I am largely a reader of this forum, not a poster (I'm unsure of precisely what my post count is, but it will be low), but I have to make an exception in this case.
I've avoided this forum like the plague now for some time because frankly it's depressing watching the majority of supporters peddle the agenda of the club's landlords and particularly the council who have been heavily involved with the skullduggery surrounding our club, principally because they seem to have you all convinced that their hands are not blood stained, despite the punitive measures they have taken against your football club!
It is no secret that SISU have consistently left us wanting more during their tenure, but yet two facts remain;
1. They have invested a large sum of money in our club (albeit whilst annotating it on the balance sheet as loans).
2. Everybody seemed to be happy with progress this year under SISU until this stadium debacle.
Ultimately, SISU are in the right here, as painful as it might be to admit it. It has been well publicised that there are impending problems for clubs under the 'financial fair play' rules. Predominantly this is very simple, we can only spend what we make in ticket sales/sponsorship etc on sustaining the club and maintaining a competitive playing squad.
At present we make precious little, and consequently, we will really feel the bite when these rules come into force. If you think a ten point deduction is hard to swallow, the consequences of not fitting in with these rules will have our club in a serious nosedive and have us tumbling down the leagues quicker than you can say 'maybe that coffee guy was right'.
Simply put for the primate contingent of this forum; some derp once upon a time made a real balls up when negotiating rent for our stadium and as a result, the cash we get in return for the tickets we sell aren't sufficient to support the club without the owners putting money in - which it is not viable long term for those owners to do because in time they will be prohibited from doing so.
The owners are business people, and bought in with the idea one day of either taking a considerable dividend or planning an exit strategy to sell the club on. This is their right and I support that. We aren't playing subbuteo here, we're playing football manager...
The club had every right to request that the arena bosses revisited the rent agreement. It is in their best interests for the club to prosper! The club and the stadium are supposed to behave like husband and wife. The stadium is cheating on the club at the moment with the council! I'm sure if the club became champions league chasers, then the arena would be looking for a substantial rent increase! This works both ways....
This exercise on SISU's part, is simply to demonstrate to the arena bosses that their arena cannot survive without the club. I support that, and you should too!
If we were smart supporters instead of sheeples, your lean would be on the arena bosses and not the club. You'd all turn out in force at Northampton to support our team at home games and frighten the life out of the arena bosses. Additionally you'd all be emailing the businesses that operate on the arena site encouraging them to demand a rent decrease in line with the footfall reduction as a result of CCFC departing from the site.
Our football club can only survive if we procure the stadium or have a rent agreement that allows us access to a lion share of the money that the supporters invest in watching the team!
The council stifled the club's attempt to get serious with the arena bosses by spending FOURTEEN MILLION POUNDS OF TAXPAYERS MONEY propping up ACL. Surely on this forum there are some people who have suffered from council cuts - be it redundancy, policing deficiencies, or perhaps they turn your streetlights off at night turning your area into a criminals wet dream? How can they spend 14M of your money like that, and nobody raise any objection?
Ultimately, if you were to protest against the council, perhaps their intervention would be punishable. Perhaps they'd have to recover their 14M and ACL would have to remortgage that 14M - Almost impossible with no viable tenants!
Perhaps then the arena will need to be sold to the people who would most benefit from it. Not SISU - your football club!
This is all a big game of smoke and mirrors, and SISU will get their way because they are a bunch of sharks - but the supporters are making it unnecessarily difficult for them - Your allegiance is to the club, not the council - I guarantee most here have been wronged by the council some way, at some time in their lives.
The club, (in my opinion) will unlikely play long-term at Northants. But if we turned out there in force to support our team, instead of these protests of about five people that frankly look pitiful, perhaps we can affect positive change over our clubs future and restore it to former glory.
Does anyone understand how irksome it is, every time our captain posts about tennis/golf/his holiday/his pets it is for you all to turn it into some innuendo filled rant about the club and the owners.
I'm sure you will all have your problems with this post, but I could no longer be silent.
PUSB!
Twitter #ashturnerdotcom
