Can we raise £400,000. Yes or No?

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northlondongull
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Post by northlondongull »

From the statement coming out of the club maybe we should try and raise the £400,000. I would happily stick in £500 and probably more if we stuttered towards the target. We only need 800 people to do that in order to get over the line!
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Post by Glostergull »

Why not make this an offer to the fans.
Bronze Stick in £500 and get a half price season ticket for 6 months
Silver. stick in £1000 and get a free season ticket for a year
Gold stick in £2000 and get a family season ticket for2 years.
all this plus extras as we can think would make it worthwhile short of getting a chauffeur to come and collect you all
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Post by Plainmoor78 »

I was interested until you got to the point about the chauffer.
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Post by PhilGull »

Glostergull wrote:Why not make this an offer to the fans.
Bronze Stick in £500 and get a half price season ticket for 6 months
Silver. stick in £1000 and get a free season ticket for a year
Gold stick in £2000 and get a family season ticket for2 years.
all this plus extras as we can think would make it worthwhile short of getting a chauffeur to come and collect you all
What happens next summer though? Debt free but no season ticket money coming in so we'll need another loan from somewhere...
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Plainmoor78
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Post by Plainmoor78 »

I believe GI will take over, I cannot see any private investor wanting to pump in £100k plus simply to see it go straight out of the club and into somebody else's pocket. The only thing in it for GI is to try and persuade the council to sell the freehold to them. So I think the better strategy is not for TUST to buy the club, but to try and buy the freehold of Plainmoor. Then if successful GI have no option but to either liquidate the club leaving TUST free to launch a phoenix club at Plainmoor, or sell the club to TUST at a knockdown price because that is all they can get.
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Post by MF68 »

Without a doubt the first £30/40k should be used to employ a scout. Most small Clubs sell on one player every year to assist with making ends meat.
Of course we lost John James years ago - that was a disaster
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Post by standupsitdown »

What would the freehold be worth and would the council be willing to sell - with some sort of legal agreement that it can only be used for TUFC?
I'd be willing to put £500 in (maybe more) but would prefer that it went towards something tangible such as freehold or shares.
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Post by Plainmoor78 »

standupsitdown wrote:What would the freehold be worth and would the council be willing to sell - with some sort of legal agreement that it can only be used for TUFC?
I'd be willing to put £500 in (maybe more) but would prefer that it went towards something tangible such as freehold or shares.
Not sure what freehold would be worth, but months ago on one of the forums someone suggested £300,000, a lot less with the sitting tenant than without. As to would the council be willing to sale; if they agreed to sell at the behest of GI then the freehold has to be offered on the open market according to the terms of the ACV, with any interested parties given six months to come up with the dosh.
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Post by ferrarilover »

This thread is great. We're not beyond the online bullshit stage yet and not only can we not agree between so much as two of us just how to spend the money, but we've already spent about £3m on scouts, shares, the ground and whatnot having raised all of about £4k.

I can't wait for you lot to take over running the place. What could possibly go wrong?

Matt.
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Post by portugull »

So if the Board fail to find a buyer you are happy for Gaming International to take over the Club which is what will happen if we the fans do nothing and sit on our hands?

Surely it is at least worth attempting to raise £400k to pay off GIL and put the Club on a sound footing. We would not be pioneers as numerous Clubs are now owned by the Fans why not us?
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Post by Dutchgull »

O.K Matt fountain of all knowledge ....what do you propose ?? You obviously have all the answers !!
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Post by Dave »

Thing is Paul me old mate, Matt is a cheeky little wind up merchant, who knows what buttons and when to press them. My message to Matt, go on to the Huffington post website and wind them up on their, much more fun, and you'll get a better response, ;-)

Back on topic, the thing Matt knows, as do I, and we all do, or should do is, to get our club back to running at the level it did before, is going to require a rich sugar daddy who does not mind losing a few quid along the way, such a white knight is not out there, the board may well be talking to some interested parties, but they'll want some return for their money.

We only have to look at the number of clubs, who have gone up from the non-leagues only to go right back down again after a few short seasons, TUFC included, and then look at the type of club now sat in the bottom half of league 2, to see how things have moved on, and how our club has been left behind, the level of finance to run a football league club is now, quite possibly beyond us, we can not rely on gates money alone to run our club.

That's why I've maintained for long, long time our club has to move away from Plainmoor, where the club can have a 3G community training pitch bringing money, and note "some other sensible, with in reason revenue streams" (before someone bores me with the, oh here we go again with the multiplex cinema jibe, that clearly is a non-starter) that it can not create at our current ground.

In answer to the question. Can we raise £400,000. Yes or No? The answer is probably not, the problem is; We have the clubs player fund, you can join the TUST, you can play the TUST lottery, you can pay into the TUST'S forever yellow fund, we now have the official supporters club.

What we need surely, is one fund, one joined effort, where us fans can pay in, knowing fully that our money is going directly into saving the club, then we might stand a chance of seeing some real £££'s rolling in, and might stand a chance of such an effort succeeding.
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Post by Glostergull »

i have watched what happened to Bristol Rovers with interest. i do wonder if its possible to approach the owner there to see if he has any friends in Jordan or elsewhere who love Football. maybe we could search for a football loving guy like that and get them interested. can't be worse than anything else proposed on here so far
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Post by Jack »

The simple answer to the original question is Yes we can. I think though that we should be more ambitious and aim to raise £1M in total and have a business plan to take us through to 2019 so that if the Football League is expanded we are still in the National League and ready to step up.
I would suggest that the Club seeks interest free loans in multiples of £1,000 and in return the Club could give a 10% reduction in season prices for each loan (£30 off a season ticket = 3% pa return on £1,000). I would be willing to lend a £1,000 so we only need 999 more!
As normal with such a scheme the devil would be in the detail including
a) Representation of lenders on the Board
b) Loan repayments in the event of the Club making a profit or a future sale of the Club to a genuine football supporter
c) conversion of loans to gifts at some future date; plus lots more!

The original post suggested that £400,000 needed to be raised quickly in order to have a Plan B if the sale of the Club doesn't happen and we need to be rid of our major creditors including GI. The initial pledges of loans of £1,000 would need to come from root and branch supporters so that a significant amount, say £200,000 is raised, before the great and the good such as former players, are approached. It may be that the current directors would leave their current investment in the Club as interest free loans if they were confident that the Club could be viable in the medium term.

The current Board are taking a fair bit of stick on various threads on this Forum but we should be grateful to them for taking the Club on when they did. I can understand their reluctance to invest any more in what must feel like a bottomless pit at times. The current uncertainty could also be having an impact on the playing staff; it is hard to focus on work if you are worried about what might or might not happen to your employer.

Like all supporters I don't want our Club to end up like Hereford, Chester, Darlo and Halifax to name but a few, who have had to start from scratch again. Any fund raising scheme would need to be managed by a small group of supporters who can work with the current Board - are there any willing volunteers out there?
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Post by exilegull »

Jack wrote:The simple answer to the original question is Yes we can. I think though that we should be more ambitious and aim to raise £1M in total and have a business plan to take us through to 2019 so that if the Football League is expanded we are still in the National League and ready to step up.
I would suggest that the Club seeks interest free loans in multiples of £1,000 and in return the Club could give a 10% reduction in season prices for each loan (£30 off a season ticket = 3% pa return on £1,000). I would be willing to lend a £1,000 so we only need 999 more!
As normal with such a scheme the devil would be in the detail including
a) Representation of lenders on the Board
b) Loan repayments in the event of the Club making a profit or a future sale of the Club to a genuine football supporter
c) conversion of loans to gifts at some future date; plus lots more!

The original post suggested that £400,000 needed to be raised quickly in order to have a Plan B if the sale of the Club doesn't happen and we need to be rid of our major creditors including GI. The initial pledges of loans of £1,000 would need to come from root and branch supporters so that a significant amount, say £200,000 is raised, before the great and the good such as former players, are approached. It may be that the current directors would leave their current investment in the Club as interest free loans if they were confident that the Club could be viable in the medium term.

The current Board are taking a fair bit of stick on various threads on this Forum but we should be grateful to them for taking the Club on when they did. I can understand their reluctance to invest any more in what must feel like a bottomless pit at times. The current uncertainty could also be having an impact on the playing staff; it is hard to focus on work if you are worried about what might or might not happen to your employer.

Like all supporters I don't want our Club to end up like Hereford, Chester, Darlo and Halifax to name but a few, who have had to start from scratch again. Any fund raising scheme would need to be managed by a small group of supporters who can work with the current Board - are there any willing volunteers out there?
A 3% return is terrible when there is next to no chance of getting your initial capital back. £200k or even £400k is merely a sticking plaster that would be swallowed up in next to no time and the club would be back to the same point in a year or less.

If anyone out there has a viable plan that clearly outlines how the club could be funded for the next 3 years to compete with a top 10 budget at this level then I would be willing to put up 5 figures to support it. I wouldn't support a stop gap solution that just postpones death for a few months and would much rather contribute to the phoenix that comes out of the ashes at whatever level that would be at.
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