Originally Posted by
NAE NOOKIE
F knows why because it isn't exactly difficult. STF loaned the money to Hibs to square the bank deal, in the process saving the club a fortune, the money goes back into his pocket and rightly so.
It would be nice to see Hibs attract some outside investment, but as has been said many times ( mostly by me :greengrin ) our plan to pass 51% of control to the fans makes the chances of attracting the ultra rich with more money than sense virtually nil ... rich folk want the tag 'owner' as the bare minimum for pouring their cash into football's money pit and that's something you wont get at a fan controlled club.
Anybody moaning about the player budget had better start facing up to the reality of what 'fan owned' really means. From now on the way at Hibs will be to spend what we earn from gate money, transfer fees, TV money, prize money and sponsorship and it cant ( and wont ) all go on players wages or transfer fees to bring folk in, the cost of just running the club runs into millions and that's before you start paying the players.
That's why HSL in the years to come will go from being a nice wee boost to club funds to being vitally important ... its going to become imperative that they gather as many contributors as possible and more importantly, that those contributors continue to pay into HSL after the share buying phase has ended. I myself am not a member, but I do intend to join soon and when I do I wont even bother about the share side of things, its all going to be about keeping Hibs competitive.
Forget managerial meltdowns or who will or wont be sold or leave in the summer. By far the biggest issue facing this club is what's going to happen when it does become fan controlled and how we intend to finance it to a standard that will keep us in the hunt for trophies and European football .... in spite of asking these questions for over two years now I have yet to see any plans or projections from anywhere, be that the current Hibs board or HSL, as to how we intend to move forward when the time comes.
As far as I'm concerned we seem to be stumbling blindly into the unknown with nobody taking any notice of addressing the problems that fan ownership will inevitably throw up ... especially in the areas of decision making structures and how to attract investment to a fan controlled club. This is not Germany where big business and rich individuals are still happy to chuck in money without control, we do not have a fan base running into hundreds of thousands like Bundesliga clubs that we can use as a crutch when the going gets tough either. Hibs know all of this, HS knows this .... but the sound of silence from both parties regarding the future is deafening.
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail ..... its time a few folk in and around Hibs got a grip on this before its too late.