Current Predicament...

[sonicyouth]

The sad injury suffered by Ryan Mason yesterday made me recall his display away at Wolves in the 13/14 season. As a result I spent most of my lunch watching highlights from that season and realising that my memory hadn't been rose tinted, we really did play some exciting football that year.

All I want is to get that back. Amusingly, that side were highly criticised at the time but I found it entertaining to watch.

[GL5 Red]

Put the club for sale and we can see. He is the current owner who is therfore responsible for this squad and responsible for why more and more loyal supporters are voting with their feet. How long can he continue to charge £25 and field as team consisting mainly of players taken because they are therfore cheapest option? Even those i speak to now who had previously supported him have zero faith in him and concede so long as he is at the helm the product on the pitch will be substandard.

[garethgillman]

sooner he goes the better.

For who?

Unless he can find another owner willing to buy the club, he ain't going anywhere and football club owners are a dying breed especially with what "fans" expect of them.

You have 2 types of owners:

fans - they are genuine fans of the club but have made a lot of money so willing to put it into the club and if they lose a few mil then it's fine. The problem is they soon get bored and hand over to someone else

investors - they are people wanting to make money from the club, they will come in, initially spenf a bit of cash to try and get promoted (Black) and when it doesn't happen for whatever reason they get bored and cost cut to try and get the club balanced so it doesn't lose them anymore money (SISU at Coventry).

Personally I think we are stuck with Power for a long time, there isn't many people out there with the money needed to turn this club around (hence why we have budgets under Power) and we have had our fair share of fan owners over the years so there isn't many others out there to ask so will be a football investor who will want to make money.

[GL5 Red]

Well if he is a so called businessman (bone of contention) then we will see how long he puts up with losing money each week as loyal fans will not part with cash to watch dross on the pitch. Previously he sold all the stars but now aside from the keeper no other player is worth anything.

[garethgillman]

Put the club for sale and we can see. He is the current owner who is therfore responsible for this squad and responsible for why more and more loyal supporters are voting with their feet. How long can he continue to charge £25 and field as team consisting mainly of players taken because they are therfore cheapest option? Even those i speak to now who had previously supported him have zero faith in him and concede so long as he is at the helm the product on the pitch will be substandard.

You must be from the Facebook group, such a doom monger........... if not, you will fit right in there.......

We are in the harsh realities, we are s small L1 club with little income, unless we have a sugar daddy, we aren't going to have a team of 20k a week pro's....... we go through stages of good pros and poorer pro's, that's lower league football for you

[Peter Venkman]

For who?

Unless he can find another owner willing to buy the club, he ain't going anywhere and football club owners are a dying breed especially with what "fans" expect of them.

You have 2 types of owners:

fans - they are genuine fans of the club but have made a lot of money so willing to put it into the club and if they lose a few mil then it's fine. The problem is they soon get bored and hand over to someone else

investors - they are people wanting to make money from the club, they will come in, initially spenf a bit of cash to try and get promoted (Black) and when it doesn't happen for whatever reason they get bored and cost cut to try and get the club balanced so it doesn't lose them anymore money (SISU at Coventry).

Personally I think we are stuck with Power for a long time, there isn't many people out there with the money needed to turn this club around (hence why we have budgets under Power) and we have had our fair share of fan owners over the years so there isn't many others out there to ask so will be a football investor who will want to make money.

Pretty much this, not sure about the last statement saying we will have Power for a long time, as I am certain one good offer for the club and he will leave......but....and its a massive but...there are no offers on the table.

Look what happened last time the club was put up for sale.....we were 3rd in the league 1 (I think) with a great chance of promotion and who came along as THE ONLY BIDDER? Jed Mcrory, having him and his band of merry theives as the only interested party should tell you all you need to know about how viable we are for any buyer.

[garethgillman]

Look what happened last time the club was put up for sale.....we were 3rd in the league 1 (I think) with a great chance of promotion and who came along as THE ONLY BIDDER? Jed Mcrory, having him and his band of merry theives as the only interested party should tell you all you need to know about how viable we are for any buyer.

Exactly, but "it's so different now" 

[GL5 Red]

No Facebook group Gareth. You must be one of those that claps at any old shit.  Probably clap the players off after losing at scum away back in September. Agree to disagree.

[RobertT]

The biggest challenge in finding new owners is what you have to offer- outside of the fun of chucking your hard earned cash down the drain for the fun of football.

We don't own our own ground.
We don't own any other significant assets
We are in L1 so TV revenue is minimal

Essentially, even SISU wouldn't have purchased us, and they look to be far worse than anything Power could muster.

We got lucky with Black - a bunch of mates with some cash who fancied a flutter - low chance of that happening again.  Jed and Power are the likely types you get - people with minimal personal wealth who fancy themselves as having a magic way of running a club on a break even approach - Jed a complete chancer, Power thinking that having insider knowledge would mean he could try something different and it would work.

If he were to sell, I reckon somebody would buy us, but it would be more likely we get another Jed than a Black.  The Trust should be doing everything it can to build the alternative model - they get very little buy in from Power anyway, so they may as well burn those bridges and work on the exit strategy for him, building roofs is clearly not working for them.

[RobertT]

Oh, and we'd still be mediocre with a new owner - it's the way of things since money flooded in at the higher levels.  Bournemouth are actually ruining it for the rest of us - a public image of poor boys done well, when in reality it's a highly leveraged business gamble that paid off when usually you get Bury as your result.

[garethgillman]

The biggest challenge in finding new owners is what you have to offer- outside of the fun of chucking your hard earned cash down the drain for the fun of football.

We don't own our own ground.
We don't own any other significant assets
We are in L1 so TV revenue is minimal

Essentially, even SISU wouldn't have purchased us, and they look to be far worse than anything Power could muster.

We got lucky with Black - a bunch of mates with some cash who fancied a flutter - low chance of that happening again.  Jed and Power are the likely types you get - people with minimal personal wealth who fancy themselves as having a magic way of running a club on a break even approach - Jed a complete chancer, Power thinking that having insider knowledge would mean he could try something different and it would work.

If her were to sell, I reckon somebody would buy us, but it would be more likely we get another Jed than a Black.  The Trust should be doing everything it can to build the alternative model - they get very little buy in from Power anyway, so they may as well burn those bridges and work on the exit strategy for him, building roofs is clearly not working for them.

Exactly but the trust do have some wealthy individuals on their board but one of them said he wouldn't be interested in buying the club, he has sponsored both STFC and the speedway but just can't see himself owning the club. Can't see anyone buying Power out as it's going to cost a few bob, once you add on paying off Black and giving the manager (and replacing the current one) funds to buy players, it's not going to be in the realms of many.

[RobertT]

The saddest thing from our past 20 years, well one of them, was not being able to disentangle SSW from Diamandis.  The other was the wasted opportunity of the Black money - a bit like how Swindon managed to go through 13 years of financial boom and still not manage a Town Centre redevelopment.  Having spunked all that money to just get us back to where we were I probably a cautionary enough tale to anyone thinking of buying us, which explains how we get people like Jed interested.

[otanswell]

You must be one of those that claps at any old shit.  Probably clap the players off after losing at scum away back in September.

[ronnie21]

All this business about Power in it to make money is probably true - in the long term.  He wanted a self-sustainable club that he could sell on and recoup all of the money he had ploughed in - and it must have been a fair bit as we have not had a whisper of administration since he has been here.  Let us not forget that Fitton was responsible for getting Austin to the club and got a tidy whack out of it when he was sold - even though he had relinquished control by then (I think!).

[garethgillman]

All this business about Power in it to make money is probably true - in the long term.  He wanted a self-sustainable club that he could sell on and recoup all of the money he had ploughed in - and it must have been a fair bit as we have not had a whisper of administration since he has been here.  Let us not forget that Fitton was responsible for getting Austin to the club and got a tidy whack out of it when he was sold - even though he had relinquished control by then (I think!).

No you are wrong, he is taking every penny out of the club at the moment and spending it all on Lamborghini's and Waterford..... 

Because Power said he was in it for money, that's all the Facebook group go on, if Power wasn't milking the club we would have money to buy players blah blah blah but forget we spent £600k this summer on players and Power has spent in the region 1.6m on players on 4 years, most of them have moved on and has tried to replace them but when you have players like Luongo you can't just find a similar player waiting for a club to snap them up and they command a high fee, most of our players that we sell on come in as kids with potential and then get sold for big bux in 2/3 years, seems the current crop aren't as good as Power hoped though.