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Are You in Favour of a Truce as per SVC

Do SZ members agree with Stan to cease protests asap ?


  • Total voters
    337
  • Poll closed .
Apart from an F.A Cup run with home games, assuming we beat Chertsey, we've got 4 games at home until 28th Dec. 2 on Tuesdays, & 2 Saturday ones.
Our next NL home game is v Dover. Hopefully we're have a new manager by then, & what an opportunity to win a home game??.
 
Those protests need to be aimed at SBC not Ron. SBC are the ones playing silly buggers and moaning about things like the width of pavement etc

I agree.

This has been going on for 15 or so years now, most of those who are protesting (they're within there rights to do so) were probably knee high to a grass hopper when all this started out and all they now know is anger towards the chairman when is should be SBC.

Ron has made mistakes sure, who doesn't but this circus has been going on for far to long. I actually have some sympathy for the guy.
 
You don't need heavyweight legal advice you just need 1 hour of research.

Its good to see the poster from Blackpool showing support but their situation was completely different and is totally irrelevant to SUFC.

I'm sure the Blackpool fan could confirm this but from memory the Oystons were booted out by legal proceedings/FA because the fraudulently stripped the club of £25+m. In effect they said we got you to the PL so we will have a big chunk of the sky money

When Ron arrived 23 years ago the club had £4.5m. No one was running on the pitch in promotion seasons with banners saying MARTINS FUNDING OUT....

Ron has said clearly and several times that he will right off the current £17m when the stadium is underway. The biggest hurdle could be decide by the end of the month.

Only an absolute fool would scupper the chance to lose £17m of debt. I believe him because equally only a fool would promise to not collect that debt and then go back on his word.

If Ron did that then he is fair game. He could go to Indochina and there will be a Shrimper hiding in a sac of rice

Some good points there, but did Ron come in with a wonderful benevolent heart or see an opportunity to make money and undertake any form of asset stripping.

How are we supposed to trust RON after years and years of broken promises , obfuscation and economicals with the truth. You may be one of the few that trusts him!

and as I understand it the referenced alleged £700, 000 a year he takes OUT of the club in charges feels massively excessive to everybody _( I would love to see all the receipts by the way, so might a solicitor or the taxman for that matter), Has he not now publicly stated he wants his £20 m back or we fold as people have referred to on here from the Zoom call

QC Taylor needs to strengthen his recommendations around what constitutes fit and proper.

, That doesnt sound anything like a write off to me. Mr sheer Benevolence strikes again?

Have you listened to it?
 
I see over 2000 people have voted on the confidence motion and 95% have NO confidence in Ron,
 
If we think Ron can be outed by going on the pitch with banners every game then we're just plain wrong.

Other clubs can be mentioned as "oh it worked here", but how many of those owners were sitting on a pile of wealth just waiting for it to be approved by the council? Ron has everything to lose by leaving, so he won't before FF is approved.

The main issue people have with Ron is he has made a multitude of bad decisions that has led us to where we are now. These problems really set in once he was the only one making the decisions (once Steve Kav left). Now we have Tom, Stan and Gary Lockett (not sure if he's been involved in manager hiring before), Ron isn't the only one making them, and we can therefore hope the decisions will be better, as Stan is a football guy and Tom has worked in a CEO role in a football club before.

Ron, despite owning a club for 20 odd years, is still a property guy. He isn't a football guy (certainly not compared to someone like Stan
I agree.

This has been going on for 15 or so years now, most of those who are protesting (they're within there rights to do so) were probably knee high to a grass hopper when all this started out and all they now know is anger towards the chairman when is should be SBC.

Ron has made mistakes sure, who doesn't but this circus has been going on for far to long. I actually have some sympathy for the guy.
He’s rang the club the same way for years ,its just he’s listened to the wrong people over the 3 to 4 years ,when we were winning no one bothered ,I think he’s starting to take advice now well hopefully he is listening ,he seems to be lets just wait and see
 
Some good points there, but did Ron come in with a wonderful benevolent heart or see an opportunity to make money and undertake any form of asset stripping.

How are we supposed to trust RON after years and years of broken promises , obfuscation and economicals with the truth. You may be one of the few that trusts him!

and as I understand it the referenced alleged £700, 000 a year he takes OUT of the club in charges feels massively excessive to everybody _( I would love to see all the receipts by the way, so might a solicitor or the taxman for that matter), Has he not now publicly stated he wants his £20 m back or we fold as people have referred to on here from the Zoom call

QC Taylor needs to strengthen his recommendations around what constitutes fit and proper.

, That doesnt sound anything like a write off to me. Mr sheer Benevolence strikes again?

Have you listened to it?
Yes Bazza I have listened. You should try it yourself rather than repeat false claims by others.

What were these assets that Ron stripped?
 
I see over 2000 people have voted on the confidence motion and 95% have NO confidence in Ron,
I have no confidence in Ron but I have infinitely less confidence in any other viable alternative.

Hmmmm, I’m in the hole for several millions of real and unrealised quid. I have a viable profit hinging on some positive decisions by SBC.

No rich person, Russian, Arab or otherwise has come forward to line my pockets but the fans they are complaining. Perhaps I should just walk away now?

GET REAL PEOPLE. Be VERY careful what you wish for.
 
I have no confidence in Ron but I have infinitely less confidence in any other viable alternative.

Hmmmm, I’m in the hole for several millions of real and unrealised quid. I have a viable profit hinging on some positive decisions by SBC.

No rich person, Russian, Arab or otherwise has come forward to line my pockets but the fans they are complaining. Perhaps I should just walk away now?

GET REAL PEOPLE. Be VERY careful what you wish for.
If I had to vote last week do I have"confidence" in Ron then I would probably have gone with no. Too many **** ups over the last three years for a yes. If I had to vote to say he should go now then it would have been a no. The question was formed in a way to maximise the yes- and understandably so as the result surely needed to be emphatic in order to apply pressure.

A no to go now for many of the reasons already posted, but the main one being it would be it's simply ignoring the reality of the current situation.. He's going absolutely nowhere and his interests and the clubs at this moment in time, as much as it might be hugely irritating and annoying, coincide.,.

Since then Stan has come back in, so it seems to me given the above that option 3 makes sense so that's where my vote went. That pretty much means let's see where we are at Xmas.

Can he win that confidence back, well that's, shall we say, is a big big task. But things change quickly. It was just 8 NL games ago that 85% (or whatever it was) wanted PB as manager..

The first two big tests are I guess the new management team/structure and the vote on the 25th. Oh and what Stan's official role within the club going forward might be.
 
You don't need heavyweight legal advice you just need 1 hour of research.

if you are serious about implementing change you absolutely need serious legal advice ....

"1 hour of research" is the amateur hour approach that RM has relied on so he can continue to convince the fan base he is the only solution.

I don't dislike RM, I think he has been very unlucky with the financial crash and then COvid but his agenda ... the development of FF etc .... has got us to this situation.

Change is required - the fans can do it.

Stan's mission is essentially to placate the fans - who for and why - we don't know.
 
I answers 'Yes - immediately and forever' only because until Martin acts up again sounds petulant and slightly immature. I don't want protests become the norm, something that's done all too easily when things aren't to our liking but yes, absolutely when necessary.
 
if you are serious about implementing change you absolutely need serious legal advice ....

"1 hour of research" is the amateur hour approach that RM has relied on so he can continue to convince the fan base he is the only solution.

I don't dislike RM, I think he has been very unlucky with the financial crash and then COvid but his agenda ... the development of FF etc .... has got us to this situation.

Change is required - the fans can do it.

Stan's mission is essentially to placate the fans - who for and why - we don't know.

I disagree to some extent. In the short term yes. But in the medium to long term, Ron will be looking for an out from the club. I think that is where Stan comes in - either with his contacts to find a buyer or as part of fan led takeover - or abit of both
 
if you are serious about implementing change you absolutely need serious legal advice ....

"1 hour of research" is the amateur hour approach that RM has relied on so he can continue to convince the fan base he is the only solution.

I don't dislike RM, I think he has been very unlucky with the financial crash and then COvid but his agenda ... the development of FF etc .... has got us to this situation.

Change is required - the fans can do it.

Stan's mission is essentially to placate the fans - who for and why - we don't know.
I think one of the first things even the cheapest brief would point out is that separating the football club and the ground into separate entities is entirely acceptable and indeed in, many many cases, recommended practice. More generally, in property development individual projects are often set up as separate limited companies.

On the football side the reason is simple- if the football club fails it doesn't take the stadium with it. If the club went bust it has no assets, and so it could be bought out of administration and come back with the stadium still being there to play in. This is why we have the draconian points penalties. You could put a club into admin, lose all the debt and start over again, never risking losing access to the main asset they need access to (the stadium they play in). It does, however, mean the owner of the stadium and club holds all the cards I'm afraid.
 
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If the protests stop then they should restart ( not necessarily in the same form) because Martin is not delivering what we are expecting.
The results on the field should not influence whether we protest or not.
If Ron does everything we want , and Stan agrees, and the structure is in place, communication improves, we understand why the new manager was chosen ( will never get everyone to agree it was the right choice- but at least we can understand why they were chosen) , the new manager is given a budget, new faces/players come in AND WE STILL KEEP LOSING then I don’t think losing is a reason to protest against Martin if he has done everything we hoped for
 
2,000 is a surprisingly small number in the grand scheme of things.
Sort of.
But this is just one fans forum, and maybe not every frequent visitor voting?

That still represents a third of our average gate over the last three seasons.
Seems pretty all encompassing to me.
 
I would be interested in how many of that 95% are younger than 25ish. I would guess a high percentage, which goes back to my post earlier
Speculative.
And here's equally speculative.
An awful lot of the comments on Zone suggest an older population.
An example is the number of posts currently celebrating our 71-72 season.
You have to be hitting 60 at least to remember it.
 
I think one of the first things even the cheapest brief would point out is that separating the football club and the ground into separate entities is entirely acceptable and indeed in, many many cases, recommended practice. More generally, in property development individual projects are often set up as separate limited companies.

On the football side the reason is simple- if the football club fails it doesn't take the stadium with it. If the club went bust it has no assets, and so it could be bought out of administration and come back with the stadium still being there to play in. This is why we have the draconian points penalties. You could put a club into admin, lose all the debt and start over again, never risking losing access to the main asset they need access to (the stadium they play in). It does, however, mean the owner of the stadium and club holds all the cards I'm afraid.
I disagree. As soon as you strip the ground out of the football club you create a massive problem. In all cases the club then has to pay rent and it just accrues on the balance sheet as no club in the lower leagues can realistically afford to pay any rent. Over time the club becomes an insolvent basket case of a company.
No potential purchaser would be interested in buying a club who are committed to paying an unaffordable rent. This is the situation we are in.
If you want to be an attractive club to purchase you need to keep the freehold of the ground in the club. This asset will increase in value. In this scenario if the club overstretched itself and the owner ran out of money, it would be fairly easy to find a new owner, particularly in the south east of England and in our case a huge catchment area.
 
I disagree. As soon as you strip the ground out of the football club you create a massive problem. In all cases the club then has to pay rent and it just accrues on the balance sheet as no club in the lower leagues can realistically afford to pay any rent. Over time the club becomes an insolvent basket case of a company.
No potential purchaser would be interested in buying a club who are committed to paying an unaffordable rent. This is the situation we are in.
If you want to be an attractive club to purchase you need to keep the freehold of the ground in the club. This asset will increase in value. In this scenario if the club overstretched itself and the owner ran out of money, it would be fairly easy to find a new owner, particularly in the south east of England and in our case a huge catchment area.
In a previous zoom call RM said the rent will be X amount in the National League, X amount in Div 2....etc. In the last zoom call he said no rent would be charged. So what is it ? I'll tell you what it is...it's whatever words they think will keep us happy until it's built. He said he hasn't been charging rent for RH, but it's still accruing on the balance sheet as a charge which puts us further in debt, year on year. Yes, he may write off our debts, but if we are unable to meet the rent payments we'll soon be back in debt like we are now.
 
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