Can we?

[ewerk]

The old, 'what can I change line'? On your own you can probably change fuck all but if others who share your opinion join or you can influence others through coherent, logical arguments then you might have a chance.

 

If you don't try you'll never know.

 

Because, quite frankly, the "bosses" at NUSC appears to be complete and utter mindless tossers. It's like telling Hitler under WW2 "I don't really mind the jews, you know? How bout we just all be friends?"

 

You think he'd listen to your opinion?

 

I know what you mean and I think there are a lot of people who feel the same as you. As I was saying, it would take more than one dissenting voice to make a difference, if everyone on here who disagreed with what NUST were saying joined and made their voices heard then you'd like to think that it would be taken on board, unless they try then we'll never know.

[Guest beardieman]

Better than a kick in the arse. On paper it may be no more than a fantasy but the likes of Man United and Liverpool have the very same groups with the very same aims so why not?

 

I think every club should have fan representation on the board, regardless of how well or awful things are going. We're the only people who can hold the money men to account nowadays. Romantic? Yes, it is. Realistic? Yes. It'll happen sooner rather than later, especially if people like MA keep up their 'commercial deals' and other such s****.

 

Just what are NUSC's wanabe board member/chairman doing with the members money?

The meetings I've been to fill me with dread at the prospect od these people ever getting a foothold in the club

 

Giving them an extra year free of charge, unless i've been singled out for special treatment by NUST.

 

As i've said time and time before NUST is what you make of it. It's a trust and fans are free to join and make what they want of it. I'm in the "Ashley is a c***, Keegan is nice, fans couldn't afford to take over the club and run it outright" camp, which patently isn't in line with the above. I don't agree with everything said but their heart is in the right place and that's the main thing at the minute.

 

Having a united fan front is important and pissy little twats getting their gussets in a twist and throwing a cyber-hissy because they don't like the look of the fat lad in the corner at the Irish club who suggests jihad is counterproductive.

 

Obviously, I would never say you were that type but you do come across as an ill educated tosser who has made a snap decision based on the fact they've heard things they don't instantly agree with.

 

Lets get this straight. I am not ill educated I am not a tosser, I have probably been around twice as long as you. I have not made a snap decision on anything. All I ask is that some one from NUSC or what even its called now tells everyone what they are doing with peoples money.

Now if you have a problem with this you realy need to give your head a shake

[Pilko]

beardieman - do you sit near the front of the Gallowgate end? I spied your Barton 666 shirt from my lofty perch in the upper.

[TRon]

I hate these tits, they DO NOT speak for the Newcastle Unted fans.

 

Have you tried making making your voice heard?

 

Why bother, it's far easier to criticise on an internet forum.

 

By the same token it's a lot easier to criticise the owner of a football club from the sidelines, what we need is someone who has the money and desire to buy the club outright and show how it's done. I'm not sure how fans buying a partial stake in the club is going to solve any of the problems.

[Heron]

Listening to Michael Shields or whatever he's called on ITV's North East tonight earlier made me think of one name and one name only Warrick Hunt.

[Dave]

Michael Shields was talking about NUST? Must feel pretty let down by the scousers.

[Guest Haris Vuckic]

 

Does the NUSC have some kind of Messiah? Because I'm not sure about it otherwise.

[Heron]

Michael Shields was talking about NUST? Must feel pretty let down by the scousers.

 

I beg your pardon?

[Liam Liam Liam O]

Listening to Michael Shields or whatever he's called on ITV's North East tonight earlier made me think of one name and one name only Warrick Hunt.

 

Assuming you've got the name wrong, what was the bloke saying??

[Heron]

Listening to Michael Shields or whatever he's called on ITV's North East tonight earlier made me think of one name and one name only Warrick Hunt.

 

Assuming you've got the name wrong, what was the bloke saying??

 

It was the punter from NUSC iirc...he was basically saying that they should be seriosuly considered by Mike Ashley as an alternative bid for the club to Barry Moat, etc, etc. It just sounded completely ridiculous. He was going on as well like they were some sort of massive business basically saying somehting along the lines of "Barry Moat can work with us if he wants, we're open to him", when the shoe is blatantly on the other foot.

 

Just sounded like a complete mong, and I could actually isualise the SMB's watching it thinking mongoloided Geordie Bastards. Embarassing stuff imo.

[OzzieMandias]

The most realistic chance of having any fan representation on the board is that Moat gets the club and one of his appointments is someone who has followed the club and actually has fans best interests at heart. is even more skint than people think he is.

 

 

 

Fixed.

[dcmk]

The most realistic chance of having any fan representation on the board is that Moat gets the club and one of his appointments is someone who has followed the club and actually has fans best interests at heart. is even more skint than people think he is.

 

 

 

Fixed.

 

I take it your not a fan of Moat's takeover bid.

 

What would you prefer to happen? 

 

[Guest Roger Kint]

I hate these tits, they DO NOT speak for the Newcastle Unted fans.

 

Have you tried making making your voice heard?

 

Why bother, it's far easier to criticise on an internet forum.

 

I tried making my voice heard and headed for their website but from what i can see it will cost me £10 per year just to access the actual discussions of the NUST website. Their non member page is just the same slogan repeated ad naseum amid plenty of NUFC news articles  and match reports. Would get a car sticker and keyring though for joining.......

[Offshore]

Trouble is, as soon as cash is involved in any venture all this equal say business goes out the window.

 

If I was putting xx million into the NUST, i'd want xx million equal votes.

 

....their intentions are good though.

[relámpago blanco]

Where to fook did they get 20m from, should just give it to Moat tbh.

[indi]

Supporters Direct keeps the faith in fan ownership despite setbacks

 

Football economics make running a club via a supporters' trust a tough proposition but the ideal is being championed at a conference this week

 

 

This has not, on the face of it, been the best 12 months for the enlightened idea that football clubs should belong to their supporters, rather than be prizes in a global tombola for millionaires. True, Barcelona, the most inspirational of member-owned clubs, won the Champions League in Rome with Unicef on their shirts, beating the Glazer family's AIG-sponsored, debt-leveraged Manchester United. But closer to home there have been sundry struggles.

 

Supporters' trusts, some of them newly formed, became the saviours of last resort for several stricken clubs around the 2002 collapse of ITV Digital, but the battle to compete financially, against clubs subsidised by wealthy backers, has seen several cede ownership back to single businessmen.

 

Notts County's supporters' trust voted by 93% in July to give away its majority stake in the world's oldest professional club to the Qadbak investment fund, whose backers have still not been identified. Stockport County, supporter-owned since 2005, overspent either side of their 2008 promotion to League One and went into administration in April. Brentford, whose trust took over a club owing around £2m in loans to the previous owner, old-school Ron Noades, did a deal with Matthew Benham, a Bees fan and professional gambler, which will see Benham invest £5m over five years then have the right to own the club outright.

 

Chesterfield and York City were also previously owned by supporters' trusts, which saved their clubs from extinction in hideous crises, but then found they lacked the wherewithal to enable the clubs to flourish, and passed them on to local businessmen.

 

Brentford aside, just one supporter-owned Football League club now remains: the defiantly cheerful Exeter City. Six years and two promotions since financial convulsions led to the club entering administration and being relegated to the Conference, and to the conviction of two former directors for fraudulent trading, the current period is close to the best the Grecians have ever had, according to the trust board member David Treharne. "There is a real feeling among our fans that as the club was nearly driven to the wall before, they are not willing to let that happen again," he affirms.

 

In the Premier League, where even a club such as Birmingham City has just been bought for £81.5m, owning the clubs has been beyond the reach of fans' mutuals; yet with eyes cast enviously on the Camp Nou, and the Bundesliga, where most clubs are more than 50% owned by fans, the idea has taken stubborn root among a corps of supporters. ShareLiverpoolfc registered nearly 10,000 members prepared to subscribe for a scheme to buy a stake of the Anfield club from the debt-laden Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

 

The Manchester United Supporters' Trust, fierce opponents of the Glazers' leveraged buyout which has saddled the club with £700m of debt, has amassed a staggering 36,500 members, committed to what MUST describes as: "The added affinity between the supporter and the club that only comes with supporter ownership."

 

The Arsenal Supporters' Trust, smaller, with 900 members, has accepted that owning the club is realistically beyond its potential, and like many trusts seeks to be a conduit for fans' views. Arsenal's trust lobbied influentially throughout their club's boardroom turmoil, for "custodianship" at Arsenal and against ownership by a single person, whether Stan Kroenke or Alisher Usmanov.

 

Supporters Direct, the initiative set up in 2000 by the government to promote fan involvement in clubs, is not trudging sheepishly to its annual conference on Friday, but pledging to learn the lessons of a difficult period. Despite recent difficulties, the organisation can point to trusts having formed at more than 150 clubs at all levels in England, Wales and Scotland, with 120,000 members in total, and £20m raised and invested across the clubs. That stands as a remarkable record of progress for an idea which, 10 years ago, was still obscure, the brainchild of Brian Lomax, founder member of a supporters' trust at Northampton Town, who steps down this year as Supporters Direct's chairman.

 

"We are not reacting to recent events at Notts County or Stockport believing they have delivered a blow to the trust idea," Dave Boyle, the organisation's chief executive, emphasises. "We believe very firmly that football clubs are community, sporting institutions, not private businesses, and that principle has gained tremendous support over the last decade."

 

It has also been backed by Uefa, which has enshrined in its strategic documents the conviction that supporter ownership is the ideal model for football clubs, and funded Supporters Direct to extend its work to fans in other countries. "Uefa recognises the growth of supporters' trusts in Great Britain as very progressive," says Gianni Infantino, Uefa's new general secretary. "It is a good model for football clubs – membership clubs which exist for their supporters – and we believe they can also help achieve the objective of financial fair play, where clubs do not make repeated losses every year."

 

That has been the difficulty in practice here for the mutual model, that whatever the money accumulated by the fundraising commitment of fans, it is swamped by the millions made available from wealthy backers, at all levels.

 

"The supporters' trust is a great model for a football club because its members are committed to the club being there for the long term, and they attract volunteers prepared to give their time for free," explains David Merritt, chairman of the Bees United supporters' trust and a Brentford director. "However, they cannot change the fundamental economics of football, in which so many clubs operate at an unsustainable level, increasing their levels of debt every year. That has to be reformed, to protect all clubs."

 

It is significant that three standard bearers of the trust "movement" which have flourished, FC United of Manchester, and AFCs Wimbledon and Telford, were started as collective endeavours by the supporters from scratch, not, like most of the league clubs, saddled with the debts of a failed previous regime.

 

Telford, previously in the Conference, were one of the few financially stricken clubs to go into liquidation, and fans set up their own to take its place. AFC Wimbledon, promoted to the Conference Premier last season, were founded at the base of football's pyramid by the vast majority of dons who refused to go to Milton Keynes with the husk of the old Wimbledon. FC United of Manchester, the do-it-yourself club formed by fans finally alienated from Old Trafford by the Glazer takeover, are regularly attracting around 2,000 supporters, huge in the UniBond Premier League.

 

"We look at what those clubs have achieved, and Exeter, and it shows what trust-owned clubs can do," Boyle says. "The last six months have reminded us how difficult it is for supporter-owned clubs financially in the Football League, so while we keep pressing for wider reforms to football, we need to consider the further help we can give to trusts, which are all run by volunteers."

 

From small beginnings, supporter involvement in clubs has struck a major chord, and been endorsed at the highest level of European football. It has just been fiendishly difficult for mutual ownership to work in professional football's mucky reality and murderous economics.

 

 

So if all these smaller clubs are going tits-up, what makes NUSC think that they will be able to take over a much larger and more complicated club?

 

My guess is: delusions of grandeur.

 

It's pie in the sky.

 

If NUSC got on with the business of being a supporters' club and stopped getting carried away with their own self-importance then they might be able to get a good thing going. I won't hold my breath.

[Village Idiot]

I think people are always putting us up as role models for supporter-owned clubs and we are not quite what these groups are trying to implement in the UK.

 

Fans have really *no* presence in Barça's (and Real's or Bilbao's) board, we just vote it every few years. A small number of them (selected by lottery) then can approve/reject the board's budget every season but that's about it. It's like voting for your PM. Other than that we have no say on how the club is run, and it's all for good if you ask me. Putting emotional football fans in charge of an enterprise managing hundreds of millions is just mental. But it's good that the team doesn't belong to anybody but us (which limits asset-striping and overleveraging since the president is just an employee, not owner).