Fans close in on club takeover

[MickeyPaul]

This is quite interesting (haven't seen it mentioned yet but I apologise if it has been):

BBC SPORT | Football | Fans close in on club takeover

[all_funkt_up]

I saw it last week Mick on football365. John Nicholson featured it in his weekly column

Bag of shite really.

50'000 people have registered an interest in doing it. How many actually stump up the cash is another matter.

[ONEDUNME]

I think the idea and website has been posted somewhere here but not the fact that they are so close to reaching the target.

Could be interesting. Not sure how workable the idea is.

[andeeeee]

your 35 quid gives you 12 months membership

[pelatis]

It is certainly fun.
Members are more than 50000 (in case some don't bring in cash) and there can always be a club to buy with this kind of money. It will be like playing Football Manager

[crowie]

Originally Posted by all_funkt_up

Bag of shite really..

Just about sums it up for me.

Would hate if it was my club suddenly being run but some internet forum voting pash. How the fuck can they make decisions, major ones, on and off the pitch on the basis of briefings from club employees. If it gets as far as pickign the team, which I am sure they were saying it would, based on internet voting then its a pile of shite. There is no way you can explain properly who is doing what and how well in training,, who plays well with who, what formation/style etc is best for the team.

Would hate to be a player and busting my arse in training only to be no selected cos of some pishy public voting thing. Sounds like the fuckign X Factor football club style. Bollocks.

[all_funkt_up]

There's a multitude of problems. For example, living in the real world is one.

These fans think they can raise a million quid or so and buy a football club. The most popular choices at the moment are Leeds and Forest. You would need nearer £10m to take over one of those clubs. I think when conference club Scarborough went bust last season, they had a debt of £3m or thereabouts. And that's just the debt!

These supporters have no common ground. FC United will be a success because it was created by like minded people. They are prepared to put their money where their mouth is and make it happen. A club can only do well if it gets bums on seats. It makes the footballing world go round.

These 50'000 people are probably scattered all over the country, if not the world. The club they 'adopt' will clear its debts and within 12 months they will be back in the shit if they dont start to boost revenue streams and encourage growth.

Within 6/12 months there would be massive rifts between the new owners and the original fans. Clubs with maybe 100 or so years of history will just become the play thing of a few internet geeks who see it as a bit of a lark. I dont think the locals will stand for it. The club will risk alienating the few people that have thus far kept it ticking over.

[ONEDUNME]

Summed up perfectly. That's pretty much put all my scrambled thoughts
into some kind of logic. That's exactly what I see happening.

I still hope it happens though. It will be worth watching it develop - as long as it's not your own club that is.

[rcgills]

I think it'll be great fun to watch if they buy Leeds or Forest

Gills should be safe anyway - they can't afford us, we're 12m in debt.

[all_funkt_up]

Are they really £12m in debt? Fuck me thats shocking. I mean compared to their turn over, I'd say it's very high anyway.

[rcgills]

It's believed to be somewhere around that figure, yes. Definitely in double figures (in millions). Chairman overspent on off-field resources (bar, restaurant, banquet hall, etc.). Brings in revenue, but probably not as much as he'd hoped, and it cost a lot more than originally planned. Still, can't be that bad off, as we spent 200k on a defender last month, and we're rumoured to have offered Brighton 525k for Dean Cox. Bank seem to be supportive of the chairman, they pretty much pull the strings at the moment and if they've let him spend 200k, they must think things are stable enough financially that we can afford to do that.

But this fans' group still can't afford us

[conanthelibrarian]

No chance of working at all, but a nice little earner for the guy who thought of it.

Just shows how gullable people really are.

[keemanan]

Originally Posted by rcgills

It's believed to be somewhere around that figure, yes. Definitely in double figures (in millions). Chairman overspent on off-field resources (bar, restaurant, banquet hall, etc.). Brings in revenue, but probably not as much as he'd hoped, and it cost a lot more than originally planned. Still, can't be that bad off, as we spent 200k on a defender last month, and we're rumoured to have offered Brighton 525k for Dean Cox. Bank seem to be supportive of the chairman, they pretty much pull the strings at the moment and if they've let him spend 200k, they must think things are stable enough financially that we can afford to do that.

But this fans' group still can't afford us

What happened to those 50k fans you took to Wembley against City?

[rcgills]

It was never 50k. City fans I knew were complaining about the ticket allocation as it was, and if we'd had 50k it would've been well over half the capacity of Wembley. Think it was somewhere in the region of 30k. May have been closer to 50k for the game against Wigan the following year, mind, as I don't think they took all that many fans, leaving more space for the Gills that year.

Anyway, the vast majority of them have not been seen since. Lot of Kent football fans in general went along to support us, seeing as the Gills are the only league team in Kent. They'll since have gone back to watching whichever non-league teams they normally follow. Still, you're right, there are a lot of them who've just completely disappeared. Our chairman's actually determined we need to move to a new ground to start attracting some of them back again. Not sure that's really necessary when we're getting crowds of around 6000 in a ground which can hold around 11000, but there you go, he seems to think it's the only way forward.

[Computer Guy]

Four football clubs have already approached them, the clubs are from Division Two and the Conference. Also EA Sports are a major player in this.