It's really time for Scally to hang up his boots | Vital Football

It's really time for Scally to hang up his boots

Wayne.Kerr

Wayne.Kerr

Vital Champions League
He's invested a lot of time and effort in keeping the Gills afloat; he even travelled frequently from his luxury home in tax-free Dubai to help the team.

He's apparently courted many new investors but somehow they haven't materialised; may be it's because he wants to still have a finger in the pie. May be it's because he's a Londoner. Well, seeing how badly he treated the fans who bought shares in the club, I doubt anyone wants to get into bed with him so to speak if that's what he can do with fellow investors.

As I wrote last week, he's taken the club as far as he can. Yes, a new stadium is all fine and dandy but sort things out on the pitch first; we don't want another Darlington FC on our hands.

The core business of the Club is football and yet somehow it seems to be lower in the pecking order than it should be.
 
Paul Scally will go when he is ready. Again he is talking of major investors. I hope I am right and he does intend to pass the club on to people who wish to try and give the club a successful future. Since his heart problems he has had nothing but problems with the club, he may well think now is the time to sell up and live a more peaceful life, or maybe he just likes the confrontation. Who knows.
 
Well said Roone! As usual I find myself wondering where this WK character is coming from. (And before he starts his grammar lesson only today it is announced that split infinitives and ending sentences with a preposition are now accepted english speech)
 
We get the Scally Out arguments every time we're lying in the relegation zone. "He doesn't care, we have no ambition" - I think we had enough ambition at the start of last season after spending a good amount of the previous season towards the top of the table. We had a non-old-boy manager, a number of players who should've been a class above, and 3-4 Gills heroes. We sacked the manager after he belittled our ambition. The team and manager fucked up, we're feeling the pinch now with a 2.2 million-worth court case and large investor possibly calling in his investment.

We'll be back.
 
Until now, I've never called for the ouster of Scally but, in the last few years, it's gone flat and even flatter on the pitch. Read my opening post in this thread ad that's why he should go.
 
Wayne.Kerr - 26/9/2017 18:04

Until now, I've never called for the ouster of Scally but, in the last few years, it's gone flat and even flatter on the pitch. Read my opening post in this thread ad that's why he should go.
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Yeah the 'investors' quote is tiring, but it's in the midst of people demanding football owners pump millions of their own money into small clubs to over-inflate turnovers and get any level of success on credit nowadays.

As a shareholder myself my grievance is with the old fucking gimmer who immidiately sold his shares at a pathetically low price, ruining everyone's 'investment'. But come on, Scally had 16 million shares (I don't know the value) and between us we raised something like 1.2-1.4 million worth of shares. We had our votes on ordinances but come on, I think an investor like Michael Anderson had a it a bit better :26:

Darlington had a huge empty stadium, the same capacity as Coventry which feels empty with twice the amount of people in it. Even then due to local traffic issues the Reynolds Arena was restricted to 10,000. Should you believe that any new Gills stadium is anywhere on the horizon then the current plans are for a capacity between 16,000-20,000 IIRC. In terms of stadium size that would place us towards the top of League 1 (i.e. a slightly higher capacity than average for the 92). More modest than the Reynolds and Ricoh.
 
The Roone - 26/9/2017 17:32

Paul Scally will go when he is ready. Again he is talking of major investors. I hope I am right and he does intend to pass the club on to people who wish to try and give the club a successful future. Since his heart problems he has had nothing but problems with the club, he may well think now is the time to sell up and live a more peaceful life, or maybe he just likes the confrontation. Who knows.
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The hearsay is that there is an investor who wants to take over but will only do so once Scally's gets planning permission to build the new ground. The potential new owners don't want to buy Priestfield and then have to work to get the nod to a new ground themselves.

Early in this year I think I read that part of the council consultation would be completed by some time at the end of this year although I'm not an expert on matters of council planning to know if any decision would be significant at whatever stage we are at.

My instant agrees with you insofar that health issues has made Scally more willing to step aside. I got the feeling down the years he wanted the money but remain in control, but maybe he is more willing to be bought out....

nibbles - 26/9/2017 17:36

Pointless post. Scally's actively looking to sell the club.
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I think you miss the point - with all the recent new posts started by Wayne, this post is obviously a ploy to win the top poster of the month award....
 
I am with you John .If you look at the statement's Scally is making and read between the lines taking everything I to account including the drop in ticket sales . I can't see how Scally would be better off financially staying . The money is drying up with the deal with the bank over the bank debt and the lack of investors in him .Staying will cost him big time just keeping us in league one .That in itself will not fund his life style anymore .Challenging for promotion in this league is beyond him financially without a lot more money and effort it is looking more and more unlikely under Scally year by year .
 
To summarise what everyone else is implying, Scally was not interested in releasing control of the club and giving up the hefty sum that he withdraws each year until he had his health problems. Not surprisingly, he could not attract any investors to pump money in to an organisation where they would have practically no control over how it is run. Quelle Surprise.

Now I suspect he is willing to sell but will still hold out for an unrealistic sum. If he gets the stadium plans passed and acquires the land, he will hold out for even more. A bit like when you own a private piece of land where planning permission has been granted to build a house.

If anyone does make an offer I suspect we will not hear about it as it will never match Scally's demand.

 
We will never hear anything .It is his private business he does not have to tell us my guess is the sale if and when it happens will go through without a word until is is completed .Bit like this new manager too.
Both may get hints of what is happening but no real news .Scally will want a higher price than is realistic of course but I believe he will agree a deal in the end because stay put under his guidance we can only one way and each year goes by it is going to get tougher to stay put .
 
I'm sure Scally would be flattered to know that he had a football career worthy enough of people wanting him to hang up his boots!
 
I note that he is still talking of investors rather than buyers. At the meeting he indicated that these potential investors were keen to keep him on board and ensure continuity and he hinted there might be more than one group interested. He said he could have sold out to unsuitable people at various times. Scally is a past master at releasing enough information to head off disappointment, disaffection and outright opposition and to prepare future excuses. This is sometimes a reasonable tactic but I think it has gone too far this time.

We have the new ground dangled once more, the prospect of cash from Centreplate. We have possible new investors, who want the regime to continue. These potential investors now have an interest in any new management decisons and so provide PDS with an excuse and get out for any managerial decision, or lack of. Meanwhile on the pitch things are dire, resources thin and prospects alarming. Any complaint is portrayed as disloyalty in our hour of need; we are on the cusp of redemption and a shiny new ground awaits us in the championship and beyond.

Our club is Scally's source of income and he isn't going away for any amount of money that anyone is willing to pay. He has always been a high stakes gambler prepared to scramble at the precipice. None of us knows the full picture but we can think through potential scenarios.

This present squad will do very well to hang on in this division, whever is at the helm. There is no money to improve it. We appear to be gambling on the Centreplate case, or a cup run to fund the second half of the season. There are several worrying outliers and the chairman has stated that playing buget costs differ little between leagues 1 & 2. We can have a separate argument about what that tells us of his ability to take us further. Look at it purely from the perspective of an owner, who earns his living from the business and relegation itself is not the issue, nor is it a disaster. The owner needs to hang onto as much support as possible in a low period when he knows he cannot reach for the cheque book. Next season a big fanfare, hopefully some of the gambles have paid off and a run for promotion. Crowds up, problems forgotten, off the hook again. There are of course much darker scenarios.
 
Exactly, of course we will never hear about any offer unless it matches his pie in the sky price level. Does anyone honestly think that Ebbsfleets Kuwaiti investor did not look at GFC first ? Of course he did but was put off by an unrealistic price
So now he builds a 5million stand for a National League club for whom 1000 is a big gate....
That is what we,re up against: a poor businessman whose increasingly desperate decisions resemble nothing more than outright red or black gambling in my view
 
jogills - 27/9/2017 09:19

I note that he is still talking of investors rather than buyers. At the meeting he indicated that these potential investors were keen to keep him on board and ensure continuity and he hinted there might be more than one group interested.
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"Buyer" and "Investor" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive terms...

In terms of the interested parties wanting to keep him on board then this makes a certain amount of business sense. If Scally has been the one doing the ground work in getting approval for a new ground then it makes sense to continue employing him as he is the one with the contacts and established relationships with the council etc.

Scally's involvement with the club after the ground is built?? Lot less certain.
 
You have missed the point again JK. I pointed to the investors distinction as being a perfect ongoing excuse, for keeping PT in charge, for making a temporary appointment, for making a celebrity appointment for any appointment, or none. It also helps him to deflect any criticism because of course we have an elastic hiatus while these investors are accommodated. Any investment decisions, or lack of put down to the possible new regime. He is buying time.
 
Why would any party want to 'invest' in the football club other than buy it outright? A fan of the club must think that they can do better than Scally, while anyone looking for a conventional return on investment isn't going to put money into a business that isn't issuing shares or bonds. After 20+ years I still can't work out if the chairman really believes what he says or genuinely thinks that the supporters will buy it. There is no new ground (if the council find the land, the priority will be housing) and there are no investors willing to let him continue to run the show or to pay the unrealistic price I suspect he wants to walk away. In other any business, the customers wouldn't care (and would go to a competitor), but I guess we are stuck with it now.
 
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