Supporters Meeting 14/03/24

[SanguinePar]

12 hours ago, Digs said:

Obviously, the fairly large elephant in the room was finances... [snip]

Rosyth was obviously a big part of it.

Just to be clear are they saying that some of the loss in the recent accounts was directly down to spend at Rosyth? If that's the case then I have less of a concern with the loss, since it's actually an investment in the future. Whether it'll prove a good investment is unknown at this time, but at least it isn't a loss of money with nothing to show for it at the end.

12 hours ago, Digs said:

They hope to be in use and moving all football activities for the club down there some time next month, which is great news.

That's superb - hopefully the facility will soon be proving its worth. Did anyone mention whether it would be available to public hire, as an income stream? I think this was mentioned before, but not 100% on that.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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. 

The Nisbet money can't have been part of our breaking even in previous years, surely? We're only getting that in the current year's accounts. I'm maybe misunderstanding.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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,

As I said at the time, I think that's reasonable - although I think it was foolish to say so in the context of a £1 million pound loss! ;-)

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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.

Bit disappointing that bonuses weren't budgeted for, but a cup run was - seems like something that was bound to bite us later.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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.

Difficulty one this - it's not really much of an assurance, but as @DougieDave points out elsewhere, what WOULD be a good enough assurance? I'm not sure how that could be achieved short of some dramatic act of generosity like unconditional investment, which obviously isn't going to happen. I guess the fact that they are still here after the last few seasons is a good sign, but I'm still a bit perplexed about why they got involved in the first place tbh. They're very welcome though, assuming they are on the up and up.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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). 

This is why I remain frustrated by the lack of squad strengthening in the summer - persuading people to come to a champion team that are stepping into a league above would surely be easier than persuading them to join halfway through a poor season. I'm not saying no efforts were made, but the weakness of the squad was much pointed out before a ball had been kicked.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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.

Fair enough, but then he can't really complain when people criticise the outcomes of that approach.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

The Manager then gave an update. He is happy with the squad and where we are.

I can't really agree with him there, although he's hardly going to sit there and moan about the squad, so not sure how much value to put on that.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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. 

Meaning Andrew Tod? Or Matty Todd? I generally agree about ability levels - we're just spread way too thin.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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. 

Consequence of a thin squad IMO. Was always a risk to run so light, and it's turned out that way.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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.

Good that we're doing this, but kind of concerning IMO that we weren't already. I'm no sports scientist, but even I would have thought training would be personalised.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

He said he made a statement after 5/6 games that this team will not be relegated and he stands by it. 

I feel like we heard the same from Grant and Hughes! ;-)

I do trust JMP much more than those jokers though.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

we have had players putting themselves through it when we were at rock bottom injury wise.

As above - consequence of a squad that was patently too thin in summer.

 

12 hours ago, Digs said:

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.

Thanks again for all this @Digs, greatly appreciated 👍

12 hours ago, Piracy said:

Question was asked about the lack of converting chances into goals and just about the lack of goals this season. Some discussion about the reasons for this, the frustration, some mention of statistics, of chances created,chances not taken etc, also tactics.

Similar to what @Grant says elsewhere, I don't really feel like we're making enough good chances in the first place - I can't recall too many "How did he miss?" moments, but plenty of "Please someone get a decent ball in".

 

12 hours ago, Piracy said:

The point was made that we're seeing significant losses for 3 consecutive seasons, over £1millon 2022/23 and a 6 figure sum for this season, concerns that this isn't sustainable for a club of our size and in our position. David Cook pointed out his 20 years in football and the business experience and acumen of the gentlemen from Gmbh Fussball and they're comfortable with the way they're managing the situation.

Appreciate that this is second hand and from memory, but to me that sounds pretty dismissive of valid concerns. Hopefully it wasn't like that.

 

12 hours ago, Piracy said:

There was more detail and discussion points I'll have missed, but that's it from me.

Thanks also, @Piracy :-)

 

10 hours ago, parsforlife said:

Planned investment is one thing, getting things wrong and having to plug gaps is another and that's too much money to misjudge.

Agreed - that's why I really want to know how much of the loss was down to spend at Rosyth. Even an approximate proportion would be good to know.

 

10 hours ago, parsforlife said:

On the point that fans would moan if we didn't invest in youth, maybe some but not me, I really don't care where our players come from,  If we can have an academy and have it run at a profit directly via player sales or indirectly by providing first team players at lower then market rate then great,  if not its pointless and probably harmful.

I can't see how it would be harmful long term - it's the short term hit that it may or may not be causing us that concerns me. Once it's up and running, I feel it can really only be a good thing.

 

10 hours ago, parsforlife said:

 it wasn't like suddenly in January or February players chose to sign for other clubs, the best players in our division have since last April/may have been choosing that we are not a good fit for them. 

Agreed

10 hours ago, parsforlife said:

You've mentioned a few references to strategy in your post, was there any pushback on cook for more detail on this?  For me its a really unsatisfactory answer 'trust me there's a plan'  You're going to really struggle to get buy in with that, you need to provide some detail, a general outline on how it will work,  a timeline and intermediary targets you're going to judge its success by and if it will need readjustment.   

Agreed again

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

with the Nisbet transfer fee coming into this year’s account we should surely be ready to break even in these sets of accounts?

Yeah, that part of the explanation doesn't make sense to me, as noted above.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Winning the league 120k – The first couple of bits I just didn’t agree with based on opinion, this though conflicted with that I’d read previously. The 120k seems to low, there’s a twitter account called @SPFLWatch which has a pinned tweet detailing the league prize money, It estimates we got just shy of 150k, now if you don’t want to take this as gospel which is fair enough you can go on the SPFL website - https://spfl.co.uk/news/spfl-prize-pot-reaches-25m which has the breakdown from the 2018/19 season, where the league one winners got 125k, I’m going to lay it out there, I don’t think the prize money has went down.

To be fair, it's only £5k difference and it's a second hand report of an off the cuff remark - DC could easily have misspoken and meant to say £125k, or Digs might have misheard or whatever.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

It’s fair to not budget for first. However again I’m going to cry bull**** that finishing second was more lucrative. For one the extra 20 grand in prize money would be nice, but secondly, and this is huge for me. What crowds were they bloody budgeting for? Due to us finishing first and being in that title race we had a fantastic number of tickets sold, far more than we had in the previous season at Championship level, is Cook saying that we did budget for the sold out game against Falkirk and the trophy day against QOTS?

To be fair, if we were in a title race right to the end and then lost, we'd likely still have had the big crowds. Possibly even moreso.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Surely it would be more presumptuous to hope for a run in the cup to compensated for their budgetary mistakes.

Agree with this...

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Surely, it’s more presumptuous to think we would have two playoff games?

...but not with this - they can only go with what's reasonably likely, and given that it was obvious that it was going to be us and Falkirk dominating everyone else, the balance of probability was that if we finished in the payoffs we would probably be in the final. I don't have a problem with that thinking tbh.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Targets going to the premier – I’ve not got it in me to pull up the quote, but I’m absolutely positive this was also said last year and it annoyed me then. “Not going to apologise for the club having ambitious targets” A couple of paragraphs ago he didn’t want to sound presumptuous by saying we were going for the League one title!

Doesn't he mean ambitious signing targets? I don't much like the phrase "not going to apologise" either, but I don't think he meant that in relation to aiming for promotion to the top flight.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

If they thought this year was about consolidation, should next year be considered a year for challenging, and will McPakes performance be measure against that?

Hopefully yes - that's been my view since promotion. Just try and safely stay in this league (I appreciate that in previous discussions it's been pointed out that it's hard to do that without also challenging for the promotion playoffs!) and then have a real run next season.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

We weren’t good at it last year, we’re worse at it this year. For me the problem isn’t the lack of converting chances into goals... We just don’t actually create chances to bloody miss

Yeah, definitely agree. I'm hoping that having Hamilton and Todd back in the midfield will start to reap benefits in terms of good supply.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Discussion on how good a lot of our play in games has been – I hope this was a short discussion, we’ve been turgid and awful to watch for the most part.

Agreed.

 

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Apologies for how negative this comes across, but I remain utterly unconvinced with a few things by the club.

Agreed, I've been feeling really flat about the Pars since summer (ie before we were playing poorly and had loads of injuries) and actually even before that, going back to last season at times, despite the success on the pitch at the time.

 

 

[SanguinePar]

Goddamn, that's a long post... ;-)

[Grant]

3 minutes ago, SanguinePar said:

Goddamn, that's a long post... ;-)

Outstanding use of the multi quote function 👏 

[SanguinePar]

12 minutes ago, Grant said:

Outstanding use of the multi quote function 👏 

It's a lifesaver :-)

[Rossmcno1]

brilliant discussion all, and everyone doing it in the right way - some great reads.

 

and @SanguinePar I doff my cap, that poor wee quote button 😁

[Salvo Montalbano]

Don't usually post on here these days but been directed here from Pie and Bovril. 

Interesting to see both the updates and the comments around them. Not going to add too much other than...

1. I think the 120 grand will be the 149 minus tax? In any event, you don't get 3 times that for 4th or 5th in the Championship. Not sure why it would be exaggerated like that. 

2. Glad in a sense that Rosyth was partly to blame for losses last year - we only see spades in the dirt but planning, remediation, drainage etc all seem to have made a dent.

3. Interesting again to hear about adding paid personnel to make the club more professional off the park - I'd argue things like social media, the new website, ticket portal, links between the website and Pars TV etc have if anything got worse!

4. I'm a wee bit of a stats nerd (not as big as others mind you) so was interested in the xG stuff. I do think our xG will be skewed somewhat by that Inverness game where we hit the woodwork six or seven times - we probably had an xG of 4 or 5 in that one game alone - whereas in most games we don't create an awful lot of presentable chances. I'd also agree with the post above that our play is often turgid - there hasn't been too many exciting or entertaining games with good football on show. We've had a few stinkers, a few interesting/intriguing games, a few that we've had some good moments in; but overall if I was looking for entertainment or excitement I wouldn't be heading to EEP at the moment. 

5. One quick one for Grant about assuming there would be 2 home play off games since it was really just us and Falkirk... a) we would have probably assumed being 9th the previous season that we'd have managed to best the 4th best team in League One and look how that turned out! And b) at the start of the season it wasn't clear it was going to be a 2 horse race. Many felt that Queens, Alloa, possibly even Kelty would be there or there abouts. Let's not rewrite history on that score. 

 

[Grant]

13 minutes ago, Salvo Montalbano said:

Don't usually post on here these days but been directed here from Pie and Bovril. 

Interesting to see both the updates and the comments around them. Not going to add too much other than...

1. I think the 120 grand will be the 149 minus tax? In any event, you don't get 3 times that for 4th or 5th in the Championship. Not sure why it would be exaggerated like that. 

2. Glad in a sense that Rosyth was partly to blame for losses last year - we only see spades in the dirt but planning, remediation, drainage etc all seem to have made a dent.

3. Interesting again to hear about adding paid personnel to make the club more professional off the park - I'd argue things like social media, the new website, ticket portal, links between the website and Pars TV etc have if anything got worse!

4. I'm a wee bit of a stats nerd (not as big as others mind you) so was interested in the xG stuff. I do think our xG will be skewed somewhat by that Inverness game where we hit the woodwork six or seven times - we probably had an xG of 4 or 5 in that one game alone - whereas in most games we don't create an awful lot of presentable chances. I'd also agree with the post above that our play is often turgid - there hasn't been too many exciting or entertaining games with good football on show. We've had a few stinkers, a few interesting/intriguing games, a few that we've had some good 

5. One quick one for Grant about assuming there would be 2 home play off games since it was really just us and Falkirk... a) we would have probably assumed being 9th the previous season that we'd have managed to best the 4th best team in League One and look how that turned out! And b) at the start of the season it wasn't clear it was going to be a 2 horse race. Many felt that Queens, Alloa, possibly even Kelty would be there or there abouts. Let's not rewrite history on that score. 

 

Apologies Salvo I'm not quite grasping you there. 

My point was (And I may have put it across poorly) is that it would be an assumption in itself that if we reached the playoffs then we would have definitely have had 2 playoff games. 

Worth noting that our closest challengers for the title (Falkirk) only had one last season after a quite incredible scoreline against Airdrie. 

It just doesn't really make sense to me why we've brought it up/said it. I feel it would've been better received if we'd came out and said "Big loss, but we're building a training ground and it's expensive". The whole missing two playoff games is odd IMO. 

[Salvo Montalbano]

19 minutes ago, Grant said:

Apologies Salvo I'm not quite grasping you there.

Sorry, it was @SanguinePar who I should have mentioned - I agree with everything you've said there about the play off.

[Digs]

2 hours ago, SanguinePar said:

Just to be clear are they saying that some of the loss in the recent accounts was directly down to spend at Rosyth? If that's the case then I have less of a concern with the loss, since it's actually an investment in the future. Whether it'll prove a good investment is unknown at this time, but at least it isn't a loss of money with nothing to show for it at the end.

Yes

2 hours ago, SanguinePar said:

That's superb - hopefully the facility will soon be proving its worth. Did anyone mention whether it would be available to public hire, as an income stream? I think this was mentioned before, but not 100% on that.

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).

2 hours ago, SanguinePar said:

The Nisbet money can't have been part of our breaking even in previous years, surely? We're only getting that in the current year's accounts. I'm maybe misunderstanding.

The original transfer money, not the sell on money that will be in this years accounts.

[SanguinePar]

51 minutes ago, Grant said:

5. One quick one for Grant about assuming there would be 2 home play off games since it was really just us and Falkirk... a) we would have probably assumed being 9th the previous season that we'd have managed to best the 4th best team in League One and look how that turned out! And b) at the start of the season it wasn't clear it was going to be a 2 horse race. Many felt that Queens, Alloa, possibly even Kelty would be there or there abouts. Let's not rewrite history on that score. 

It's not a question of "rewriting history" - in my memory the general view, and certainly my own opinion at the time, was that it was clearly going to be us and Falkirk, then all the rest. You may remember differently, but presumably that's what the board thought too - and indeed it turned out to be the case.

So, assuming that the board thought that, then I think you can conclude that assuming we would either win the league or make the playoffs was pretty reasonable. And that it was more likely to be the case than us failing to make the playoffs at all.

I also think it's reasonable to think that that would mean bigger crowds for at least most of the season.

And also that it's reasonable to think that, were we to be in the playoffs, it was more likely than not that we would win in a semifinal. Not guaranteed, of course, nothing is. But in making a budget you can only try and project what is likelier to happen with the information you have.

Again, the only thing I take issue with the board on this point is mentioning recently it when reporting a huge loss. That's a comms failure IMO, but I don't think it was the wrong budgeting approach necessarily.

[SanguinePar]

2 minutes ago, Digs said:

Yes

Fab, thanks

2 minutes ago, Digs said:

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).

Fair point. Will be good if/when that is possible though. I seem to remember that our artificial pitch was a decent earner until it was ruled against by our SPL pals.

 

2 minutes ago, Digs said:

The original transfer money, not the sell on money that will be in this years accounts.

Ah ok, got you - although was it all that much initially? Enough to break even? I guess it must have been.

[Digs]

Just now, SanguinePar said:

Ah ok, got you - although was it all that much initially? Enough to break even? I guess it must have been.

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

[scottyboy]

2 hours ago, Grant said:

Outstanding use of the multi quote function 👏 

I burnt ma toast. Cheers.

[Rossmcno1]

34 minutes ago, scottyboy said:

I burnt ma toast. Cheers.

Genuinely lol’d there.

[da_no_1]

There was a definite feeling after we were relegated that we would find it tough, that McGlynn would make a difference at the top and that Kelty, QOS and even Edinburgh City would push us all the way for a top 4 place.