So what can we expect to change under the new ownership?
Apr 11, 2022 16:19:06 GMT
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Post by steve on Apr 11, 2022 16:19:06 GMT
Worth breaking this down into several sections.
1) Playing budget: This is almost certainly going to go up substantially, perhaps even by an eye-watering amount. While there has been a lot of guesswork about where our current £1.3m playing budget puts us in League 2 (bottom third? Bottom quarter? Bottom 2?), Eben and Preston on the podcast seem to be saying it was their belief that it is the lowest in League 2. They want to bring in use of analytics on the playing side and commissioned an expert to say what level of increased spending would give us a two-thirds/greater than 50% chance of promotion to League 1. That figure came back at an extra £2m! Now obviously they were not saying they would definitely spend this amount extra - but as they have said they want promotion in the next two seasons or they will offer to move aside, it's reasonable to expect they will want a spending level to deliver it. Somewhere around a playing budget of more than £3m would probably blow every other team away in League 2, possibly even the coming Wrexham. So, exciting times?
2) Players and John Yems: With that amount of extra spending, what will be the consequences for the incumbents already here? On the podcast, Eben and Preston state that they are "excited" that half the current players and John Yems are signed up for next season. But that won't be the end of it, you would suspect. A much bigger playing budget along the lines of above will probably give us the chance to sign players better in every single position than those we have currently. So there could still be big squad turnover if today's guaranteed starters struggle to make the bench next season. For Yems, the expectations will be huge. He finds himself strangely in the same situation as someone he is often compared to because of their fiery natures, Steve Evans. If you remember Evans battled along here for a few years here with low budgets and achieved creditable high mid table finishes given the money he had. Then it all changed with big budgets and he was expected to come first and get promotions. He did that, so that could be the weight on Yems' shoulders now too.
3) Redz: Eben and Preston are very unhappy with the current outsourced arrangements. So it's obviously coming back under club day to day management with all cash handed over for pints now going directly to the club rather than the outsourced contractor. The new owners feel we've missed out on revenue streams here. Obviously some familar problems await, we know even with current not-amazing crowds, we can get a lot of crowding/long queue waits. So those will have to be solved somehow. Pop-up bars? New extensions? Thinking caps on. It was good to see us Saturday getting the whole bar back after the final whistle rather than being shoe-horned into half of it. A vibrant Redz culture pre and post match, with the owners doing walk arounds with a few players, could really perk things up a lot, let's hope they do that.
4) Food: Now Eben and Preston confined themselves on the podcast to talking about the arrangements inside directors box/corporate hospitality. They envisage the offering is going to be built up with more staff employed to do so. The implications for us more common herd in the rest of the ground are obvious and the same points apply as with Redz. Revenue streams are being squandered if our food offering ain't great and you have to queue up ages for it. Improvements ahead surely?
5) Fan democracy: Now this one could really be the strangest one to get our heads around. Key to the model of ownership that Eben and Preston want is power decentralised back to fan communities. This isn't a nice optional extra they want to give us, they see it as the entire purpose/end point of their involvement. So we (season ticket holders and the new community of fans abroad buying NFTs) could conceivably get to vote on various key strategic matters, such as the size of the playing budget. Eben and Preston expect the number of NFT community fans to quickly outstrip conventional season ticket holders in number but have said that, for the initial stages at least to protect the influence of the Broadfield attenders, the votes would be weighted so each group gets 50 per cent of the votes.
1) Playing budget: This is almost certainly going to go up substantially, perhaps even by an eye-watering amount. While there has been a lot of guesswork about where our current £1.3m playing budget puts us in League 2 (bottom third? Bottom quarter? Bottom 2?), Eben and Preston on the podcast seem to be saying it was their belief that it is the lowest in League 2. They want to bring in use of analytics on the playing side and commissioned an expert to say what level of increased spending would give us a two-thirds/greater than 50% chance of promotion to League 1. That figure came back at an extra £2m! Now obviously they were not saying they would definitely spend this amount extra - but as they have said they want promotion in the next two seasons or they will offer to move aside, it's reasonable to expect they will want a spending level to deliver it. Somewhere around a playing budget of more than £3m would probably blow every other team away in League 2, possibly even the coming Wrexham. So, exciting times?
2) Players and John Yems: With that amount of extra spending, what will be the consequences for the incumbents already here? On the podcast, Eben and Preston state that they are "excited" that half the current players and John Yems are signed up for next season. But that won't be the end of it, you would suspect. A much bigger playing budget along the lines of above will probably give us the chance to sign players better in every single position than those we have currently. So there could still be big squad turnover if today's guaranteed starters struggle to make the bench next season. For Yems, the expectations will be huge. He finds himself strangely in the same situation as someone he is often compared to because of their fiery natures, Steve Evans. If you remember Evans battled along here for a few years here with low budgets and achieved creditable high mid table finishes given the money he had. Then it all changed with big budgets and he was expected to come first and get promotions. He did that, so that could be the weight on Yems' shoulders now too.
3) Redz: Eben and Preston are very unhappy with the current outsourced arrangements. So it's obviously coming back under club day to day management with all cash handed over for pints now going directly to the club rather than the outsourced contractor. The new owners feel we've missed out on revenue streams here. Obviously some familar problems await, we know even with current not-amazing crowds, we can get a lot of crowding/long queue waits. So those will have to be solved somehow. Pop-up bars? New extensions? Thinking caps on. It was good to see us Saturday getting the whole bar back after the final whistle rather than being shoe-horned into half of it. A vibrant Redz culture pre and post match, with the owners doing walk arounds with a few players, could really perk things up a lot, let's hope they do that.
4) Food: Now Eben and Preston confined themselves on the podcast to talking about the arrangements inside directors box/corporate hospitality. They envisage the offering is going to be built up with more staff employed to do so. The implications for us more common herd in the rest of the ground are obvious and the same points apply as with Redz. Revenue streams are being squandered if our food offering ain't great and you have to queue up ages for it. Improvements ahead surely?
5) Fan democracy: Now this one could really be the strangest one to get our heads around. Key to the model of ownership that Eben and Preston want is power decentralised back to fan communities. This isn't a nice optional extra they want to give us, they see it as the entire purpose/end point of their involvement. So we (season ticket holders and the new community of fans abroad buying NFTs) could conceivably get to vote on various key strategic matters, such as the size of the playing budget. Eben and Preston expect the number of NFT community fans to quickly outstrip conventional season ticket holders in number but have said that, for the initial stages at least to protect the influence of the Broadfield attenders, the votes would be weighted so each group gets 50 per cent of the votes.
