weeyin

Or nowhere near football in general - but sadly a large part of our game still thrives on the religious divisions.

If all those pro-Protestants go to church tomorrow they'll run out of pews across the West of Scotland.

Entertaining game, though - not always for footballing reasons. And Theo gets a good view from the bench for a semi againt Argentina.

I don't know what Theo needs to do to get some minutes on the field. Canada are a decent team but are crying out for someone to take a chance or two. Should have been 3 up at half time in tonight's game, lost a soft goal, and missed another couple of good chances after that. 1 - 1, 15 mins to go, and he still isn't getting a sniff.

Agreed. If you ignore the Brexit vote, the rise of right wing extremists in France and Donald Trump winning the Presidency, when has calling people with opposing views "gullible" or "stupid" done any harm?

Agreed. If you want to persuade people to join your camp, calling them "stupid" or "gullible" is not the approach to take.

Not been contacted yet, but I was assuming an email was forthcoming based on the original announcement. About the ballot This vote will be administered by Civica Election Services (CES), the UK’s foremost independent provider of election services and voting mechanisms, on behalf of The Well Society. CES will issue voting instructions to members directly in due course, either by post or email from takepart@cesvotes.com. Please add this address to your safe senders list.

Also, all Trump's businesses go bankrupt and/or end up having to settle lawsuits.

Exactly my thought. I have zero inclination to donate to EB's pension fund if he takes over the club.

As others have said, we are doing fine without US money. If you look at our accounts since the Society took control, they are actually quite healthy. A lot of that is thanks to Les Hutchison who, when he took charge, articulated a very clear plan of how he wanted the club re-structured, how his money should be spent, how his loans should be paid back, how many new fans needed to join the Society, and what his exit plan was. Exactly what you want to hear from an investor. Exactly what we are NOT hearing from EB.

Thought that one was OK, but not great. However, they have been all over the place in recent years with hoops vs stripes vs their blackpool rock version and their chessboard version Seems like they make significant design changes on a regular basis.

Sean Hutchison is a favourite of mine, where they manage to get both names wrong.

"Tough luck" is what many savvy investors receive in the way of returns. That's why they diversify their portfolio. Sink money into multiple businesses knowing that many will return zero or close to, and hope the one or two that succeed will cover their losses. If all you have is 500k and sink that into a single business, you are a mug. However, as I (and you) said, I literally came with up with those in under a minute. I have no doubt that given a few weeks we could come up with more concrete ideas. The biggest issue the Society has had in recent years, and the biggest issue I have had with the Society in recent years, is that they seem to have been doing nothing in this area. It's why I haven't voted for any of the incumbents in the past couple of elections. But even if all my ideas are mince, it still feels that doing nothing at this point is much better than accepting the bad deal EB is offering. It's not like we are teetering on administration (which is what happened when JB was the single investor). That's just my opinion though. It's only worth one vote, the same as the rest of the members.

So you agree that they received hundreds of thousands in partnership deals, they are a smaller club than us and it's possible to get a return on academy players being sold?

That's why they are examples. EB hasn't even offered those.

So what you're really asking is why EB, owner of an American film production company, would choose us over a worldwide known club? Or does that test only apply to Scottish businesses?

Accies received hundreds of thousands in partnerships and I'd argue we are higher profile than them.

So how does it stack up to EB's proposals and how he plans on getting his return on investment?

For the pitch, the maintenace costs come out of the rental fees. The return on investment percentage comes after costs paid. For the data, players obviously already have it in their contracts given the Opta stats that is available for a fee. If you invest 500k and get zero return from the academy, that's tough luck. Any investor knows returns are not guaranteed and the rate of return factors in that risk. A 50% return implies higher risk. But given I made these up inside 60 seconds, I'm sure some actual thought could be given to more watertight scenarios. It's hardly a unqiue situation for businesses to partner with sports teams for some kind of return.

Here's a hypothetical example or two. I own a 4G (or 5G) football pitch company. I invest 50K into the club and lay a practice pitch for cost. In return I get 5 year's free advertising inside Fir Park and 50% of revenue generated by renting out the practice pitch. I'm a sports data company. I give you the equipment and software to use for free. In return, you give me all your player data for free and I combine that with other team's data that I combine and sell to sports scientists, universities, journalists and game developers. I invest 500k for new equipment and faclities in the academy. In return, I get 10% of transfer fees from academy graduates for the next 10 years, capped at 750k.

If the Well Society had no plan right now I'd still vote for it, because doing nothing over the next 6 months is, for me, still better (and safer) than accepting EB's offer.

There is some good scientific evidence that when you challenge (with evidence) someone on a strongly held belief - it actually causes them to strengthen that belief. That's one reason that trying to debate things on social media quickly deteriorates into shouting.

Knowing Accies they probably found a way to have his shirt sponsored for ₤300K with CBD Oil Shaw on the back.

Aye, I've had many dreams take flight at Fir Park, never to be seen again! Seriously though, I've always thought the investment path the Society should be following is the strategic partnership one and happy to see that's at the core of this one. A nicely laid out explanation of the plan.

With their recent injury woes and Dúbravka expected to leave, it seems like they do.