bazil85

Yet again i’ll ask, who has the crystal ball for what players would have been successful? That was the strategy used last season and it worked. Tried it again this season and it hasn’t worked, that has been down to the person signing the players this season more than anything else. It sounds like OK prefers a smaller targeted squad from the Q&A but it doesn’t mean one strategy is always right and one is always wrong. We could have signed fewer players last season and maybe he wouldn’t have picked up Hilson or Stewart but equally he might not have picked up David or Reilly.

Agreed fully. We got AS completely wrong, if anything it’s proof the board have a strategy in place that prevents against major financial events (which the wrong appointment of AS has become) in January we should run some of the new signings past the fortune tellers on here just to be sure though

And that’s your opinion, that’s not what I asked. I asked what should the strategy be? How would you have gotten SMFC, SP football this season, turned a bigger profit and given us access to all the additional income that comes with being an SP club this year? Or do you think it would be a better plan to save last season, not get promoted and only be getting championship income again this season? You realise that would have cost us money right? My point is I can’t get my head around people being critical of a strategy that has clearly worked. If you noticed earlier Billy shared a post showing we pay the second lowest wage budget (after Livi) in the league this season. So again it baffles me people coming up with these (IMO) complete myths about better plans to have us either where we are already or further up the league. If you knew what players would clearly be a success and clearly wouldn’t better than JR and AS, shame we didn’t approach you to be the manager for last/ this season.

And as has also been asked, who has the crystal ball that tells us which players would have added value and which wouldn’t? Yet again, people seem to have an issue with a strategy that has worked and return top flight football to Paisley and a profit. I’ll ask again (never received an answer to this) regarding looking at the long-term for SMFC, what should we be saving for to target that’s higher than SP football? Should we be saving for a title challenge? If someone could please tell me what strategy is better and more profitable than the current one where we have gotten into the SP and making much more money that if we were still in the Championship sitting looking at our pretty bank balance from a few good transfers, fighting Morton and Dunfermline for a play-off place. Im 100% sure if we were fannying about mid-table in the championship and announced a large six figure profit, we’d have fans moaning on here ‘why aren’t we investing in the player squad?’ As for it being boom and bust, I’m also still waiting for a shred of evidence we have spent outside budget and not money that was available to us. Happy to proven wrong on this but I’ve seen nothing so far that suggests the money we have spent risks a ‘bust’ Last part is catch 22. You’ll get fans that moan we don’t get enough money for key assets then the fans that’ll moan that we give players 2-3 year deals that turn out not to be good enough. See crystal ball comment above.

‘We will have trouble investing in the acadamey’ will we? Source please or like I say, is it needless and without foundation negativity?

Agreed

The lack of truth in this post is a touching tribute to Mr D...

Hopefully they will be. The new club call themselves Rangers now by the way...

Aye hold on while Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen jump right behind that one.

Well where were you getting the stuff about not investing in the youth academy? Was it more needless negative assumptions than actually based on anything? Again, please feel free to share your source where we are not spending/ planning to spend money on Ralston?

Brilliant to see and a brilliant message. Everything we can do as a fan base to move our club forward helps. Could be a factor in the next generation of McGinns, Morgan’s, Mallan’s, etc. COYS

I still hold out hope for the first two. No such luck on the last one and you’re right, more chance of winning the lottery than pinpointing the specific topic LPM will be moaning about on any given day never mind so far in the future. Who are the sorry souls getting the SD chat now?

Great insider knowledge there. Can you show us your source where investing in the youth team was not part of last years budget? We can ignore the £150k new pitch that the club has just put down in Ralston that youth players will use to train.

Obliged I do feel to ask you for a set of rules I should be following regarding an internet forum.

I just don’t understand how you can think we’re ‘sailing too close’ we’re a club making profit and we’re in the SP. we are also agile enough that if things went wrong we could adjust so very easily. There are many clubs in Scotland in much worse situations, with expensive, older stadiums, borrowing and in less favourable league positions than us. If that’s you done then fine but I’m still wondering what possible event could happen? Nothing likely (never mind something that we’re running dangerously close to as you’ve eluded to) from where I can see. It would have to be an extraordinary event and we wouldn’t be safe from such events even if we had banked the transfer money and sat battling it out with Morton for 4th place in the Championship. We’ve put the outputs from the academy to good use and got us into the SP. which is pretty much the optimum position for our club (bar maybe the odd occasion) so again I don’t see what more benefit you’d be hoping for from banking money. A title challenge perhaps or a European trophy... i’ll leave You with this, what would be your end goal in prudently looking after the money and would it be a higher aspiration that being in the Scottish Premier league recording profit for soon to be the third season in a row?

I think you'll find my understanding of the business that is SMFC is perfectly fine. We are a football club and as such our primary aim is to have the best footballing product possible. Our business model is to spend what we earn in order to deliver that. Transfer fees could be delayed but it's by far and above an exception as opposed to the norm. There have been 58 fee paying transfers in Scottish football (in or out) over the last two season. Can you name one that has been delayed due to issues with the club paying? Your argument (and to question my business understanding wit this argument is the beyond laughable part) is 'we should hang off on signing players because there's a chance some of the transfer money might get delayed' Or on the off chance other income streams get delayed. Are you serious? I'd also put it to you, what do you think would happen if one of our income streams was delayed? Do you think banks just foreclose on football clubs instantly or administration happens without a long process to repay sums owed? That's not how things work, not in football clubs not in other businesses. In saying all this, there is no evidence at all that we spent money before we got it and even if we did it would take a massive amount of bad luck, delays and other events to get us even close to trouble. We also never spent every penny we had, we made a profit both years. Yet I'll pander to you some more, please indulge me in what 'financial crisis' could have hit our club? Please remember that sums of these transfers would have been paid up front before we started spending last summer and the money we got for Morgan was from a club that raked in an eight figure sum in Europe. Also please let me know what your alternative plan is that would also gain us promotion and record a profit last year? I'm sorry are you the one with the crystal ball that knew for fact the players that didn't contribute would be duds and the ones that did would be worthwhile? Another fan taking issue with a strategy that's worked. Now that is absurd.

So you’d have been happy for us to be sitting mid-table in the championship and sitting on all this transfer money? Even though by doing that it would have cost us million+ in increased revenue being in the SP generates? Yeah that’s really safeguarding the clubs future. If another club had a cash flow issue and couldn’t pay us we’d sue them. Out of the uncountable number of transfers in world football, I can maybe think of a handful of cases where a club hasn’t received transfer money. In the unlikely chance that happened, we should not take any risk at all and be happy being a mid-table (or below) championship club? Absolute madness i’ll put it to you. - what’s we’re the chances of Celtic not being able to pay for Morgan? -Derby or Barnsley paying what’s realistically a pretty small sum? Id say low to zero, so there isn’t really a great deal of risk. But let’s say one of those deals fell through. What would we have done? How about not sign any players in January/ less in the summer and ride out the difference. Do you think we’d of recorded a bank breaking loss? Im sorry but some of these points are beyond laughable.

Club has already said he didn’t sign the second contract. Only wage rise was after Dundee. You’re on fire right now

Another thing that baffles me, when we are looking at multi-million pound accounts, people can still try and bring the tiny sums related to SMISA in as part of a debate. SMFC have said on many occasions, anything not funded by SMISA will be taken from budget or won't happen. So it's completely false to think it would be an issue with the budget.

Mccalister money came in the January before, Morgan the January of the title winning season but was almost guaranteed since early on. We spent money that we had to spend. Football is about taking calculated risks. Yes Morgan could have dipped in form or gotten an injury but you don’t get reward in any business without taking risks. People that don’t understand that and don’t appreciate it paid off, don’t understand business

Without those sales we wouldn’t have signed the players we did. The event happened after the cause. You can’t switch it around and say ‘we’d of ran at a loss’ there is zero evidence they would have spent the same money. In fact they certainly wouldn’t have. The money that came in, they used it to their advantage and it paid off. So you'd be happy if we were still in the Championship but posting say six figure profits? Do you realise what it is to be a football fan? It’s about success on the park and we delivered that. Again about the players, donate and likely Hill both signed for cover. McGinn or any player could have snapped his leg a day after they were signed. We worked to a budget, a budget that included player sales. Mullen is the reason we beat Dundee and has played a lot this season. Stubbs is the reason Hippolyte isn’t here, we have no idea if he’d have done a job.

He did yeah, what’s your point? We haven’t overspent. We have made a profit two seasons in a row (not checked previous seasons) and almost certainly going to be a third. Like I say it sounds like you have an issue with the strategy. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but no one could have predicted who would and wouldn’t be our star players that season. Take Gavin Reilly as an example, he has a very tough time the previous season and then banged in 20 goals. Also like I said, the strategy looks to have changed. Gus coming in is a sign of that. It’s not a case of what’s right and what’s wrong, it’s what works. No one can deny JR strategy worked.

We budget in advance every season, if player sales aren't coming in for the next couple of years (which is no guarantee) a proportion of the money will be offset by being in the Scottish Premier. If we get relegated, we will downsize. I have no doubt wage cuts will be in a number of players contracts and we also always have half or more of the squad who's contracts expire. Billy shared the wage budgets for this year and you can clearly see we are one of the lowest, yet we don't have the lowest crowds and potential for income. We spend what we earn, as we have practically all of our history. Having more money to spend due to transfer income right now, does no mean we'll have a disaster if that doesn't come in. We survived nine seasons recently in the top flight with little transfer income. In giving examples of previous situations the club has been in, in detailing we only spend what we have, coupled with the profits we've recorded and the increased revenue that comes with being an SP club, I feel I should have adequately passed your test. Now feel free to enlighten me to how you would have gotten us promoted and saved more budget?

Can you explain to me what your strategy would have been in spending less money, getting us promoted and recording a larger profit margin?

Not ignoring it in the slightest, to clarify. It sounds to me like you have issue with the strategy that got us promoted which confuses me. Do you genuinely think JR signed all these players thinking every single one would make an impact? You’ve answered that question already in your numbers and if memory serves me right JR actually spoke about it in an interview. So unless JR was under impression rules had changed to 25 a side matches, he was aware they wouldn’t all play He and everyone else at the club knew a number of those players wouldn’t be first team players. The question was always which ones? The strategy was to sign a big squad then bring a team together to do the business. It paid off. At the time of signing did you know for a fact players like Hippolyte and Irvine wouldn’t be important players in the SP/ Championship? Irvine for example ended the previous season on great form, Hippolyte could have filled the Morgan gap (he still could have,who knows, Stubbs got rid of him) as for Donatti, he was signed as an old head going into a coaching type role to support the squad for the rest of the season and cover for McGinn. If McGinn got injured I would wager he would have played a part. We had the finance to do that as clearly shown in the profit, so why not? If you don’t like the strategy JR used, fine but you can’t deny it worked a treat. We’re in the SP now and made a profit. From the Q&A with OK it sounded like he was more of a fan of a small talented squad. It’s simply a different strategy. Neither right or wrong, whatever works for each manager. As for selling players on the cheap, it’s been discussed many times and it’s all a matter of contract length. Our hands have been tied. We could sign up promising players to longer terms sooner but for every Morgan, you’ll have three Thomas Reilly and Lewis McLears stuck on long term deals.