DoofersDad

The club shop! Is that where you can buy the club at a discounted rate?

I would suggest Administration is more likely with the plan than without it. Not a shred of any argument has been given as to why we would get a better team through this plan or why targeted players would choose us over central belt teams. And because players are not locally based, it is inevitable that a lot of fans would increasingly lose interest.

I'm not a fan of Ferguson but I think the reality here is that whilst we need the CEO gone and the Kelty deal reversed, we simply can't afford to pay Ferguson off.

Or poor contract writing not to have the use of the car park secured in the deal.

Morrison said “I would ask the fans to rally round the club at this time and show their support by not only purchasing their season tickets but also getting involved directly with the club to see how they can help". I will be more than happy to do that, but not whilst Gardiner is there and not until the absurd Kelty scheme is reversed.

The courier is also reporting that Park and ride scheme has fallen through. Statkraft bought out the Red John scheme from ILI and have not been able to agree costs with the Club. They have therefore walked away from the deal and are looking elsewhere. That is yet another non footballing scheme which has failed. It just gets worse and worse. Suggestion that not receiving the expected payment for this may be the reason for not being able to submit the accounts.

Yes. Confirmed in the Courier. No replacement. Morrison says that is for those at club to sort out. Interestingly he says he had already told the Board he intended to stand down at the end of June so you one would have thought a successor was standing in the wings. He also says it is for those left at the club to decide the fate of the CEO.

Well, I suppose that’s possible, but why would they post them when they have been sending things digitally for a while? Surely they can’t afford to pay unnecessary postage just now!

Potentially very awkward if we haven't got a team.

No. It is not simple fact that these projects made us a lot of money. The Battery company was sold to 3 of the Club's directors who could simply have put the same anount of money into the club had they so wished. Time will tell whether the Directors taking over ownership of the company is of more benefit to the club than if it had stayed with the club. It is true the club received an income from the concert company's activities, but had the club just done the sensible thing and rented the ground out to a production company who knew what they were doing, the club would still have received significant income. No doubt the Concert Company was happy to pay the club a bigger sum for the rental of the stadium and the time of club employees etc than a proper production company would have done, but any extra income was at the expense of local business who were left out of pocket by the failure of the enterprise. If the club made more out of the venture than they would have done by simply hiring facilities out to a production company, then the decent thing would have been for the club to honour the debts from its own profiteering. Against any profits the club may have made from these ventures are the opportunity costs. Both projects, and the concert fiasco in particular, have resulted in huge reputational damage to the club. As a result, the club will have been losing significant income which might have come from local businesses in terms of sponsorship and hospitality. Club staff and directors have been spending a totally disproportional amount of time on these vanity projects and have been ignoring the bread and butter business of the football club. A little bit more focus on the footballing side of things and we might not have been relegated this season. A bit more focus on the wide range of shortcomings highlighted in the Supporters Trust's matchday survey and we might be seeing a few more through the turnstiles and spending a bit more when they do come.

Agreed. The ineptitude of the Board is breathtaking. There are guys on the Board who run successful businesses but yet they seem utterly incapable of taking the simplest of decisions to ensure we actually have 11 registered players who can play the first competitive game in a few weeks time. Meanwhile, good players, who may have stayed had appropriate actions been taken sooner, are jumping ship and nobody can blame them.

The news from the Supporters Trust this morning must surely lead to action today. I think just about every supporter is desperate for Gardiner to go. Whether he jumps or is pushed he needs go and go now. I think most have some sympathy for Morrison. But whilst his heart may be in the right place, he has made far too many mistakes and has alienated too many people in the local business community to remain as Chairman for the rebuilding process.

Technically it has now provided income for the club, but only because it has diverted income through another source. I agree that the purchase will protect any BESS profits from the administrators but it also raises the potential that any major profit ends up in the pockets of the directors. I should say that I don’t for one minute suggest that they would not put the money back to the club, but it opens the door to suspicion. The point here is that after all the publicity and controversy over the BESS project, the directors changed the ownership and kept quiet about it. If the change of ownership was good for the club then why not immediately announce the move and explain the benefits for the club? Cynics would say that people only keep quiet when they have something to hide.

In his Courier interview, the Chairman said that he and the 2 other directors had bought the battery company for £250,000 because the club needed the money. If these directors have that money to buy the battery company, why not simply give money to the club? I don’t have much understanding of business practices, but it is clear they didn’t buy the company because the club needed the money. Is it because they anticipate the club going into administration and any profit from the battery farm being used by the administrators to pay off the creditors? it seems that everything the Chairman says raises more questions than it provides answers

The Trust stated they had taken legal advice on the matter.

The club's lack of transparency means that it is very difficulty to challenge any figures they produce. As you rightly point out, if you get rid of somebody who is doing a poor job, you then have to replace them. In relation to Board members and especially the Chairman, anyone potentially willing to take over from Morrison at the helm will want to see the full detail of the financial position and the projections for any options for the future. It is not easy. Often, the greater the need for change, the less likely it is that there will be someone willing to take over. And boy, do we need change!

That's a fair summary, Quizzer. The Trust will put a summary on here in due course but can everyone please bear in mind that the Trust Board are few in number, some are in full time jobs and there are a hell of a lot of things they are doing and will need to be doing during this crisis. So please be patient. They are doing a great job on our behalf and a big "Thank You" is due to them all, particularly George Moodie who chaired the meeting so well tonight. I am sure we will be hearing quite a bit from them in days to come - and that might well include some pleas for help! The vast majority of the Season Ticket holders in the room indicated that they would not be renewing this year until certain actions are taken. It is important to note that the Trust is not endorsing a boycott but it is taking the view that this should be a decision for individuals. Taking this neutral stance is important given the Trust's status as Community Benefit Society. The Trust's role here is to discuss the implications of any boycott with the club and to impress upon the club that it is the actions of the club which are the cause of the boycott and subsequent loss of revenue.

and-down-t-351844/ So Morrison thinks Gardiner has been loyal. What about fans who have been loyal since the club was formed? Fans who have bought season tickets year in, year out are now saying they will not buy one this year due to this absurd decision. Does the loyalty of these people not matter?

Great podcast guys. Well done! The club board would do well to listen to this. They might then understand that a football club is nothing unless it is embedded into the community.

If the club do a u-turn, the person / people who came up with the daft idea in the first place simply have to go too. Fingers crossed.

Is the club paying for Gardiner's Tornagrain pad?

These are really worrying times. There seems to be so many important issues which need clarification and for which the more you look into them, the more murky and bizarre they seem to be. I'll just pick up here on one the bizarre ones. Folk on here are saying the the appeal for the BESS application has not yet been submitted and that there are now just 3 weeks to lodge the appeal. The club told us this was vital for the future of the club and any delay would have serious ramifications. Presumably, the sooner the appeal is in, the sooner it can be heard and, assuming the club wins its appeal, the sooner they will be able to get some income from the project. The reasons for refusing the application seemed to come down to the fact that the club had annoyed some councillors rather than for any meaningful problem with the application. It should have been possible to get the appeal paperwork sorted in a few days, so why is it not in after several weeks and with time running out? Morrison told us that we stood to make £3.4 million from this. I understand that due them making a mess of the application, the company which was going to develop the site has pulled out, but Morrison also told us that there would be no difficulty getting another energy company to build and operate the BESS. Maybe a 2nd company would not pay as much for the site, but based on what Morrison has said, one would expect a sum equivalent to at least one years turnover for the club. In these circumstances, you would expect getting the appeal in would top priority for the club. The lack of progress is bizarre. Link this with the Kelty connection and it start to look sinister rather than bizarre. The Kelty project is justified partly on the current costs of accommodating players moving to the inverness area to play for us. Yet the decision to make this highly controversial move which in itself has significant financial commitment has been taken without knowing whether the club will have this huge capital injection or not. It just does not make sense.

You just don't get it! Last season we had a squad which was good enough to gain promotion back to the championship. We were very unlucky to be relegated in such a tight division. Despite a lot of injury problems we were a penalty miss away from 5th and in reality, had a squad that was good enough to challenge for promotion. We might have done so with a better manager. The powers that be on the Board were negotiating this absurd scheme whilst we were in the Championship and not expecting to be relegated. They, presumably, expect this scheme to produce a squad which will put us back in the Premiership. Anything except promotion straight back to the Championship will therefore represent an absolute failure for the scheme. But do you really think the scheme will allow for recruitment of players that will take us back to the Championship, let alone to the Premiership? As previously explained, the scheme makes it far more difficult for any player who actually lives in Inverness or would be happy to come and live in this wonderful part of the country for a year or two. The only players for whom this scheme will be attractive are players living within easy commuting distance of Kelty. These players will also be within easy communing distance of numerous other clubs looking to recruit. So tell me, what makes you think that these guys will sign up for us and a 3 hour trip up the A9 before and after matches, rather than a more local club where they are embedded in the camaraderie of the club infrastructure and the local community? Success will depend on recruiting a very significant number of such players. Logic tells us that the only players we will attract will be ones who can't get a contract with a central belt team. A team of rejects with no link to Inverness are more likely to see us relegated than promoted.

Saturday sees the start of June. This is the month for new contracts and the month Morrison says our training bases will move to Kelty. It is now just 6 weeks till the new season kicks off with the first round of matches in the Viaplay trophy on 13th July. So what progress has the club made to put together a team capable of improving on our showing in that competition and then pushing for promotion back to the championship? The silence from the club is deafening. There are a host of questions for which answers are required in the next few weeks. Which of our contracted players have confirmed they want to continue to play under the new arrangements, and who have requested transfers? Which of our out of contract players have been offered new contracts? Of those, who have agreed terms, and who have said they no longer want to play for us? When are the club going to announce the flood of quality new players attracted by the club's "innovative" new arrangements? If the squad are to be based in Fife, who will the club's pre-season friendlies be against and will any of them be played in Inverness? We should be expecting the answers to some of those questions to be answered in the coming week and to all of them in the coming month.

Thanks for posting that, Jack. Brilliant article. Absolutely nails it.