Ikon_Klow Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Dear all After watching the final nail go into the LCFC Championship coffin yesterday I can’t believe that the club that we all love so much is in such a mess. I do place some blame at Mandaric’s door and I also place some blame at Ollie’s door as well. Both have managed to make a complete mess of a business/club that should never have even been flirting with the prospect of the League One football yet alone actually playing in it next season. In these times of disarray I see a potential opportunity for us as fans to make a difference. We know that potentially Madaric looking to sell the club. We also know that the club is in a financial mess, with it possibly falling into administration again. The club has a huge wage bill and I have very little doubt that there will be a substantial fire sale of players (some good, some bad). Mandaric is not in the habit of wanting to lose money and I believe that he is in real danger of doing exactly that at the moment. The club is only actually worth what someone is willing to pay for it (like any business). It is debt riddled and also now in League One (sorry for pointing that out again!), which means that it is most likely going cheap providing Mandaric can get most of money back (over time perhaps). Proposal Why don’t the fans look to buy the club? I know this has been mentioned before but now is a great time to seriously think about this prospect. It is not silly as you might think if the right level of support can be gained. For example, the very basic figures that I looked at were based on 30,000 fans each paying £500 for one share in the company. That is a total of £15,000,000 (fifteen million pounds) which may be enough to buy out Mandaric and pay off some of the debt. I would suggest that we follow the Barcelona model (but obviously tweak it accordingly to our needs) which roughly equates to one member one vote. No one fan can own more than one share at any one time. Shares can be passed down through family generations (with a small transfer admin fee applicable – payable to the club) and so ownership really does stay within the community and most importantly with the fans. Ownership of a share will give you the right to vote to elect the board of the club on an annual basis but not vote on the day to day activity of the club. This is at the end of the day a business and the purpose of the fan ownership is not to allow fans to vote on every aspect of the club as I believe that model is flawed for a club of our size. The point is actual ownership of the club and having a vote on the direction of the club i.e. electing the people who will actually run the club financially and make the decisions for that season. The figures above are obviously very much pie in the sky and I am open for any other suggestions as to what fans believe will be more realistic. I am conscious that the credit crunch is in full flow and £500 from 30,000 people might be too much to ask. This is about taking the club back to the community and giving the club back to the people of Leicester and more importantly actually making the board completely accountable to the fans as they ultimately will work for us. Remember, Mandaric could very easily settle for deferred consideration payments based on the club’s performance in an attempt to get his money back and so the need to pay him off in full on completion of the deal might not be needed. This post might just end up as nothing more than another post between fans but I am interested in gauging fan opinion before thinking about pushing this any further. What do you think? Plausible? Achievable? Let me know. In any event I will be supporting the Foxes next season. Leicester till I die.
DB11 Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Even if they could buy the club, they wouldn't be able to keep the amount of money going into the club to get better players.
Durnerz Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Can you imagine if the fans did buy the club, what with the Foxes trust fiasco and all that? Fryatt would be in one week, out the next Constant approaches made for O'neill at Villa
DanTheFoxBhoy Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 The pre-Mandaric board was more fans-based than most (albeit they were businesses and businessmen/women) and was no more successful than the pre-administration board.
act smiley Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Two words really, Operating Loss. The problem with fans buying the club is the obvious one of we're in a crap position with high outgoings and loads of debt. Fan run clubs inevitably have to have a tightly run ship with limited budgets. While Manardic would probably be happy to get out the money he put in and run at this point, and there's a possibility of raising something like it, the club is still losing money due to the money wasted on all the crap transfers and the debt payments. While getting several thousand fans to put in a few quid is certainly possible, I'm not sure whether it would be sustainable as, as far as I know, the club made a £5m loss last year.
davieG Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 You can dream and I appreciate your sentiments but as the fans were unable to raise an significant amount to stop the club from disappearing altogether any thoughts of 30000 fans ( 10k of them only sing/attend when we're winning) stumping up sufficient funds to buy the club is I'm sorry to say laughable.
Chairman of the Bored Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Unlikely, but I'd chip in with a bob or two. Although I think we'd need more than that!
SOCCERROO FOX Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 I could imagine seeing Bruno and the like selling choclates door to door to help keep the club afloat
Father Ted Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Ermmm... I'm not so sure. Do you really think 30,000 fans will splash out £500 How will we have enough money to sign players? It's a good suggestion but I would not risk taking my own club even deeper into sh*t. If at any stage in my life though, I become loaded, I would buy Leicester City - it is like my dream!
davieG Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Two words really, Operating Loss.The problem with fans buying the club is the obvious one of we're in a crap position with high outgoings and loads of debt. Fan run clubs inevitably have to have a tightly run ship with limited budgets. While Manardic would probably be happy to get out the money he put in and run at this point, and there's a possibility of raising something like it, the club is still losing money due to the money wasted on all the crap transfers and the debt payments. While getting several thousand fans to put in a few quid is certainly possible, I'm not sure whether it would be sustainable as, as far as I know, the club made a £5m loss last year. We couldn't even afford the payments on the Stadium when we were in the Championship and those debts haven't/wont disappear with MAndaric.
breadandcheese Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 The pre-Mandaric board was more fans-based than most (albeit they were businesses and businessmen/women) and was no more successful than the pre-administration board. It depends how you judge success. They achieved stability and despite Mandaric's PR team trumpeting that we were going back into admin, we were financially stable. Now, we have an off-balanced wage bill (off-balanced even when in the Championship), increased debts, and are in the position where we are more reliant than ever on Milan not to pull his funding. Re: the original idea of a barcelona fans style buying of the club. It is all very good buying the club but without working capital, you are a liquidation waiting to happen.
renards Posted 5 May 2008 Posted 5 May 2008 Two words really, Operating Loss.The problem with fans buying the club is the obvious one of we're in a crap position with high outgoings and loads of debt. Fan run clubs inevitably have to have a tightly run ship with limited budgets. While Manardic would probably be happy to get out the money he put in and run at this point, and there's a possibility of raising something like it, the club is still losing money due to the money wasted on all the crap transfers and the debt payments. While getting several thousand fans to put in a few quid is certainly possible, I'm not sure whether it would be sustainable as, as far as I know, the club made a £5m loss last year. On course to be over 18M this year. I and many other fans put money in to the club..and lost it all
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