Woodstock Jag

On a point of accuracy, we were 9th, but your point is otherwise valid.

They're talking about two different things. One is the player budget. The other is the club's overall budget. They are saying that the player budget was sufficient to meet the footballing objective of promotion. They are also saying that the overall budget that was set will be challenging to be kept to, presumably because anticipated sources of revenue have not materialised and costs have been higher than budgeted for.

It is possible for two things to be true at once, Jim. (1) that the money allocated to the player budget is believed to be more than adequate to mount a promotion challenge (2) that the Club's finances are "challenging" regardless of whether or not promotion is secured.

Jim this really boils down to you think Ian McCall would produce a better league outcome than Kris Doolan. That's fine. Plenty of people agree with you. The Club Board disagrees, and clearly thinks McCall should have been doing better given the resources made available to him. That's their current assessment of the situation, irrespective of whether he was in fact given sufficient resources by the previous Board to meet whatever target he was set, and irrespective of how realistic it was that that target would be met.

The assessment of the Club Board is that, with Ian McCall in charge, his objective was no longer attainable. People might reasonably disagree with that assessment, but it's not one beyond the range of reasonable conclusions a Club Board could draw.

Relative to £240k it isn’t.

The financial impact of dropping place compared to our current position is not substantial. The prize money difference between 5th and 8th is less than £50k. That figure, in the context of the gap between 5th and 4th, 5th and 3rd or even 5th and 2nd, is not substantial.

It directly contradicts what we are all told by Three Black Cats, which was that the Club was being run on a sustainable break-even basis, assumed first round exits in all cup competitions, and that the Club did not require fans to fundraise in order to help with running a balanced budget. It’s also fantasy economics. The current Club board has literally just said, even taking into account the Rangers money, that it will be “challenging” to achieve budgeted results and that this will require both spending cuts and new investment.

Jim, at no point did I say that the funds given to McCall to achieve promotion were adequate to achieve that objective. Neither you nor I know if that was the case. But as Alan Rough has now helpfully confirmed on PLZ, the budgeting assumption at the Club was that we would finish 2nd. If the manager doesn’t feel that he’s been given enough money in the summer transfer window to meet the objective imposed on him by his employers that’s really a matter for him. I’ve literally just said that the logic of their position is that they believe Dools can improve on this. Whether or not they are right is ultimately a footballing assessment. That’s what a football club board is there to do. You think their assessment of the footballing potential here is wrong. That’s fine. Entirely your prerogative. No I haven’t “ignored” this. It’s the entire premise behind the original post. They think there is a better chance of us finishing 2nd (£240k better off), 3rd (£160k better off) or 4th (£80k better off) with Doolan as manager than with McCall. That is their footballing assessment. But equally if we don’t finish lower than 8th, and would have finished 5th anyway, there is no significant financial detriment. It’s a risk, but one that they’ve decided is worth taking. Of course you can. There’s been several material changes of circumstance since the original objective was set, and part of that is that McCall’s team has underperformed expected league position so far. It is ultimately a footballing assessment whether he would have improved the position between now and the end of the season. On this opinions can reasonably differ. It’s just as well it’s an interim board then, isn’t it?

This isn’t correct. The new board gave a substantive update in early January. It was here: https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-news/board-update-5th-january-2023/ The fans have been kept updated about this. The Working Group was set up and met in late December. TJF, The PTFC Trust and the Jags Trust provided a joint update on 19th January, less than a month ago, advising that the next big decision point was mid-February. See: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/joint-update-on-future-of-fan-ownership/ A further substantive update on this can therefore be expected very soon.

Any change of manager is always an unknown quantity, especially when an untested manager is then brought in. I am assuming that the Club Board has concluded that Ian McCall is unable, or very unlikely, to meet the objective he was set at the start of the season given recent performances. They obviously think a change improves those prospects, and have acted accordingly. If they are wrong, and (say) Ian McCall would have secured us a 2nd place finish, the Club would be £240k or so better off in prize money if they hadn’t put him on gardening leave. If it makes performances on the pitch worse, and we finish, say, 8th, this makes very little difference to the financial picture versus a 5th placed finish (about £50k). I am assuming (based on the phrase “relieved of duties”) that we are simply paying off the outgoing managing team in the manner we did with Archie: not all up-front. So it’s no “new” cost there. Putting Doolan in charge limits any increase to the wage bill, especially if the promotion is on an interim basis and they reassess if things go hellishly wrong. The financial “risk” doing it this way is therefore much lower than bringing someone in from externally before the summer (reasonable guess that would be a large 5 or low 6 figure commitment, needing basically a 2nd place finish for it to be pulled off). If Doolan makes a hash of it? No significant impact on the financial or footballing wellbeing of the Club unless it really is relegation playoff territory. If he gets a bit of a bump in results? Potentially anything between £80k and £240k better off than where things stand now. Against the backdrop of the Club describing the position as “challenging” to meet the budgeted expectations set at the start of the season, that is a potentially very significant payoff for relatively little risk. Unless you think Ian McCall was on the cusp of overtaking either or both Queen’s Park and Dundee with 13 games left. Purely personal opinion? We would miss out on the playoffs or finish 4th at best on current form. But that’s just finger in the air and vibes territory on the football side. On the financial side, unless you think McCall was going to get us up to 2nd or 3rd, this is a decision that’s perfectly rational even if it turns out to be wrong.

Bluntly, this isn’t a plain situation. It’s a complicated and technical one. If things are oversimplified they will (a) mislead (b) lose nuance and (c) expose relevant parties to financial and legal risks. So it is a delicate balancing act.

Of probable assistance to those trying to make sense of this... from the TJF statement. I will go further. The accuracy of the Directors' Statement in the Annual Accounts (which claims, in effect, that a conscious decision was made to overspend to increase the player budget) must be doubted, given the answers given on this point at the AGM.

We are all of us but interim players in this universe.

Probably because you aren’t the majority shareholder and they are companies specifically run to make you money not assets of community value to which you have a sentimental attachment and whose success is measured by things other than solely profit and profitability. You don’t go to bed at night dreaming of Tesco winning an award for its caterpillar cake.

Get yourself to the Record Factory

I can't find a more up-to-date version on the SPFL website right now, but this one is fairly helpful: https://spfl.co.uk/news/spfl-prize-pot-reaches-25m This broadly tallies with other (more recent) information I've heard referred to, which is that within the top 5 the gap is about £80k per place of revenue, and that the gaps are then far smaller from 5th downwards.

That is exactly the job of a football manager. If your squad is picking up lots of injuries it’s either or both because you’ve signed a bunch of injury prone players and/or you’ve not put in place proper conditioning and injury prevention strategies. Injuries aren’t (for the most part) a case of good or bad luck. It tells you a lot about what is being prioritised behind the scenes. Good managers mitigate and plan for absences and build a squad designed to minimise them in the first place.

I am confident that the Working Group's proposals will be seen as a very significant step forward, with a genuine recognition of the role that fan democracy needs to play. I don't perceive what has been proposed to be a few tweaks. It is quite an imaginative solution given where we are now, and one that (I hope) gets us most of where TJF wanted the Club to be, while providing some important assurances to the existing Trustees that proper custodianship will be in place.

In case anyone missed it at the start of the week, there was a joint statement on the progress on the fan ownership situation: https://thejagsfoundation.co.uk/joint-update-on-future-of-fan-ownership/ Essentially we are waiting for the Trustees to consider and (we hope) ratify the proposed way forward, and for us then to set out collectively the intended timescale and milestones for implementation. There has been *a lot* of activity behind the scenes at Firhill since the change of board, and I will say this for the Trustees: this has kept several of them fully occupied. They also very clearly recognise that TJF is the primary vehicle for fan engagement, and all going well this will be reflected in the changes made to the fan ownership model. As for the question about financial contributions, it has always been TJF’s ambition, whatever the Club’s financial situation, to provide direct and indirect financial support to the Club. The decisions made by TJF to use some accumulated funds in this way reflects (a) a change of attitude of the Club Board to us as a source of funding and (b) significant behind the scenes progress to recognise and embrace TJF as the vehicle for fan engagement. We did want to have a more detailed budget proposal to put to members in the aftermath of our first full trading year. But bluntly, the working assumptions about the role TJF would play at the Club, which necessary underpins that, has changed completely in the space of the last 8 weeks. Essentially all of the feedback we’ve received from members has been to endorse the recent commitments we’ve made, and they have driven significant membership growth as well. Obviously we want to regularise the influence that our members have over our broader decision making, but with a lot of things not tied down yet about the future ownership and funding model, we think, and I suspect most members will understand, that it’s best to get the chronology on this right. The Working Group, it should be emphasised, was set up by the Trust, in its capacity as majority shareholder, to improve the ownership model. The group included people across very different segments of the Thistle support. Its purpose was never to have a long and wide consultation exercise, but to get to grips with very obvious deficiencies in the model and to fix them. TJF were at the table because the fans already broadly backed the approach and solutions we were likely to suggest. Before the end of the season (and I hope much sooner) it will become clear why this stage in Thistle’s journey has involved a lot of work behind the scenes. I entirely understand the clamour for information, but this has to be done the right way. If it wasn’t, you have my word that TJF directors would be making it abundantly clear at the earliest credible opportunity, just as we have done on so many other matters, not least the Club’s most recent set of accounts.

Sent you a DM about this.

For what it’s worth we are working on this. There are complications under company law for U16s to be full voting members but we want to find a way to overcome that as younger fans really are going to be the lifeblood of the Club going forward.

Absolutely ******* glorious.

To emphasise, I agree with you that the reasons for not doing it appear tenuous, but equally yes the above is an oversimplification in some respects. One of the main advantages of pre-match online purchases is that it's much easier for the Club to track away sales before the game (and to judge, for example, whether a particular away support warrants the opening of the Main Stand, or merely a section of the Jackie Husband Stand). That significantly impacts several aspects of match-day expenditure (think lighting, stewarding, catering etc). Also, ticket arrangements can work both ways in terms of incentives. If you've already bought a ticket on Tuesday and it's pissing it down on Saturday you'll probably still turn up because you've already paid your money. If you have a PATG option, you might put off deciding whether to travel from Kirkcaldy until the Saturday morning, and then decide not to go. This can as easily cancel out the extra revenue as the people you encourage to go to games by making other purchase options available, and is why the Club should rely on some proper data on the impact of the recent shift to see if it really has saved money. It may, as I've suggested earlier, that more measured and reliable comparisons can be made in the close season. If you're offering a PATG option, you're doing it for the entire away support, not just those who wouldn't otherwise go. So it's the admin burden of serving, on a matchday (at our level) anything up to 500 people, not the handful of people who might have been put off by no PATG option. So it's probably not "hire one person for 3 hours". It's probably needing at least 3-4 and possibly more people, especially if and when the Main Stand, rather than the Jackie Husband Stand, is being used. If you offer a cash option at the turnstile itself, it also introduces cash handling challenges that don't currently exist. Those things all have to be weighed-off against one another. Again, I agree with you that the Club should, if possible, be offering a PATG (and cash) options for both home and away fans. I think that's the best way to make football more open and accessible to punters. But it's not as straightforward as "five extra punters covers costs". It's about how well the wider matchday operation works with the people they have. If you were at the Queen's Park game on Monday, you'll know exactly what I mean.

I've said before personally that I'm sceptical it makes a huge difference to the admin burden for the reasons you state. You can rest assured that when these aspects of the match-day experience are being looked at again, TJF will make sure these questions are part of the discussion. In terms of timing this is purely one of immediate priorities. I think the Club should do some data work on away attendances and work out what impact a move to ticketed-only has had. However, you'll appreciate with the recent changes, some things are more urgent and pressing than others. We've always believed that the fan ownership community should be about the wider fan experience throughout Scotland, not just for Thistle fans, though, and I agree we need to make sure our away fan offering maximises both revenue and match-day experience. I hope that provides some reassurance.