing wrong? Nae bother mate.

Okay here goes an essay... As this progresses I find the society even more amateur and backpeddling from its failure. If the Well Society wasn't a failure this discussion wouldn't even be happening. The society are a group who have done very little in my view in recent years until the prospect of some external involvement knocking them off their perch. Saturday's Well Society day didn't convince me otherwise. The additional attention and focus they received on Saturday was considerably greater than our average match day sponsor (so I hope they stumped up an additional payment to the club for advertising, like we would ask of any sponsor). It can't be attractive to any investor I have to say when the organs of the club were promoting the alternative to investment throughout the day. I was at Fir Park for the first time in a couple of years due to working abroad with a group of mates who support other provincial clubs and discussed all the politics of this probably in more depth than the match. When you are away for a while and come back it shows how we are falling behind the pack very quickly in terms of our facilities, budget and resilience. Before anyone gives us the "well rollercoaster" or "punching above out weight" lecture, let's look at three other clubs similar in size to us. Dunfermline - relegated and not come back. Falkirk - just spent 8 years in league 1, lucky to still be on the go until their recent turn in fortunes - with the help of a blend of external investment and fan support Dundee United - the yo-yo club of the decade. If Motherwell were in the situation of any of these clubs we would struggle to maintain ourselves without a shadow of doubt. All three of these clubs have different models and I accept that. But our budget and working capital differs to these three clubs as a result of top division TV money and away ticket revenue only. Our overall home ticket and commercial income is likey on a par. The additional investment is necessary or we will join that club, or likely be in even more of a right rope year on year financially than these guys as no fall guy would be there to cover the losses. The Club needs to build a pathway towardsa substantial modernisation of our facilities and corporate operations. Our main training facilities are rented, our players are bussed between two sits for their training and we have a stadium which is in dire need of replacement once sentiments are put aside. We are simply no longer attractive to companies for corporate days or hospitality as we have such dated infrastructure. Once we have modernised infrastructure the club can start to widen its income and stability. The external investment at Dundee is being laughed at but I think long term as their project takes shape they will be the ones laughing. Unlike Aberdeen's new stadiums which have been proposed about 40 times, this genuinely seems to be making traction. We need to watch this as a "what could be" rather than looking at what is going wrong/has gone wrong elsewhere.

Simple question... Who is currently on the Executive Board?

And we have sold you as many tickets as possible, for which no refund will be available. Surely this is a time when PATG is the solution.

MFC registered OFFICERS @ Companies House are Keys as Secretary, Dickie, Feely and McMahon. 4 only.

Every Society member owns 1 voting share in the Society. Having effectively proportional representation makes no sense. It opens up the possibility that the Well Society members could vote 70% against the takeover but the overall shareholders vote goes in favour of it. In that scenario the Society assets are hugely reduced in value against the wishes of the membership. If you wanted a direct vote the shares were on sale dirt cheap not long ago.

Hopefully things will be clearer when the Well Society complete their governance work stream, but some folk could do with learning what boards, executives, and shareholders do in general.

Jay from the Society board posted this on P&B on the 5th of March. So the Well Society don't have control over the Executive Board despite owning 70% of the club. McMahon is one of the three non WS Executive Board members, the other two are a mystery to me and don't seem to be listed anywhere on the club website. Again this is another example of why we are miles away from being able to have an informed and responsible debate about any proposals. There's very little accurate information available about the club and Society's financial position and structure and there are a lot of wrong assumptions out there amongst the support which is entirely down to the club and Society choosing to keep us in the dark. The argument has always been that Society members don't need to be involved in the day to day decision making of the club which everyone agrees with but the structure and overall financial position of the Society and club should be available and easy to understand for members. I'd like to see the Society set out a few points which I think would clear things up. 1. The overall profit/loss since the Society became majority shareholders. I've seen people say on P&B that we are in profit over the period, other people say it's unsustainable. Which is it? 2. What is the playing budget and add some context because £2.3m or £2.8m doesn't really mean much but pointing out clubs which spend a roughly equivalent amount in Scotland, England and Europe would give us a good idea of where we stand. 3. How much funding have the Society given the club directly and in loans? How much have the Society given to the Community Trust? 4. Why do the Society board feel we are best represented by having a minority position on the club executive board? If the Society board answer these questions we would all have a clearer idea of how fan ownership is working.

No, they most definitely should be involved in the discussions and proceedings. As majority shareholders, that should be a given. There's a difference between the elected representatives of the Society board being involved in proceedings and any information being divulged to the wider membership base.

The same could be said for many aspects of life such as juries and elections but we do live in a democratic society and thank goodness for that. We're a Jock Tamson"s bairns as they say. Everyone is entitled to a say.

Add neither should they be. Fan owned or not, divulging potentially sensitive information to the Society would be making details of the negotiations public knowledge basically. I'm more than happy to wait for the details then say yes or no. The one thing that worries me is do we have enough intelligent, level headed members to make an informed and correct choice for the good of the club when the time comes?

Executive board seem to be doing what any other business would do in this type of negotiations. outwith football Jim McMahon im sure has a knowledge of how this all works and I’m relatively relaxed .with how things are progressing . For me a simple update is sufficient at this stage and as a £10 month Well Society member I’m not sure why I’d need to now much more at this stage of the negotiations or how my complete lack of knowledge on how these things work by throwing in my tuppence/thoughts would help proceedings Why don’t we just wait and see what the proposals are when finalised , see what the executive board recommend following these discussions then based on all that vote whatever way you think is best for the club going forward . That tends to be how things work in any walk of life and as far as I can see this is no different . Ok I get the anxiety some people may have at this stage about updates and info etc etc but that’s how business transaction’s/dealings tend to work . Im sure the executive board said they would be using a specialist /legal team to pour over the detail to prevent us being bitten or words to that effect Dont think I need to know much more that that at this stage tbh . So for the next 6 weeks think we need to be patient . It’s not that long to wait tbh .

Steelboy moaning like fuck about this or anything is the biggest shock ever......

Who said they were in talks with an American investor at that point? You don't think the Taylor Swift comment was tongue in cheek?

Regarding the statements, or lack of. There are all sorts of legal, compliance and regulatory issues defining exactly what can and can't be said during these kinds of transactions - and they mostly boil down to not being able to say very much. That is true for dealings both sides of the pond. I don't see anything about the potential investor being American, only that they are a "US-based family" - and there's a quite a few us of us here that fit that bill and are not American (I'm not the investor, btw). Enjoyed the analysis of the "2017 Trump Tax Reforms' though. Thousands of pages of complex tax law distilled into "you can write off overseas losses". BTW, not saying I'm in favour of this - I voted against allowing overall control for any investor and I'll need to see some serious detail before I continue to contribute to the Society.