Some fair questions/points. The key difference will be that the Well Society will have a majority of directors on the board and will be largely in charge of the club. So they will have a majority say in setting the budget and the priorities for the club, in consultation with members, and hiring the key employees. And, like pretty much any other club, paid professionals will carry out the day-to-day running of the club. At the moment, the WS has a 6% stake and now one director on the MFC board. We have a fundraising target to meet or the game's a bogey - so efforts are being concentrated on raising the money. That way we get a huge amount more influence than now.
There is an important current influence - the statement from the club about their financial position in May came immediately after it was called for at a Well Society AGM and a subsequent MFC board meeting, when the Well Society reps secured until the end of November for the WS to raise £800k. The future ownership of the club was the main topic of the MFC board meeting since then.
That's the current focus and main influence. I know consultation over club affairs was part of the attraction of joining and I understand why members might be disillusioned. If we raise the money then there can be meaningful consultation, so that's another key difference that maybe wasn't made very clear in the statement. The plan was to have an informal meeting with members in recent weeks, but other events to do with raising the finance have sidetracked everyone.
If fans don't want fan ownership, it obviously won't work. But the fact that fan ownership usually comes after times of crisis shows that these crises are caused by different ownership models. And the lingering effects of those crises and more pertinently the overspending of the pre-crisis period can help explain why they might play at a lower level in the next few years. Swansea are an example of a club that was saved by fans and went on to flourish, although they have a minority stake. Gretna are playing at a much lower level - but they were playing at an unnaturally high level before they became fan-owned. Most fan-owned clubs don't have a reserve fund - the fans' money has usually gone on paying off a percentage of old debts or former owners. There's no more benefit in having one rich owner loaning a club £500k to steady the ship than a group of fans collectively doing the same thing. The benefit is the other way round as a rich owner might soon find he's not rich for other reasons than football.
I wouldn't want to categorise the financial issues facing Motherwell now but the fact is that the club lost £780k in 2011-13 and forecast a loss last season when they finished 2nd. They have the same budget this season. The ownership is up for grabs and we either do everything we can to keep it in the community or we leave it up to chance. Some might get excited about new owners but there are all sorts of people who want to own football clubs and you have seen the damage some have wreaked elsewhere.
The statement was more of an argument to try to convince fans who are sceptical of fan ownership, but also to update that we are focusing on raising finance through major inputs of cash, whether they are soft loans/gifts/investments, although a rush of new members could also take us over the line. I'd like there to be a better update too but people are continuing to do everything they can to raise the money so there's still a chance.
