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Fan representation on the Board

Mate, it shows a lack of coherency

- Very few of the points are a priority now
- Very few of them would/should be a current priority
- Any concessions made by ENIC do not apply to future owners, should the club be sold, the new owners have zero obligation to include fans on future board/decisions "unless" fans own some share.

Comes back to my point (I'm not defending ENIC), the Trust is doing very little useful here.

Have they ever?
 
Almost all of them are sensible. I expect that the same concessions for future owners would be a condition of sale. I can see why ENIC would not want to agree with them, I could not see why any THFC supporter would not agree to (most) of them.

Mate ENIC can agree to three quarters of that list because it's flimflam

- You want us to commit to not changing the name of the club? = fudging sure, not moving from the billion dollar asset we just built = fudging sure, not changing the crest we recently trademarked globally = fudging sure, dividend policy = again something we haven't done in twenty fudging years = sure

- Other stuff that you have no way of forcing future owners to comply with = fudging sure, why not, you want to add if Unicorns every show up in the real world we will make them a club mascot too?

If you walk into a negotiation (and make no mistake, this is exactly what this is), you don't want to give the other side 7 out 10 freebies, because now the club can say, "hey, we conceded on all those points for you" (absolute nothing burgers), so you need to concede on this one (probably the only one that matters)

I can write that letter and plan 100X better and more in line with what you and every anti-ENIC person on this boards wants with very little effort, so again, I'm not defending ENIC, I'm saying if I was ENIC and that was the list of demands, I'd have a huge fudging laugh.

But let me ask you the question

- You get a shot at being in front of Levy & the board, what's your top 3 priorities?
 
Mate ENIC can agree to three quarters of that list because it's flimflam

- You want us to commit to not changing the name of the club? = fudging sure, not moving from the billion dollar asset we just built = fudging sure, not changing the crest we recently trademarked globally = fudging sure, dividend policy = again something we haven't done in twenty fudging years = sure

- Other stuff that you have no way of forcing future owners to comply with = fudging sure, why not, you want to add if Unicorns every show up in the real world we will make them a club mascot too?

If you walk into a negotiation (and make no mistake, this is exactly what this is), you don't want to give the other side 7 out 10 freebies, because now the club can say, "hey, we conceded on all those points for you" (absolute nothing burgers), so you need to concede on this one (probably the only one that matters)

I can write that letter and plan 100X better and more in line with what you and every anti-ENIC person on this boards wants with very little effort, so again, I'm not defending ENIC, I'm saying if I was ENIC and that was the list of demands, I'd have a huge fudging laugh.

But let me ask you the question

- You get a shot at being in front of Levy & the board, what's your top 3 priorities?
Great. I expect most of it to be agreed nice and quickly then. They are all important things, just because this set of owners haven’t done those things so far (and they actually tried two of them with Stratford and ESL) it doesn’t mean they or future owners won’t try to do so in future.

It is easy enforce for future owners by making a condition of sale (I expect the trust will push for this and I expect ENIC will push back on this).

I don’t think it matters about what the club concede. The trust have outlined some quite important things (IMO). If the club agree to them then great, we have safeguarded the most important things in our club’s future.

I’m not anti-ENIC. I think they are broadly OK owners. I’d like them to care more about the club winning things than their own fortune or even see the correlation between the two things better, but there are also a few worse owners out there that we could have.

if I was going to be the supporters director then I would probably have reasonably similar priorities to what the trust have proposed tbh. I think those sorts of things are important and are dangerous to take for granted.
 
Great. I expect most of it to be agreed nice and quickly then. They are all important things, just because this set of owners haven’t done those things so far (and they actually tried two of them with Stratford and ESL) it doesn’t mean they or future owners won’t try to do so in future.

It is easy enforce for future owners by making a condition of sale (I expect the trust will push for this and I expect ENIC will push back on this).

I don’t think it matters about what the club concede. The trust have outlined some quite important things (IMO). If the club agree to them then great, we have safeguarded the most important things in our club’s future.

I’m not anti-ENIC. I think they are broadly OK owners. I’d like them to care more about the club winning things than their own fortune or even see the correlation between the two things better, but there are also a few worse owners out there that we could have.

if I was going to be the supporters director then I would probably have reasonably similar priorities to what the trust have proposed tbh. I think those sorts of things are important and are dangerous to take for granted.

so nothing about success, nothing about ambition, nothing on squad investment, nothing about DNA of playing style, nothing about youth, nothing about area development, nothing about charity, nothing about the club stances on social matters .. interesting ...
 
For those in favour of the equity ownership, how does it work if ENIC want to invest some money into the club?

Do we have to wait for all the other shareholders to pony up before they can do that? Or do ENIC just give away money to those investors?
 
so nothing about success, nothing about ambition, nothing on squad investment, nothing about DNA of playing style, nothing about youth, nothing about area development, nothing about charity, nothing about the club stances on social matters .. interesting ...
No. Those things are all very subjective and up to other parts of the board. Those are the exact things that we shouldn’t want supporters meddling in.
 
For those in favour of the equity ownership, how does it work if ENIC want to invest some money into the club?

Do we have to wait for all the other shareholders to pony up before they can do that? Or do ENIC just give away money to those investors?
In the (unlikely) chance that ENIC want to inject liquidity they can just have a bond issue and underwrite it. Or issue new shares.
 
My memory is failing me now, but I'm sure that was a problem before when a chunk of the shares were owner outside of ENIC.
About 15% but ENIC have controlling a interest. ENIC actually issued a convertible bond several years ago that they underwrote which actually injected liquidity as well as increasing their holding in the club (by them acquiring the bonds not purchased by the other shareholders).
 
About 15% but ENIC have controlling a interest. ENIC actually issued a convertible bond several years ago that they underwrote which actually injected liquidity as well as increasing their holding in the club (by them acquiring the bonds not purchased by the other shareholders).
Thanks, I remember now.

I'm sure there was some kind of problem where they didn't get the increase in value that their investment made but it was required as they wanted a full shareholding. Am I completely misremembering?
 
Have they ever?

No, but they disagree with Levy/ENIC so according to some on this board they must be brilliant minds

Funny how the true legitimate criticism of ENIC is ambition, handling of managers and players, but not mentioned by Trust and still everyone agrees?

Imagine going into a board level negotiation with a bunch of points that the person you are negotiating with either agrees with or already has agreed to .. fudging hell.
 
No, but they disagree with Levy/ENIC so according to some on this board they must be brilliant minds

Funny how the true legitimate criticism of ENIC is ambition, handling of managers and players, but not mentioned by Trust and still everyone agrees?

Imagine going into a board level negotiation with a bunch of points that the person you are negotiating with either agrees with or already has agreed to .. fudging hell.
I think you are confusing things here somewhat (or perhaps just don't want to admit that the trust have come up with largely sensible requests?)

Criticising ENIC about ambition, hiring/firing of managers, buys and sells, etc and the things that the trust have proposed enshrining into a new structure at the club are completely different things. The things that the trust are proposing relate to key aspects of THFC's being.... The location of the home stadium, what competitions we play in, the location that we play games in, the name of the club, our badge/colours. These are all sensible things that are reasonably black or white in terms of whether they are in place or not. They are things that many (including you it seems) may take for granted but, as evidenced a few times in recent years, actually could be changed pretty much at the owners' whim. These are largely things that are worth protecting in the eyes of the supporters of the club. We saw that with the reaction to the proposal to relocate the home stadium to Stratford and joining the ESL.

Supporter directors can't (and shouldn't) really be involved in decisions relating to hiring managers, players, etc.... How can these things be defined in a black or white way? Why would you want the Supporter director(s) to be involved in these aspects of the club and how would you propose that is achieved? Would you want them having a veto on which manager or players are recruited? Or them to set sale prices on the players in our squad for example? It's just not workable.

Not everything has to be a negotiation where there is a winner and a loser. If the trust have gone in with a bunch of requests that are easy for the owners to concede to then brilliant. As a supporter base we now have a certain set of things that (many of us) care about protected. The best negotiations are actually the ones where both parties feel they have got what they wanted. If these are easy things for ENIC to concede to and they are put into place then this will be a successful negotiation that has had a positive outcome.

I know your default position is to belittle everything that the trust does but here they have come up with a largely sensible set of proposals that shouldn't be contentious (I don't agree with all of them but I do the majority).
 
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Thanks, I remember now.

I'm sure there was some kind of problem where they didn't get the increase in value that their investment made but it was required as they wanted a full shareholding. Am I completely misremembering?
I think it was actually kind of the opposite. IIRC ENIC actually managed to increase their holding in the club for a lower price than it would've cost them to actually purchase the shares to do so.

Only semi related to the above but am I right in thinking that the club also performed some share buy backs over the last few years? Not sure about others on here but I'm certainly against the owners using club funds to buy back shares to strengthen the value of their asset (actually thinking about it this perhaps should be something for the trust to add to their terms (Supporter Director agreement of using club funds for share buy backs).
 
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I think you are confusing things here somewhat (or perhaps just don't want to admit that the trust have come up with largely sensible requests?)

Criticising ENIC about ambition, hiring/firing of managers, buys and sells, etc and the things that the trust have proposed enshrining into a new structure at the club are completely different things. The things that the trust are proposing relate to key aspects of THFC's being.... The location of the home stadium, what competitions we play in, the location that we play games in, the name of the club, our badge/colours. These are all sensible things that are reasonably black or white in terms of whether they are in place or not. They are things that many (including you it seems) may take for granted but, as evidenced a few times in recent years, actually could be changed pretty much at the owners' whim. These are largely things that are worth protecting in the eyes of the supporters of the club. We saw that with the reaction to the proposal to relocate the home stadium to Stratford and joining the ESL.

Supporter directors can't (and shouldn't) really be involved in decisions relating to hiring managers, players, etc.... How can these things be defined in a black or white way? Why would you want the Supporter director(s) to be involved in these aspects of the club and how would you propose that is achieved? Would you want them having a veto on which manager or players are recruited? Or them to set sale prices on the players in our squad for example?

Themes

- Protect heritage and legacy of club -> Stadium, assets, colors, etc, (lets say we agree here)
- Role of club in society -> area investment, charity, social media, diversity & inclusion (you seem to disagree but I think these are a core part of our identity, who we want to be)
- Ambition of the club -> this is where those pieces you disagree with sit

This isn't about saying we want a veto on players or set a price tag

- This is about (what I swear everyone fudging screams about every day on this board) what is the long term strategy for the club to be successful "on the pitch"
- Is it about leveraging the academy, when our revenue increases are what our our projected buying models (not individual players) and how does that tie in to what objective (top 4, top 2, win the league, by when?)
- Playing style, tied to above what trade off are we willing to make/not make for success?

And my argument is, right now, the last point -> ambition of club and plan to get there is 100X a more relevant conversation than "do you plan to move or change the name of club"

But you will disagree, because you refuse to concede/agree on a single point, it's not black or white, win/lose here. and someone else will jump in with mental gymnastics to tie my way for the Trust to be more relevant into "ENIC stooges"
 
So the old trust are sticking the boot into the new trust then.....oldest story in time. Kat and Martin were never going to go quietly into the night
 
That Kat birds stuck the knife in the new board, there is an article on the fighting rooster will dig it out for you

https://thefightingrooster.co.uk/2024/02/trust-issues/

Was just reading it so there you go, assume it's the same thing, written by Martin Cloake.

replace rooster with c ock, bloody swear filter...
 
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