Digs

Sat 23rd March Arbroath v Partick Th 0-2 Ayr Utd v Queens Park 0-1 Dundee Utd v Inverness CT 2-0 Morton v Dunfermline Ath (14/2265) 1-3

Thing is, there’s no glory yet, they’ve not won anything and aren’t even guaranteed in doing so either.

Sliding into Saturday like...It's almost as if they've spent the entire season ****ing everyone else off... The entitlement from that lot when they'd struggle to fill a bath for the last 25 years is hilarious

I reckon I've paid for at least two of our loan players at this point...

I don't have a problem with it as a ST holder. I don't buy it for any other reason than it gives the club money up front at the start of the season and it guarantees my seat. This is actually the first time in a long time I've not actually missed a game at home anyway, so I don't see it as missing out. I'd rather the club do everything they can to get bums on seats and people through the gate to make as much money as they can. If you're a fan complaining about losing money to this, then I'd argue you're not that much of a fan, the money is spent. As someone pointed out above, it's no different from buying a a pair of trainers for full price and seeing them go on sale two months later. Surely the club making as much as they can is the priority? I, and most fans I know, spend a lot of money in the club every season through various other outlets like the club shop and bars and do so with the intention of getting something for their 'donation' but treat it as such. I buy kits and barely wear them, I spend about £25-£40 every home game in Charlie D's/Legends. I could easily not do those things but do so knowing I'm putting money in the coffers and that's why I do it.

It always impresses me when folk remember this stuff in detail, I can barely remember what the score was three weeks ago.

Yeah, it was a pretty adamant answer to the questions of why we haven't published P&L. Another fan rep answered that small companies don't have to, which he was correct in that we utilise the 'small company' rule to allow us to do that, but it was quickly followed by David Cook saying that we have never published P&L. Now, he could have been mistaken or didn't know, or he could have meant, '...in his time there'. That wasn't made clear though.

So basically what was said in the meeting last week wasn't true - "we've never published P&L"

100%. Benjamin drove up to sign at 4am on Friday, trained and played the Saturday. It's no surprise he played the way he did.

You're right because he gets away with absolute murder, he could easily have seen red in the last game at Cappielow, but we completely allowed ourselves to be bullied by him and he took full advantage, he's not a particularly good footballer. With Bene back, it won't happen again I don't think, and MFW has had a good run of games at centre back now which will hopefully stand him in better stead.

I think the others are The Heritage Trust, Pars Supporters Trust, Young Pars have been in the past, Tappies Bus, the Rosyth Bus, Pars Business Club, Marv represented her Donation shop. It's not necessarily always the same groups as people can't always make it etc. Happy for others to go to these meetings if you're happy to provide updates so we can get the messages out there.

Honestly, that would make my season. I couldn't care less where what happened after that, that alone would be worth it.

This is the way.

Jakubiak was absolutely outstanding last night. Thing is, he’s been doing that all season but the difference was tonight, he was getting runners going beyond him and he was getting the support to keep the ball. His 1-2 with KRH for the 3rd 😮‍💨 I’m so pleased for the guy as he is clearly a player with ability and he’s now getting to show it.

Think it was a decent amount tbf. I'd be lying if I said a figure as I can't remember.

Agreed. At every one of these I've been to, he speaks passionately about the game and talks and talks, and acknowledges himself he is doing so. He just loves the game and I think he's an infectious guy and I can see why the group is close, as I think that as a player, you'd want to play for him, and it would be enjoyable. Obviously his persona in the dressing room will likely be different to what he shows here but you can tell a fitba guy when you meet one, and he is definitely that.

Yes Not sure but I'd doubt it for now. The building would need to be done as there would need to be toilets etc if it was open to the public so not sure if it is in the plans for the future, (I seem to remember something from a previous meeting that said it might be, but that may have changed). The original transfer money, not the sell on money that will be in this years accounts.

I'll take each one in order as they are above but a few things. Also, I'm not arguing their corner or defending anything said, this is partly my opinion and partly my perception of how it was said. You have to remember this isn't verbatim, and doesn't reflect the whole stream of conversation so there is a danger things can be taken slightly out of context of how they were said as it's difficult to get that across in a summary. Budget - I had the same questions/concerns as you but I think they realise how it came across. I still don't think the second place argument makes much sense. I do agree though that is is more prudent to budget for that rather than 1st place. Having said that, I;d have thought that they would have had a contingency/expectation in place to pay bonuses as I'm sure they must have been agreed at the start of the season? Wotherspoon - It's been said before, and I thought everyone knew this, we didn't just miss out on him. He was offered a deal, two weeks he was given to make his mind up, and a deadline was set. We were signing him to play in the hole, and in the meantime, after the deadline has passed, we signed Summers for that role. Wotherspoon then came back and said, he'd had a change of mind and was the deal still on the table and we said no, sorry pal, you're too late. IMO that is absolutely the right way to go about things. It's not like we were waiting on an answer from Messi. Make your mind up, if you don't take what's on offer, we move on. Tommy Smith - That came straight from JM, not Cook and he said he didn;t blame him for taking the Australia gig, as he'd have done exactly the same in his position. I've no reason to think he made up a reason or story to change the narrative on this one. Chris Kane - He never said it was a good thing he had a recurring injury. He said, it's good that he would recognise the signs within himself to say when he was ready to come back and not be rushed. Also, a recurring injury doesn't mean he is a cripple or there is an inherent defect in him that means he should be avoided like the plague. Players get recurring injuries, it's no big deal. It's not like he's a cripple and will have to retire from it. It's part and parcel of being a professional sportsman. I disagree with the 'fold like a deck of cards' assessment. We've rarely been battered this season. Lots of games we have had loads of the ball then given away daft goals but when you've got an ever changing back line though this is going to happen. We've rarely capitulated completely though, Rovers in the Scottish, Morton at home aside. I can't think of many other games we've been battered out of site. The group as a team is solid, and I believe him when he says that. The coaching thing? Of course it does. There is often an assertion that we need a striker coach, or we need a defensive coach etc. The point I'm making is that they do this already in regards to the strikers. It's not just about taking the chance or creating a chance with a pass. If you've not got strikers making the right runs or even making dummy runs to create space, the creative players have got nothing to hit. Also, we often do put great balls into great areas, and there is no-one there. For me, that's a personnel issue and I think without saying as much, he probably agrees. That is very much my personal opinion though. I'd completely disagree with your assessment of us being 'turgid' for the entire season, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that. Statements - I hear what you're saying and I agree with you in general but it was more a case of him saying there is no point in frequent statements saying either the same thing or nothing of substance. I made the point to him that we went from being treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed ****e) by Masterton, to a whole new way of working with clear and honest updates when things happened to back to less frequent updates. I said whilst I agreed with no point in coming out to say nothing of substance, there is probably a balance between now and the way it was required. (I'm paraphrasing quite a bit here but this was the gist of the convo).

That wasn’t present, he said it was earlier in the season. It was part of a wider point about making chances aren’t necessarily the problem, he was acknowledging we need to be better at taking chances.

Just back in, and this has taken me nearly 90 mins to decipher my horrendous corrie-fisted handwriting and type up so sorry for the delay! 🤣 As usual, it's not necessarily what was said word for word verbatim, as it's not easy to listen and write at the same time, and it's not necessarily in the order it was discussed as some things came round more than once so I've consolidated those together. It's also not every single thing that was spoken about as some of it was conversational and tbh, was just that, people's opinions and conversations, so not really worthy of including as it was just chat and isn't really an update. As always, this is just what was said, and only some parts are my opinion, which I will make clear, so don't shoot the messenger! David Cook spoke first and gave a club update, and the manager gave his update on some things then took questions which formed the largest part of the discussion. He thanked us for coming and reiterated it is important to get in front of the fans, win, lose or draw, something the manager spoke about too. Obviously, the fairly large elephant in the room was finances. They are obviously disappointed to be posting such a big loss but he went on to give reasons to try and give context whilst not discussing full specifics. They did budget for the losses, and spent money to try and give the manager the best possible backing to get out of league 1. They won't apologise for doing that. Rising cost in the world we are living in account for some of this too. Energy, cost of supplies etc, have hit the club like everyone else. Rosyth was obviously a big part of it. Even with the matched funding and grants, it was over £100k in getting the applications, planning and surveys done for the drainage with another £96k to get it done right. They see Rosyth as integral for the future of the club and again, don't apologise for trying to build a foundation. (my words here - Basically, it's more than just breeding players to sell on, it's about building a football foundation at the club - end) With the £825k in investment from GMBH and match funding, it allowed us to get the ground to standard and get the pitches down. They hope to be in use and moving all football activities for the club down there some time next month, which is great news. They left Fife Elite and put that funding into building our own instead of funding the development of players for them to go to other Fife clubs, which did happen. DC - I'm sure the fans wouldn't have been happy if we hadn't invested in youth - He does have a point here IMO The approach isn't one where they are throwing good money after bad. I'm paraphrasing but they are basically saying that they know they are spending money but it is in a controlled fashion, and GMBH Fussball are fully committed to both funding the progress to this point, ie it's not been forced or a stretch, they are doing it in a way with which they are comfortable. Obviously it's not a sustainable position to be in but GMBH recognise that breaking even is hugely difficult for a football club, especially in the championship. DC said that he'd like to dispel the myth that we have gone from breaking even to losing money. Some of the reasons we did so for a long time were due to 'windfall events' as he referred to them. Things like selling Kevin Nisbet (first transfer fee) playing the OF in the cup. Last year we were relegated and even winning the league didn't give us much back - £120k for winning the league. The gap in the championship is huge though, mid-table finish in this league is treble that. We also invested in the squad and the manager (I'll cover off more of this in the manager part) and heavily incentivised the squad. We budgeted not to finish first, as it was a bit like tempting fate and a bit presumptuous, this is what they meant in the statement about budgeting for two play off games that didn't happen, and also paid out bonuses to the squad which wasn't budgeted for. We didn't get a run in the cup either, so no extra there to make up that shortfall. It was about £150-£200k swing from what was budgeted all tolled. The truth about breaking even > losses is probably somewhere in the middle in terms of the truth and what people believe. He was in no way saying anything about the previous board or how it was run. He covered Greg Shields and some of the rumours that DC was behind him leaving. He said absolutely not, and praised him for the job he did in developing a lot of our promising youngsters. He said Greg reached a point in his career where he had to decide if he wanted to continue to pursue a career in the game and decided to go down a different route. He did say they are talking to 6 or 7 really interesting people for his replacement and those discussions are ongoing. He covered the assertion/accusations of how 'interested/invested' GMBH are saying there is at least one of them over once a month, with 5 of them having been over multiple times over the course of the season and Thomas Meggle coming across once a month on top of that. Nothing has changed in terms of their commitment. Regarding paid staff, they are doing this to try and professionalise the club. Obviously that has also had an impact on finances too. Alister Burn has just passed his one year in the job and is doing well, they have also brought in a new Ticketing and Events manager. They previously had someone else that didn't work out but the new guy has settled in well, another Pars fan. He finished off by saying the supporters have been great, referencing the Airdrie 5k gate as an example of how the fans have continued to stick by the team. A question was asked about the sustainability of losing money season on season and how is that sustainable. There was a question of when does that come to a point where they say 'enough is enough'. I reminded DC that even though it is 10 years ago, the wounds of admin are still fresh in some people's minds, and whilst no-one is really questioning the integrity or motives of GMBH, what reassurances do we have that they won't just walk away? Basically, it was reasserted that they absolutely are fully committed and whilst we have made losses, they aren't phased by this. The emphasis is getting the club to where they want it to be infrastructure-wise, and on a day to day, looking at both costs and revenue and developing ways of improving both. DC said he has a guy coming from Germany to work with him on this who has worked with one of GMBH before on this very thing (can't remember who it was with, or if it was even said). The extra £300k didn't have to be requested by the board, they made that investment when it was required without question. DC was also keen to point out that the rumours around us missing players over the sake of £100 etc is not true. He said we can easily compete with anyone in this league on that point. Every player we have missed has been for footballing or professional reasons. ie going to Rovers over us to fight for a medal/title as opposed to a mid-table (or worse - my words - relegation battle). To illustrate this he said 3 of our summer targets signed for Premier teams. It was put to him that did we maybe shoot too high and this has cost us and he said he wasn't going to apologise for the club having ambition and ambitious targets. By the sounds of it, it's a tough market we're dealing in and small margins in regards to success or failure in getting deals done. Whilst they thought Ashcroft was a done deal, it fell through, on the choice of the player for football reasons late in the day. On the flip side, Kane signing for us was the same things as he had another deal agreed for him elsewhere but decided to come to us. ON deadline day, we had a deal agreed for an international player who was coming up from England, he was coming. Then we got a call to say he had had a late offer to go to Australia, which he couldn't turn down. The board gave him the option to bring in someone else so they moved for Malakai. None of the deals were 'panic signings' they were all players we had been watching. DC then stressed, in summary we would never lose out on a player for the sake of £100pw. Lastly, he confirmed there had been considerable damage to seats, toilets, and graffiti at Starks on Saturday. It's not acceptable and this is going to cost the club. The Manager then gave an update. He is happy with the squad and where we are. He feels that the squad as a whole in regards to the ability in it is better than last year. He's delighted with the development of the likes of Otoo and Tod, who is now on his way back. As an aside, DC said that this group is better than the group we had when he came in, paraphrasing, better team spirit, better attitude as a hole and more together. Incidentally on Otoo, the manager said he turned down an extension at Celtic on more money to come here, because he wanted to develop his football. Which I think everyone would agree is working out well for him. In regards to injuries, he feels there are definitely some, in hindsight, that they could have prevented. Bene being one, JM holds his hands up to that. Bene felt himself he was fine and broke down again, but we have changed how we approach this with individuals now to avoid this scenario again. Taking into account how the player feels with the data on the rehab. How they approach the rehab and how they manage them back. Bene wasn't rushed back per se, he'd done the rehab, but it was maybe still a week or so too soon. I asked the manager what has changed form last year in regards to injuries. Yes, it's horrendously unlucky, and I agreed I'd never seen anything like it, but it can't all be bad luck. What's changed and what is the data telling us if anything? He gave a really good explanation saying that they had looked at absolutely everything. All of the traditional markers in the data you look for were showing really high numbers for us, as we press high, and we run a lot. We have actually run more this year on average than last year, and more at top speeds. He took the problem to someone he knows outside of the club for advice, a really good sports scientist who looked at things and made some suggestions. (he was keen to point out this isn't a reflection on current or previous staff - just a fresh pair of eyes from someone he trusts) Now we are starting to be a lot more personal in terms of load, baseline load rest etc than we were before. We were working with a too generic approach previously, so we are taking it a lot more individually then we were before in terms of what we're asking them to do in training, comparing that to what they've done in games, when, for how long, at what speed. We are now asking the sports science team to come to him with more info on this to advise on what they should all be doing as individuals. There's loads more but in short, I was happy with the explanation as he put it down to himself saying maybe it's a learning curve for him as a young manager, and so we have now implemented changes which we are starting to see the benefit of now with players coming back and staying fit. As an aside, Chris Kane's injury is an older recurring one, so the good thing is he knows how to manage his own recovery for it. He said that if someone had said at this point we'd be 5 points of the playoffs he'd probably have taken it, but has also been in the league long enough to realise we are not that far above relegation either. We have a squad of 22 tomorrow, so it's getting fitter all the time. We always wanted to consolidate this year at the very least, but the main overall aim is still to get this team to the Prem (I took this to mean not necessarily this year, but not in a negative way) He said he made a statement after 5/6 games that this team will not be relegated and he stands by it. They never budgeted for the severity of the injuries, and the cost for surgeries has been astronomical. That has obviously come at a cost but it absolutely did NOT affect playing budget. I also asked are we having to manage the players differently to make sure they don't make the Bene mistake, and he basically said yes, and they do now. However he pointed out that we have had players putting themselves through it when we were at rock bottom injury wise. Wighton played with an injection against QP. Summers played with an injury that game too. Hammy has a sunken bone in his cheek and was warned it needed surgery or may not be able to be fixed. He was given the choice, and said he wanted the surgery. Next day, he came in and said he'd leave it and play. They told him he didn't need to do that, but he wanted to put it off so he could help the team. (My words) I think they are trying to stress that the group has a brilliant attitude, and will run through brick walls four each other, and us. and they just wanted to acknowledge it. We discussed goals, and lack thereof, and the reasons behind it. When we were 3rd bottom, we had the second best defensive record in terms of goals conceded, and second only to Utd for expected goals, ie chances that should have been converted. It was margins that small that we are working under, which I agree with. He says that we absolutely have to be scoring goals and we need to get that in the team and they are working on this. They even considered are they working too much on it on training, were they putting them under too much pressure with it? (They weren't - they changed it up and it made no difference but I think this dispels the part about them not being coached). On the striker front, they said that Taylor Sutherland is knocking on the door and that they absolutely see him starting soon, and that as a finisher, he's got it, and scores barrowloads in training. He said he is a great kid with a brilliant attitude, always wants to learn and is always asking questions, wants to learn the game. So, don't be surprised to see him start a game soon... I think this is about it, I don't think I've missed anything important. There were a couple of bits and bobs that were conversational etc, but this is the pertinent parts. If anything isn't clear, ask below and I'll try and answer as best I can.

The branding for the patterns is '10 Clans' and its' supposed to represent differetn tartans, without actually being tartan. Adidas are predicting it will be our biggest ever selling Adidas kit. Apparently we consistently sell more kits than Spain.

Friday 15th March Dunfermline Ath 0 V 1 Dundee Utd (27/7469) Sat 9th March Airdrie 1 v 0 Arbroath Inverness CT 0 v 0 Ayr Utd Partick Th 1 v 2 Morton Queens Park 1 v 2 Raith Rovers

|Going back to a 4 has completely hamstrung our two full backs since we've done it. It's been the pay-off for a slightly more solid defence in terms of stopping teams getting in behind.

Sorry, but you can't compare McCann and Jakubiak on anything but goals return. He brings way more to the team in terms of hold up play, link up play, knowing where to run for himself, knowing where to run to create space for others and general ability to play the game than McCann does. It's not even close.

It would have been difficult to wreck the toilets at Brockville given the fact they used to just stream down the terraces.