Thetownend.com

After the discussions regarding the Trust etc, in 'The Board, consultancy fees...' thread, I thought I'd set this up..

 For those who want Complete Control...

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeTw_p_WglY

...and for those wanting Some Control:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPCBN6ufYyE

The Trust have looked an embarrassing outfit recently - fuck knows how they could run a football club and provide any meaningful funds.

you could say the same of the current board, or what's left of them.

The fans could have complete control of the club.

Sadly we dont have the numbers really to make it count...3-5 thousand hardened fans will not get the job done.
20 odd thousand or so would make an impresion of sorts....a good fan ownership with passion and zeal would encourage backers into the club...just cant ever see it happening :(

Not sure we'd need 20,000 at this level, getting that many through the turnstiles would be a good start though!

http://www.football365.com/f365-features/8641798/Has-Tide-Turned-For-Fan-Ownership-

We will never get 20,000 fans .....what i meant to say was 20,000 pledging money...industry maybe and fans who pop in now and again...some well off fans donating a lot more to make up for others etc....i am not an expert but maybe someone could bring some figures together regarding fan numbers and say £200 pledges to get it up and running.

I agree with the earlier post that 51% fan ownership, 49% investor(s) would be the holy grail. I can't see that in the short term though.

The current board (a fat man and some mates who appear, disappear, reappear, disappear) just make you feel we would be in no worse off place if we had a go ourselves via The Trust.

I'd like to see the club wholly owned by fans who then appoint a board to actually run the club. This is due to most fans being fuckwits who would bankrupt the club in weeks given the opportunity.

Would be good to understand how it works in other countries, such as Germany and Spain. Don't Real Madrid (or is it Barcelona) fans own the club and then appoint someone to run it, normally the person who promises to spend the most amount of money buying the biggest star players on the planet?

As mentioned on the other thread, has to be (b)...à la Bundesliga.  German clubs are run by the fans, for the fans.  Sadly, we are where we are, and I can't see how we could emulate that given where we are now.

It's Real Madrid AND Barcelona.

Barcelona are a true co-operative. The difference between them and us is that they've got over 100, 000 equal owners. We'd be lucky to get 5000. Oh and they also generate a huge amount of income. Bundesliga  clubs, as someone has already mentioned,  are subsidised up the arse. I can't see Swindon Borough Council spending vast amounts on the club.

I can't imagine too many businessmen queuing up to part with their money with a load of eggs in replica shirts with their name on dictating how's it's spent (spunked)

Aren't Barcelona / Real Madrid being investigated by the EU for illegal government subsidies?

Fan ownership will never happen here.

The most I could ever hope for would be co-opted representation

Then the fans fall out with the board for not spending enough!

Just sadly can't see it happening here without some expertise and backing to the Trust.  Where it does seem to have worked its where they have got on board with investors and businesses,  we nearly reached that state with Power.

Even that isn't a panacea though. The German way has got a lot of press recently, and they do a lot of things right but it's not all rosy, particularly in their lower divisions. Give this a quick perusal

http://www.soccernomics-agency.com/?p=457

Key paragraph -

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

That's probably not how it would work though is it? The idea of all fans voting on all decisions isn't practical, the failure of the 'MyFootballClub' project showed that. What would happen under fan ownership is that there would be a board running the club, as there is now.

The difference is this board, or at least part of it if it was co-ownership, would be elected annually by the fans through the Trust using a one member one vote system. This board, or at least the elected members, would therefore be totally accountable to the fans.

This!

I'm honestly not arsed anymore, I just want the club to be run properly and an open dialogue between the fans and club without the bullshit in between.

With Trust ownership or part ownership there would have to be an open dialogue, or the directors wouldn't be re elected.

Never happend before and no signs of it changing.

Could the fans run the club properly though? I fear the majority of fans would choose to keep Matt Ritchie and go bust instead.


Untrue, when Fitton was chairman there was a great dialogue with fans and a high transparency.

to a degree yes, but plenty of bullshit inbetween, secrecy etc imo

As Pets has pointed out, it's not like every potential player sale would go to a popular vote. Those elected to the club's board would have a duty to act responsibly, as the club's board has that duty now, the difference being that if they didn't they could be voted off by the supporters and replaced.

As many people have intimated, the ideal would have been for the Trust to have secured an interest in the club while we had the broadly sympathetic Fitton and Wray in charge. The Trust did in fact increase its shareholding significantly during that period, with a view to increasing it further with the assistance of the club, only to see it all but wiped out in the end by Andrew Black as he sought to dilute the holdings of his fellow owners. However, Trust membership was at a spectacular low during the good times, and it is hard for a chairman - however sympathetic - to give serious consideration to offering any level of official influence to a group that at the time could claim to speak for less than 0.5% of the greater Swindon supporter base (if we assume that to be the 30,000 or so who go to Wembley).

Whatever anyone thinks of the current or past or future owners of the club, anyone interested in fan representation at board level needs to join the Trust. It isn't going to happen any other way, and only when it has a membership numbered in the 1000s can it claim with any legitimacy to represent a significant cross-section of the Swindon fanbase.

Swansea model would be ideal (so b). A consortium of businessmen who are fans of the club leading it sensibly for the long term, with meaningful fan representation.

The main problem is the enormous apathy of the vast majority of fans. Even when the club was on the brink of insolvency only about 1,000 fans could be mustered to join the Trust. In good times you're probably looking at 250 tops.

You see the evidence of this all the time on here and elsewhere with comments on how the Trust should do this or that but invariably the posters refer to the Trust as "them" i.e. they want someone else to actually put the time in and have no intention of doing anything themselves, not even joining as a member.

Unless this changes, and I dont see any prospect of that happening, the most the Trust could achieve would be a small shareholding and maybe an elected rep on the club board. Even that is a long way off though.

The only scenario where fan ownership would be likely would be an AFC Wimbledon / Chester type situation where the club reforms at the bottom of the league pyramid.

 I keep harping on about this, but up until the mid 80's we did in effect have fan ownership.

 Shares were sold, mostly in the works, so many fans became shareholders, and had a vote as in a Co-Op system of one share one vote.

 Directors then had to put themselves up for re-election, and could be voted off.  The complaint with the system by the mid 80's, was that it it discouraged anybody wishing to put money in and was expensive to administer, what with shareholders passing away. moving etc.

So it was changed to your shareholding carrying that number of votes.  At first, incoming Boards still paid a bit of lip service to the tradition....even the Board of SSW and Carson, showed some respect for long standing small shareholders....but ripping up of the democratic element was the worst thing the last Board did.  So the present lot whoever's left have no accountability whatsoever, other than to the sort of cyber world, we now seem to inhabit.

This is not a dig but my reasons for not joining yet are simply I do not know what the trust is aiming to do? What is the difference between the trust and the supporters club? why do we need two separate supporters groups? genuine questions 

 Further....Rikki Hunt, who we know has an iffy reputation, did in fact try to encourage grassroots democracy, by selling a pound share to fans, so that they could start a shareholding. Also he was true to his word as a couple of mates took him up on it.

My take on this from a few weeks back in another thread.

Thanks Ardiles. Be interesting to see how many are a member of both

If the fans truly want ownership of the club then they would need to set up an AFC Swindon and form a breakaway team as per FC United of Manchester. I dont feel that right now there would be enough interest but its an option which although would be a difficult one is always available to us as fans should things go badly.

To establish - or re-establish, in deference to Reg - fan representation at board level at Swindon Town Football Club.

What the flying fuck are you on about Fatters ?

Ummmm. The fans wouldn't own the club though they'd only own AFC Swindon, just like AFC United of Manc fans don't own any part of Man United. Doing anything along those lines will only ever be a last resort.

Isn't there already a sunday football team called AFC Swindon ?

Wycombe, Exeter, Swansea and Pompey would suggest otherwise.

[url width=350 height=188]http://replygif.net/i/242.gif[/url]

I am.

Although i joined the trust as a lifetime member (saved me renewing every year) years and years ago. I should take more interest but like a lot of people i don't.

Been in the supporters club for a lot longer, mainly because i do the pounds for points thing every season, it's cost me a lot the last couple of seasons. However i prefer that to the 10-11 season where i didn't pay out much but got depressed instead...

Great point. There are lots of armchair quarterbacks* happy to say what others should be doing, without any intention to do something themselves.

(*wrong sport)

If the Trust sent out a clear message that they wish to come on board with a controlling interest in the club I'd join....until then I'm like a lot who are confused as to what they actually do.

Took me 2 seconds on the Trust website:


Although the Trust perhaps haven't been as vocal as they could be, maybe people should do a little research for themselves before demanding that they should be spoon fed information.

As a organization though who want to increase numbers maybe they should spoon feed it a bit more. When was the last time you seen them at a game wandering around speaking to fans?

Not for a long while, but that's more due to me hardly going to a game for the last two seasons.

The Trust lost a lot of focus in the last few years and perhaps got a bit too complacent post-Diamandis.

The ideal time to push forward would've been early in the Fitton era when the membership was still quite high, but understandably there was a bit of a lull when things calmed down after Fitton's consortium came in. As a Trust board member at the time, there were plans to make progress with fan representation and move further forward on the ground redevelopment, but with the passing of time and the resignation of several board members things kind of lost their way.

I'd love to dedicate more time to the Trust again because I really believe in what they/it stands for, but my personal situation dictates otherwise. Maybe in the future.

We all saw what the Trust did to pauld. Steer clear :)

Yeah, I'm going bald enough as it is.