But the Trust have no official ownership in the club - all they can do is echo fan sentiment to the best of their ability, although thankfully that looks to be changing now with government and public pressure on greater fan involvement in football governance.
Fan ownership as a concept is pretty well-established and completely risk-proofed already. All clubs in Germany with the exceptions of Leverkusen, Wolfburg, Hoffenheim and Leipzig are fan-owned - look at Bayern, Dortmund et al for what 'fan logic' actually looks like in practice. Quite good, as it turns out - hire good businessmen to run the club, expand infrastructure, get annual reports and a golden vote on critical issues like relocation et al. Not a bad bargain.
Leicester have won more in five years of being in the PL than we have in 20 years under ENIC - and in 10 years of their ownership, they've gone from Championship to the Premier League, from relegation struggles to Champions, have played in the EL and CL, have built one of the most expensive training facilities in England and are now expanding their (already fairly new) stadium to 40,000+.
As a club, they are naturally constrained by being in Leicester as opposed to being in London - there's an inherent limitation on revenue levels that doesn't exist for us, for West Ham, and for other London clubs. And their base when their owners took over was tiny - formerly Leicester Fosse, big new stadium but basically no history whatsoever. Far smaller than ours was when ENIC took over - we were the 4th most decorated club in England then. But despite those disadvantages, their owners have basically beaten Levy and ENIC pathetically ragged in half the time. So, really, no comparison.
And arguing about future-proofing is a bit pointless as we can't see in the future to confirm, but I'm certain Leicester are going to be secure whatever happens - their training infrastructure matches ours, their stadium is being expanded, their commercial revenue has skyrocketed, and they have trophies to show for it.
Your other examples also don't really work. You say Southampton and Everton would go into oblivion outside the PL, but that's a bit of a useless comparison, because *so would we* - if we get relegated, our enormous stadium becomes a paperweight, the interest rates go up, borrowing becomes harder, and we probably fold or get sold. Same thing for them - so what is the point bringing them up? And if you say 'ENIC have made it so we don't get relegated' - wow, what an achievement.
There's Raziel with his money trophy - hooray, we're #1 in the accounting awards, you'll never sing that, that's what football's all about you know, etc.
If you're mentioning it, it's because you know that's the rejoinder, mate.
Would we really have paid top dollar for a CEO under fan ownership - yep, probably. Again, German clubs have competent CEOs, who in some cases are far smarter and more successful chairmen than the mediocre Levy has ever been - Hans-Joachim Watzke foremost among them. No reason we couldn't have done the same, which again brings it back to what those useless deadweights ENIC have actually contributed to the club - f.uck all, mate.
In 2021, we finished 7th. Out of the five you mentioned, Leicester and West Ham finished above us. And the clubs immediately below us were...Arsenal, Leeds, Villa, Everton and Saudi Sportswashing Machine. And in the past ten years, we have been in as many finals as Aston Villa, btw. Woo-hoo, what progress by the penny-pinching geniuses we're owned by. Sure glad to have them around, contributing absolutely nothing.
You know what we've done? We've charged the highest ticket prices in world football for 20 years straight, have combined that with 20 years of exploding PL revenues and have built a stadium and a training ground.
Notice - none of that requires owner involvement. A monkey in a CEO's suit could have made that binary choice - invest club revenues into a) infrastructure or b) players, and then do absolutely nothing else. Have they exploded commercial revenues? In comparison to the rest of the PL and our peers, not really - commercial income has grown about as much as you would expect with our occasional CL involvement and our base in London (again, a natural advantage most other clubs don't have). Have they made smart decisions on whom to hire, whom to fire? Not really, as 20 years of randomness show. Have they made smart decisions to invest to take us over the line when needed? F*ck no - their ambition is to run us like Levy ran his discount bargain-basement Mr.Byrite clothing store. Hooray.
We could not have done worse is not an argument I have made. We could have done much, much, much better than these miserly deadweights is one I constantly make. We don't have to fear doing worse, we can dream of better. These owners do nothing for us, mate - in twenty years all they've done is basically sit and watch the PL grow and take us with it. They have invested nothing, contributed nothing, and their job could be done by any half-competent CEO we could have hired in that time - only we wouldn't have to be owned by an odious tax exile who made his money shorting the pound on Black Wednesday.