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Wage cuts
Topic Started: Nov 17 2010, 05:38 PM (2,353 Views)
Ivan
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F*cking plebs.
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Naebody
Nov 18 2010, 06:53 PM
Ivan
Nov 18 2010, 02:45 PM
That's just the sort of wrong-headed nonsense that caused the economy of the world to explode. Then collapse.

Debt's not bad. It's what you do with it that counts.

Just say if Mr Mclean, instead of running up an overdraft shipping random blokes in boxes from South America, bought a gym operator. The club and the business would have some quite obvious synergies (and I apologise for the management bullshit, but there's no other word). The same could be said for catering firms, security firms, property agencies, media agencies and about a hundred other companies that offer obvious and easy synergies (sorry) with the core Dundee United FC operations (sorry again). No capital expenditure (sorry) is risk-free, but this is as close as you get. It's called vertical integration (sorry). It's on the opening page of The Idiot's Guide to How to Avoid Running Your Moderately Successful Business into the Shite Within Five Years.

Sure. The fans would've bleated about buying actual assets rather than signing this or that player. However, I don't have a great deal of time for this idea that football clubs are simply bowing to what the fans want. They've shown no evidence of ever having done so, except retrospectively when looking for someone to blame for their asshatted decisions.

Okay, that makes more sense to me. I'll keep my nomination open, for now.
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Hamish
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Ian McCall
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I missed this earlier on Thursday in the Glasgow Herald. Maybe it's not new?

The United owner is also in talks with two mystery English Premier League sides and a foreign club about forging an alliance which could bring players to Tannadice on loan deals. He said: “There are a few clubs who see their players coming to Scotland as a good prospect.”
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Naebody
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Twat
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Hamish
Nov 18 2010, 11:32 PM
The United owner is also in talks with two mystery English Premier League sides and a foreign club about forging an alliance which could bring players to Tannadice on loan deals. He said: “There are a few clubs who see their players coming to Scotland as a good prospect.”

That's another thing that f*cks me off. The "we'll become a feeder club" solution. Why is a player from the youth side of Villa or Newcastle better for the club than a player from United's youth side? Because the former would be free. That's all. The short-termist cynicism of this makes me despair.

If United can't afford to pay its players it'll have to pay its players less. If that means losing players, fine. If that means results suffer, fine. The club managed to balance income and outgoings quietly and without resorting to charity for 70 years before McLean made a twat of it; if Stephen Thompson thinks revertion to the mean is beyond his ability he should protect his inheritence by going and finding a better chairman.

(My kid can't sleep, in case you're wondering.)
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Setenza
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Knitting with only one needle
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Naebody
Nov 19 2010, 04:17 AM

That's another thing that f*cks me off. The "we'll become a feeder club" solution. Why is a player from the youth side of Villa or Newcastle better for the club than a player from United's youth side? Because the former would be free. That's all. The short-termist cynicism of this makes me despair.

I think from a few points of view it does make sense.

It does save money, and can really benefit us. There are a lot of good SPL players around who started as youth players at other clubs, not good enough for them, but fine for us. If we can take them cheaply / free and get first option should they not be required by their main club, it would make sense.

It also confuses things a little - there was a big deal made about Levein and the revamped and innnovative youth setup we were creating. It's always frustrating when these things happen, then by the time any of the players who start in the system get old enough (presumable about 6-8 years), everyone's forgotten. But if our future is this system, the loan stuff doesn't seem to make sense.
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Setenza
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Knitting with only one needle
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I think as well as Conway, Gomis and Buaben have been mentioned as out of contract next summer.

Are there any others? Could be January Sales time if none sign up.

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Barca87
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Gordon Chisholm
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Setenza
Nov 19 2010, 04:54 PM
I think as well as Conway, Gomis and Buaben have been mentioned as out of contract next summer.

Are there any others? Could be January Sales time if none sign up.

I presumed part of what Thompson was doing was essentially making them available to reasonable bids this January.
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whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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I thought Buaben had another year to go.

Regarding Stephen Thompson - I think he's doing a good job and his moaning only makes me wonder how his Arab credentials could be doubted.

While Naebody's "speculate to accumulate" approach is certainly attractive, I would remind him that Dundee City is one of the poorest cities in the UK, and Tannadice is in a rather insalubrious area, so expanding the DUFC business empire in the vicinity of the club would be unpromising. This is not Chelsea.

It's also worth bearing in mind that running a football club is a relatively simple and limited operation despite the disproportionate media attention it gathers. Adding gym operator, catering and security firms to the business is really quite a dramatic level of diversification and would require a talented board who could probably not be drawn from existing DUFC fans with a bit of money, and we'd have to end up being a diversified medium-sized company that happened to have a football division.

Bearing in mind the turnover of DUFC Ltd, while there might be some synergy, the area of overlap between DUFC Ltd and the other companies would be relatively small, unless the other businesses were so small as to rely on DUFC Ltd for a very large proportion of their business. In which case, it could be debatable whether they were separate businesses or just different portacabins hooked up to the Tannadice power supply.

In short, the nature of the small-football-club-in-Scotland business is fundamentally limited and draws its potential leaders from a small, already emotionally affiliated gene pool, which in itself limits the scope and potential of the business. Diversification would require leaders who are less emotionally attached to the football side of the business, and they would likely conclude that the company should concentrate on its core football business, or relegate the moribund football side to a minor arm of the company, probably leading to it being sold off as a stand-alone at a later date.

God, that was depressing. I wish I hadn't even thought of it. We should all just give up now and support Barcelona.
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Naebody
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Twat
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With as much respect as is customary, WT, that's bobbins. Once again, it's not the expenditure but the method that matters. When the mantra is "don't speculate" you're much more likely to accumulate.

Put it this way. Just say Lucky Gyms counts on United for a tenth of its income. United buys 51% of the company and retains current management. United then gets 51% of Lucky Gyms' earnings from nine-tenths of its original income as well as getting to retain the other one-tenth that was formerly a cost. The sums on how much you can pay to take a supplier in house take exactly 30 seconds; if the number you get is bigger than what the suppliers want for a stake, you buy. Earnings-accretive acquisitons by leveraging your advantage in an informationally asymmetric market. Piece of piss.

Also, why do you assume the investment's in Dundee? I'd advise buying scale and/or scaleable businesses by geography. You're right to say Dundee as a city is fading, so -- brace yourself here -- I'd also move the day-to-day operations away from the stadium and outside Dundee. Edinburgh, perhaps, or maybe St Andrews. Places where asset depreciation is slower, basically.

Of course, this is all moot. These are things that should've been done in the 80s; the club lost the window to become sustainable long ago, and all we have to show for it is a Scottish Cup in 1994, a few empty stands, a laundry list of breathtakingly poor signings and a future that has austerity all the way to vanishing point. That, I concede, is rather depressing.
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Skeletor
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Most likely to be Ann Widdecombe
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Naebody
Nov 18 2010, 01:37 PM
Here's what I can't get my head around. Attendances have been flat for a decade, pretty much. The debt's not budged so we can assume interest payments haven't changed drastically either. Corporate sponsorship has always been meagre but appears steady. The transfer market's dormant, of course, but income that way was only ever a sporadic bonus.

We were told in 2008 that the club was operating at breakeven. What happened?

Oh yes. Of course. Setanta imploded. Circumstances beyond our control.

Hang on though. The old Setanta deal was �54.5m over four years, or �13.5m a year between 12 clubs.

The current Sky/ESPN deal is worth �65m over five seasons, which is �13m a year between 12 clubs.

Are we saying the current crisis is because of a shortfall of �41,666 per club? That's about the price of Danny Cadamarteri's twatwagon.

I'm confused.

What a guy eh? I prefer the term Poof chariot myself..
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whatsthatonyourback
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Waldo Jeffers
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Naebody
Nov 19 2010, 09:16 PM
Of course, this is all moot. These are things that should've been done in the 80s

Too right it's moot. We should have bought shares in Apple in the 80's, too. If only we'd known, eh? Damn you, Jim McLean, and your financially illiterate chairmanship!

What you appear to be saying is that if we were run by a board such as runs a large dynamic and aggressive multi-division company, we should have done all these things, leveraging the guaranteed income 5000 hardy season ticket holders brings. I actually agree with you, but question in what universe such a board would ever find themselves in charge of a company like DUFC Ltd. With this in mind, I put it to you that this is so much hypothetical speculation with all the practical application of a time-travel movie plot.

Don't mean to down your imaginative plans for United, but do mean to suggest a more realistic expectation of Stephen Thomson's stewardship would be more constructive.
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