Kevin
Having reviewed your response there are some interesting issues I would like to comment on:
1 Is LLSC trying to promote a debate or take a particular stance?
2 Does LLSC actually favour the do nothing approach?
3 Does LLSC object in principle and then in practice to the fact that the Club is a business?
4 Does LLSC believe that the owners of the Club are naive and incompetent?
5 On such a complicated issue can LLSC actually take a stance at all without compromising a significant proportion of its members?
Let me expand on each in turn:
1 Is LLSC trying to promote a debate or take a particular stance?
The LLSC home page is headed with what I assume are the guiding principles of LLSC:
‘Through independence, commitment, transparency, loyalty and passion for all things LTFC, we strive to ensure the long-term future of our great football club for the enjoyment of all fans for generations to come’
The rest of the page however seems anything but independent and transparent, and personally I question whether it isactually working towards or against the long-term future of the football club.
It currently holds an article by you which includes the following statement:
‘I thought I would use this opportunity to gauge current opinion amongst the ranks for the moving of the Club out of the town and to a site on greenbelt land in a soulless industrial development in between two small villages, where there is much resentment to the overall development.’
It is far from clear what opinion you are actually seeking, as the only place in your article where you invite comment is in respect of the campaign to restore standing on terraces (and whilst I have experienced many a happy afternoon standing in the Oak Road it is not a factor in the J10/J11a/J12 debate).
But even if you were actually seeking opinion rather than expressing it the question you pose is hardly one which MORI would consider balanced. Soulless industrial development?
LLSC is expressing a view that J12 sucks, but it is not clear why nor where the mandate for that view comes from?
Maybe it does suck if you have a double-barrelled surname (W-C perhaps) or live in Harlington, but J12 is not obviously worse than J10 (which seems bedevilled, though I am not close enough to know what by) or indeed J11a which, if nothing else, also seems no more than a possibility in the absence of a land donation.
I am clear in my view that I will support whichever one looks likeliest to happen and leave the Club in the best financial position to benefit from it. And that means I am independent and transparent.
2 Does LLSC actually favour the do nothing approach?
Your article goes on:
‘Many of you previously expressed your disbelief to me how the current custodians could ignore what is now 122 years of history and linkage to the town and move outside the boundaries without initially consulting the stakeholders i.e. the fanbase. On the back of this LLSC made a strong voice and stance that the Board should not be moving forward with any development outside of the boundaries until it was proven there were no viable alternatives within the town. ‘
I bet most fans (myself included) couldn’t tell you what are the existing boundaries, how they have changed in the history of the Club, and how they will change in the future. Boundaries are political concepts, whereas we are talking about emotional ones. Many fans travel large distances to home games, not because they are in the borough, but because they have an emotional linkage with the Club. Not the Town, the Club.
Let’s face it those fans who have moved away and indeed most of those who remain will have limited enthusiasm for the horror that is the centre of Luton. And the lack of support shown by the politicians of Luton over the decades that the Club has sought a new home suggest that they in turn have little enthusiasm for the Club.
The natural catchment area for the Club has always been broader than the borough. Luton Town is Bedfordshire’s club, and its appeal and fan base has always included Dunstable, Hitchin, Stevenage, Flitwick, Toddington, Harlington, Ampthill, Bedford, as well as parts of Hertfordshire and no doubt Bucks too.
Are you suggesting that fans from these areas are in some way less loyal than those living in Luton? Are you suggesting that a stadium an inch outside the borough boundary is somehow less acceptable than one an inch inside? You suggest in your response to me that my approach leads, ultimately, to a groundshare with Milton Keynes. Poppycock as you know, and the simple counter is that your approach will lead to the death of the Club over temporary lines on a political map. Marx would be proud at such a principled stance.
How in practice do you prove, as you have suggested, that there are no viable alternatives within the borough? Is an alternative viable if it would work if we had £20m cash to buy the land? Or £50m? Or even if the land was free but we had to pay for the build? Who knows? It is a matter of opinion we could debate for years.
How do you consult the fanbase? Ask LLSC? It doesn’t represent my views because it is absolutist. Or ask the question asked by Luton on Sunday:
Where would you like the new stadium for Luton Town to (be)?
A simple and pointless question unless there is a level playing field financially, which unfortunately there isn’t.
And who in practice would anwer it? Well I suspect many residents of Harlington for a start.
And what voting system would you use? My preference today, in order, would be:
1 J12 – the money is there
2 J11a – it seems the will is there
3 J10 – I am not convinced either is there, but it is better than KR
4 KR redeveloped but this is a pipedream
but the vote by Luton on Sunday is just a first-past-the-post nonsense. So would we use ATV or STV or …?
Chaos and paralysis, just like we have had for the last fifty years.
3 Does LLSC object in principle and then in practice to the fact that the Club is a business?
I used to think that capitalism sucked and socialism was the answer. I still think capitalism sucks but, like democracy, it is the least worst option I can think of. And that means that profit is important.
Luton went bust, as we all know, and there were no fairy godmothers around to save it. Like Man United and Liverpool and Chelsea we were bought by a businessman (or in this case businessmen). And they are here for at least one reason, namely to make a profit (or at least to not make a loss). Gosh how awful!
So maybe Jayten and its shareholders are hoping to make money out of a property development. Well that would hardly be a first would it? Kohler, Watson-Challis, Bassett, are they any different? I don’t know but the sight of LLSC somehow trying to decide which property developer we should actually help enrich is rather peculiar.
You seem obsessed with the fact that they may make a profit. Who cares what John Mitchell’s shareholding is, or how much he paid for it? Only someone else trying to make the same profit.
If we develop at J10, J11a, J12, or anywhere else previously agricultural then some lucky (or clever) so and so is going to make a profit. The issue is not whether they do, or what their motives are, but how good a deal can we get for the football club.
What you should be doing is challenging Jayten on what exactly is the Club going to get from this. John Mitchell has made lots of promises about the financial position we will be in afterwards. Let’s try and get this secured, let’s consider transferring the club to a trust, or something positive, instead of taking every chance of improvement and looking for the negative.
You say ‘I also struggle to see how you get the £25m to magic up to £50m.’
Easy – £25m build contribution, £20m naming rights, plus a bit more for owning the freehold to 30 acres, call it £50m for cash. You can question whether £20m for naming rights is correct – I have no idea – but the maths is the easy bit.
4 Does LLSC believe that the owners of the Club are naive and incompetent?
You say ‘I would have expected the Board to have completed full due diligence and financial appraisal on all the sites rather than their current blinkered approach. Surely that is their duty as custodians of the Club?’.
I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that the Board has considered fully all options and selected the one which best suits their interests as Directors trying to act for the benefit of the shareholders. It may or may not be the perfect decision, for them or for the Club, but I think they are intelligent enough to have done the due diligence they consider appropriate, and made a sensible decision.
5 On such a complicated issue can LLSC actually take a stance at all without compromising a significant proportion of its members?
This is not WWII. There is no good v evil answer. Your response is full of don’t know/need more facts/maybe something else would be better type comments. And then you come to a definite conclusion that you are against J12. I can only conclude that you must have a crystal ball.
In practice any one of J10/J11a/J12 would do if all other facts were the same. these other facts include:
Likelihood of success
Financial outcome on day 1
Long-term attractiveness of solution
We may never know enough to really compare these alternatives properly. Not because of naivety or deviousness, but because there is and never could be a parallel process. Instead we have fumbled around for God knows how long with J10, and moved on to J12, and if that fails we will probably move on to J11a. But at the moment J12 is a possibility, and if it really has a 50-70% chance of success then it would be a shame if it failed because of lack of support from LLSC, on the grounds that there may be a better solution later.
I don’t know whether there is a hierarchy of good here. All I am interested in is a hierarchy of likelihood, where the objective is to secure a viable (and that is a pretty important word here) future for our club in a much-improved stadium within Luton or a reasonable distance thereof. And if J12 is too far away for LLSC members, then maybe LLSC isn’t a very apt description.
We should be uniting behind realistic options. All of them.
Even Jayten would probably support J11a or J10 if J12 was clearly and unambigously thrown out for good.
For the avoidance of doubt I have no links to Jayten, the Board, or John Mitchell other than the public meeting I attended last Thursday.
Regards
Martin
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