Brilliant Disguise

With answers like that you could be as Politician or a Secondhand Car Salesman

At least you are admitting there are issues at the club. It is rather pompous and dismissive of you to suggest that fans don’t have the ability to have ideas that affect their club. It’s amazing when you keep taking the stance that the board are all fans.

Basil forgets that this is a fans forum where we get to moan, chew the fat, berate, cheer or congratulate the club. None of us are experts at running the club, however our opinion does count because, when you get down to it we are customers of a business. The guys that are on the board (now not playing fans) never had any experience of running a club until they went on the board. So why do they have better ideas than the paying fan/customer. Maybe there are successful business Rascals on this forum whose life experience and knowledge of businesses have some validity rather than being pigeonholed as a moaning supporter with hairbrained ideas.

I prefer to be a challenger than a YES man. Yes men think they are helping but are more often the problem. There are no golden tickets to any ideas without time, momentum, effort, market demand and people. When your finished reading your Andrew Carnegie biography please advise on what award wining initiatives you have come up with. (Doing a survey to ask the fans form more money has been done already)

No one said any of the ideas and initiatives were easy. If they were easy everyone would do them. What’s interesting is that in the interim period of us debating this the club have issued the Barn Door Survey basically advising the fans that to save the stand we need to fleece you of more cash. At these time of rising cost I’m surprised they did not advise that by attending the Glasgow club games you would be saving putting on your electricity thus saving money and supporting the club. Win Win.

Not Bitter. It was written with a massive level of sarcasm

I’m agreeing with you. Lets be better and smarter than St Johnstone, give them all the tickets for the game and cash in. In fact lets rename the ground for their visits to Lesser Ibrox and Lesser Parkhead. Our Directors could introduce a NotSoLoving Cup and welcome the Directors of the respective Clubs to drink from it for invading our Stadium and cashcowing our season. For each of the games we should remove the seats as they don’t use them and it will save them getting damaged. We could even make more money from the Rangers Fans by importing Bottled Seville Toilet Water and selling it at a premium.

👏 We are informed that the custodians are fans. Maybe the prawn sandwiches have forgotten what its like to be in the body of the support. Selling out to the easy pound is not the solution. Building a long term strategy to increase season ticket holders, revenue streams and sustainability in the club is the solution. Basil has gone to great lengths to shoot down many of the ideas put forward because they are not the golden goose. However ideas need work, effort and momentum to grow. Our ideas seem limited to putting the responsibility of the filling of the stands or substituting the revenue to the current fan base they already have.

Taking on board some of the proposals here, why don’t we just cut to the chase and give them the entire stadium on match days. Charge £50 ticket x 8000 x 3 min visits - £1.2m. Change the shop and sell their shite for that game, over charge hospitality, build temporary stands in the corners to maximise their income. How far do you go in giving up your stadium before it no longer becomes a Home Ground for that game. Games against either teams when they commander both ends no longer makes it feel like a home game. ”its better taking their cash” NO !!! It’s better being one town one club. Not selling out.

Think your missing the point that the comments are evening provide to try and improve the club and the experience in the hope that the club could investigate or embrace some of the ideas. While you take them as moans and negative it’s supporters trying to be helpful Whereas you like to blow smoke up the clubs arse and are happy with the mediocrity of the club on a number of aspects. I take your approach as unhelpful and negative

- Free entertainment outside the ground organised by SMISA - Free and discount tickets. - Improvements to an elitist club Great Can see the numbers and the revenue shooting through the roof. So are these initiatives still on when the old firm visit.

HOWEVER do we have the skill set to make the transition and run the club as a business or continue to run it as golf club

No one said it was easy nor that any ideas implemented would be an instant success. However ideas have to be generated and implemented to drive change. Doing nothing generates SFA. If the club is looking to only implement ideas that generate instant, guaranteed and mass amount of money then i can see what they do feck all. What initiatives have the club implemented in the last 5 years to generate more fans through the door. Last year they struggled to get any fans through the door never mind more

The clubs marketing and profile is poor and has been even at the times of SG. The club do not try new revenue streams, despite your assertion, they rely heavily on the cash cow of season tickets from the cannon fodder, the match day hospitality and from the annual dinner. The hospitality is a captive audience that could and should be exploited in so many other ways. How many follow ups do the corporate team do to the guests at hospitality to try and upsell the experience, how many follow ups do the team do to try and sell future games and exploit their special occasions. (I know for a fact that you only get a call to fill a table if your a mate) Does any one check who the hospitality guests are and then assess whether they are decision makers in their employment and could revenue be generated by contacting them direct. The club don’t approach any local businesses to assist in match day advertising or incentives them selling tickets. Bazil you have confirmed that the mindset of many smaller clubs is not to try as its not worth it. What initiatives has the club tried and what have failed.

No one said it was easy. However one thing for sure is by not doing anything will certainly not generate anything. Your statement is symptomatic of the lazy approach the club has. - How many local businesses have an affiliation to the club. How many have actually had someone from the club doorstep them - What promotional stuff do the club do. I don’t see anything around the town telling people about SMFC nor do i see local businesses with SMFC visuals in their premises - How many of the players of the staff attend the schools,clubs, hospital for the PR and have it plastered on social media - Why do we not have someone at the club constantly feeding the media on our starlets, the club, the community. Create positive spin - Have a think group that tries a number of social media stunts and see where it takes us. Many of the recent social media phenomena started as nothing. - Align with a local charity and do some good for the community and generate some positive PR - Make the experience on match day unique. (We do the same as most other clubs loud music before the game, cold pie at half time while watching the subs play keepy up, with the occasional mumble on a mic from the tunnel) We are asking the club to try and add 10% more to the season ticket numbers. This drive should have started before now. Good to see season tickets on sale early while the early bird discount it should have been stretched out to new season ticket holders also.

This is exactly the crux of the problem. The solution to the problem is to sell more St Mirren tickets rather than sell our soul to the creative accounting of how much the old firm tickets generate. Selling tickets to the old firm demonstrates a lack of vision, connection to the community and ability to actually market the club from a passive board. The imminent survey is lip service to a decision that has already been made at board level. Furthermore SMISA votes have a poor response from members and is hardly a proper representation of the support. Selling out to the old firm just fuels their perception that all other 40 clubs in the SPFL are just making up the numbers and the Scottish game would not survive without them. It is clear that our home support drops at old firm games. However the board don’t care as they already have the season ticket money from the non attenders for this game. They don’t see that filling the ground with the opposition fans creates a toxic environment for all and actually puts off their paying customers. It is described as easy money, its not it greed at the expense of their loyal customers. It is been clear for many years that the club have no loyalty to the fans. The fans are purely the clubs cashcow.

Altering a fire door could nullify its integrity and certification. The gap under the door can vary from 3-8mm depending on the type of door it is. The removing 1mm extra off a door will only increase the ventilation space by 0.0009m3. This is negligible and difficult to control. It would be easier leave the door ajar and allow the aroma of the damp crowded CO2 filled corridor to migrate in to the class room to save the children. Why did the EXPERTS not suggest drilling holes in the class room walls to assist in getting the required air changes

How many of those class rooms had too many pupils in them Reduce class room sizes = Reduction in Covid. Sort the class room size policy.

It was a stupid suggestion in the first place. Only put forward to avoid paying for mechanical extract systems that they can’t afford. . Leave the door open would have a more preferable solution to cutting said doors. Irrespective of the stupidity of the argument you don’t get much fresh air from school corridors.

I agree that everyone is an expert other than the people on the committee. Thats human nature. You only have to look at the 65m people in Britain that are Covid experts. The issue with cliques is that they close ranks to ensure that the “experts” don’t get a chance to be heard or voted on. I’m only looking from the outside and can see that the paying SMISA representatives only 2 occasions have only been able to vote for a single candidate. The “selection process” was undertaken by the SMISA committee before they got a chance to vote. That seems a very closed book way of being open to all.

That sounds like a golf club committee. Run by cliques who don’t like anyone advising them of varying opinions to their own. Voting their own on to positions. Sounds the very reason why fan ownership will never succeed. This handing the members one person to vote for in an election is straight out of the dictatorship handbook. Suppose its one way of ensuring that your members only get to see the people you want them to see. Thus keeping the clique cycle going.

All of this is hypothetical until real facts are released on the perceived issues. First the McGinn money if forthcoming is the clubs money not the shareholders funds. This could not be used to purchase the shares (technically it could, however the club would become the shareholder, which makes it unlikely to happen) If Kibble have an issue with the board and the representatives then It should be addressed at board level. If and its a big IF Kibble have gone legal on their own board then this is fundamentally wrong on many fronts and potentially dangerous. Going legal on a board is bully boy tactics to drive your own agenda, particularly when you have the financial resources to take on the board. Again another IF. If this occurs the problem lies fully at the door with SMISA on a number of points They should have checked who they were getting in to bed with (£35m/year business V £12/month/member organisation). David verses Goliath (only David has the largest shareholding and Goliath has the resources, funds and supply chain in their back pocket) They should have checked who they were pushing through on to the board. Giving their members one candidate to vote for or against is not a democratic process. (What background checks were done on JN. Why was he told not to post on social media after his appointment) Keeping quiet on the whole JN issue has done them no favours, especially when the Kibble threw him under the bus. Then People very close to the SMISA treasurer promoting crowdfunding to pay the JN fine, sends out the message to Kibble that JN comments are acceptable.

The “notwithstanding” part of the wording of the act would supersede any shareholders agreement on protection of individual Directors. If not then a Director could sit on any board unopposed irrespective of his/hers actions. The board are purely representative of the shareholders, the ACT ensures that the shareholders hold the voting rights of the entity.

They agreement maybe to protect who can become a director. However the Companies Act 2006 states 168 Resolution to remove director (1)A company may by ordinary resolution at a meeting remove a director before the expiration of his period of office, notwithstanding anything in any agreement between it and him. This gives SMISA the ability to remove the Kibble representatives from the board., irrespective of what’s in the Shareholders Agreement. At that point it gets very messy and there will be winners.

If Kibble are threatening or even are taking legal action against SMISA then SMISA have a duty to advise the members of this action. I have not seen anything to suggest that SMISA have done this. Also worth remembering that SMISA are the majority shareholder on the SMFC board and Kibble are a minority. They can have the ultimate voting rights on any decision on the board. If Kibble are taking action against SMISA or their representatives then they are jeopardising the board and ultimately SMFC. Separately at the time i did wonder why a Rangers fan would trawl through the Chairman of SMFC twitter account to find these posts from way back. In all intents and purpose John Needham is a nobody to these fans, therefore why was he targeted when i am sure every other clubs representatives have similar posts on their social media. If as you say this is the Kibbles workings and it can be proven then the Kibble are jeopardising SMFC not SMISA then SMISA would have a possible legal argument to remove Kibble from the board. Read extract from legal advice on companies (caveat is that there is a shareholders agreement in place to protect Kibbles place on the board, however not sure where this agreement would stand if they were taking action against their own board) The Companies Act 2006 and the normal rule is that a simple majority of shareholders can remove a Director from office. A minority Shareholder who holds less than 50% of the shares is, conversely, in a weak position as he is unable to control the board