but out of adversity could we create something?
A play-off final ticket would cost an average of £50 or thereabouts.
Therefore if the 30,000 or so that would have attended the play-off final donated that £50 to the Supporters' Trust (what is happening with that by the way?) we would raise £1.5 million which would help enormously.
How to best use this money is up for debate but, in no particular order, I suggest:
1) Make an offer to purchase The Valley thus placing it effectively in fans ownership
2) Purchase the training ground
3) Take a stake in the academy given that we will almost certainly be reliant on our youth products for the forseeable future.
Feel free to add suggestions. Am I completely mad?
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we could also get the club/stroke players involved with the ebay auctions thing or run our own, i am sure there is some memorabilia that we could get to flog
i would willing contribute to something like this
That being said, the Supporters Trust seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
No clue what is happening with the Supporters' Trust other than not a lot but as I'm not involved there could be something rumbling on.
The Valley might be stretching it but why not be ambitious.
Well, I don't know about that - but it's good constructive thinking which could well lead to positive and beneficial results.
I understood The Valley was collateral to the Covered End (sorry, North Stand) mortgage, and perhaps other borrowings too?
So can't see the stadium being bought by a fans entity unless the club can pay off secured loans first.
But again, nice idea.
I did the Valley Investment Plan last time, still got the stificate
And, I helped buy Ronnie Moore!
Wouldn't need a Trust but it would be a legal entity which would make handling the money and purchases more straightforward.
Still happy to put anyone who wants to get the Trust idea going in touch with Supporters' Direct but not going to do myself.
I'd give my last penny but unfortunately not many would.
The mortgage is an issue
That there is no Trust is also an issue but one for the fans not the Club.
Doubt they would gift it for a number of reasons even if there were not mortgage. It would make the Club less attractive to any buyer, they wouldn't be able to use it as security on future loans and could mean paying rent to the Trust where as at the moment there is no rent.
The other problem about fans owning the ground or training ground is what do we do if the Club doesn't pay the rent? Let it go? Evict them? Issue a winding up order
might get more people interested than 30,000@50
I wonder if a freehold/lease arrangement would work better.
I'm no expert but you can borrow on a lease
It would remove the need for rent, costs of running it would be handled by the club, and indeed maintenance
Would mean the trust could stipulate use etc
Would secure the freehold from being sold off
I can see finance being an issue however, the value of a lease with restrictions would be nothing like the value of a freehold with none I would guess. There is also a need to pay off the finance on the ground (5m?).
Got to take it on and make it happen and that means a group of people putting in the donkey work.
It's not going to be me for reasons I've given before and in any case there are a lot of more talented people out there.
So it is going to have to be YOU, yes YOU, the person reading this, YOU. Go on, make it happen.
However, i am fearful that the lack of structure to take such things forward is a real holding-back issue.
I also think that the amount of people who would be interested in supporting such a scheme is grossly exaggerated.
The club is suffering from two key issues:
1. the level of debt that it is carrying
2. and this is the current key one, the fact that it cannot at present get anywhere close to operating at a break-even basis.
Supporters may well be able to participate in big ticket, short-term schemes that may help to reduce the outstanding debt, but a short-term scheme will do nothing to help the 2nd point over than simply papering over the cracks and delaying the inevitable.
How supporters could help on the 2nd point is to do what we could to increase our season-ticket holder base, increase the matchday sales, and try and increase the constant income the club receives and needs to budget on.
If we could get 1000 people to put in £1000 each (a lot of money - I appreciate that) then that is £1million towards the club and its running costs. Or maybe increments of £500
In return you could get something like a name plaque on your seat, a brick in a Charlton Supporters VIP wall, your name on a shirt (didn't someone do that once?) or a page in the program with all the names - something that will last.
Who knows - if the good times come back maybe the club would reimburse these fans but that's another story!
There's definitely scope for things like this and I'd be interested if anything took place
There must be SOMEONE on here who has the time, energy, know how to look further into the suggestions made & hopefully set the ball rolling. I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple of Lifers seeking employment at this time ....If one of them has any expertise in the aforementioned field, how about offering, say £500 of the monies pledged to pay for their time ie kind of commission....?
Waiting to be sunk....But can't bear the thought of sitting on our hands in the close season whilst "Rome" burns.
When I was at Southampton's ground a few weeks ago, they had the ground level outside walls of the stands, with each brick in the wall sponsored by individual supporters.