Steve_R

what else can you buy for £2 really come on ! carnt even get a bus for less than £2 ! but most of the dossers waste there money on cider and drugs etc did i say you or anyone else does ? no i didnt i said people of oldham i didnt point you or your little mate out did i ?

You honestly think that only people in Oldham drink cider and do drugs?

That's fair enough mate. You're entitled to do what you want.

 

Small World takes on a new meaning in Oldham.

I think you'd find that if you tried to take practically every other club out of the town of it's name and plonk it somewhere else, their fans would be up in arms. For a hell of a lot of football fans supporting your team is all about local identity. I support Latics because I'm from Oldham, it's my local club. Move it somewhere else and it wont be. Why do people get annoyed at ManU fans from Oldham if it doesn't matter where you come from or where your team plays?

If that means I have a small world mentality then so be it. But anyone who thinks that moving us out of Oldham will have the fans flocking is seriously deluded.

Part of the agreement when they bought back BP from OMBC was that they guaranteed football would be played there for at least 10 years. There are three years left and I just don't see how they can could go back on that.

i don't want to be rude but you're talking :censored:e

Be as rude as you want but just stop talking :censored:e

i'm against moving out of Oldham but would accept it as an alternative to not having a club at all

If we move out of Oldham we will have no club.

I don't agree with that statement and other similar statements made on here. Its your view so I respect it, but my response is that if it means that Oldham Athletic is alive and kicking at a brand spanking new stadium a stones throw outside of the borough of Oldham it will be an incredibly good thing for the club and the fans. I believe the club would have new fans if a move outside of Oldham occurred. Please note, I do not want it to happen but if it is the best for the club then I'm all for it.

 

I know its a different matter but if a family member or your partner you love moved to a different town to you, you wouldn't cease your feelings and love for them just because of that reason would you? A bit far-fetched but hey...

There has been much bull:censored: spouted on this board over the last day or so, but none of it caps this.

there'd be no comparison

 

we've tried to stay in Oldham, they specifically wanted to move 80 miles away

If we move out of the borough of Oldham it is exactly the same. The distance is irrelevant, be it 80 yards or 80 miles. Oldham Athletic belongs in Oldham. Take it out and it is Oldham Athletic no more.

Now I’m not sticking up for OMBC here but all this talk about they don’t care about Latics is bollocks. They’ve been behind Failsworth from the off, but what this has shown is their total ineptitude. They’ve tried to railroad it through without going through the proper procedures so that basically we could get on with it, but it has come back to bite them on the arse.

As Corney says, they want a new stadium; they just don’t seem capable of helping Latics to deliver one.

And as for moving out of town, unless is something we’re forced into, then that’s me out of it. If we take the decision to move out of Oldham and build a new stadium elsewhere, then it’s Jeff Stelling or Oldham Borough on a Saturday afternoon for me.

I think using the word 'town' is a bit generic. Fair play, a lot of people are upset with the council, but I'm proud of the town where I'm from and that's why I support the football club that represents it.

Correct

There isn't a place called Tameside. It's a Metropolitan Borough of Greater Manchester and spans the towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Audenshaw, Denton, Droylsden, Dukinfield, Hyde, Mossley and Stalybridge. These towns all have football clubs (two in Ashton) and a couple of them are only three promotions from the football league.

 

How arrogant would we be to turn up with our football club? Thankfully, as far as I know, a move out of the borough of Oldham is not even being considered and neither should it. We're Oldham Athletic.

What he said

I didn't hang around at Hull to see what happened, but I believe Dean Holden flicked the V's at the fans at the end of the game so it's a long way from unwarranted abuse. And for the Barnsley game, yes, there was flak directed at the team but Richard Butcher copped for the brunt of it by a long way. It was ugly, I recall it as clear as day. You can't dress it up as anything else really.

 

By the way Harry DGS, superb words, superbly put.

The flak he received at Barnsley was awful, and he copped it in plenty of other games as well. But in my 40 odd years watching Latics nobody has copped for as much abuse as Dave Penney. It seems ironic then that there's another thread running at the moment absolutely slaughtering our ex manager.

As for Richard Butcher, terrible news. RIP.

Not an excuse but with only three new teams per year and the clubs that went down the previous season tending to yo-yo back up you don't get much chance to go to a new ground and get a new experience. I bet most teams have sold out away at Blackpool this year.

 

I'd hate to go to Bolton every season for a 0-0 draw.

The Birmingham section looked pretty sparse at Bloomfield Rd the other night when I saw the goals on TV.

I do agree that managing supporter expectations is going to be difficult - but the point of my post was to highlight the likelihood of failing the club's aspirations whilst we remain in the lower levels of the professional leagues so whether it's realistic or not, our only hope of progress is via promotion.

Survival in Division 1 was probably the target for most of us at the start of the season but the bigger fight is that of survival as a football club and whilst the possibility of a promotion still exists, we need to do everything we can to nurture that hope.

The thing is (and I think it’s pretty much what you are saying), is that we’ve lost a lot of fans recently, and they haven’t all buggered of to Man City no matter what our Chairman says. The football and results so far may be a lot better but hovering around mid table isn’t going to tempt many back or attract new ones. They may hear noises about how much better we’re doing but when they pick up their Sunday paper and see us in twelfth position or whatever, they just think ‘That’s pretty much how its been for the last fourteen seasons.’

Unfortunately we are in that viscous circle were the only way crowds will increase significantly is with a serious promotion push, but we need the gates to show a sharp rise in order to finance one.

Either that or Dickov proves to be a miracle worker and achieves it on a shoestring budget like he’s working on now, but for that he’ll probably need that precious commodity, time, and our recent history shows we don’t afford our managers too much of that.

YES MK dons are a joke of a football club, yes putting money in their pocket is like shaking the hand of a paedophile, but for fuk sake its latics for a tenner we are talking about get your arses down their, 4 of u in a car £15 a head max, £10 a ticket, support the boys in blue towards 3 vital points at a vital time of season, and kick fuk out of all the seats around u if you want to make your £10 entrance fee worthless to MK Dons..

So you'd shake the hand of a paedophile for a tenner? Franchise FC have never had a penny out of my pocket and as long as I've a hole in my arse they never will.

I’ve always said that when something doesn’t go to plan these days it would appear that there has to be someone to blame. It has to be somebody’s fault. As far as most football fans are concerned if their team doesn’t get the result they crave it is usually the fault of either:

1) the referee

2) the manager

3) the goalkeeper

It would appear that most on here blame 2 or 3, although I’ve definitely read one person hammering the ref.

They way I saw it last night was in the first half we played some of the best football we’ve played in a long time. Slick, one touch football, great passing moves, three cracking goals and plenty of other chances. We were totally dominant. Yet it is rare, even at the highest level, that a team dominates in such a way for 90 minutes. In most cases when a team is so much in the ascendancy in the first half and have a healthy scoreline to boot, the second half falls a little flat.

Exeter have an astute manager and they had little to lose anyway, and no doubt we did become a little complacent, but the game was drifting towards a comfortable victory when they scored. Suddenly panic set in everywhere, from the stands onto the pitch.

Goals change games, and they were buoyed by theirs, we panicked, and god knows how but we managed to throw away a three goal lead. It happens. It shouldn’t, but it does. Arsene Wenger is regarded as one of the top coaches in the world but he copped for it on Saturday. ManUre were 3-1 up in injury time at Everton not long ago and ended up clinging on for a point.

But there has to be someone to blame, somebody has to be at fault, and suddenly the manager, whose name was echoing round the ground from ecstatic supporters in the first half had got it all wrong by the end.

:censored: happens. It always has and it always will, but doesn’t always have to be someone’s fault.

I think it was September ’81 and we played Norwich away. A coach load of us went down to the game to be followed by a night out in Great Yarmouth. Latics won 2-1 to carry on our unbeaten start to the season so Great Yarmouth fell host to 50 or so pissed up Blues celebrating our victory.

At the end of the night we ended up in this nightclub were some of the locals took exception to us and it kicked off. The police soon turned up and two of our lot were, shall we say ‘wrongly arrested’ and carted off to the local nick.

Me and my mate, with a belly full of ale inside us, decided that if we told the coppers what had actually happened they would surely let them off so went down to the cop shop to plead their case. We were soon told that they’d be held until Monday morning before being up before the judge, so we might as well go home.

We asked for directions to the coach park were our coach was due to leave shortly, only to be told that it had been sent on its way already! So there we were, both bladdered and stranded in Great Yarmouth at half one in the morning. We decided to head to the train station, kip down there and get the first train out of the place in the morning. When we got there a train was in dock, and it was either that or a freezing cold platform so we just got on it and crashed out.

We woke up about six in the morning and got off it straight away before it set off and we ended up even farther away from home than we already were. We pooled our money together and waited for the ticket office to open only to find out that we only had enough for one of us to get home. There were no credit cards then (or at least we didn’t have one) so my mate had to phone his dad, who had to go down to Piccadilly Station and pay for his ticket before they’d let us on the train. Being a Sunday there were no direct trains to Manchester so we had to change three times before finally getting home about 9 O’clock Sunday night.

Still, we won 2-1 so all’s well that ends well.

And the 7 players loaned out?

Gregan, we all "know", was on a significant wedge.

But even if the wage bill for the players we’ve signed equates to that we’ve (mostly only recently) loaned out, or is even a bit less, we’re still losing a shed load of money with no one to bail us out if the :censored: hits the fan.

So in effect we’ve still signed players whose wages we can’t afford. I’m not having a go at anyone here, it’s just that on a smaller scale we’ve only done what Wednesday have (ands most other clubs for that matter).

Have we????????????

 

Who has told you this?

Well I presume Feeney, Jones, Jarrett etc are being paid a wage, and all the loans, short term deals etc will cost the club something. These were all signed after Blitz said 'no more money' and we lost £1.5m last year.

The difference between us and Sheffield Wednesday is that whereas SW have spent money that they didn't have and then couldn't afford to pay when the bills became due, OAFC's owners set budgets, knew that income was below outgoings and voluntarily put funds in to the club in the form of a loan which they knew that they may or not get back so that when the bills become due the money to pay them was there. The risk is with OAFC's shareholders not the taxman. However we are now in a different position in that the shareholders are not putting further funds in and we need to cut our cloth accordingly.

The thing is TTA (or Blitz and Gazal) agreed to sign players on two or three year deals last year but have stopped funding the club part way through those, meaning the the money is not there to pay them. So we now have a wage bill that we can’t afford as we’re struggling to ship those players out, resulting in Hardy’s ‘Financial Disaster’ claim last week.

Yet despite this we’ve still added to our wage bill this season, and have taken on loans, short term contracts etc. These may not be big wages, but it would appear its still money we haven’t got.

The grand scale of things is much smaller, but the principal is very similar.

There was one a few years back where it was absolutely rammed but the official figure from Hudders was given as 2800 which even the HUddersfield fans thought was ridiculous. We filled it under Dowie as well and never take less than 2500 from when i've been anyway. It's a little embarrasing that a club with the support that they have can't fill our away end. Comparatively our waway support is phenomenal given our base home support, one of the few things we can really be proud of in truth.

We took 595 last year.

It's somewhat surprising that no-one on this thread has really considered the business sense aspect of 'buying' the club.

 

Now I'm no expert and stand to be contradicted, but surely, when someone buys a business the normal expectation is that in return for buying the assets (or goodwill), they have a business plan (which may or may not include further financial investment) that provides for an acceptable financial reward for their money & efforts.

 

However, in Latics case, I don't believe we have any assets of any value as the stadium is owned by a 3rd party company with loans already secured against it (and rising by the day). So any investor would not only have to pay market value for the stadium but also settle the outstanding loans - a nett result that his investment is immediately worth considerably less than what was paid.

 

The only conclusion I can make from this is that any investment is totally dependant on cast iron guarantees of a stadium development (BP or Failsworth) and the profit expectancies from that venture exceeding the settlement to the existing landlords and creditors.

 

Is that a possibility in the current economic climate?

 

Your guess is as good as mine.

Well according to Hardy if we build Failsworth we don’t even need anyone to turn up to break even, so an average crowd of say 5,000 should have the profits soaring.

Easy, isn’t it?

Barry

 

What's the latest on Failsworth? It's been suspiciously quiet for quite some time now and the last I heard some time ago was the council were offering some charitable status land elsewhere in the borough/area to keep the Failsworth burning torch and pitchfork crew happy. But this was ages ago now, what's happening?

The main question for me, and one that never gets answered, is say we get the nod off the Charities Commission and the council grant planning permission, then what?

The club are in a perilous financial position and the men with the money have ‘severed all ties’ with the club, so who’s going to fund the building of this new stadium?

I see it the way another poster said, I take a post at a time.

Barry's post did not warrant lambasting for his PR or spelling etc.

There are bigger issues that that. I'd much prefer you're views on them. Peopel who attack spelling etc can normally find no fault with the argument.

I don't know Barry, I take it at face value, so when he attacked MAddog with the "easy get out" it may have been an atempt at hunour but to me it was a facile comment. That post did warrant the criticisn it got.

If it is facts you want:

But there are Doom and Gloomers. That is a FACT.

There are people that want to do the club down. That is a FACT.

There are even people advocating that the club fiold and some sort of MyClub with a budget of 250k per year instead £1.5m be resurrected. FACT.

There are people that want Simon Corney to go, depsite no one to fill the black hole. FACT

There are people that only snipe at the club, whatever it does. FACT

It's all to easy to sit and type criticism (by the doom and gommers).

People got up and marched.

But that was undone by factional infighting.

And I can see it happening again.

That's my issue.

Writing FACT in capital letters doesn't make it one.

Whilst in no way sticking up for the council, we can put as much pressure on them as we want to get Failsworth sorted, but say planning permission was granted tomorrow, then what?

We haven't got a penny to start building it with.

Blue Square Bet Premier side Cambridge United stopped them scoring so you would expect a club like Latics 2 divisions higher to show similar defensive resolution.

So what you are saying is that no team in the bottom two divisions should allow Huddersfield to score, yet they're in second place in League 1 at the moment.