Fellow Traveller

Thanks. There's another £1 I've got to spend, McK, eh?

Came up in another thread. Working from memory here, but as I remember it, Thistle did a deal for Propco to take 50% ownership of the Main Stand and City End of the stadium. This deal was done in the bottom of a property slump, so the value must have been lower than in years. Thistle supposedly own 50% of Propco, but actually only got 20% of the voting rights. Three PTFC directors at the time, Beattie, Hughes and Prentice, were all private investors in Propco, so presumably that conflict of interest meant none of them played any role whatsoever in negotiating the deal on the club side, or indeed the Propco side. Never did find out who masterminded it for us. Cowan? (Stand to be corrected on any of this.) Anyone know where they are currently with it?

Hahaha! I'm almost nostalgic for the days when all we had to worry about were the conflicts of interest involved in that scam.

In a word, no.

It's been nice to see so many old faces still here, although I can't help feeling things haven't moved on at all for the forums since Lianne's day. I find Twitter much more useful and I've never been happier to be out of this game. (BTW, on a retro theme, I've contacted admin twice now asking for advice on how to change my username back to an earlier one I used, but don't seem to have had any response. Help.) Even though you want to throttle these clubs that are giving in to this, it's very hard to blame them for caving in. There can't be many people in football at any level who are enjoying being a part of it any more. If I was being oppressed in my business like these guys are, I'd be looking for a new business. And since football isn't the main job of most of them, it must be even tougher to justify to their families. If there's a Mrs Turnbull Hutton, what's she likely to be telling him would be better for his health and happiness? Anyway, what's glaringly obvious now is that the fans have turned up to a financial fight armed mostly with a sense of fairness. I can't see that working out well for us against people whose principles are non-existent. They're playing to win and we're mostly praying for things to turn out OK in the end. If the game's finances are really in such a dire state, and that might be true, then the fans have got much more muscle than they've ever realised or taken responsibility for. I think the prospect of boycotting other clubs to put them out of business is very misguided and will eventually come back to bite us, but we all really need to sharpen up the message to our own clubs at what the cost will be to them and their sponsors if they give in to this pressure (or to their own worst instincts). Us worrying that the club will lose its soul means nothing to them. Losing its income they can understand. That's dangerous ground, but I doubt you'll get a firm commitment to reject Newco in Div 1 or in an SPL2 without being prepared to go there. But reject this and the SPL will be so weakened and the Old Firm stranglehold finally, but maybe only temporarily, broken that meaningful reconstruction will still be on the agenda. This is no time to be bluffed into a sell-out.

And as others have pointed out following Regan's idiotic comments, how can the Appeals Tribunal even consider a more severe punishment than the embargo when the head of the organisation that called them together has effectively ruled out their available options? Clearly there is a conspiracy going on, but it's a really dumb one, which at least gives some hope the wheels will come off their plans again. But who hasn't got a really sick feeling in their gut about this now?

No, no, no. Come on, the last thing we need is clubs going under and the league crumbling around us. Who would love that most? The knuckle draggers who support the newco and now actively seek the collapse of all other clubs just to prove a point. I don't like Kilmarnock or the way they've been run. A lot of Kilmarnock fans feel the same way. They opposed newco, but their chairman did the dirty on them. It does no good now to wish or try to kill them off now because of that. What they need is help to get change at their club. The idea of the game is for clubs to survive. It's not a last man standing competition. And we above all ought to be very, very careful about wishing ill on other clubs because of the way they vote or the bad way they've been run because that's exactly the sort of thing that could come back one day and kill us.

We sure can pick our moments. If ever there was a day not to throw yourself into the comforting arms of the SFA, this was it. Statement number five can't be far behind...

That much I'd figured out and I can even grasp the idea that the Countess has a negative view about this person - who I'd not heard of until the other thread about her. From what I've heard since, I don't know that I'd be a fan of hers either, but nonetheless I maybe hoped if people had a gripe with someone at the club that we'd evolved to a point where that could be expressed in a more open fashion. There's enough childishness around in Scottish football as we've all been seeing yesterday and today. When people know who you are behind your screen name, it's actually quite liberating, as many of us know. But I apologise for calling it shit. It is, but I shouldn't have said so in polite company.

Far be it from me to cast the first stone, but in all seriousness, what is this shit?

But somewhat artificial to read the club's statements without the broader context created by the chairman's public utterances on the issue, the negative response to which kicked off this seemingly endless stream of pronouncements from the club.

Bolt the doors!

A stone-cold genius on Twitter has just suggested the simplest solution of all - Celtic volunteer to go to Div 3 with them. Don't let the arse cheeks be parted. (Pretty good advice all round.)

Read the Clyde account of the meeting. It's a bit more forthright than the Thistle version and shouldn't leave anyone in any doubt about the disgusting pressure and bullying being placed on the SFL clubs, including by the SFA, to bring about a solution with only one aim - save newco to save the SPL. http://www.clydefc.co.uk/news/2012/07/04/4137/ If a club doesn't take a stand against this, what's it all for?

Principle says Newco start at the bottom tier like anybody else would. Whatever the structure, they go to the back of the queue. Accept anything else and all you've ever been doing is haggling over the price you can be bought for.

Pretty much exactly how I read it. We don't want our fingerprints on it, but will accept it if passed down to us from on high by the SFA. And then it just comes down to whether people can stomach sharing a league with Newco next season. For me, it would be game over, but I don't begrudge anyone spending their money to prop up a self-confessedly pre-destined sporting competition. Put your mortgage on Newco for the title and you might come out well ahead here.

That's a bit of a harsh judgement on Jim Spence who has consistently been one of the very few voices you can trust in this. Sometimes they're really just reporting what was said, which is a valuable service.

I'm just going by what reporters were tweeting from Hampden. This is the argument laid out to the SFL clubs. I'm not responsible for the truth of it!

I think the argument is Rangers in Div 3, no TV money. No TV money, no settlement payment to the SFL from the SPL. So clubs would lose out. SPL putting a gun to our heads by claiming Sky and ESPN are putting a gun to theirs. And whoever signed that contract really needs to be clearing his desk.

We have to be fair to David Beattie and understand that he's an enthusiast for these plans. He went out of his way to go to bat for them in not one, but two newspaper interviews. He said the plans were clever and innovative with very little downside to them. He said this could be the making of Scottish football and even if Rangers win the First Division this season "which they probably will do" (his words), then at least play-offs would give us "something to play for as well". That's where he is. We may think he's dead wrong, we may think he hasn't got a clue about what his own football club is all about, or we may even agree with his position. But that's his instinct on it and so any climbdown now in the face of massive opposition has to be a delicate process otherwise he looks humiliated. And if he decides to press on and support the proposals, then we know his vote was in the bag from the start and no amount of howling was going to sway him. That would also be a delicate PR predicament. So maybe we need to give him a little breathing space, give him a chance to hunt out a fig leaf or two to cover his embarrassment. And if we get a meeting next week to express a point of view, somebody bring the smelling salts because it's going to have more scare stories than a Halloween campfire.

I can't tell a lie - I won't sleep much tonight worrying about the recently discovered "unheard voice". There are clearly tens of thousands of football fans living in so much fear that they are too scared to press a button on the Scotsman poll in case they are hunted down and yelled at by hot heads and the baying mob. No one should live with this kind of terror and, frankly, something ought to be done about it.

I'd be surprised if anyone was unaware of how precarious the club's finances are. I'd also be shocked if the fans on here who have suggested they will not renew season tickets didn't do it with a very heavy heart precisiely because they know what's at stake. Maybe David Beattie could use the old Tom Hughes "Armageddon" template to sway a few doubters: http://jagsforum.posterous.com/armageddon-2006

That might be the point. For what it's worth, I have some opinions about this on my blog. Nothing new, but nothing neutral.

The Bairns Trust have issued a statement now. http://www.bairnstrust.com/ We all may have missed it, but the Jags Trust quietly stated its view yesterday. http://www.jagstrust.co.uk/

The fact that this thread isn't called Michelle Moan is just another sign of how far standards have gone downhill lately.