Questions for doheochai etc

[Roger Kint]

Originally Posted By: Urchins

Forgive me for jumping onto your forum but I have been reading about this intriguing MyFC takeover and there are some things I am curious about which I'm sure that someone like doheochai or any of the others who know all about MyFC and think they know how to run a football club can answer for me.

Now I always thought that the biggest bugbear for a manager (or head coach) was interference in team selection from the board. Indeed, any talk of this usually signifies unrest at a club. As I understand it, before each game a member of the board - the one representing 51% of the club ownership - will hand the head coach a piece of paper with the team selection. What makes you think that these team picks will be any better than if, say, the club chairman picked them ? At most clubs, the manager (or head coach) picks the team, end of. If he is successful he's congratulated and keeps his job, if not he is sacked or resigns. That's the way it should be in my opinion.

Also, aside from team selection, who decides what to vote on ? For instance, who makes the decision to vote to sack the head coach ? How long should the vote run for ? What kind of majority is required, 51%, 75%, 90% ?? Who decides this ?

Will you be picking the youth team, or the ladies team ? What about pre-season friendlies ? Will you be voting on who to play pre-season ? will you be voting on team selections for these games ?

There will be times when quick decisions need to be made, and will need to be made by the board member representing the majority shareholders. Do you accept this, and what mechanism is in place if that representative's decision is not backed by the members of MyFC.

Here's a scenario. You are due to play Wealdstone at home in the FA Cup. The head coach makes his team recommendations but some bright spark suggests that this will be an easy game and that you should pick some fringe players to 'give them a run out' and 10,000 others agree with him. The game does not turn out to be so easy and you scrape a draw. The replay is on Monday night. Liam Daish gets home, embarrased, frustrated and a little angry, calls the Chairman and resigns. So you need to vote in a new Head Coach (even if its temporary), he needs to post his player assessments and recommended team picks and then you have to vote on it, all before Monday morning at the very latest. You need a decision quickly - so who makes it ? You haven't got time for 20,000 people scattered around the world to assess the options and make their choices, after all you have to give them all enough opportunity to make their choice and take into account time zone differences.

If Daish goes you could have 20-30 applicants easily. You can't interview them all. Someone has to create a shortlist. The shortlisted people need to be interviewed. You can't all do it can you ? My point is that one or a small number of people have to make these decisions, conduct these interviews etc, and so I question how much real control you have over the club.

If MyFC can make this work and truly turns Gravesend into a League club then you deserve the plaudits. However there are a lot of posters on here talking about rising attendances, increased revenue, rising up through the leagues, more this, better that, and I just think you have many surprises and a huge slice of reality coming your way.

Being on the irritating side of pedantic, would the replay be on the Monday? Your post seems to imply that LD resigns immediately after the game, which tradition dictates would have been on the Saturday. Is there not a requisite time interval (greater than two days) before the replay can be played?

[Urchins]

Wealdstone play their midweek matches on Monday nights. That's why I picked them for the scenario.

 

For the scenario, they're not changing it

[darling]

Why even give us two days?

 

It's 2-2 in the FA Cup Final, 15 minutes to go. One of our midfielders breaks his leg. Upon seeing this, the manager has a heart attack and is carried away, comatose. We need to make an attacking substitution or a defensive substitution. How can we possibly all vote on what to do in time??!!??

[JohnB]

Originally Posted By: Uncle Urchin

knowing liam he will just blow smoke up their arses..declare the ones chosen that he doesn't want as injured and do what he should be doing.....trying to win football matches and not fckn around with a load of wired up bonzos....

Sounds good to me ...

[toddybad]

As I understand it the voting is PROBABLY going to work like this (I say probably as the vote making may chance and eolve as MyFC evolves and until we actually start voting (this won't happen until the club is purchased apart from the yes/no to the purchase itself):

 

Thousands of ideas are on the MyFC forums. When members post threads or responses, other members are able to ;rate' their posts. The idea behind this is that the 'best' ideas will have higher scores than the lower. Currently alongisde the threads there are tables indicating the most popular postings, the most active threads etc. These will be used to indicate the popularity of ides. The most popular will be used to determine what the members want to vote on.

 

Along with this we will have the team-selection. This will not happen straight away and it is likely to be several months after takeover before MyFC members actually get to pick the team. It is likely from what I have read that Liam Daish (or whoever) will detail his preferred strategy/team for each match. Obviously, if we are doing well this is likely to be agreeed by the membership but clearly if the membership speaks as one and says "that left-back is cack let's replace him with x" then that will happen.

 

If Liam Daish left, or some other major decision needed to be made urgently, the board would retain the ability to make a decision (in that cas make a temporary appointment) as one of the central rules behind MyFC is that THE MEMBERSHIP IS NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE FOR ANY MEASURE THAT IS AGAINST THE CLUB BEST INTERESTS. This means that we are not able to run up huge debts or attempt to sack the entire playing staff etc, which is fair enough. If the board made a temporary appointment then they would have time to shortlist candidates before the MyFC membership would vote on the man for the job.

 

Essentially all functions of the club will remain as they are except any major decisions that can be made by the membership will be. The fact the board and a manager (or headcoach rather) will be kept on means there is resilience in the model - for example if the MyFC picked centre forward gets injured five minutes before kick off clearly the manager has to be able to put in somebody else. It will be the decisions he makes himself that are likely to indicate his effectiveness in the job.

 

I hope this explains a little bit about how things are likely to go. Feel free to ask as many questions as you like - at least with this model you can ask how a decision was reched and we'll try to tell you

[Yorkshire Fan]

It's quite easy really - Liam makes his recommendations (with info supplied to MyFC) - any major discrepancies from his own recommendations by MyFC vote at short notice and he declares an unfortunate food poisoning outbreak and picks his original lineup

[Urchins]

Originally Posted By: darling

Why even give us two days?

It's 2-2 in the FA Cup Final, 15 minutes to go. One of our midfielders breaks his leg. Upon seeing this, the manager has a heart attack and is carried away, comatose. We need to make an attacking substitution or a defensive substitution. How can we possibly all vote on what to do in time??!!??

Your HEAD COACH (you don't have a manager remember !) has a heart attack and all you care about is what type of substitution you make ! You're all heart you are !

I think in this case, play would stop whilst paramedics attempt to resuscitate your head coach and the game will probably eventually be abandoned.

[American FLEET FAN No1]

Originally Posted By: Urchins

Originally Posted By: darling

Why even give us two days?

It's 2-2 in the FA Cup Final, 15 minutes to go. One of our midfielders breaks his leg. Upon seeing this, the manager has a heart attack and is carried away, comatose. We need to make an attacking substitution or a defensive substitution. How can we possibly all vote on what to do in time??!!??

Your HEAD COACH (you don't have a manager remember !) has a heart attack and all you care about is what type of substitution you make ! You're all heart you are !

I think in this case, play would stop whilst paramedics attempt to resuscitate your head coach and the game will probably eventually be abandoned.

Only if they have a vote on it!