Manchester City Supporters Trust - Does it exist?

[dobobobo]

As with any former player, we all like to think that they remain Blues and would do anything to help our club. I tend to think Ranson does have a strong feeling for City but, as with Francis Lee, it doesn't always make for the best investor.

PB - on the book writing front... I'd say do it. Don't worry about my book (that may never see daylight anyway!), get yours written and published. There are so many angles to the problems and successes of the last decade that there's plenty of room for other books. David Conn's book directly impacted the publication of "The Journey" (my book) in 2011, but that hasn't stopped my long term drive to get this out there. I won't be publishing mine for at least a year, maybe 2, maybe 3... so get yours out there now. I know I'll be keen to read it. If you need any help I will, of course, be happy to help in any way I can.

What about combining forces? Half of the book is contributed by a journalist in the know and the other half is contributed by a fan(s) in the know. That way we have a book which has two different perspectives.

 

[Alex - City Matters]

after the recent lack of discussion on unnecessary price increases and the way the disabled fans have bee ignored it might be time to resurrect the idea nothing like a bit of independence to sharpen practice even if things were hunky dory its good for fans and the club to have proper dialogue without strings more on the concept here <a class="postlink" href="http://www.supporters-direct.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.supporters-direct.org/</a>

I'd be up for this too, maybe we could get something going? Anyone else?

 

[117 M34]

after the recent lack of discussion on unnecessary price increases and the way the disabled fans have bee ignored it might be time to resurrect the idea nothing like a bit of independence to sharpen practice even if things were hunky dory its good for fans and the club to have proper dialogue without strings more on the concept here <a class="postlink" href="http://www.supporters-direct.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.supporters-direct.org/</a>

I'd be up for this too, maybe we could get something going? Anyone else?

I'm up for it.
I will write a letter to get it sorted.

Dear Mr mansour,

We are not happy with how you are running the club because you have put our season tickets up by 15 quid a year. I have put together a group of 50 city fans who all happen to have a spare million knocking about to buy 10% of your shares in the club. We can then tell you ( a multi billionaire) how to run your business. Hope that is ok with you
P's. Please get Klopp as the next manager and sign Koke

 

[alberto0292]

after the recent lack of discussion on unnecessary price increases and the way the disabled fans have bee ignored it might be time to resurrect the idea nothing like a bit of independence to sharpen practice even if things were hunky dory its good for fans and the club to have proper dialogue without strings more on the concept here <a class="postlink" href="http://www.supporters-direct.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.supporters-direct.org/</a>

I'd be up for this too, maybe we could get something going? Anyone else?

I'm up for it.
I will write a letter to get it sorted.

Dear Mr mansour,

We are not happy with how you are running the club because you have put our season tickets up by 15 quid a year. I have put together a group of 50 city fans who all happen to have a spare million knocking about to buy 10% of your shares in the club. We can then tell you ( a multi billionaire) how to run your business. Hope that is ok with you
P's. Please get Klopp as the next manager and sign Koke

It isn't about how to run a business, it is about not loosing touch with the fans.

The OSC is silent on most of the issues, it feels like they don't want to challenge the club at all. 1894 Group main focus is improving the atmosphere, but they (actually we) have put a statement towards the end of the year about a few things (new singing section, safe standing, ticket prices, pre-match build up and asking more engagement with fans by the people at the club.

Another body, either a trust or a fans ambassador, could be a good solution to represent fans voice.

City Voice isn't enough, that's how you run a business.. by letting fans believe they have a voice on how the club is run when they actually don't

Tickets and season-ticket prices going up every year, not paying living wages to employees, not providing adequate spaces for disable supporters, digital advertising boards on level two, continuos increase of beer and food prices inside the stadium are just some of the issues that need to be addressed before it's too late.

 

[glenowen]

Cool, thanks!

I'm mainly wondering if a Trust gets treated differently, or in other words, has more clout than a supporters club.

Interesting question. I first got involved when I became a shareholder in 2005 an attended my first AGM. I wasn't impressed at all by the proceedings, at which I thoughts fan shareholders were fobbed off and patronised. I was deeply unimpressed by the then CEO Alastair Mackintosh and wondered how supporters could get involved in their clubs on what you might call a political basis 9e.g. a pressure group). I came across Supporters Direct, who are the group that promote and support supporter ownership. Trusts are legally constituted bodies, where a member has one vote, regardless of how many shares they have.

Via the MEN Online forum, four of us got together to look at forming a trust. Our intention was to try to get enough shareholders together to collect a block of shares that could be used to wield some influence at board level. We started talking to key shareholders and found that many of them were unhappy with the way the club was being run. There was effectively only one executive director, which was Mackintosh.

We realised that we could get enough support from some very influential people (such as David Bernstein & Franny Lee) to force the board to appoint more directors that we would nominate (DB would have been one and we were talking to a couple of others). We had a couple of wealthy backers who were committed to the cause of fan ownership & approached Sky, who had 10% of the shares. They agreed to sell to us which then might have given us control over something like 40% of the shares allowing us to put two or three fan-appointed directors onto the board. We weren't looking for regime change, just more accountability as we were being misled over the true state of the club's finances. However when the club realised we were about 24-48 hours away from purchasing Sky's shares, they announced they were in takeover talks.

This was clearly a load of baloney but it stopped Sky selling to us temporarily. Eventually, after a few months, Ranson and then Shinawatra came in and Wardle agreed to sell to the latter. Once the shares were all in his hands, there seemed little point in carrying on so we dropped the idea. However, a year later we found out that the club were in desperate financial trouble and administration was likely. Bernstein was keen to pick up the pieces so contacted us to see if the funding was still there (which it was) and would we be prepared to get the trust back up and running. Eventually the club got a £30m loan which kept them going, although they probably wouldn't have lasted much beyond December. Fortunately ADUG came in and the rest is history.

In terms of how we were treated, it was very coolly, to put it mildly. They talked about a meeting but never agreed to any of the dates that were suggested. The club (i.e. Mackintosh) realised we were a genuine threat, due to the backing we had, whereas the OSC weren't. We did talk to the OSC to assure them we were no threat to them and I think they accepted that. I'm certainly not criticising the OSC but they have a mutually beneficial relationship with the club and don't get involved in the politics. I understand that fully.

I think they may have put private detectives on us as they seemed to know a lot about us but they made a mistake in trying to tell some of the bigger shareholders that we were of no consequence. We could show the level of support we had and we also proved to one, who was initially sceptical, that the club were lying to him. That turned him into a fervent supporter. It was amazing just how many people at and around the club didn't like Mackintosh and many of my good contacts were made in that period.

It was a stressful but fantastic time and I met some great people. Greg Dyke was chairman of supporter-owned Brentford at the time and he and his board were really helpful, as were the Trusts at Reading & Northampton. We used to hear all the time that Trusts were fine for clubs like that but would never work in the PL. We used to counter that with the fact that being fan-owned didn't seem to have hurt Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and most other Spanish and German clubs. I still firmly believe that fans are the only stakeholders who genuinely have the long term interests of their clubs at heart. Our owners certainly are far better than most in that respect but I don't like the gulf that seems to have grown between the club management and the fans over the last couple of years. Having run a fan-owned club, I'd have thought that Soriano would be a little more empathetic towards us.

Would we have had more clout than the OSC if we'd achieved our objective? Abso-fucking-lutely we would.

That's a really insightful post, Prestwich Blue. I suspect that most fans - myself included - had no idea how close the Supporters Trust came to securing a meaningful shareholding in the club. I remember being very interested in this issue around that time, because of the shambolic state of the club's finances. But my interest got no further than swapping a few emails with a Blue on the Isle of Wight who seemed to be one of the leading lights of the Trust. I would certainly be interested to find out more about the "inside story" - so don't hold back on your exposé!

I believe you are the man who writes the finance articles in the King of the Kippax? If so - and I hope you don't mind me saying so - you definitely have a way with words and I am sure there is at least one book about the recent history of MCFC in you - if you find the time!

 

[BlueBearBoots]

PB, you really, really do need to write this book, I would definitely buy it.

I totally agree EB a truthful tale about the nitty gritty of that time would be so interesting and as Damo says Colin MES has experience on this you should collaborate

 

[bluebrickroad]

Cool, thanks!

I'm mainly wondering if a Trust gets treated differently, or in other words, has more clout than a supporters club.

Interesting question. I first got involved when I became a shareholder in 2005 an attended my first AGM. I wasn't impressed at all by the proceedings, at which I thoughts fan shareholders were fobbed off and patronised. I was deeply unimpressed by the then CEO Alastair Mackintosh and wondered how supporters could get involved in their clubs on what you might call a political basis 9e.g. a pressure group). I came across Supporters Direct, who are the group that promote and support supporter ownership. Trusts are legally constituted bodies, where a member has one vote, regardless of how many shares they have.

Via the MEN Online forum, four of us got together to look at forming a trust. Our intention was to try to get enough shareholders together to collect a block of shares that could be used to wield some influence at board level. We started talking to key shareholders and found that many of them were unhappy with the way the club was being run. There was effectively only one executive director, which was Mackintosh.

We realised that we could get enough support from some very influential people (such as David Bernstein & Franny Lee) to force the board to appoint more directors that we would nominate (DB would have been one and we were talking to a couple of others). We had a couple of wealthy backers who were committed to the cause of fan ownership & approached Sky, who had 10% of the shares. They agreed to sell to us which then might have given us control over something like 40% of the shares allowing us to put two or three fan-appointed directors onto the board. We weren't looking for regime change, just more accountability as we were being misled over the true state of the club's finances. However when the club realised we were about 24-48 hours away from purchasing Sky's shares, they announced they were in takeover talks.

This was clearly a load of baloney but it stopped Sky selling to us temporarily. Eventually, after a few months, Ranson and then Shinawatra came in and Wardle agreed to sell to the latter. Once the shares were all in his hands, there seemed little point in carrying on so we dropped the idea. However, a year later we found out that the club were in desperate financial trouble and administration was likely. Bernstein was keen to pick up the pieces so contacted us to see if the funding was still there (which it was) and would we be prepared to get the trust back up and running. Eventually the club got a £30m loan which kept them going, although they probably wouldn't have lasted much beyond December. Fortunately ADUG came in and the rest is history.

In terms of how we were treated, it was very coolly, to put it mildly. They talked about a meeting but never agreed to any of the dates that were suggested. The club (i.e. Mackintosh) realised we were a genuine threat, due to the backing we had, whereas the OSC weren't. We did talk to the OSC to assure them we were no threat to them and I think they accepted that. I'm certainly not criticising the OSC but they have a mutually beneficial relationship with the club and don't get involved in the politics. I understand that fully.

I think they may have put private detectives on us as they seemed to know a lot about us but they made a mistake in trying to tell some of the bigger shareholders that we were of no consequence. We could show the level of support we had and we also proved to one, who was initially sceptical, that the club were lying to him. That turned him into a fervent supporter. It was amazing just how many people at and around the club didn't like Mackintosh and many of my good contacts were made in that period.

It was a stressful but fantastic time and I met some great people. Greg Dyke was chairman of supporter-owned Brentford at the time and he and his board were really helpful, as were the Trusts at Reading & Northampton. We used to hear all the time that Trusts were fine for clubs like that but would never work in the PL. We used to counter that with the fact that being fan-owned didn't seem to have hurt Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and most other Spanish and German clubs. I still firmly believe that fans are the only stakeholders who genuinely have the long term interests of their clubs at heart. Our owners certainly are far better than most in that respect but I don't like the gulf that seems to have grown between the club management and the fans over the last couple of years. Having run a fan-owned club, I'd have thought that Soriano would be a little more empathetic towards us.

Would we have had more clout than the OSC if we'd achieved our objective? Abso-fucking-lutely we would.

That's a really insightful post, Prestwich Blue. I suspect that most fans - myself included - had no idea how close the Supporters Trust came to securing a meaningful shareholding in the club. I remember being very interested in this issue around that time, because of the shambolic state of the club's finances. But my interest got no further than swapping a few emails with a Blue on the Isle of Wight who seemed to be one of the leading lights of the Trust. I would certainly be interested to find out more about the "inside story" - so don't hold back on your exposé!

I believe you are the man who writes the finance articles in the King of the Kippax? If so - and I hope you don't mind me saying so - you definitely have a way with words and I am sure there is at least one book about the recent history of MCFC in you - if you find the time!

I also remember being in contact with a Blue from the Isle of Wight regarding a Supporters Trust. It would have been about 8/9 years ago and before I had heard of Bluemoon. In those days my means of contact with fellow Blues was through a football forum on the BBC website - each club had their own "sub forum" and it was actually very active and interesting.