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Scunthorpe Chairman

uttoxram75

By uttoxram75
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AndyinLiverpool
AndyinLiverpool

'There to stupid'. You have to laugh, don't you?

Eddie
Eddie

"... There to stupid..." For crying out loud - it seems that we have found the legendary c*** in Scunthorpe.

sage
sage

To no-one's surprise, this idiot is from Nottingham.

Mucker1884

Mucker1884

Posted
Posted

Forgive me, as my memory is lousy...

 

Wasn't we all invited to chip in to a whip round/sign a petition/march alongside/join a fans mutiny* or some such, not so long back?  🤷‍♂️

That wor Scunny, worritnot?  🤷‍♂️

Was that in the run up to the previous lousy chairman vacating his post, and before this latest lousy chairman, or was this current lousy chairman already in his lousy chair by then? 🤷‍♂️

What is it with this lousy memory of mine?  🤷‍♂️

 

 

*delete or add other other scenarios, as applicable.

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Alty_Ram

Alty_Ram

Posted
Posted

Jeez, what a total shambles 😞 

Not just in financial trouble, they're mired in litigation and don't even have a ground to call their own. Sounds horribly familiar... At least the numbers required to save them would presumably be chickenfeed in comparison to us. Even so it would probably need a local business person with a love for the club, not their business head on. That also sounds familiar.

As always, you feel for the fans.

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Alty_Ram

Alty_Ram

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, Leeds Ram said:

What concerns me is that it will take a really big club to go under for this to be sorted. At one point, I honestly thought we'd end up being that cautionary tale for everyone else. 

Yeah, exactly. A lot of other teams fans still don't seemed to have grasped just how perilously close we were. I've read some absolute garbage written on social media by the ill-informed (that's pretty much the same thing I guess..) that suggests that we were 'always going to get dug out of the s*** by someone'. That is absolutely not true. It was the Clowes cavalry, driven by a desire to save his club for the city; or absolute and utter oblivion and start again with a phoenix club at whatever level we would be allowed to participate. It was that black and white. Time had run out, the good ship DCFC was going down with all hands.

The fans were outstanding in terms of loyalty and resilience and raising the profile of the issue but we cannot save a club on our own with the staggering debt profile of some clubs these days. The sheer size of the unserviceable debt that can be run up, and the way that owners can just throw a club and fans and history under a bus, and the way that primary assets like the stadium can be separated from the football side of things, added to the tacit encouragement by the EFL to let teams sue each other for damages for any perceived wrongdoing and it is surely just a matter of time before a bigger club pops in a messy way, and even then some people will still be surprised by this when it happens.

People have to stop assuming that some Arab Sheik or wealthy American consortium will just sort it out - The debt in the championship even is getting beyond the means of anyone but the absolutely loaded. Where there is no financial case to be made for buying a club because of issue like above (no stadium asset, crippling debt, guaranteed relegation due to points deductions, looming litigation etc) then you are left hoping for a miracle. A miracle that makes little financial sense to sort.

The current crop of bigger sides that are in trouble may be OK because they don't have all these factors stacked up against them, but our situation will not be unique unless rules change. Someone else will suffer that perfect storm of circumstances because nothing has been addressed in the governance and finance of the game.

The Scunthorpe example is particularly scary because the owner seems to be actually taking glee in their plight.

Not everyone has a David Clowes riding over the hill on a white charger. Sometimes that noise approaching is just another 10,000 orcs who have come to burn your castle down.

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TigerTedd

TigerTedd

Posted
Posted
25 minutes ago, Alty_Ram said:

Yeah, exactly. A lot of other teams fans still don't seemed to have grasped just how perilously close we were. I've read some absolute garbage written on social media by the ill-informed (that's pretty much the same thing I guess..) that suggests that we were 'always going to get dug out of the s*** by someone'. That is absolutely not true. It was the Clowes cavalry, driven by a desire to save his club for the city; or absolute and utter oblivion and start again with a phoenix club at whatever level we would be allowed to participate. It was that black and white. Time had run out, the good ship DCFC was going down with all hands.

The fans were outstanding in terms of loyalty and resilience and raising the profile of the issue but we cannot save a club on our own with the staggering debt profile of some clubs these days. The sheer size of the unserviceable debt that can be run up, and the way that owners can just throw a club and fans and history under a bus, and the way that primary assets like the stadium can be separated from the football side of things, added to the tacit encouragement by the EFL to let teams sue each other for damages for any perceived wrongdoing and it is surely just a matter of time before a bigger club pops in a messy way, and even then some people will still be surprised by this when it happens.

People have to stop assuming that some Arab Sheik or wealthy American consortium will just sort it out - The debt in the championship even is getting beyond the means of anyone but the absolutely loaded. Where there is no financial case to be made for buying a club because of issue like above (no stadium asset, crippling debt, guaranteed relegation due to points deductions, looming litigation etc) then you are left hoping for a miracle. A miracle that makes little financial sense to sort.

The current crop of bigger sides that are in trouble may be OK because they don't have all these factors stacked up against them, but our situation will not be unique unless rules change. Someone else will suffer that perfect storm of circumstances because nothing has been addressed in the governance and finance of the game.

The Scunthorpe example is particularly scary because the owner seems to be actually taking glee in their plight.

Not everyone has a David Clowes riding over the hill on a white charger. Sometimes that noise approaching is just another 10,000 orcs who have come to burn your castle down.

Clubs should be listed or something really. Normally if something is more than 100 years old and if significant cultural importance to a community it gets some sort of protection. 

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Leeds Ram

Leeds Ram

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

Clubs should be listed or something really. Normally if something is more than 100 years old and if significant cultural importance to a community it gets some sort of protection. 

This is kind of what will happen once someone like us goes bust. If a seriously big club with tens of thousands of fans goes to the wall then there'll be systemic change enacted. Unfortunately, at some point in the next 10 years, it looks inevitable one will end up being completely liquidated and no change looks like it's coming until it happens. Football clubs are special institutions that need their assets ring-fenced and their finances carefully guarded to ensure their ongoing relationship with the local community is safeguarded. 

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Anon

Anon

Posted
Posted

Stop paying players so much money. This isn't a defence of the shambolic way Scunthorpe has been run, but these situations are getting more and more common and we always go straight to hand wringing about fit and proper person tests and clubs as historic institutions. They're businesses and very few businesses could survive by paying almost their entire turnover out in wages. No one ever suggests that maybe, just maybe a league 2 footballer shouldn't be getting £75,000 per annum. Maybe Scunny will go the same way as Bury, but I can guarantee if they do most people will pretend that it's because the people in charge were malicious and somehow uniquely evil rather than the fact that the cost of keeping a competitive playing squad is becoming completely untenable for small town parochial clubs.

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Alty_Ram

Alty_Ram

Posted
Posted
On 29/09/2023 at 09:11, Anon said:

Stop paying players so much money. This isn't a defence of the shambolic way Scunthorpe has been run, but these situations are getting more and more common and we always go straight to hand wringing about fit and proper person tests and clubs as historic institutions. They're businesses and very few businesses could survive by paying almost their entire turnover out in wages. No one ever suggests that maybe, just maybe a league 2 footballer shouldn't be getting £75,000 per annum. Maybe Scunny will go the same way as Bury, but I can guarantee if they do most people will pretend that it's because the people in charge were malicious and somehow uniquely evil rather than the fact that the cost of keeping a competitive playing squad is becoming completely untenable for small town parochial clubs.

The problem also seems to be that there is almost no control over how much technical loss you can run at, and then nothing to stop an owner just leaving them to it when they lose interest or drop dead, leaving behind an unviable mess. There are several clubs that are (still) just relying on an owner to bankroll their current expenditure by writing debts off with accountancy shenanigans and there is absolutely no attempt to work within any reasonable responsible budget and inevitably at some stage the owner will find something else to spend their money on.

We were rightly criticised by some over the activities of Morris but the likes of Boro and Stoke continue to run at completely unsustainable levels once you take the safety net away.

It's slightly tricky in that I don't want to have a situation where the super-wealthy ruling elite of the game can never be challenged by say someone wanting to bankroll their hometown club, but commitments need to be about more than just the current season and need to have some focus on longer term viability. I'm not really sure how you balance that with the current setup within football though.

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jono

jono

Posted
Posted
On 28/09/2023 at 19:14, TigerTedd said:

Clubs should be listed or something really. Normally if something is more than 100 years old and if significant cultural importance to a community it gets some sort of protection. 

But how can you protect “it” .. The club as a member of the league ? Separate from its assets and trading position, and how do you square that with creditors and mad borrowers or the go bust and start again merchants vs other clubs who rightly get angered by financial foul play. It will need some clever lawyers and makers of rules. Maybe we need an ABTA / IATA type bond attached the stadium and club name and it’s league membership ? 

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GboroRam

GboroRam

Posted
Posted
On 29/09/2023 at 09:11, Anon said:

Stop paying players so much money. This isn't a defence of the shambolic way Scunthorpe has been run, but these situations are getting more and more common and we always go straight to hand wringing about fit and proper person tests and clubs as historic institutions. They're businesses and very few businesses could survive by paying almost their entire turnover out in wages. No one ever suggests that maybe, just maybe a league 2 footballer shouldn't be getting £75,000 per annum. Maybe Scunny will go the same way as Bury, but I can guarantee if they do most people will pretend that it's because the people in charge were malicious and somehow uniquely evil rather than the fact that the cost of keeping a competitive playing squad is becoming completely untenable for small town parochial clubs.

You're not wrong, but while fans continue to demand perpetual success at any cost, the problem won't go away. 

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jono

jono

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, GboroRam said:

You're not wrong, but while fans continue to demand perpetual success at any cost, the problem won't go away. 

Somewhere there must be a common sense equation for this industry. Years ago a small manufacturing company owner said to me - plus or minus …. it’s direct labour and raw materials, then double it and you won’t be far wrong. So working backwards … matchday costs plus wages relative to turnover and you have a figure. They have tried it before in one form or another. There doesn’t need to be a wages cap but quite simply it just has to be linked to turnover/commercial acumen . Which is tickets and sponsor deals VS wages and running costs. All of these are within a clubs ability to define easily to whoever is overseeing the machinery. Why is it so complicated ? 

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