Also great job by the trust. Agree to a proposal that at best will be unpopular and then antagonise a lot of members by not paying 159 quid to allow people to see first hand what they have negotiated behind closed doors. Then ensure that any questions could not be heard in a q and a
If you wanted to fuck up an evening more I’m not sure i could think of a way.
Especially after the slide 1 boast of how brilliant a digital club we now are.
Sounds like a cross between an old style 1970s union meeting where matters were decided on a show of hands in the factory car park and the Republican logic of even though we lost we must’ve won
I don't fundamentally disagree with Robs outlook but I think he's both planning and spending way over what is appropriate and is much too hopeful about promotion and not as detailed on how long it will take to recoup spending.
As for the Trust board, who do a difficult job, and I genuinely appreciate most of the time, unfortunately this is an absolute disaster.
Appalling meeting tech-wise as if it's the first one we've ever had, people excluded, questions extremely selectively picked, nobody on Zoom allowed to speak directly....oh and let Rob drop in £3m+ yearly losses and all the champ money gone as a mere detail and a reason why we need to allow him to spend even more money. No guarantees, wild plans, fairly obvious they are arguing on the fringes with no impact on bigger picture. I'm about done paying them to nod along
I am concerned that in two years time we will end up as another Derby County. However, I'm sure Mr Parry will come on here and tell us we've got nothing to worry about.
For all my quipping on this thread I'm actually quite annoyed with myself. I hated Hayes from day one and this is how I got my username, as I would post pictures of North Korean rallies on the old forum with sarcastic comments about the man. This, combined with my silent one-man boycott of home games, must really have hurt him.
So I should really have seen the Couhigs coming but, whatever the opposite of a perfect storm is, the combination of Ainsworth, Akinfenwa and a Chairman promising good times made me a bit giddy. And we did have good times. Of sorts. For a bit.
I was going to say the one saving grace is we can sell Forino and Mehmeti for multi-million pound fees, but I doubt that now our dire financial situation has been laid bare. The vultures are most probably circling already.
The trust has already agreed to sell them to Luton for £100k each. But there is another million if Anis plays internationally (in small writing for England). They found an old contract template on a computer and used that.
It is also imperative that you all read & understand the new Trust rules that are being proposed (in line with the FSA model rules) & I would recommend voting in favour as I believe it gives us more protection etc.
The existing Trust board need to go, not one of them standing for re-election will get my vote, not just because of tonight's clusterfuck but because of their failure to grow membership & revenue over the years.
If they had done so then the Trust ought to have been generating somewhere in the region of £4-500k pa from membership & ground rent, but asking us for £30pa then giving us back £10 as a voucher was never ever going to cut it. I suspect they pay 15-20 times that for their golf club membership & use it less often than they visit AP.
Anyway, onwards to the AGM & the likely spatt before Xmas from RC where he spits out his dummy & insults us all even more. (Yes I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt when he was making all the right noises & I deeply regret being suckered).
I didn't see the point in being a Trust member once the takeover went through, but it always struck me as little more than an old boys club anyway. How old is the youngest member of the board?
The Trust’s objects are to benefit the community by:
1.1 enhancing the social, cultural and economic value of the Club to its Communities and by acting as a responsible custodian of the Club for future generations;
1.2 upholding the mutual ownership of the Club operating democratically, fairly and transparently;
1.3 ensuring the Club operates with financial responsibility enabling the Club to be run for the long term interest of the Community;
1.4 providing sporting facilities and opportunities regardless of age, income, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, religious or moral belief; and
1.5 playing at the highest level possible, but always operating in a financially responsible and prudent manner.
Perhaps RC should have familiarised himself with Alan Sugars quotes on football before his purchase?
The money coming into the game is incredible. But it is just the prune-juice effect, it comes in and just goes out straight away.
There is a lot of luck in football. Following England is like following Wycombe Wanderers or Leyton Orient. You hope for the best and hope you are lucky.
It’s a lousy way to run a vote and it speaks volumes.
I don’t think Rob came here to con us, I think he genuinely believed he knew better than everyone else and thought running a sustainable club just needed some savvy. He has learned it is almost impossible and is ruthless enough to do whatever he thinks it takes to save face. Which seems to be by gambling on promotion with uncosted and ill thought out plans to make it happen.
If Horgan is on the reported £7500 per week cutting him loose in the summer would have meant a 10% reduction in our losses. So on what basis was he kept? MAYBE GA was told his limit on signing new players so dodged that by using the option on Horgan's contract to keep him. MAYBE. I honestly can't think against this financial background why would choose to keep a guy who rarely gets minutes from the bench.
Was it a question of Pete wanting to be the fun football guy who loves having a beer with everyone and was therefore incapable of making tough budget decisions? I look around the club now and see some of the decisions made and we look like an episode of The Apprentice where a group of fcukwits get to run a football club for a while.
@Manboobs I agree with you in so far as I do not think RC is a con man, I think he was caught out by the extent of how much of a financial basket case professional football is in England, without the wherewithal to keep pumping money in &/or generating net revenues from player sales all clubs bar the top 6 piss money down the drain like it is going out of fashion.
Modest clubs like ours, might be able to break even, but only by having a decent cup run every other year, keeping football salaries down, running the club on a skeleton staff supported by a decent cadre of volunteers, having a reasonable sized membership paying proper fees & maximising non footballing income from the ground. That model pretty much ensures you will never rise much above the lower reaches of the top half of L1 unless you are really really lucky (e.g. Rotherham, who over the years have bounced back & forth between L1 & Championship but have managed to attract bigger crowds each time they go up & not lost them all when they go down). We are also hampered by the fact our ground is effectively down a cul-de-sac in the arse end of nowhere, which limits its attractiveness for non footballing revenue uses.
Do not get me wrong, I love my club & want it to survive but am happy if that survival is yo-yoing between L1 & L2 & not disappearing down a financial black hole.
Rob likes walking around the ground with everyone high-fiving him. He’s not going to like the sudden abuse he’s gonna start copping. He and his money will be gone from the club by Xmas...
So, having made it to the meeting after a 1hr drive (because of the zoom limitation). I actually got to speak to RC directly. His comment to me was "As a member of the Trust, you should be asking how to maintain your 25% share of the football club".
The answer to that is to not agree this proposal and instead have RC issue a cash call and then match 25% of the investment.
Therefore, rather than throw our toys out of the pram and resigning from the Trust, as Trust members we need to start putting our money where our mouth is and provide the funds needed by the Trust as a 25% share holder in the football club.
As RC himself said, he could simply have issued the cash call and let it play out. He's under no obligation to make this agreement from his perspective.
FYI, at the point when RC eventually sells the football club it won't matter if the Trust owns 25%, 10%, 5% or only 1% as the new owners can acquire our residual share at its then valuation.
The real choice today was what value the Trust put on the 15% share we're giving up. Sadly I missed that part of the meeting so can't say.
I agree it is difficult for RC to have conned us, as a con would basically be "I am going to waste all my money pretending I am going to make you sustainable". Not much in it for him. I think it has been a mix of well-meaning naivety sprinkled with a little hubris.
That being said (having not been allowed at the grown up's table today) if from what I understand he basically threatened us with "my way or I pull the plug" the happy marriage between club and owner is over, and if we stay together it is only till the kids are out of the house.
Slightly ironic we are all this money in debt ( assume large percentage on players) but we are out of both cups and sitting mid table . Somewhere down the line, the plan hasn’t worked. Whose to blame Couhigs or Ainsworth.
On a separate matter , tonight’s meeting has been a fiasco and the blame should be firmly pointed to the Trust Board , who clearly are totally incompetent. Not sure how it can be achieved but a vote of no confidence in the current board should be the next step. Trust members have been taken totally for granted and have been p***ed on from a great height.
Comments
Also great job by the trust. Agree to a proposal that at best will be unpopular and then antagonise a lot of members by not paying 159 quid to allow people to see first hand what they have negotiated behind closed doors. Then ensure that any questions could not be heard in a q and a
If you wanted to fuck up an evening more I’m not sure i could think of a way.
Especially after the slide 1 boast of how brilliant a digital club we now are.
Sounds like a cross between an old style 1970s union meeting where matters were decided on a show of hands in the factory car park and the Republican logic of even though we lost we must’ve won
I don't fundamentally disagree with Robs outlook but I think he's both planning and spending way over what is appropriate and is much too hopeful about promotion and not as detailed on how long it will take to recoup spending.
As for the Trust board, who do a difficult job, and I genuinely appreciate most of the time, unfortunately this is an absolute disaster.
Appalling meeting tech-wise as if it's the first one we've ever had, people excluded, questions extremely selectively picked, nobody on Zoom allowed to speak directly....oh and let Rob drop in £3m+ yearly losses and all the champ money gone as a mere detail and a reason why we need to allow him to spend even more money. No guarantees, wild plans, fairly obvious they are arguing on the fringes with no impact on bigger picture. I'm about done paying them to nod along
I am concerned that in two years time we will end up as another Derby County. However, I'm sure Mr Parry will come on here and tell us we've got nothing to worry about.
For all my quipping on this thread I'm actually quite annoyed with myself. I hated Hayes from day one and this is how I got my username, as I would post pictures of North Korean rallies on the old forum with sarcastic comments about the man. This, combined with my silent one-man boycott of home games, must really have hurt him.
So I should really have seen the Couhigs coming but, whatever the opposite of a perfect storm is, the combination of Ainsworth, Akinfenwa and a Chairman promising good times made me a bit giddy. And we did have good times. Of sorts. For a bit.
There's no fool like an old fool.
I thought only 15 people expressed a preference online and all but one were against, did I get that wrong or express it badly above?
So are we saying that members like me who couldn’t get into the meeting for no fault of our own, will not get a vote at all?
I was going to say the one saving grace is we can sell Forino and Mehmeti for multi-million pound fees, but I doubt that now our dire financial situation has been laid bare. The vultures are most probably circling already.
Another tidbit is we made about £300k from the Derby situation
Welp, at least Horgan and Kaikai are not wasting away on the bench given what we are paying them. Now THAT would be silly!
Did we get any closer to answering the question of how much money Rob actually has?
The trust has already agreed to sell them to Luton for £100k each. But there is another million if Anis plays internationally (in small writing for England). They found an old contract template on a computer and used that.
Didn't someone say earlier on here we were 3m to the good on last years accounts?
It is also imperative that you all read & understand the new Trust rules that are being proposed (in line with the FSA model rules) & I would recommend voting in favour as I believe it gives us more protection etc.
The existing Trust board need to go, not one of them standing for re-election will get my vote, not just because of tonight's clusterfuck but because of their failure to grow membership & revenue over the years.
If they had done so then the Trust ought to have been generating somewhere in the region of £4-500k pa from membership & ground rent, but asking us for £30pa then giving us back £10 as a voucher was never ever going to cut it. I suspect they pay 15-20 times that for their golf club membership & use it less often than they visit AP.
Anyway, onwards to the AGM & the likely spatt before Xmas from RC where he spits out his dummy & insults us all even more. (Yes I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt when he was making all the right noises & I deeply regret being suckered).
Online were only asked to object. Not say yes, so the assumption would be the other 45 didn’t object.
Not saying that’s a satisfactory way to run it, but a big majority did not object.
Ah, thanks for clarifying, wasn't aware that was the case.
I didn't see the point in being a Trust member once the takeover went through, but it always struck me as little more than an old boys club anyway. How old is the youngest member of the board?
Objectives of the Trust:
1. OBJECTS
The Trust’s objects are to benefit the community by:
1.1 enhancing the social, cultural and economic value of the Club to its Communities and by acting as a responsible custodian of the Club for future generations;
1.2 upholding the mutual ownership of the Club operating democratically, fairly and transparently;
1.3 ensuring the Club operates with financial responsibility enabling the Club to be run for the long term interest of the Community;
1.4 providing sporting facilities and opportunities regardless of age, income, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, religious or moral belief; and
1.5 playing at the highest level possible, but always operating in a financially responsible and prudent manner.
Indeed @wandering_jock that would certainly suggest the current board have failed n'est-ce-pas
Perhaps RC should have familiarised himself with Alan Sugars quotes on football before his purchase?
It’s a lousy way to run a vote and it speaks volumes.
I don’t think Rob came here to con us, I think he genuinely believed he knew better than everyone else and thought running a sustainable club just needed some savvy. He has learned it is almost impossible and is ruthless enough to do whatever he thinks it takes to save face. Which seems to be by gambling on promotion with uncosted and ill thought out plans to make it happen.
Have Liz and Kwasi been having a word in his ear?
Very much looking forward to @aloysius input
If Horgan is on the reported £7500 per week cutting him loose in the summer would have meant a 10% reduction in our losses. So on what basis was he kept? MAYBE GA was told his limit on signing new players so dodged that by using the option on Horgan's contract to keep him. MAYBE. I honestly can't think against this financial background why would choose to keep a guy who rarely gets minutes from the bench.
Was it a question of Pete wanting to be the fun football guy who loves having a beer with everyone and was therefore incapable of making tough budget decisions? I look around the club now and see some of the decisions made and we look like an episode of The Apprentice where a group of fcukwits get to run a football club for a while.
@Manboobs I agree with you in so far as I do not think RC is a con man, I think he was caught out by the extent of how much of a financial basket case professional football is in England, without the wherewithal to keep pumping money in &/or generating net revenues from player sales all clubs bar the top 6 piss money down the drain like it is going out of fashion.
Modest clubs like ours, might be able to break even, but only by having a decent cup run every other year, keeping football salaries down, running the club on a skeleton staff supported by a decent cadre of volunteers, having a reasonable sized membership paying proper fees & maximising non footballing income from the ground. That model pretty much ensures you will never rise much above the lower reaches of the top half of L1 unless you are really really lucky (e.g. Rotherham, who over the years have bounced back & forth between L1 & Championship but have managed to attract bigger crowds each time they go up & not lost them all when they go down). We are also hampered by the fact our ground is effectively down a cul-de-sac in the arse end of nowhere, which limits its attractiveness for non footballing revenue uses.
Do not get me wrong, I love my club & want it to survive but am happy if that survival is yo-yoing between L1 & L2 & not disappearing down a financial black hole.
Rob likes walking around the ground with everyone high-fiving him. He’s not going to like the sudden abuse he’s gonna start copping. He and his money will be gone from the club by Xmas...
Well.... its basically all turned from gold into shit hasn't it....
Wow... fuck sake.. I'm going to bed.... process .... well try to process this all in the morning
And then what?
So, having made it to the meeting after a 1hr drive (because of the zoom limitation). I actually got to speak to RC directly. His comment to me was "As a member of the Trust, you should be asking how to maintain your 25% share of the football club".
The answer to that is to not agree this proposal and instead have RC issue a cash call and then match 25% of the investment.
Therefore, rather than throw our toys out of the pram and resigning from the Trust, as Trust members we need to start putting our money where our mouth is and provide the funds needed by the Trust as a 25% share holder in the football club.
As RC himself said, he could simply have issued the cash call and let it play out. He's under no obligation to make this agreement from his perspective.
FYI, at the point when RC eventually sells the football club it won't matter if the Trust owns 25%, 10%, 5% or only 1% as the new owners can acquire our residual share at its then valuation.
The real choice today was what value the Trust put on the 15% share we're giving up. Sadly I missed that part of the meeting so can't say.
I agree it is difficult for RC to have conned us, as a con would basically be "I am going to waste all my money pretending I am going to make you sustainable". Not much in it for him. I think it has been a mix of well-meaning naivety sprinkled with a little hubris.
That being said (having not been allowed at the grown up's table today) if from what I understand he basically threatened us with "my way or I pull the plug" the happy marriage between club and owner is over, and if we stay together it is only till the kids are out of the house.
Slightly ironic we are all this money in debt ( assume large percentage on players) but we are out of both cups and sitting mid table . Somewhere down the line, the plan hasn’t worked. Whose to blame Couhigs or Ainsworth.
On a separate matter , tonight’s meeting has been a fiasco and the blame should be firmly pointed to the Trust Board , who clearly are totally incompetent. Not sure how it can be achieved but a vote of no confidence in the current board should be the next step. Trust members have been taken totally for granted and have been p***ed on from a great height.