javeajag
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Posts posted by javeajag
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1 minute ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
No - it doesn't
Academy Funding is not in our budgets
So what’s the problem then ?!
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Cross ball …. Sneddon…. Sort of inevitable
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22 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
But we are losing money ?
So what your saying is that we should continue to wrack up losses
That Funds should be redirected from Dools Budget - to The Womans Team & a Youth Academy - which “ may “ pay dividends in Players & Fans “ someday”
So how long to we keep losing money for until we see if the dividends kick in ?
Its not a long game as last year showed we were going Bust
I assume being profitable next year includes the cost of the academy so I’m nit sure your argument holds.
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I was reflecting on this as last week I went to watch Valencia play Athletic Blibao…. Now Valencia are a financial basket case but they won their fourth game in a row to go 7th in La Liga with the youngest team in the league
Mosquera 19, Lopez 21, Perez 21, Guerra 20, Mari 20, Vasquez 20, Yerek 19.. all involved
if rumours are to believed Guerra is off to the premiership for 35m next season
so academies can work it’s finding the right structure that works for us.
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Maybe a simple way to frame this would be …., should TJF funds c£175k be used :
1. to cover some or all the losses the club incurs in a financial year
2. To provide the manager with additional funds to acquire players
3. refurbish the ladies toilets ……
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1 hour ago, ChiThistle said:
So can these 8 pages be summed up as:
1) Ideally the prior year losses would be offset by a plan to reduce operating costs or increase revenue through “normal trading”.
2) JJ has not seen a comprehensive plan as outlined in #1 above. It could be argued that one doesn’t exist. Yet. Hopefully.
3) The TJF money is good and valid, but it shouldn’t need to be used to paper over the aforementioned losses. Those losses should be reduced through generation of increased “normal” (read: coming from operations) revenue or reduction in operating costs
4) The USA money is either highly welcome, or somewhat contentious, due to the urgent cash flow situation we were in and the issuance of shares/board position that accompany it. Only a select few will know how truly bad things were that necessitated the decision, which hopefully will be a one-time only deal once the CTA is in place and beneficiaries are consulted on such matters going forward.
5) We all agree the toilets need fixing - first the women’s then the men’s. LIB has been suspiciously quiet about the toilets while the menfolk fight this battle. This underscores the forum power dynamic and indicates she’s really the one who runs things here.
Hopefully that all covers it and we can all go get a beer. I’ll be back over in November around the US Thanksgiving holiday and will buy the first round.
Good job !
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1 hour ago, dl1971 said:
I get that but equally I'd argue the money from TFJ ( aka the fans ) is good business, showing a positive relationship between the business and its customers. If that's not business related I don't know what is....
Sure but the point that it shows no improvement in the rest of the business is worth looking at
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52 minutes ago, dl1971 said:
Money is money. Do we count income from the centenary club for example? Do we count 50/50 profits? Irrespective of views, surely the TFJ income stream is valued. You may view it as a donation. I view it as investing in the financial future of the club.
To be fair I think JJ is saying ….
if you lose £300k in year one but reduce that to £150k it may appear you have improved things but when you add in the now £175k from TJF then the underlying business performance is basically the same .
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6 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:
It's incredibly easy for people to criticise, or to insist from the outside that things are somehow "simple" when they almost never are. It would just be nice if those same people volunteered practical solutions to deliver things in ways that would be remotely acceptable to the key stakeholders involved, instead of just declaring that some outcomes would be desirable and providing absolutely nothing by way of a plan to deliver it.
I think I suggested a number of practical ideas !
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9 minutes ago, dl1971 said:
I agree the list may be long. But these things take time with the best will in the world. I'll say it again, I'm grateful to TFJ in particular how they have undoubtedly improved things in a relatively shall period. Rome wasn't build and all that....
I’m a member of TJF indeed a very early one so I have nothing against them at all.
the issue now is how to make everything in the club better.
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19 minutes ago, dl1971 said:
The more I read this read the more I think why anyone would put themselves forward for either TFJ, JT or the board. Pretty thankless task. I'm not sure how many on this forum are actually on one of these entities, but given the number of ideas circulating maybe they should be. I seem to sense a lack of gratitude for all those doing their best in trying circumstances. We should never forget that.
The task of everyone who supports the club is to make us more successful and to do that we need to critically evaluate what we do well and what can be improved.
given the Boards we have had in recent years the to do list is long but that’s an opportunity.
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1 hour ago, laukat said:
I think lapsed fans is a very good area to look at. I suspect this seasons season ticket numbers will be higher than normal due to fan wanting to help the club out at the point where finances looked really bleak.
I would hope that we have considered some sort of deal that helps to keep those new season ticket holders into a second year and 3rd year so they become established season ticket holders otherwise we may very quickly get a drop in season ticket holders and effectively more lapsed fans.
I also think we need to look at how we can better contact walk up fans. Surely one of the advantages of online ticket sales is that you have a method of contact for pay at the gate fans? I would hope there was some analysis of that data to start targeting fans that are frequent attenders but who don't have a season ticket to help develop a path to making them season ticket holders.
Yes…. Lots of good ideas that need to be put into a coherent plan
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19 minutes ago, Lenziejag said:
I didn’t make it that choice. But if you don’t have the finance to do everything, you need to pick the one with the highest return. It needs accurate assessments, not ones skewed for your favoured one.
Sure …. But at least you have a priority list with some thought behind it … I’m not sure that’s what we currently have
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28 minutes ago, laukat said:
I think the above is probably is a very fair comment. The only thing I would add is I think we have a strategy of increasing the supporter base. the U16 ticket price has been the main cornerstone of that over the years and clearly our second strategy is to increase revenue from hospitality and strategy the missing part to my mind is a multi year plan to deliver the strategy
If there was a plan that said year 1 we upgrade hospitability, year 2 target is bathroom facilities and so on then I think it would galvanise what seems to be well intentioned reactive projects.
One of the advantages of fan ownership in my head was it took you away from an owner who would at best only plan for the length of their interest in the club. The fans will always be here so potentially a 5/10 year plan is now something that could be developed and kept moving?
I don’t disagree…..it seems we lack an overarching plan to work on the various potential fan segments …..I suspect lapsed fans is a big one for example….and end up doing tactical things that have become ‘issues’.
for me Kingsley has been the best thing we have done in recent years and has given us great coverage , it’s in the ‘ not your typical mascot category ‘ which could potentially be a marketing hook for us generally as a club.
we have lots of marketeers in the fan base and should get a group to work on this issues. We need some innovative thinking.
More fans equals more revenue.
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1 hour ago, Lenziejag said:
You need to do the detail. You are trying to convince the Board not to upgrade Hospitality, but do the ladies toilets instead.
This is a false choice we need to do both…..just as we need a strategy to attract kids, women, students, disabled fans, lapsed fans etc etc
the danger is we do things isolated with an overall strategy of how to increase our fan base.
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11 minutes ago, elevenone said:
The club needs to start thinking outside the box with smaller details. A lot of new students arrive every year from all over the Uk to just down the road. Do we market them, put forward the non OF perspective, offer better facilities, catering etc. Maybe game packages? Have deals with women’s team cause at end of the day it’s all about getting Partick Thistle out there.
Spot on…..and very relevant in that Donald McClymont first attended firhill when he came to Glasgow as a student …..
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8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
But Shudder the Thought anyone might actually suggest we increase the Fan Base
This is the key point here……we need a fan acquisition strategy …..to many football clubs marketing is geared towards the fans they have nit getting new ones.
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4 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:
TJF, and others, wouldn't have been given access by the Club Board to the detailed financial information necessary to facilitate:
- the financial disclosure people like you were (correctly) demanding throughout the first half of 2023
- any meaningful investment process, without which the Football Club would have become insolvent and defaulted on player wages
A bi-product of this could also have been that the PTFC Trust and TJF didn't build-up a trusting working relationship over that period.
The consequences of that could have been that the fan ownership roadmap fell through. Causing massive instability and uncertainty at the football club while Doolan was trying to get us into, and then through, the play-offs.
It's very easy to be against NDAs in the abstract. We didn't like that Sandy and Andrew needed to sign them. But they were the price that had to be paid for disclosure and to get in the room to be part of the solution.
That tells you a lot about the club board and whether they would have held on to that position in the event of a refusal to sign is another matter.
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2 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:
The NDAs were signed (according to my records) some point between January and February of 2023 (I don't have the exact date to hand). They were entered into by two individuals that were not, at that point, Directors of the football club. Therefore they were not bound by the general obligations of confidentiality of directors. Obviously Andrew subsequently joining the Club Board in mid-June changed his relationship with the Club, to a much cleaner one with directors' duties.
Are you suggesting that the Club should have shared confidential financial information with third parties which, at that point, had no legal relationship with any shareholding in the football club and no representation on the Club Board? Not having a go here; I'm genuinely asking here as I do not understand what point you are making. Just because the Club is a small business doesn't mean that there aren't really obvious commercial sensitivities around aspects of its financial position.
The purpose of those NDAs was to facilitate the sharing of confidential financial information beyond the Club's Directors and CEO. Without it, TJF (and others) would not have received any of that information.
The financial disclosure exercise that happened in June would have been entirely on the initiative and terms of the Football Club Board. TJF would have been completely unable to provide additional insight and commentary in a timely way. We'd have had to rely exclusively on the draft Accounts published a few weeks ago, some six months after the fact, just like everyone else.
What should have been done differently?
NDAs are vastly over rated, rarely enforced and generally over used. What bad thing woukd have happened if they were not used.
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30 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:
No I haven't.
Who signed NDAs?
As we have said, several times, the two individuals who signed NDAs are Sandy Fyfe (no longer a TJF director) and Andrew Holloway (still a TJF director). Those were signed in the context of the process of financial disclosure and investment proposals, when it became clear in late 2022/early 2023 that the old Club Board's presentation of the financial position was considerably at odds with the reality.
They (and various others involved in investment discussions) were given access to financial information under NDAs that would not normally be put in the public domain for reasons of commercial sensitivity (management accounts, for example). TJF deliberately confined this exercise to NDAs for only two directors precisely so that the rest of us could speak more freely if needed.
Other confidentiality obligations
Additionally, Andrew Holloway was privy to information in his capacity as a Club Director, which would not otherwise have been available to him. As with any director or former director of a company, he owes continuing fiduciary duties in respect of confidential information, including commercially sensitive information, which would only be shared by the Club by express agreement.
The same also applies to Stuart Callison, who has as of less than 4 days ago taken on the position of Club Director.
It should therefore be obvious that the rest of the TJF Board has less information about the day-to-day financial decisions of the Football Club than those on the Club Board. That is entirely appropriate in a fan-owned, not fan-run Football Club.
Greater information sharing
There will be some information the Club has to share with the Trustees, under the Club-Trust Agreement, which it is currently under no legal obligation to share. This includes:
- the draft budget, strategic plan and business plan (from season 2024-25 onwards)
- any contract of quantum greater than £50kpa (excluding playing staff)
- any major proposals to borrow (whether secured or unsecured) otherwise than in the ordinary course of business
- any proposal to buy or sell land, or take out any lease of greater than 5 years
- the prospectus of any proposal to issue new shares
This provides the governance structure that makes budgetary and long-term financial accountability credible and sustainable.
This ‘reasons of commercial sensitivity’ covers just about anything you want it to ……I’m not sure what it’s meant to protect beyond an existing requirement on confidentiality on directors.
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2 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:
I honestly give up with you Jim.
There is no point in me engaging with you because you repeatedly ignore or misunderstand the context in which comments are made.
You personalise and catastrophise absolutely everything.
You’ve already made your mind up about people, some of whom haven’t even been in the door three months.
You’ve misrepresented the nature of TJF’s support/opposition and involvement in decisions. You’ve repeatedly said things that have turned out not to be true, or to be a very incomplete account of what actually happened.
You’ve swallowed hook line and sinker a bizarre interpretation of “the German Model” which was literally a term of phrase used to describe a new legal protection of the majority shareholding that didn’t exist before. 51% is a floor, not a target, for the fan ownership shareholding. Any dilution will be voted on by the beneficiaries and will not happen if they object.
You are, quite simply, lying when you say that “TJF have no questions to ask”. We literally asked a detailed question at the AGM, on the thing you are concerned about.
You didn’t like the answer given to that question. We haven’t said anywhere what we think of that answer. You are, as always, jumping the gun and assuming the worst in people.
It is infuriating that you cannot see how the situation is different in January 2024 than it was in November 2022.
TJF (a) has Club Board representation (and therefore that person has access to confidential financial information including the management accounts of the company (b) is a trustee of an organisation that has the majority shareholding and (will shortly) have a legal agreement in place governing budgetary and spending approvals.
Precisely none of this was in place in November 2022.
The presentation to shareholders was described by someone sitting next to you at the AGM as like “night and day” compared to what the Club Board offered at the previous one. This was a shareholder who made an excellent point about the lack of due diligence done before the share transfer. That was a fair and balanced account of what happened at the AGM. Yours is not.
Frankly it is utterly exhausting and not a good use of my or anyone else’s time trying to engage with you on this, because the kernels of legitimate points on longer-term sustainability are lost in a web of inaccuracies and preconceived notions.
TJF funding of the Club is not the full answer (no one has suggested it is) but it is making a substantial material difference and is an entirely legitimate component of sustainably funding a fan owned football club.
If you don’t believe this, you’re frankly in the company of Jacqui Low and Peter Shand, who made clear to TJF in the summer of 2022 that the Club neither needed nor wanted fan fundraising to be a part of the budget.
Have you signed an NDA ?
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1 hour ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
Did you get answers on the Reliability of Income Forecasts ?
Do we have any info on the Reliability of the Forecasted £150K Losses ?
Can you advise what the Detailed Plan was to increase Revenues ? ( beyond increasing Hospitality )
Given the Cash Injection & TJF Monies - we should be Break Even this Season ( and that's allowing for a Competitive Team on the Park ) This is a £2.5MN Turnover Company -its in the Owner Managed Bracket of Companies - if we don't have people capable of turning it into Break Even without donations - change them
And what we are now saying is that TJF cannot ask awkward questions because of NDAs - so seriously what is the point ?
Even when there was a statement that they were involved with the Investment Process from the USA ( as opposed to the Fait Accompli they were presented with ) the TJF Reps in the Room said Nada
If we cannot get to Break Even this Season - TJF address that and replace the Board ( included there Directors ) under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should there ever be a requirement for a Second Round of Funding unless there is some massive issue that we are not aware of
The Board between the USA & TJF are getting £675K Cash input into a £2.5MN Turnover Company & forecasting a loss - are you kidding - you would be fired immediately in the real World
So we are a Bowling Club - Zero Ambition - if that's what people are happy with - Keep Buying the Pins
It might be helpful if people on the the forum who have signed an NDA with the club had an NDa emoji agsinst their name so we know they can’t say anything ?
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Ok a couple of points ….,
can someone actually explain what the commercial sensitivities are that require so many NDAs in a tiny tiny business like Ptfc ? It is literally ludicrous and not very helpful
now if I read this correctly we have a company with c £2.5m turnover that requires the financial explanation of Microsoft …..
it is surely not beyond the ability of anyone on the board of the club to explain our financial position on one side of an A4 piece of paper and if they can’t well they shouldn’t be there …
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Airdrie v Thistle Jan 27
in Main Jags forum
Posted
Can we get Sneddon done cross ball coaching !!