Board Statement

[steelboy]

I don't really see any chance of the figure being met. Getting the society established was a strong motivation for people to put their money in initially, given that we are miles away from the MFC board created figure of £1.5m, any money invested now isn't likely to have any noticeable effect on the society or the club. Even now they are asking for over £300,000 to effectively stay in the exact same place we have been for the past year and a half.

 

What happens if you upgrade your membership but the total isn't reached? By the sounds of it the money stays in the society even though the society is effectively on the way out. The likelihood is that you would be putting your money in for nothing.

 

I've felt the society board has been too in thrall to the club from the beginning and the fact that they are willing to give up on their stated primary objective because the MFC board decided so proves that. I don't think it's fair to be critical of the society board for the lack of fundraising but they have failed to put the needs of the society they were elected to represent ahead of pleasing Weir and formerly Dempster.

[steelboy]

 

the reason that the well society is/was such a good and unique opportunity is that the 1.5m would go into the club's coffers as back-up money rather than going towards paying the former owner for his shares. It is still a unique opportunity - a one-off payment should secure the club for good as long as it's run sensibly.

 

 

i thought that as well but that turned out not to be true.

 

the society has to purchase the shares from the club at a ridiculously high price which the society board have made no attempt to negotiate on.

[East_Stand_Al]

some mixed input so far, we need to remember the clubs trading income and the Society funds are two different entities

 

its pretty sad that on teh face of it there appears, just cause, to criticise volunteers effort and hard work, when in fact most of it is down to lack of clear communication channels

 

as well as whats been mentioned, there is also a full Well Society fundraising dinner event at planned for one of the holiday weeekends in the pipeline (think its September)

 

waiting on confirmation but I believe it will be the first acknowledgement by fans of Tommy McLeans contribution to our clubs history.

 

I'll also say that, even if its unpopular, all the excuses from the majority that a tenner a month to join the society is too expensive, is misguided. at every opportunity the society and club have said if you want to join and contribute go and speak to them (alison) and work something out.

 

Sure, if you dont want to do it , move along and just follow the club as you are.

 

Most season ticket holders on average are getting into games for around £16? add a society membership and thats around £22-£23, not cheap but surely achievable for more than 1 in 5 of our season ticket holders

 

and if that ST holder is getting a free kid or two, then its really £8-12 a head per game to be a ST holder and one adult member of society.

 

It has been said many times, maybe our fans would only realise what a vunerable position the club is in, were the worst to happen

 

PS, I'm not against alternative investment, be surprised if we have any fans with serious cash, who are not already involved,I'll be delighted if there are, like United or Killie,

 

but with external investment, comes seats on the board, JB called it that the last guy wasnt suitable, lets hope we are able to keep the ability to control the path of the club.

 

 

 

It is the September weekend and will be held at Hamilton race course, tickets will be on sale soon.

 

I can confirm Tommy McLean will be in attendance and we are trying to bring some of the former players to commemorate the Tommy Mclean era.

 

 

There have been several open meetings from the Well Society including a Fundraising ideas meeting, none of which were broadly supported.

 

The Bucket Collection and The Quiz night were also poorly supported. The Well Society will have a presence at the Bellshill Street Fair this Saturday, Claret & Amber will be there and there will be face painting form around 1pm come along and see us, if you are unable to provide Financial support then moral support is happily accepted.

 

 

 

 

 

[East_Stand_Al]

i thought that as well but that turned out not to be true.

 

the society has to purchase the shares from the club at a ridiculously high price which the society board have made no attempt to negotiate on.

 

The Well Society does not require to "purchase the shares" in the traditional sense but rather raise the required funds which will be ring fenced to provide what will be in effect a bank of last resort to ease problems caused by the cyclical nature of football finances.

 

John Boyle donated the shares to be held in trust, additional shares in the club were purchased normally as there was no facility in the rules to "lend the club money"( This was changed)

 

 

However this only serves to highlight the lack of clear concise communication.

[steelboy]

The Well Society does not require to "purchase the shares" in the traditional sense but rather raise the required funds which will be ring fenced to provide what will be in effect a bank of last resort to ease problems caused by the cyclical nature of football finances.

 

 

leeann said they would try and ring fence the money. there was no guarantee or obligation.

 

do you really think they have an account set aside with the £150,000 the society paid for 6% of the shares?

[East_Stand_Al]

leeann said they would try and ring fence the money. there was no guarantee or obligation.

 

do you really think they have an account set aside with the £150,000 the society paid for 6% of the shares?

 

Leads us back to the communications aspect, I have often suggested the WS board should get more involved in these types of forums

[maxywell]

Not sure that's a fair comparison at all, really. Even with a sizeable chunk out of our budget, I still think we'd be comfortably 'safe' in the SPFL.

 

Dunfermline didn't go bust because they were in the 1st, they went bust for a multitude of reasons, including vastly, vastly overestimating the number of fans who would come and see them get scudded every week in the SPL (From memory, their estimations were out by 1-2k fans p/w?), on top of years of mismanagement, and their chairman being a pure cunt.

 

I mean, like, Hibs are going to stay up this year, and they've been completely piss for months. The gulf between top three and bottom three in Scotland is pretty wide, so even with a cut in the budget, I'd still fancy us.

 

 

 

 

Not sure about that.We didn't beat Hibs easily in any of the games and if we lost 2/3 of our better players and didn't replace them with anyone decent then we'd be near the bottom.

 

 

 

If we lost even a quarter or a third of our budget we'd drop well down the league.

[David]

If we lost even a quarter or a third of our budget we'd drop well down the league.

Which is preferable to facing administration though, right?

 

There's a real possibility that we end up simply having to accept the level that we should be operating at. If we're really drawing less fans through the gates than we did when Malpas was in charge then something has to give.

 

If that means turning to youth and looking to offload some of our better players in a hurry then so be it I guess. We just need to hope we can bounce back down the line.

[Guest]

Not sure about that.We didn't beat Hibs easily in any of the games and if we lost 2/3 of our better players and didn't replace them with anyone decent then we'd be near the bottom.

 

We finished 35 points ahead of Hibs. We scored double the number of points over the course of the season that the bottom team did. Whether we didn't beat Hibs easily, we've lost to them once in two years (and that was a fucking sham as well), and vastly, vastly outscored them over those two seasons.

 

And they didn't even finish bottom either year.

 

I'm not saying we'd be as comfortable as we are now, but I wouldn't be worried about relegation just yet.

[wellfan1992]

I know that there is no money coming in from TV and sponsorship just now and with Rangers out the league its even worse for us financially...But does anyone else find it pretty depressing that we are having such a good period of sustained success (for a club our size) finishing runners up, in Europe 6 out of 7 seasons etc and we are still seemingly on the brink of financial meltdown? what would our situation be if we had finished 6th and 7th for the last few years?

 

I also, like the statement said, find it disappointing that we can only muster 4,500 fans a week for league games when we are sitting second place as it wont get any better for us and when we can attract large crowds in for home games in Europe so clearly the support is there when the occasion arises

 

However, why should people be forced to pay £22 to watch players signed from 3rd division English clubs? and as much as I personally enjoy the games the football on show in the SPFL is pish. There needs to be a vast reduction in price to get supporters back and we clearly arent in the position to reduce prices so what about the SPFL subsidising ticket prices or the government getting involved in it?

[weeyin]

However, why should people be forced to pay £22 to watch players signed from 3rd division English clubs?

 

That's the problem, but there are no easy answers. Most leagues in Europe get a lot more TV/Sponsorship money than we do. We rely on gate money for most of our income. If we drop the prices, then we drop the quality of players we attract.

 

To watch the same players perform in England costs the same (or more). If there was an answer we'd probably have found it by now, but so far it's better financially for clubs to have 4,500 fans at 22 quid than 5,500 at 15 quid.

 

A longer term solution would be for the SPFL and SFA to do something, so we can rule that out.

[underboyleheating]

We are leaking money faster than the daily interest on a Cash Converters payday loan.

 

The way I see it...

 

• We have no players of note to sell in which to generate much needed instant income

 

• Despite recent league success our fan base shows no sign of increasing

 

• The Well Society has not generated the income hoped for

 

• Unless drastic measures are taken we are heading for a fall and into deeper financial problems

 

We need to act now and prepare to accept a period of scrapping in the bottom six by playing more youngsters. This will be tough to accept after our recent league success, however, for the financial future of our club it's a policy we may need to adopt.

 

In a word we are skint with no visible means of support. Can we fix it? I hope we can.

[well-army]

We need to act now and prepare to accept a period of scrapping in the bottom six by playing more youngsters. This will be tough to accept after our recent league success, however, for the financial future of our club it's a policy we may need to adopt.

 

In a word we are skint with no visible means of support. Can we fix it? I hope we can.

 

 

Q meltdown on here if this were to happen. Well fans these days have had it easy and expect us to get a result most weeks. pre 1991 i didn't think we would ever qualify for Europe now its a yearly occurance.

 

I must admit i haven't been to the football much in the last 4 - 5 years mainly due to cost / having a young family..... However i plan to get a season ticket for the coming season but unfortunately we need another 2 - 3 k of myself doing the same and it aint going to happen.

[CoF]

It's gutting that despite having the most consistently successful period of league placings in our history, the club haven't made any tangible gains in terms of longer term success or more financial security.

 

A few more through the gate would have been a decent reward for all this success however, I do wonder if the drop in attendance is actually down to the increasingly poor away supports. It would be interesting to see if the number of home fans has changed much over this time.

[Ya Bezzer!]

I would like to see an outline of income and expenses to see exactly why these losses are occurring, rather than just general figures.

[Ya Bezzer!]

It's gutting that despite having the most consistently successful period of league placings in our history, the club haven't made any tangible gains in terms of longer term success or more financial security.

 

A few more through the gate would have been a decent reward for all this success however, I do wonder if the drop in attendance is actually down to the increasingly poor away supports. It would be interesting to see if the number of home fans has changed much over this time.

 

I think our attendances have dropped a bit but not radically but I think we probably get a lot of kids in on free season ticket books.

 

Away supports have gone down badly and the teams in the league currently aren't ones that are going to bring a lot of fans. Rangers would probably bring 10,000 fans to Fir Park in a season, Ross County probably didn't even bring a 1,000 over the two matches for instance.

 

In fact it's only really Celtic, Aberdeen and Partick that brought significant supports to Fir Park last season.

[gilmour]

Haven't a clue what to do here. Initially inverse at the £1000 and got the 2 kids the £25 ones. New baby here and I'm watching every penny now and haven't renewed the memberships. Do I renew memberships and get the baby a £25 one (good money after bad as if it hasn't worked by now will it ever ? ). Or do I just renew season tickets instead of PATG. Not in a position to do both anymore.

 

[milo]

It's all very worrying indeed.

 

I've said before if the floating fan isn't encouraged to come back and watch us in the periods of fantastic consistency and top end finishes then what WILL make them come back?!?!

 

I honestly thought the return if faddy would put a few more on the gate at least.

 

I don't think any Motherwell fan expects and 2nd place finish every season. Or at least they shouldn't! I think, for the long term future all of us would except a few mid table (but still top 6 for financial reasons) if it meant the medium term future was a bit more secure.

 

Although we all hate them (and have really enjoyed laughing at them) it would be best if rangers came up ASAP. That would at least mean the gates would be increased and surely therefore mean the league would have a sponsor and a better tv deal secured. Doncaster etc should still get tae though!

 

We probably need to sell anier in January or the summer and any other sellable asset punted also.

[weeyin]

Given the lengths we went to get the Anier deal financed and the length of his contract, you'd have to think the plan was to move him on for a fee like Henrik.

[ropy]

Is he really a saleable asset?

[gilmour]

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Given the lengths we went to get the Anier deal financed and the length of his contract, you'd have to think the plan was to move him on for a fee like Henrik.

 

 

Yep tie him down for longer and sell him for a bigger profit.

 

 

[Steve Diggle]

Great work so far.

 

What's next?

 

In amongst fixing up Lasley, making calls on the remaining 3 keepers, Reid &. Ainsworth. we really need to be looking at extensions for guys like Carswell, Leitch, and potentially Vigurs. Generally making sure any 'saleable' assets are on lengthy enough tie-ups

 

Oh and can we fix out the Dom Thomas situation?

[Ya Bezzer!]

Yep tie him down for longer and sell him for a bigger profit.

 

We had Randolph on a three year contract and couldn't sell him.

[Ya Bezzer!]

Great work so far.

 

What's next?

 

In amongst fixing up Lasley, making calls on the remaining 3 keepers, Reid &. Ainsworth. we really need to be looking at extensions for guys like Carswell, Leitch, and potentially Vigurs. Generally making sure any 'saleable' assets are on lengthy enough tie-ups

 

Oh and can we fix out the Dom Thomas situation?

 

Ideally we'd be looking to offer Vigurs and Sutton 2 year contracts now. Might not be financially possible though.

[Kmcalpin]

However, why should people be forced to pay £22 to watch players signed from 3rd division English clubs?

 

I don't care where we sign players from as long as they do the business. Championship and EPL players are way out of our league as they are of almost all Scots clubs. We have to be realistic.