Robo

My wee girl's first game today as well. Had her fingers in her ears any time there was crowd noise, got a sausage roll at half time and got it everywhere, and missed the goals 'cause she was watching the seagulls. Says she wants to go back.
Delighted :-D

My wee girl's first game today as well. Had her fingers in her ears any time there was crowd noise, got a sausage roll at half time and got it everywhere, and missed the goals 'cause she was watching the seagulls. Says she wants to go back.
Delighted :-D

He has really enjoyed his trial period with us and is willing to sign if the club make him a half decent offer.
He's not looking for silly money just a decent contract that gives him a decent wage.

Ludo's top corner save v Livi at Almondvale springs to mind.

Ludo's top corner save v Livi at Almondvale springs to mind.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - what does cheap, cheaper and cheapest mean. The club spends what it takes in and just a little more as we have shown a small loss for the last few years. That is a fact borne out by the audited accounts. So could saltcoatsbuddie, or anyone else who hurls accusations of parsimony at the board, please come on here and explain what the mean? Are they accusing the board of fraud; of syphoning money out of the club; of charging Wonga level rates of interest on loans. What is their case and how do they think we can spend money we don't have?

It doesn't really matter if the authorities allow them to claim the history or not.
Rangers fc is in liquidation and the new club only has history going back to 2012.
That is a fact and no amount of whataboutery will change that.
The presence of the old firm is a cancer not just in Scottish football but in society in general.
What rangers fc did is one of the greatest ever scandals in sporting history. If we 'move on' then they will have got away with it.
We cannot and should not allow these people to trample all over us. We have to stand up to them.
The history and the trophies mean everything to them. We must never ever let them forget that their club is dead and what they have now is nothing more than a tribute act that has won nothing.

Could prevent the younger players running loose on the lash on a Saturday night with their mates and dealing with a hangover on the Sunday.
I think its a good idea, its not as if they have been told to come in an extra day. I suppose it keeps Saturdays game outcome fresh in the mind, win lose or draw.

I said years ago..
Two 3000 seater Stands.
And covered standing areas behind each goal. Capacities, 2000 each.
Naebody listened, as usual .

I would suggest we all start with a long, low 'Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...', maybe standing and waving our fingers in the air as we do it, as if we were playing an invisible airborne piano.
Hold the 'ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' for as long as possible, before moving smoothly into '...when the Saints', and which point we all clap along with the rhythm. Pick up the pace of the song as you go through.
That would be my singing tactic, anyway.

He would DEFINITELY have signed for us if Ian Murray wasn't in Spain.

Or phoning his wife to see if they needed milk.

Div really needs to sort out the ignore function for android devices.

Nacho Novo?

I love how people with no knowledge of Ian Murray, of Dumbarton FC, of the Championship or of Jack Ross as an assistant manager can state authoritatively that Dumbarton performed worse and conceded more goals once Jack Ross left.
Let's take a proper look at the goals Dumbarton conceded this year:
- 13 goals conceded against Rangers (not in the Championship last year)
- 14 goals conceded against Hearts (not in the Championship last year)
- 11 goals conceded against Hibs (not in the Championship last year)
In other words, 38 of the 79 goals Dumbarton conceded - almost exactly half - came against the top three teams in the league, each of which is clearly too big for the Championship and has the sort of large, fully professional squad which makes a difference against a small part-time team.
Now, like everyone else on this board, I have no insight into Jack Ross' influence as an assistant manager. However, I would be pretty willing to wager that the addition to the Championship of those three teams had a more negative influence on Dumbarton's goal difference than Jack Ross' departure.

Let me stop you there.

It would certainly be positive progress if the club conducted an adequate, professional recruitment process. You know - applications, shortlisting, and interviews - that sort of thing.

Poz,
I do not disagree with you, however, the current BoD have a reputation for taking their time and like you suggest, we will be waiting a long long time for them to make a move. Therefore, we need to chap their door.
If I walked past a car with a For Sale sign & nowt else on it but I fancied buying it, I'd seek out the owner to ask "how much?" then I would start thinking if it was affordable & then, how was I going to pay for it.
If it was for a Ford or a Vauxhall or a Nissan, I'd probably walk on by but if we were talking about a Lamborghini {& we are}, I'd be hunting down the owner if I really wanted to buy it. But that is me.
I live in Essex
I work as a nurse {ward manager in Neuro}
I coach 2 Under 11 teams for Romford FC.
If that is of any use to a group in getting the exploration of a fan purchase of St Mirren going, drop me a PM.
Unfortunately, the distance will limit my input/attendance but as someone said somewhere earlier, folk have got to start sticking their heads above the parapet.
If it is of no use, I am looking forward to seeing those who can drive this. Soon :-)

there's a fair bit of pontificating going on from both sides of the REA fence here which is distracting the focus on us all finding a suitable group of individuals to spearhead the exploration of a fans buy out of the club.
We need a vehicle that has credibility amongst the wider support that should not & will not be cause for raising concern of self interest. SMISA is the obvious choice for me with The Fans Council {IMHO} being the only other potential vehicle to try delivering fan ownership of St Mirren.
I would prefer to see SMISA pull this together.
Whichever route is taken, it needs to be embarked on now {sorry Poz, if we wait for the current BoD to make the 1st move, we'll be waiting a long long time}.
It would be foolish not to pick the bones of the 10000 hours bid for learning and also the gleaning of whatever useful information we can from REA, whilst he is willing to share it.
REA could have kept schtoom or worse still said "nah, you are on your own" as he has taken quite a bit of flak then & now.
I genuinely believe we would be foolish to completely ignore a valuable resource the advice from REA could be.
I was never convinced of the 10000 proposal and remained unconvinced of having a Board that answered to a Board who could be veto'd by a board {or something like that}.
You can count on me paying a specified monthly DD & I can be relied upon to continue paying it until such time as a Fans buyout was complete & the DD's were no longer required.
Looking forward to a very prosperous future for St Mirren if a fans buyout gets off the ground.

good point, though I can see how the summary could have been misunderstood, "wasn't feasible at this stage" should perhaps have been written " wasn't feasible at that stage"

I've joined Smisa recently.
I'd like Smisa to increase membership & have a short term objective of purchasing the majority shareholding in St Mirren fc for a fair price ASAP.

Nonsense. St Mirren's leasing deal with the local council for the land at Ralston means they cannot raise revenue by hosting juvenile football clubs and local amateur club matches from the facilitiles there. It would make perfect sense to have a full sized 3g pitch that could be rented out every single night to boost the revenue coming into the club, and to create footfall.

I have been quietly reading this topic and the varying views which everyone is quite rightly allowed to express.
To be honest the possibility of some of us fans being willing to look at FO again and the enthusiasm shown by those has been the only bright spark in the last few dire months. I actually feel pretty upbeat even with relegation a certainty.
I'm in because I love my club, I genuinely believe we can make the club a much better community club and grow our support in that way. There are loads of great ideas that come from this forum and it would be fantastic to see some come to fruition. If it doesn't come off and some other group comes forward so be it, we tried and won't be left wondering what if. For those that don't want to be involved that's fine, I understand and respect that, but I also know you'll support those who want to give it a go in other ways.
I'm upset with where the club is, I want to do something about it if I can.
So whilst I accept the concerns generated by some I'd prefer to remain positive and excited about this opportunity (if there is one) there has been so many negative feelings this season it hurts.
I've always dreamed of being a bigger part of the club, I'm putting my £10 away each month starting now, if I don't end up using it on St Mirren I'm sure I'll be able to use it to help some other good cause.
I'm down in Cheshire so would be limited as to what I could do, but willing to help in anyway I can. Oh, and I retire in 3 and a bit years and my wife is desperate for me to have a plan !
Edited due to my dreadful spelling

As I said on this forum months ago, the only good thing that can come out of our relegation is that the fan ownership model is adopted. (Thankfully) no consortium will give Gilmour and co anything like the sum they think the club is worth now that we have been relegated. The only sustainable model for running football clubs of our sort of size or smaller (so this goes for more or less every club in Scotland bar the OF) is fan ownership because it is not possible to make a profit which would interest an (honest) investor, and a sugar daddy might only come along once every few generations, if at all. Even consortiums of passionate local businessmen don't seem to be around to take over from the existing one in our case.
As for Oaksoft's suggestion that it would all go tits up if fans took the huff when results turned bad, it's simply misconceived:
1. Firstly, fans are far less likely to take the huff than an owner with no connection to the club.
2. Secondly, and more importantly, the club has to be run on the basis that it only spends what it earns (as it is at the moment). The money coming in monthly from the fans should not be considered part of that revenue, at least for an initial period of years when either the old board is being paid back in installments or the monthly subscriptions are being built up into a cash reserve. We have no monthly subscriptions from fans at the moment, so clearly we are spending only what we earn at the gate, from sponsorship and from TV money. We would be no worse off under fan ownership. Perhaps at some point in the future, fans' monthly payments could be used to top up certain budgets once there is a reserve in place, but we should not be spending every penny of it from day one.
As for whether fans would run the club well or badly, it's a non-point. The same goes for any businessman - just look at the shambles we are in. The point is that we would always know that the club would be run by a committee of fans elected by the fans with the club's best interests at heart. That is infinitely preferable to any other model. There will no doubt be ups and downs as there are under the current structure, but there will be a sustainable club there for generations to come to support.

The "guarantee" as you Div know was always an issue with all the work 10000hours put in, we did come up with a way of dealing with it but fundamentally only £1.25m could be Guaranteed legally and that was not enough
There is new ways of doing this now that can give guarantee of the form you mention above that have become available recently however it cannot be done using these interest free and would be capped at £500 so at £1.2 you would need 2400 members, (more than possible if the Club actually name it as the way forward, like at Motherwell) or if the price drops to say £800,000 which i seem to recall is a cost of shares number (some one will be able to correct) is 1600 members
As Foundation of Hearts now have 8000 members and Rangers First have 13500 can SMFC fans get 1600-2400....if it becomes the policy of the Club to promote FO then yes it can IMHO