NEW OWNERSHIP IS BECKONING !

[Benny]

Nov 24, 2024 5:01:27 GMT royalstone said:

Nov 23, 2024 20:37:11 GMT Benny said:

Oliver Ash on ambition, to an audience of dozens at Bluesky Social.

bsky.app/profile/oliverash1.bsky.social/post/3lbcpet4b622k

Well said Oliver. Unfortunately some of the Ash Out Brigade will not be persuaded by rational, common sense! If any of them are reading this look at what's happened at countless other clubs ffs!(including Stones in the past) Plenty of 'ambitious' owners have come and gone, Overspending and buying short term success but leaving clubs running at huge losses or with unmanageable debts. Look at Reading FC now, Mr Yongge was ' ambitious' spent huge amounts in his first few months in charge, gambling to get back to the prem. When it didn't happen overnight we were left running at huge losses and he has lost interest and couldn't even be bothered to provide the funds to make sure players and staff get paid on time #sell before we Dai.

I would love more investment(in the loosest sense of the word, ie not necessarily expecting an ROI) at Maidstone and I'm pretty sure Oliver would welcome it too but it has to be the right type. Ideally from someone with the long term interest of the club in their thoughts(keep doing the Euromillions Dave U)😁. What Terry and Oliver have done for the infrastucture of the club should not be forgotten and hopefully someone in the future can do even more.

One point I would pull Oliver up on tho is that I would say the stadium is a clubs second most important asset. A clubs most important asset is its fans imo (although I suppose you could argue they're technically not an asset). I think the key to
our long term success is trying to keep/grow our fan base so there has to be some degree of 'ambition' but Oliver is 100% right in saying words to the effect of ambition is not overspending in the short term and jeapordising the entire future of the club.

True about fans being the most important asset. We all owe a huge debt to those who kept Maidstone United alive.

Interesting choice of platform. Maidstone United have 39,900 followers on X, compared to 242 on Bluesky Social.

Yet we are now giving equal importance to both platforms. Wishful thinking by left leaning Oliver?

He has a rough ride on X and has to close comments on posts. But he would have reached many times more fans on X.

[Dan]

and yet we have a quite a few financial gurus on the forum disputing Oliver's aspirations and business savvy.
Their ambitions for the club are so much more lofty.

[jackster]

Never quite understanding why those posters wanting to 'speculate to accumulate' in the club, don't actually put their millions to good use.

[Harry]

Messrs Ash and Casey know how to run successful businesses.

I just wonder if those supporters who are always saying we must spend more on players have much experience of owning and running multi million pound businesses.

[Dickie]

Many of us have already seen the club go bankrupt before, effectively twice.
It's not pretty.
Yet here we are again, a new generation of fans wanting the same again.
Madness

[Sword65]

Nov 24, 2024 8:42:01 GMT Dickie said:

Many of us have already seen the club go bankrupt before, effectively twice.
It's not pretty.
Yet here we are again, a new generation of fans wanting the same again.
Madness

A new generation of fans brought up in the Premier league money years who think just because every Premier league team throws £100million a year at the team that every team in the country has money to just throw away. Teams like Wrexham,Chesterfield and Notts County destroyed the financial structure of Non league football and then moved on but now clubs fans think that their team should be paying players £4,000 a week regardless of the dangers. I think the Ash out brigade are very few in number,thankfully, but it only takes a few to undermine the stability of the club.

[Sword65]

Perhaps our glory boys would like T & A to go the PBB way of doing things by queueing up outside the loan sharks office at 09.00 on Friday morning to borrow the players wages at an interest rate of 149%. Disappearing to the Caribbean with supporters club funds and begging his brother to bail him out again,and again and again.

[smokey74]

According to published accounts the club (both companies) have been profitable seven of the last eight years and I think it is safe to assume last year was also profitable.

The only loss making year was the last season in the National League (through the two most profitable seasons were also in the National League), which from an outside perspective would appear to be down to poor recruitment and then doubling down on this by sticking with Hak too long and bringing more players in in the forlorn hope of survival.

This season seems to heading in a similar direction to 2022-23 with the investment in what on paper appears to be a stronger squad not producing the dividends on the pitch, last season we brought in Paul Appiah from Leicester and a proven goal scorer in Faal - this season Greg Cundle and Sol.

There simply doesn't appear to be the commitment this season as in previous seasons - add in the new toilets saga, George arguing with fans, treatments of fans in wheelchairs and being knocked out of all cups already - things just seem very gloomy and reactionary this season.

Would matching Boreham Wood's offer to Benton for five months have bankrupted the club - no and I don't think anyone is calling for Ebbsfleet style spending.

There is a wide gulf between loosening the purse strings a small amount and bankruptcy/near bankruptcy of a club with no financial assets.

I think all fans would love to see the club achieving far more and hope for the Football League again and would love this to be with the current owners at the helm.

[pigbag]

"Would matching Boreham Wood's offer to Benton for five months have bankrupted the club"

Smokey you miss the point. Benson was good but not a game changer or Div 2 standard. He was on loan and we only had to pay a percentage of his wages equal to the sum paid to our top earner and Solihull made up the difference. How do you think it would have affected the dressing room if a player that was often brought off after 60 mins was paid up to twice as much. Was he twice the player of Corne or Blair who I suspect are our top earners? 
 
Conversely would the club have to look at the wage structure and inflate all the squads pay leaving a lot less to strengthen the squad when better players are available?

We also do not know if BW had to pay a fee to Solihull

[nick]

Gloomy and reactionary is how smokey sees it.

Fair enough that is his opinion and how he cares to regard the running of the club.

So much negativity in his World.

Luckily I don't have to share it.

[jdl]

Nov 24, 2024 5:18:13 GMT Benny said:

Nov 24, 2024 5:01:27 GMT royalstone said:

Well said Oliver. Unfortunately some of the Ash Out Brigade will not be persuaded by rational, common sense! If any of them are reading this look at what's happened at countless other clubs ffs!(including Stones in the past) Plenty of 'ambitious' owners have come and gone, Overspending and buying short term success but leaving clubs running at huge losses or with unmanageable debts. Look at Reading FC now, Mr Yongge was ' ambitious' spent huge amounts in his first few months in charge, gambling to get back to the prem. When it didn't happen overnight we were left running at huge losses and he has lost interest and couldn't even be bothered to provide the funds to make sure players and staff get paid on time #sell before we Dai.

I would love more investment(in the loosest sense of the word, ie not necessarily expecting an ROI) at Maidstone and I'm pretty sure Oliver would welcome it too but it has to be the right type. Ideally from someone with the long term interest of the club in their thoughts(keep doing the Euromillions Dave U)😁. What Terry and Oliver have done for the infrastucture of the club should not be forgotten and hopefully someone in the future can do even more.

One point I would pull Oliver up on tho is that I would say the stadium is a clubs second most important asset. A clubs most important asset is its fans imo (although I suppose you could argue they're technically not an asset). I think the key to
our long term success is trying to keep/grow our fan base so there has to be some degree of 'ambition' but Oliver is 100% right in saying words to the effect of ambition is not overspending in the short term and jeapordising the entire future of the club.

True about fans being the most important asset. We all owe a huge debt to those who kept Maidstone United alive.

Interesting choice of platform. Maidstone United have 39,900 followers on X, compared to 242 on Bluesky Social.

Yet we are now giving equal importance to both platforms. Wishful thinking by left leaning Oliver?

He has a rough ride on X and has to close comments on posts. But he would have reached many times more fans on X.

Twitter is dead - Musk has killed it. Bluesky is the new Twitter (or, strictly speaking, the old Twitter). Both Twitter and Threads still have more users, but that will change - Bluesky has put on several million in less than two weeks, and often gets more daily users than even Threads. And Threads isn't really a direct competitor to Twitter, anyway - it's more like Instagram. Some of the poster who have switched over from Twitter seem to have taken their users with them, other have chosen to let their followers build up again naturally. There's a growing number of users popping up on Bluesky looking for posters who've moved over, so this shouldn't take long.



Is Oliver "left leaning"? I certainly hadn't noticed it!

[jdl]

Obviously the fans are a club's most important 'asset', but not in the sense that they appear on the balance sheet and are a concrete thing that someone can buy (and sell). Any new buyer for MUFC would certainly take notice of the fan base and its potential, but their main concern would be how much could they sell the club for to recoup their investment, if they had to. And, in that regard, the ground and buildings/facilities count for a lot more than the number of fans.

All this rather highlights the risk that Oliver and Terry took when they bought the club. It had no assets at all, and, knowing the sort of 'businessman' PBB was, there's a fair chance that there were a few hidden debts to take into account as well. O&T made the decision to risk a considerable sum of their own money almost entirely on the basis of the support the club had. Oliver himself says this - being impressed at just how many fans turned up for an unimportant fixture in the middle of nowhere, miles from their home town.

[jdl]

As for foreign buyers being interested - I very much doubt it.

We are a relatively new NS club, not an ex-EFL club fallen on hard times - much more of a risk. We also have very limited expansion possibilities, without the even higher risk of having to build a new stadium. And, on top of that, the paradox of being located in a non-traditional football area, but also only a short distance away from an EFL club which regularly gets 6-7k gates. There's very little chance of the club building the sort of fan base that they would need to recoup their investment (as our experience in and around the NL supports - we get the odd near capacity attendance, but our average gate only goes up a few hundred, some of which are away supporters).

O&T aren't not trying to sell the club, they are finding it very hard to get even interest in anyone buying it.

[Harry]

Not in buying it outright, but more likely, buying a stake in the club.

It appears to have gone quiet, but the sky is normally at its darkness before the dawn.

[hongkongstone]

Nov 24, 2024 18:47:26 GMT jdl said:

Nov 24, 2024 5:18:13 GMT Benny said:

True about fans being the most important asset. We all owe a huge debt to those who kept Maidstone United alive.

Interesting choice of platform. Maidstone United have 39,900 followers on X, compared to 242 on Bluesky Social.

Yet we are now giving equal importance to both platforms. Wishful thinking by left leaning Oliver?

He has a rough ride on X and has to close comments on posts. But he would have reached many times more fans on X.

Twitter is dead - Musk has killed it. Bluesky is the new Twitter (or, strictly speaking, the old Twitter). Both Twitter and Threads still have more users, but that will change - Bluesky has put on several million in less than two weeks, and often gets more daily users than even Threads. And Threads isn't really a direct competitor to Twitter, anyway - it's more like Instagram. Some of the poster who have switched over from Twitter seem to have taken their users with them, other have chosen to let their followers build up again naturally. There's a growing number of users popping up on Bluesky looking for posters who've moved over, so this shouldn't take long.



Is Oliver "left leaning"? I certainly hadn't noticed it!

Totally agree that Twitter has been destroyed by Elmo Musk. My feed was getting post after post from him personally (have now blocked) and Trump plus an increasing number of China Communist Party shills (paid Westerners) lauding the CCP and how great China is and better than the west with no genocide in Xinjiang, no suppression or migrating Han majorities into Tibet and Inner Mongolia etc. or people driving their cars into crowds murdering dozens of people is some sort of Western fallacy (nothing to see here). For my sins I am still hanging on in there as I can see the MUFC feeds (and Fred's comments) but it is amazing that these do not automatically appear on my timeline even though they are my most visited..