Woodstock Jag
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Posts posted by Woodstock Jag
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8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
OK - So why is it stated that the Club will likely approach TJF to Sign off a second Tranche of Shares being sold for £500K in Q1 of this Year
It isn’t.
It’s stated that the Club Board wants to progress further investment.
If this comes to anything then the PTFC Trust will be approached with the details of the proposal, of which TJF is one trustee.
And no investment deal will be allowed to progress (per the terms of the Club-Trust Agreement) without the approval of the beneficiaries in a fan vote.
If you want to know why the Club Board is keen to progress this in Q1, ask them directly. Speaking as one of TJF’s representatives at Trustee meetings, I see absolutely no hurry for any further investment, and given the influence TJF Board members will have in communicating what they think of any proposals with the wider fan base, I am unconcerned.
If it’s a bad deal we’ll say so and the fans can make up their own mind.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:There is no immediate requirements regards the Stadium
So what? Are you suggesting that the Club should decline all investment proposals, regardless of how favourable or unfavourable, until Glasgow City Council revokes a safety certificate? This is really weird Jim.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:We have any losses covered with Tranche 1
Tranche 1 was a bailout to deal with the immediate cashflow problems. It wasn’t a catch-all solution to all the Club’s longer-term sustainability needs. No one ever said it was.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:Why would you need Tranche 2 ?
We don’t.
But the Club Board wants it, to enable it to do things it can’t currently do, because we don’t have large capital reserves.
Whether those things warrant investment and if so on what terms remains to be seen. That’s a completely hypothetical question until the Trustees are presented with something.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:And as I have pointed out - Morton with significantly lower income Streams seem to be doing OK
They’ve been losing large six figure sums in consecutive seasons and they’ve had two large Old Firm away day cup ties, run a smaller squad than we do.
I think you’re making the argument here that we should rig the balls in the domestic cup draws in future and appoint Dougie Imrie as our manager?
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:I can see No circumstances where there would remotely be a requirement for selling off more Shares ?
Okay, then make sure you’re a beneficiary of the PTFC Trust and vote no on any proposal that’s presented to you.
As a representative of one of the Trustees, I will not be prejudging a proposal that hasn’t even been put to us.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:So why is it stated that there is likely to be an approach to do so in Q1 ?
Jim if I offered you £500k now, £500k in June, or £500k in 2047, which would you pick?
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:As for the notion that somehow we require more resources to get more Revenue - that's simply nonsensical ( Plus we have a remaining £350K of the Original Investment )
It’s not nonsensical. There are some types of revenue growth that require any business to invest up-front capital in facilities improvements, or to hire more effective staff (for example) to deliver better commercial returns.
You yourself, on this very forum, were calling for the Club to spend (what would be) tens of thousands of pounds improving the toilets, on the grounds that it would attract more fans to the ground in the longer term and that this would increase income and make the Club more sustainable.
8 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:TJF as part the majority Shareholding Group should be asking Questions why its even being mentioned as it makes no sense on any level
As we explained in our post-AGM update we met with Donald McClymont (and other Club Board members) and asked them several questions about the investment process and what lay behind the desire to progress the investment this season.
That is an ongoing discussion, but one about which there is nothing new of substance to say unless and until the Trustees are presented with a formal proposal document. Which hasn’t happened.
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Jim asks about “how Morton are doing it”.
The short answer is that they sustained six-figure losses last season and the year before that. Just like Thistle did. The exact quantum for 2022-23 will be revealed soon (their accounts are due shortly) but this is how the Greenock Telegraph reported it in September:
Morton also had a lucrative cup tie against Celtic at Celtic Park last season, so it looks like their “budgeted” performance may well have been similar to our own.
Morton, of course, relied on a two million pound write-off from the departing Rae family in 2021 to make their fan ownership implementation able to happen.
As to whether Morton required a bailout on cashflow: they may well have done. That said, they drew Rangers at Ibrox in the League Cup this year, which I’m sure will have helped.
Their cashflow position wasn’t in great nick (and quite similar to ours) at the end of the 2021-22 season:
(Morton 2021-22)
(Thistle 2021-22)
Morton is also differently structured than Thistle (for example Cappielow is owned by a separate company), and run a smaller first team squad than we do. If I had to guess (it’s not readily apparent as their accounts are less detailed) I’d say they’re probably a lower turnover company with lower fixed off-field costs than Thistle, Cappielow being a dump.
So if Jim’s point is that Morton are probably doing slightly better in footballing terms than their finances would suggest they should, and that Dougie Imrie had a jammy cup draw record, then yeah, no arguments here.
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17 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
Why would the Club require another £500K and sell off more Shares given the statements made at the AGM regards Finances ?
There was no immediate requirement regards Stadium Repairs so why would we need another £500K ?
The Club does not “require” another £500k.
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The possibility of a second tranche of investment has been prominently advertised:
(a) at the point the original investment was completed on 5th October 2023
(b) at the Club’s AGM on 11th January 2024, which Jim attended (here is the slide from the presentation pack, which Richard Beastall specifically spoke to on potential uses for tranche 2) - the forecasts presented to shareholders also indicated that the cashflow of the business would remain positive even without the investment.
(c) in the Club’s post AGM update of 16th January 2024
(d) in TJF’s AGM summary report, published on 22 January 2024.
So I hope anyone given the impression that this potential investment was somehow subtly released to fans at the back of the Census report is quickly disabused of that notion.
Having attended a meeting of the Trustees on Monday 12th February I can confirm that no second tranche proposal has yet been presented to the Trustees.
As and when a proposal is presented, we will consider it on its merits, ask more detailed questions and for further information (including financial), and then come to a view. That view will be set out in public for all PTFC Trust beneficiaries to consider, and no investment will go ahead without a prior vote to approve it from the 2400 plus beneficiaries of the PTFC Trust.
We will not be taking lessons in diplomacy from those who would have us pre-empt this process. The ultimate decision is not one for us to make: we are simply a set of custodians representing the interests of the fans who will themselves decide if any further investment is desirable, and if so on what terms.
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Just a quick update to say thank you to all the beneficiaries who got in touch about the draft Club-Trust Agreement during the consultation phase. We had a Trustees meeting yesterday evening to discuss the feedback and have reverted to the Club. Our aspiration remains for this to be signed and put into force later this month, but we'll keep you posted.
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The results from the TJF Census are now published, together with a report providing (hopefully) a pretty comprehensive update on the key priorities raised by members in late October/early November.
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Three observations:
1. The efforts to keep the Youth Academy going were specifically at the urging of the current management team
2. The community links of an Academy are not solely concerned with the community football initiatives
3. Whilst a cost-benefit analysis is absolutely a sensible thing to do (and sustainability work has been ongoing for several months now at the Academy) it's an odd thing to call for if someone has already made up their mind that it isn't affordable. Surely it's precisely that exercise that will determine whether that is the case?
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1 hour ago, Big Dan said:
Thanks for that, do we have any idea of the cost of running an effective Academy. I realise that there may be a degree of commercial confidentiality over stats but a ball park estimate may give us an idea.
The honest answer is that I don't have those sorts of numbers to hand and it depends.
The main costs are (a) staff and (b) facilities - the costs of these vary drastically depending on whether there is overlap with the Club and/or the terms on which facilities can be accessed.
The corporate structure also impacts access to things like grants.
tl;dr it's quite complicated and not my area!
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2 hours ago, fifexile said:
I see the benefits of academy players as basically twofold. Bringing 2 or 3 players through each season reduces the need to sign players. It also gives us assets to sell on. We can argue how successful or not we are doing that but it also shows potential recruits that (1) there's a track record of academy graduates making it to the 1st team and (2) that leads to them being in the 'shop window' which can lead to moves to bigger clubs.
All this needs to be set against the cost of running the academy but that's a separate debate!
The key benefit is a conveyor-belt of talent that generates (at least initially) inexpensive first-team players and/or transfer and sell-on fees further down the line. I understand that, across Liam Lindsay, Kevin Nisbet, Aidan Fitzpatrick, James Penrice and others, the Academy has (there or thereabouts) generated revenue for the Club well into 7-figures. The sell-on fees and training compensation payments can get really quite substantial if a player goes on to bigger and better things.
Worth emphasising that, at the moment, the Club does not pay to run the Academy. After exhausting the (extensive) capital put in by Colin Weir, the Academy is being funded mostly by a benefactor, partly by sponsorship and partly by the new TJF pledge, this season.
There are legitimate questions about how to make the Academy sustainable to fund in the longer-term, but as indicated in the TJF consultation on the pledge, the Club simply wasn't in the position to commit financial (or major administrative) support to it back in the summer.
Unless a decision is made to make savings elsewhere in the Club's budget, I don't anticipate this changing. The solution will therefore need to find a way of meeting costs in the short-term and an equitable way of splitting income from graduates sold-on in the longer-term.
Without the intervention of the benefactor in late summer, let's be clear though: there would be no Thistle Weir Youth Academy still in existence.
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1 hour ago, Lenziejag said:
I guess the club didn’t see much of the other £1.9M either.
About £300k of it was gone before 3BC bought the Club anyway. And about £200k of it was sitting in the company at year end 2021-22 (plus some non-cash assets).
I’d guess a significant six figure sum has also gone on duties, professional services and other administrative fees.
And as I said earlier, at least £530k went into the Club directly in the 2020-21 season. But the Club accounts (to me) aren’t entirely clear exactly how that money went in and was accounted for at the Thistle end.
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1 hour ago, Lenziejag said:
Kind of what I am getting at is, how much of the £1.3M and the £1.7M did the club see in cash.
Zero.
The £1.3 million was the sum paid to existing shareholders to acquire the majority shareholding.
The £1.7 million was a sum paid to a property company for two bits of land, which were (after considerable delay) gifted back to the Club.
The Club did not receive any of the money given to the property company (despite being a shareholder in it) because the people who put the capital into the property company in the first place had a preferential distribution.
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57 minutes ago, Lenziejag said:
Whatever happened to the £5M that Colin Weir gave to Three Black Cats to manage ?
It was £4.9 million (as a soft loan, for working capital) and it eroded as follows:
A few hundred grand went into activities preceding the acquisition of the Club (likely connected to the ill-fated training ground)
£1.3 million of it went into buying the majority shareholding in the Club (for which there will also have been, probably, six figure professional advisory and other costs)
£1.7 million of it went into buying the Main Stand and Bing from Firhill Developments Limited (plus advisory and other costs)
£800k of cash was burned through during the 2020-21 COVID season (of which at least £530k is explicitly recognised as having been committed to 3BC’s only subsidiary, the Football Club). Without those commitments, and without furlough and other grant income, the Club would have lost about £1 million that year.
Further professional advisory and other admin costs appear to have reduced the cash pot of 3BC further in 2021-22. This coincides with a season in which the Club had operating losses of more than £200k, but it also coincides with the transfer of the Main Stand and Bing back to the Club.
And now 3BC no longer exists, so we will never properly know its financial activity in 2022-23.
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“You’re not allowed to count reliable and repeatable six-figure income from the Club’s core customers! That’s cheating and doesn’t suit my argument and agenda!”
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2 minutes ago, javeajag said:
I think I suggested a number of practical ideas !
This wasn't aimed at you!
A lot of the good ideas that have come out (for example in this thread) are fundamentally ones for the Football Club (and at that, ones that have logistical, practical and resource implications) rather than for TJF.
But there are several examples on this thread of one individual in particular trying to blame TJF for things that fundamentally just aren't our responsibility, and which show a total disregard for the model of "fan owned, not fan run".
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38 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.
I should stress that, despite my frustrations on here sometimes, it is a rewarding thing to represent 1650+ fellow Thistle fans. The key challenge is not placing all of the burden on a very small number of people, because otherwise, bluntly, they'll burn out. It's why I was delighted that we were able to bring Derek McLeish on board at the turn of the year after Sandy stepped back, because running a successful members' organisation at the heart of a fan ownership arrangement is difficult even in the most benign of environments. New energy and ideas to relieve the battle-weary is a good thing.
TJF has had to deal with some absolutely extraordinary, bizarre, irrational and chaotic behaviour from other people in positions of power in the last 4 years. It has had to try to exert influence first from completely outside the tent and then from (underappreciated) minority positions inside of it.
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.
There will be some people that TJF, the PTFC Trust and the Club Board can never keep happy. They revel in having a grievance with zero responsibility. The challenge is to ensure that their negative energy doesn't get in the way of achieving positive things.
Consistently, I find that the most vocal armchair critics give very limited to no consideration of who fills the void in organisations if the people already there leave.
Or put another way, they should be careful what they wish for or they might get it.
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11 minutes ago, Jordanhill Jag said:
Yeah Yeah - you can find the Money to upgrade Hospitality and the 71 Club ( and an external Contractor was used ) because thats part of the Big Cunning Plan that Hospitality is going to resolve the Revenue Issue - but you cant find the Cash for upgrading the Women's Toilets which might actually assist in Growing the Fan Base long term
As for HGT Jlo announced over a Year Ago that the Club would be Stocking Free Sanitary Products in the Female Toilets
There was No Snarky Comment - PR exercises are pointless -unless you improve the overall Matchday Experience for Females which Toilets are an important part of
And I honestly cannot believe that in this Day and Age a Fans Group is questioning upgrading Female Toilets -that are circa 30 Years Old against upgrading Hospitality and the 71 Corporate Lounge
Why does TJF have to “ Consult” about upgrading Female Toilets - what complete and utter Rubbish
If this was under Jlo TJF would be given her Pelters ( and I was no Fan of the Jlo Tenure ) but seriously this is ridiculous
This post has very neatly encapsulated how you deliberately misconstrue and twist things to suit your agenda, accusing people of saying things they clearly haven't said. It is profoundly bad faith on your part to suggest that I was somehow "questioning" whether the female toilets should be upgraded.
I will simply make three observations:
(a) No one here has questioned whether the female toilets should be upgraded - they should.
- I made a separate observation about the provision of hot water in all toilets, which the Club has previously ruled-out installing on grounds of cost.
(b) No one on here has said that the hospitality lounge should be a higher priority than toilets
- You have inferred that from the fact that the Club has spent some money doing the lounges up. You have absolutely no idea whether they plan to make major improvements to the toilets facilities (whether those for women or for anyone else) because you haven't even asked them.
(c) Despite pronouncements (or in your terms, "PR-exercises") on sanitary provision by the previous board, if you actually spoke to any female fans you would know that last season there was a persistent problem with supplies running out and not being replenished.
- Her Game Too raised this with Beth at the Club shortly after they formed at Thistle and the result was consistently better-stocked sanitary provision in the women's toilets in both stands. Not PR-exercises: practical results.
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57 minutes ago, elevenone said:
I am going to leave out the aside back and forth revenue chat as it is outwith the full realms of my understanding albeit an interesting read.
However @Jordanhill Jag (and I haven’t agreed much with him in the past) has it spot on with small details like the toilets, facilities etc being of importance. To use an example :- me and my lad attended all home games together then he started stepping out with new girlfriend of non football persuasion. Takes her to a few games and after seeing what the toilets are like, catering etc she is like no thanks not for me. End result being she no longer will attend and has most Saturdays taken him away from Firhill too as they are happier spending their dosh at cinema,bowling,pub etc where they can enjoy a better level of comfort. Knock on effect is £44 per home game lost outwith other matchday spends (50-50,programme,food etc) That is obv a tiny sample but that adds up over a season.
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.
Absolutely. Facilities, including the toilets, are an important part of the picture. For what it's worth, I know that some work has actually been done this season on the toilet facilities, but this was largely a tidy-up and paint-job. The Club has quite a small facilities team (including volunteers) but they've made some really good progress in places this year.
Edit: I should add here that although Jim makes snarky references on here to the Her Game Too presence and interventions at the Club, they were actually responsible for addressing a long-standing problem with the women's toilets in terms of getting the Club to include properly stocked sanitary facilities. It's an important reminder of the direct influence that fan groups and fan activism can have.
For the benefit of those who weren't at the AGM, questions were specifically asked about facilities and stadium maintenance (by The Jags Trust, the Trustees agreed to split the themes of our questions between us to cover as much of what had been brought to us by the fans as possible).
The CEO, Chris Ross, explained that the Club has a rolling list of key facilities priorities (with safety compliance essentially being top of the list). For example, there has been a rolling programme to replace or fix broken seats in both stands over the course of this season.
Proper renovation of facilities has up-front cost implications, and when you're a Club without a significant cash buffer, it's difficult to commit to more ambitious projects. The lack of hot water in the toilets is one that's come up before (indeed, it's come up at previous AGMs) and the reason for not doing it has always come down to the cost being very substantial to install it.
This is where fan ownership comes in in terms of helping to shape priorities of the Club, but also identifying people and businesses within the Thistle community who can help.
Improving facilities was something that came up time and time again in the TJF Census survey, which we're hoping to get the results out on soon. It'll also be one of the things we seek to do follow-on consultation on in conjunction with the Club, so that there is a better sense of what fans think is more and less important to their match-day experience.
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I'll be the first person to admit that TJF has made some mistakes along this journey.
But I hope this exchange illustrates the sometimes impossible position that TJF were put in at various points. It's extremely easy for Thistle's armchair generals, some of whom (like JJ) aren't even TJF members, to be gung-ho about what they would have done in our position.
They didn't have to build the relationships just to get in the room, let alone to get some influence over either the Trust or the Club Board. They didn't have to manage the expectations of many hundreds of fans, most of whom were giving an overriding message of urging TJF to be pragmatic and to make compromises on their behalf in the interests of unifying the fanbase.
If you think you can do better, stand for the Club Board representative positions later in 2024. Stand for election to the TJF Board. Your success will be everyone's success.
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5 minutes ago, javeajag said:
NDAs are vastly over rated, rarely enforced and generally over used. What bad thing would have happened if they were not used.
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.
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9 minutes ago, javeajag said:
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.
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?
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1 minute ago, javeajag said:
Have you signed an NDA ?
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.
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A quick Google away:
Average Home League attendance 2022-23: 3127
Average Home League attendance 2023-24 so far: 3470
An 11% improvement.
Nuff said.
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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.
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49 minutes ago, Lenziejag said:
I understand you are explaining some of the areas contributing to the improvement in the loss for 23/24 compared to 22/23. One of the difficulties with using terms like trivial are that people have different ideas of what that actually means.
Okay I’ll quantify each use of the phrase “non-trivial”.
TJF money is a gain this financial year compared to last of over £170k.
According to the draft accounts, getting sponsorship back to 2021-22 levels would raise an extra £60k in the income column.
And according to the presentation given to shareholders at the AGM, the spend on the management team is projected to be down this season by a significant sum (a large five figure sum).
They are therefore “non-trivial” because they materially change the position in terms of the size of the deficit being run. Delivering on those three things alone plausibly could address as much as half of a £600k+ deficit, and that’s before you get into late phasing of playoff income, substantially higher season ticket sales and any gains to have been made in other parts of the business.
Second Tranche Investment
in Main Jags forum
Posted
That you’ve jumped the gun. Again.
No. Simply that we won’t be rejecting a proposal that doesn’t yet exist when we haven’t even seen it!
It isn’t. Any second tranche is subject to a beneficiary vote. So unless you think the Club Board exhibits mind control over more than half of the beneficiaries, nothing is a “foregone conclusion”.
That’s not for me to say. That’s for the Club Board and any investors to present a costed financial proposal on.
But again, I find it baffling that you’re saying there were “no stadium issues” at the AGM. This is nonsense. Morag McHaffie, on behalf of the Jags Trust (one of the trustees) asked about stadium maintenance and Chris Ross gave a detailed answer about the approach to stadium maintenance and resourcing.
The Club acknowledged that there are lots of issues with the stadium, and that some of its existing budget is being used to remedy things like seat replacement, blown windows in the Colin Weir, and to do some roof repairs to the Jackie Husband Stand. Some of it had also been used to upgrade catering facilities in the Aitken Suite and the hospitality lounges, which are now in drastically better condition than they were 12 months ago.
What they also said was that existing resources were prioritised towards ensuring the safety certificate would be renewed every year. They readily acknowledged that Firhill is a stadium with a long list of maintenance and aged facilities issues. There are plenty of things to do with stadium maintenance and facilities that we could do if we had £500k extra in the bank that we can’t do now.
The question is whether those things are sufficiently high priority and value for money. We await the Club’s and investors’ detailed proposals on this before coming to a view. Which is the correct approach. Not dismissing things out of hand based on incomplete information.
Yes, that’s what Richard Beastall’s forecasts said.
That’s for the Club to set out and argue for. Not me. It’s not my proposal.
A decisive majority of TJF members said it was important or very important that Thistle remains majority fan owned. That much is true.
That is precisely why we insisted on a properly embedded legal guarantee of majority fan ownership as a condition of tranche 1.
That is why we insisted on a beneficiary vote to be a precondition of any future investment that would alter the share capital of the club.
Our survey highlighted a lot of different things about TJF members’ priorities. For example, financial sustainability was considered as important by more members than majority fan ownership.
As a proportion of overall open text responses, far more fans raised issues to do with stadium maintenance and facilities than they did about corporate governance or shareholdings.
A lot of the things we can do to improve the fan and matchday experience won’t cost much money: they’re simply about better understanding and engaging with fans.
But some things will cost money, and that money will often have to come up front, rather than be spread over multiple seasons (unless the Club wants to take out debt, which it appears very reluctant to do, understandably).
So there is a trade off there. Are the fans content to make trade offs for those bigger ticket initiatives, or not?
That’s not for me to say. That’s for them to say. If and when they are asked. Which they have to be!