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Why Are So Few Other Clubs Trust Owned?

DB9

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Understandable this thread is getting slightly side tracked but if David T is about i'd like to ask him (As someone who was involved in the very early days of the Trust running/owning the club) why he thinks that not many clubs have become Trust/Fans owned in the last 20 years or so? We've had enough evidence of the Shitesters without money buying clubs but hardly any Professional clubs in the English game have taken the same route as ours.
 

fred binneys head

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Loving the boy Stanno
Thanks Egg, he was a prolific and very insightful poster on Exeweb at the time.
 

Spoonz Red E

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One factor is that Trusts can't demand to own a club.
Both our near neighbours have hit the rocks since we did and in both cases any approaches by Supporters' Trusts were manoeuvred away.
 

Egg

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One factor is that Trusts can't demand to own a club.
Both our near neighbours have hit the rocks since we did and in both cases any approaches by Supporters' Trusts were manoeuvred away.
Quite. In a way we were fortunate that Russell and Lewis came along when they did and that an unprecedented combination of circumstances opened the door for the Trust.

At the same time, the government could put legislation in place to give supporters more say in the running of their clubs and I for one was disappointed that the 2020 Trust AGM failed to support a motion backing the Labour Party's manifesto pledge to implement a review of reform into the game.
To be clear, I'm not seeking to make a party political point here. I'd have been disappointed if the Trust had failed to support a similar pledge from the Tories or any other party.
 

budegrecian

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Understandable this thread is getting slightly side tracked but if David T is about i'd like to ask him (As someone who was involved in the very early days of the Trust running/owning the club) why he thinks that not many clubs have become Trust/Fans owned in the last 20 years or so? We've had enough evidence of the Shitesters without money buying clubs but hardly any Professional clubs in the English game have taken the same route as ours.
I appreciate that you have asked this question of Mr T, & I would also be pleased to hear his views on the subject, but my understanding, for what it's worth, is that unsurprisingly it comes down to finance.
The Peterborough Chairman, Darren MacAnthony, was questioned about the very small number of Fans owned clubs, on his podcast a while back & his answer was basically that by & large fans owned clubs can't compete financially. He admitted that it sounded great in theory but talked about several fans owned clubs, in particular Portsmouth with a large fan base, not being able to sustain the model & the mess Wycombe were in before they got bought out. He talked lengthily about City & suggested we were able to sustain the trust model for two reasons: The Academy & the fact that we are the best run football club in the EFL by some distance. (He genuinely has a lot of respect for us).
Whilst I love our fans owned set up, it's surprising how many fans of other clubs don't wish to have such a model as they prefer to live in (the forlorn) hope that they will get a rich & benign benefactor, who will simply throw money at the job to buy success, even though experience tells us this rarely happens. Sad really.
 

DB9

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I appreciate that you have asked this question of Mr T, & I would also be pleased to hear his views on the subject, but my understanding, for what it's worth, is that unsurprisingly it comes down to finance.
The Peterborough Chairman, Darren MacAnthony, was questioned about the very small number of Fans owned clubs, on his podcast a while back & his answer was basically that by & large fans owned clubs can't compete financially. He admitted that it sounded great in theory but talked about several fans owned clubs, in particular Portsmouth with a large fan base, not being able to sustain the model & the mess Wycombe were in before they got bought out. He talked lengthily about City & suggested we were able to sustain the trust model for two reasons: The Academy & the fact that we are the best run football club in the EFL by some distance. (He genuinely has a lot of respect for us).
Whilst I love our fans owned set up, it's surprising how many fans of other clubs don't wish to have such a model as they prefer to live in (the forlorn) hope that they will get a rich & benign benefactor, who will simply throw money at the job to buy success, even though experience tells us this rarely happens. Sad really.
I agree with a lot you've said BG but I'd just like to hear David's views on this and probably he'll say roughly the same as you have, I just think he might have an interesting insight being at the sharp end when our own Trust was in its infancy running the club.
 

Super Ronnie Jepson

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I think we are definitely on the road, with regards to players contracts for a start. The balance seems to be shifting towards us as a football team rather than just generating sales as soon as we can. It’s great to see.
Obviously, the Watkins money helps but also having more than one saleable asset at the same time allows that. In the past, only one player has been coveted at any one time and the next one doesn't come along for a while. It's totally different now.

Also, once the C&F is done (fingers crossed) then there can't be any more large-scale infrastructure projects that need investment?
 

SaintJames

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Obviously, the Watkins money helps but also having more than one saleable asset at the same time allows that. In the past, only one player has been coveted at any one time and the next one doesn't come along for a while. It's totally different now.

Also, once the C&F is done (fingers crossed) then there can't be any more large-scale infrastructure projects that need investment?
Ronnie, if my memory serves me right the development at the C&F was part one of a two part project. Part one was essentially the current wooden building. Part two was the Academy accomodation where the current portacabins are. And longer term part three was the indoor training pitch required for stepping up to the next Academy category. That would probably account for the fat end of £6M so still a bit more infrastructure on the cards
 

Nigel E

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Generally it is a crisis that causes a Trust to end up "holding the baby" at a football club in the first place. But in the absence of a sack of cash, a Trust-run club then needs a viable long-term strategy to work to, and a steady stream of willing and competent volunteers to pick up the reins when those who have stepped into the breach have to bow out for whatever reason.

I suspect many of the clubs who are no longer Trust-run had neither of those things, and have had to throw in the towel and sell up. It's been a tightrope-walk for City though - without the sale of Matt Grimes we probably wouldn't now be Trust-owned, or would certainly have needed some kind of external help. (We had to resort to PFA loans to pay the players wages that season). But of course it was the Academy-focused strategy adopted by the Trust that created Matt Grimes in the first place, so we kind of "made our own luck".

Our senior player recruitment does seem to be improving now, and so hopefully we won't have to rely solely on Academy graduates for transfer income. (Other than Stockley, I can't think of many signed senior players from the recent past who have earned good transfer money). But in the current squad, I'd be willing to bet that Sam Nombe has the best potential to earn us a Watkins-style windfall.

But it will continue to be a tightrope-walk, as we are running a fairly hefty operating loss funded by capital from Watkins/Ampadu/Chrisene/Storey etc so there's no room for complacency.
 

SEA Grecian

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Our senior player recruitment does seem to be improving now, and so hopefully we won't have to rely solely on Academy graduates for transfer income. (Other than Stockley, I can't think of many signed senior players from the recent past who have earned good transfer money). But in the current squad, I'd be willing to bet that Sam Nombe has the best potential to earn us a Watkins-style windfall.

But it will continue to be a tightrope-walk, as we are running a fairly hefty operating loss funded by capital from Watkins/Ampadu/Chrisene/Storey etc so there's no room for complacency.
Yes, we are running an operating loss but at the same time we are still finding the money to invest in infrastructure and build-up a decent cash reserve in case of emergency.

As for non-academy players who could be sold for a profit, I'd suggest that Stubbs is the most likely at the moment unless he opts to run down his contract. And, as well as Nombe, Taylor and Coley were presumably both signed with an eye to potentially selling them on in the future if they develop as hoped.
 
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