steelboy

We've not been able to keep hold of our better players for the past 30 years. Lambert and McKinnon leaving on Bosmans changed everything. The question isn't about keeping hold of our better players it's about how to do we make sure we are signing enough Premiership level players every summer to sustain us. People need to define what 'compete' actually means us for us. There is no outside investment which puts us on a level playing field financially with Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen. Our optimistic aims are always going to be Top six, grab a Euro spot and have a good cup run whether fan owned or not.

Exactly. Also we have to be aware that any party with a controlling interest has many different options for extracting cash from the club. The Indonesian/Australian bid which is being offered supposedly involves advanced scouting software which no doubt the club would have to pay to use. It's easy enough to put money in with one hand and take it back out with another. A good example of this is Mike Ashley at Rangers getting them to sign a merchandise deal with Sports Direct that basically robbed them of millions.

£333,000 a year for 6 years for the controlling interest of the club. Utterly ridiculous. If this is true and McMahon and Weir are genuinely pushing for it then serious questions need to be asked.

It's a strange world where people who have been going to Fir Park aren't football people but an Indonesian conglomerate or an American TV company would be considered to be. The board have said at the AGM that potential investors want the controlling interest in the club. That opens us up to selling the stadium, taking on debt and money flowing out the club to the new owners. A minority shareholding and a seat on the board won't make any difference if investors with a majority want to go down that road.

The Well Society is legally an Industrial and Provident Society and each member owns 1 voting share. It's illegal not to allow members a vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_and_provident_society

It would be crazy if they just let people buy a vote for a fiver. £300 was the price of membership when it started so it probably still is. I'm going to email and ask for a copy of the constitution.

I felt it was a poorly worded question. The 'no investment' option was phrased as being permanently binding and the 'investment' option was completely vague. Phase 1 of McMahon and Weir's PR operation(still need to find out who paid for it) to end fan ownership has been successful but they will need to be more honest and open going forward. There seems to have been a big effort to protect the identity of the American investor while the Australian one has been more public. I'm guessing phase 2 will be more scare stories about auditors and introducing the Americans. At the moment it's not even clear if they are talking about an individual buying us or a TV production company. The main outcome of this vote is that we won't have a CEO in place anytime soon so expect our squad building to become even more of a farce.

It still counts as part of the loss in the annual accounts. That's not how P+L, it still counts as expenditure even if you use borrowed money. Also I don't think it's true that it was only for infrastructure. Covid loans to every other business were used to cover wages. It's also a bit of a joke that we have to pay this back but the SRU got a £15 million grant no strings attached. Working class Vs middle class sport.....

Why would the Society agree to wipe out the value of it's shareholding for no return? That's giving the club including millions in assets away for absolutely nothing to a foreign entity. Madness.

Hopefully we can shut this down this week then appoint a CEO who can make a start on the summer transfer business.

The loss was all down to Burrows completely pointless stadium and pitch redevelopments. The people who are leaving the board are the ones trying to force through a sale. I wouldn't be surprised to see them reappear if the Well Society gives up the shares. We don't have a CEO because McMahon and Weir want to sell a club they don't actually own. There are serious questions about who the CEO and Chairman have actually been representing these last few months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakrie_Group This is the conglomerate who own Brisbane Roar. From their Wikipedia Page Football club[edit] Brisbane Roar (2012-present)[edit] Bakrie Group, through PT. Pelita Jaya Cronus acquired A-League title-holders Brisbane Roar FC in 2011. Bakrie Group initially purchased 70% of the club shares, but in 2012 the Football Federation Australia (FFA) announced that the Bakrie Group has acquired 100% ownership of A-League club Brisbane Roar FC.[35] In May 2016, Brisbane Roar faced an administrative and financial turbulences when the team ownership held investment in the club, resulting in Brisbane Roar failure to pay staff and players.[36] C.S. Visé (2011-2014)[edit] C.S. Visé, a second division league Belgium football club was acquired by Bakrie Group in 2011,[37] during Bakrie's ownership Indonesian youth players like Syamsir Alam, Manahati Lestusen and Alfin Tuasalamony were called to play for the club.[38] C.S Vise was eventually sold by Bakrie Group in 2014.[39] https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/indonesia-tycoons-name-is-mud-over-unpaid-disaster-dues/ JAKARTA – Fifteen years since a flood of toxic mud and gas spewing out of a breached natural gas well cut road links and forced the mass evacuation of East Java villagers, firms controlled by coal tycoon Aburizal Bakrie have still to pay at least US$100 million in compensation for causing the disaster. Although the flow from the world’s largest mud volcano has been contained by levees since late 2008 – and is now expelling only a fraction of the 120,000 cubic meters a day it was at its height – experts expect the after-effects will continue to be a problem for the next 30 years. They warn that because the levees are only made of compacted earth, there is still a real danger of heavy monsoonal rain or increased seismic activity triggering a catastrophic collapse, unleashing an avalanche of mud across an even wider area. “It is mind-boggling to me that the mud is still flowing,” says one source who was involved in the project at the time of the eruption. “There was a lot of evidence in the seismic of a sub-surface feature, but we thought we were drilling a reef, not a volcano.” Mud volcanoes are not volcanoes in the accepted sense because they don’t produce magma. They are normally formed when hot water from deep beneath the surface mixes with subterranean mineral deposits and is forced upwards through a geological fault. Officials said last December they were still considering ways to collect on the $54.8 million loan taken out by the Bakrie-owned PT Lapindo Bratas and subsidiary PT Minarak Lapindo Jaya to recompense the government for providing the bridging finance to compensate many of the victims. Lapindo claims to have already paid as much as 8 trillion rupiah ($560 million) as part of the emergency response and victim resettlement, but the State Audit Agency (BKS) says it now remains liable for 1.5 trillion rupiah ($105 million), covering the principal, interest payments and accumulated penalties built up over the past decade.

The fact that Wilson, Weir and McMahon are stepping back and have suddenly decided fan ownership isn't viable doesn't seem like a coincidence to me. I think they have always viewed fan ownership as a means to allow them to continue to run the club and have probably convinced themselves they are the only people in the support capable of it. They have obviously put a look of work into the club which they should be thanked for but it always has to be remembered that they all worked for Royal Of Bank Scotland and were in prominent positions when it was run into the ground by Fred Goodwin. Bankers will always say the richest person in the room is the one you have to listen to but the vast majority of us aren't bankers and we all should bear in mind who actually paid the bill for Royal Bank Of Scotland going under and who walked away with a lot of money. I think after this week it's clear that the infamous video wasn't aimed at attracting investors as this has obviously been going on for longer than a few weeks. The video was aimed at us to demoralise us and prime us for the suggestion that we need to sell the Well Society shares to whoever is interested. The reason we don't have a CEO is because the two interested parties want to appoint their own people and Weir and McMahon have chosen to prioritise driving through a sale over the day to day running of the club. A manager who can't win a football match with a secret contract, videos that embarrass us and make it seem like the club have no money, vital positions unfilled on and off field and the threat of a bogeyman auditor popping up again. It's all designed to bully us into handing the club over. The Society needs to be proactive and put out some figures that people can actually understand. We have a top 10 budget in the country but everyone I talk to goes on about "no money". We are spending over £5 million a year on wages while being owned by the Society, that doesn't look like "no money" to me. We need a great deal more information about the club's financial status at the moment relative to other clubs and we need it put forward in way that the average society member can comprehend. We also need people to be able to separate the on and off field factors, we can't abandon fan ownership because Kettlewell and Daws are useless in the transfer market.

We had better players 1-11 which got us through the playoff. Their stinking attitude got us into the playoff.

That's the issue. There's no more County at home and Livi at home is post split. Where's the next win coming from? 3 wins in 5 months and no wins all season really where we won an ugly game. We don't have the qualities to grind out a win and we can't outplay any team that's not in meltdown. Dougie Imrie showed everyone how to play against us tonight. We have nothing in the final third to break teams down and Kelly and Butcher are utterly chronic.

They went after losing to Morton and Raith. Maybe someone will step up in the dressing room like wee Lionel and put us out our misery. League record, transfers, cup exits, style of play, youth development, game management, team selection are all dreadful. There's no reason to keep him on unless you think Stuart Kettlewell is bigger than the club.

Power is still a better player than Davor.

He dodged the post match interview. Hopefully he's resigning.

Butcher is totally done. He needs dropped, hopefully Casey can come back in.

Taking Gent off for a guy who has never played senior football was idiotic.

Devine is light years ahead of SOD.

Boy from Sheffield looks way out his depth.

Vale is mince but miles ahead of Bair and Butcher in terms of looking like a footballer.

He's getting schooled by Dougie Imrie. Barraclough and Hammell went for lower league cup defeats. Kettlewell should be following them.

Still playing 5 at the back with no midfield now.