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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 3 2016, 12:28 AM (7,011 Views) | |
| Morvant's Finest | Jan 7 2016, 07:28 AM Post #31 |
Tommy McLean
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Yeh, this comment stood out:
It's a good point in hindsight, but perhaps ST should have made his feelings clearer sooner if he had concerns. Suppose its a balance, while we were successfully signing overseas players who were doing well for the club there won't have been many complaining. I wonder if anyone at the club watched the likes of Cierzniak or Pernis play in the flesh? |
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| Barca87 | Jan 7 2016, 08:31 AM Post #32 |
Gordon Chisholm
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It was a statement of the blindingly obvious, but I've no problem with him calling out McNamara on it. To a certain extent he could argue that he gave his manager the freedom and support to the job as he saw fit. However the best part about the whole interview was that it made Derek Ferguson nearly have a seizure on air defending players/McNamara - because it surely can't be the fault of players or Jackie. |
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| Tom_Boland | Jan 7 2016, 09:33 AM Post #33 |
Ivan Golac
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Watched the interview on Reporting Scotland last night. Personally I don't think he's done himsell any favours and am at a total loss to understand why he would do an interview like this. "My family cannot fund the Club long term". Well how come ye were gonna buy and fund a bankrupt Club in Oz? He's just filled the supporters with a lack of confidence.about the Club, making us nervous wrecks into the bargain. I mean talking about Administration FFS. Is he hinting of things to come? It's fighting talk we want to hear, not impending doom. Doesna give me any pleasure to have spoken with a couple of dozen other Arabs last night, most of whom I dont even know or never met before, knowing that they all pretty much think the same. |
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| zico | Jan 7 2016, 10:23 AM Post #34 |
Ivan Golac
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Lack of success affects finances, blah blah blah, recuitment not good enough in summer la la la Buck atops with the chairman, he appoints the gaffers and givea them caah to meet clubs objectives. We are not asking him to put more money in from the family, we are asking him to reinvest some of the substantial sums we received from selling players. If you buy from the basement you head in that direction ST thinks we are all mad. |
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| Barca87 | Jan 7 2016, 11:49 AM Post #35 |
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Gordon Chisholm
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Wait a minute. What would we have said if in the summer, he had not given McNamara money to spend, or said he didn't fancy one of McNamara's signing so wouldn't fund it. There would be outrage. People texting in Sportsound with the usual "it's a disgrace" etc. yes, in retrospect we all wish he had binned McNamara after last season - however, there is a totally legitimate argument that McNamara had enough credit in the bank from 13/14 and the first half of 14/15 that he could argue to Thompson that he could reverse the slide if backed properly. I don't think Thompson's decision to keep McNamara could be seen has ridiculous or daft in that context - and given he was keeping him on, he gave him the means to sign players - as we can see they were all pish, but is that Thompson's fault? No. We need to get over the Armstrong/GMS stuff. Yes it was appallingly managed, but it is not the reason we are bottom of the league today. They would have been gone by the summer so it's not actually an issue. The most pressing question should be who do we need to get in to either keep us up, or make us competitive in the championship. The fact we will be in the financial keech if we get relegated seems to me to be a statement of the obvious - and we may be quite grateful that the Armstrong/Ciftci/Robertson money has gone on debt. |
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| Tom_Boland | Jan 7 2016, 01:22 PM Post #36 |
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Ivan Golac
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This is turning into a phuckin panto. |
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| yasser | Jan 7 2016, 01:31 PM Post #37 |
Ivan Golac
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That must be 100% correct. It's in The Sun 
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| Barca87 | Jan 7 2016, 01:45 PM Post #38 |
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Gordon Chisholm
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Mr McNamara, as your lawyer, I recommend what we should do is pick one your summer signings - Durnan, Donaldson, Snjeider, Bodul, Zwick, Muirhead and really focus on them being a success for United. If we do that, Thompson will have to take back those comments. |
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| vvhatsthatonyourback | Jan 7 2016, 01:55 PM Post #39 |
wild eyed
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+1 |
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| Cobardon | Jan 7 2016, 02:13 PM Post #40 |
Uncle Smurf
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It seems there are a substantial amount of United fans who are gleefully horrified by every new outrage our chairman foists upon us. It's a sign of the times, this instant taking offence at everything and anything. Only the pampered and insulated from real worry could possibly be so bothered by some of the things they are now. Anyway, I digress. Thomson would be - and was - immune from criticism when the team was winning on the pitch. His biggest crime has been to be chair of a club with a team that's turned to shit. Some of this was his fault, no question, but many fans seem to forget that without him there would be little cause for the optimism we've had over the past five years either. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be criticised, but it should be done with measure and appreciation for his efforts, albeit mistaken on occasion. The venom he seems to attract now for this is spectacular. I don't know why he bothers to be honest. He could have retired and bought a villa in the south of France years ago after all. No one would be calling him childish names and he'd have time to sit on a sun lounger sipping from quality wines from a full wine cellar. Strange thing fandom. Edited by Cobardon, Jan 7 2016, 02:14 PM.
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| Naebody | Jan 7 2016, 02:19 PM Post #41 |
Twat
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That's a statement of fact. Thompson has -- correctly -- been talking since before the debt buyback that the club needs to match costs with income. What's the alternative? As we've discussed in at least a dozen "Dundee United finances" threads, the club is operating at breakeven because the Thompsons have been providing personal loans that cover an overspend in operating costs. This has been happening for about a decade. We survive out of the chairman's pocket. There's no point in denying that. Also, United avoided administration only because Thompson backstopped the debt when the bank spat the dummy. (One can argue that the club would've been better going into administration, I guess. But that's quite harsh. You'd basically be arguing that Thompson should've walked away from a business he owns rather than trying -- successfully! -- to save it.) The player sales paid down some of that debt. Yes, some. There's no conspiracy here. Quite a lot of the transfer money was wasted because the securitisation deal was badly structured -- which is hardly surprising as banks tend to be quite good at negotiating money stuff in their favour. Some of the transfer money was owed to various parties (including HMRC, which tends to be forgotten) and some of it didn't exist in the first place, as the numbers reported in the papers rarely have any bearing on the numbers received by the bank. Whatever. The upshot here is that there's no money in the club beyond what's provided by 5k or so people coming through the turnstiles every two weeks. A long-term stability plan requires rebasing costs for those 5k of ticket sales. What's the alternative? Surviving on charity? No thanks. The Thompsons are currently overspending versus income. Spectacularly so, in fact. This season's been catastrophic for the finances. Note that Pongolle, Demel and Kawashima are probably the three highest paid players in United's history and none has a cent of resale value. The family is being absurdly profligate to try and appease an increasingly unhinged fanbase. Yet the fans don't seem able to recognise this. They want more money thrown at the problem, as if Thompson has to make amends. But what for? Ant & Dec Day was a very sore kick in the nuts, clearly. But there's something kinda neanderthal about continuing to blame Thompson for doing the thing that triggered the implosion. We're not where we are because GMS and Armstrong went to Celtic in February rather than July. That's just silly. We're here because JMc, when given a lot of cash, bought a lot of crap. It may be that he'd have bought more sensibly if United didn't have an absentee chairman through much of 2015. It may be that, if Thompson had been in the country more, JMc would've been sacked earlier. That's a reasonable accusation. So if you want to blame Thompson, blame him for not sacking JMc. Don't blame him for being a spendthrift though, because the opposite is true. He's burning through money like there's no tomorrow. And if he's not careful, there won't be. |
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| Barca87 | Jan 7 2016, 02:22 PM Post #42 |
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Gordon Chisholm
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Absolutely. |
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| Naebody | Jan 7 2016, 02:25 PM Post #43 |
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Twat
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So the Sun reporter called JMc to get him to comment on Thompson's comments. JMc told the reporter, "Ahm gonna to talk to my lawyers so am not commenting. That's off the record." Bingo, a story. Newspapers may get stories wrong, wilfully or otherwise, but they don't just make shit up for a laugh. Stop that. |
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| Barca87 | Jan 7 2016, 02:32 PM Post #44 |
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Gordon Chisholm
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What this thread also highlights is how poorly United, Thompson and our predicament are covered by the media. As several of us have discussed in various posts, Thompson is not to blame for us being bottom of the league for essentially allowing his manager to manage the club in the manner which that individual saw fit. Something which if he hadn't have done, we would have all cried outrage at. The media, where I presume a lot of United fans get the information to demand Thompson is thrown into the Tay, continues with this very tired narrative of United re-investing the money from Gauld etc into the team - when I'm fairly sure that in terms of wages at least, the players we have replaced Gauld et al with have been more expensive. Listening to Thompson's interview last night, it struck me that part of his problem is he obviously pays very little heed to courting the media (unlike his sister arguably), so now we're in the trouble, the media have kicked him up and down the street - rehashing all those tiresome "where's the money gone" and worse "he sold Ciftci, Armstrong, Robertson" as if a) we had any chance of keeping them and b) they could be easily replaced. I suspect his sister would not be getting this sort of criticism, as she is a burgeoning media darling, and our coverage might be more of the poor United, wasn't Jackie a bit rubbish. All in all, it only serves to underline Cob's point. Why on earth would anyone want to do that job. |
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| Conan the Destroyer | Jan 7 2016, 04:04 PM Post #45 |
I prefer it when we're pish
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It only happens because people are idiots with little else in their lives, I assume. I wish we were still top of the league but we're not. It's a good chance to introduce my boys to the skill of coping with grief without getting them a hamster. |
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4:47 PM Jul 13