In Metro we Trust
Earlier today, here at LiviNews, we were bemoaning the apparent lack of focus from supporters and press regarding the ongoing financial chaos behind the scenes at Livingston Football Club.
Well, right on queue, up pops an article to put us in our place.
Todays edition of the Metro (a free daily newspaper read by thousands of train and bus commuters) included a small piece that quotes directly from the LIVIforLIFE supporters Trust (LFL) recent press release.
The piece reads:
LIVINGSTON supporters have been planning for a future without the club’s Italian backers. Players have repeatedly been paid their salaries behind schedule as concerns grow for the club’s financial health. The Livi For Life Supporters Trust have called an open meeting next month. Trust chairman Don Paul said: “We believe it is vital that supporters explore all the alternatives should the situation become more precarious.”
A relatively small article on this occasion, it must be said, but from small acorns mighty trees grow.
LiviNews believes that the focus must be firmly kept on the financial side of Livingston Football Club, as in order for supporters to make the right decisions, should the time come where they need to, that forearmed is forewarned.
LiviNews 
Risky strategy by the Trust unless they have cast iron funds to facilitate a takeover along with a big helping of reality.
This meeting could result in them further ailienating what seems an already fragile relationship with the Italians.
Jo King - March 18, 2009 at 8:47 PM |
You’re assuming that the Trust is prepared to contemplate taking the strain of the debt inherited by and added to by the Italians. Maybe they’ve no intention of doing any such thing. In my humble opinion, they’d be fools to even contemplate that option.
If Livingston is to have any sort of future post Italiano then it must look to the community it purports to serve. This, I believe, is where the future of the club lies, or otherwise.
debito insoluto - March 18, 2009 at 8:53 PM |
Actually I wasn’t assuming they would take on the debt.
If Massone feels sufficiently alienated he may walk away (and this meeting may be enough to convince him to) and the trust doesn’t have the funds then it will be good bye Livi FC, it may come to that anyway as any rescue to a degree will depend on the goodwill of creditors, some who have been stung previously and some who have been declared “enemies” of the club, no-one not even the council is awash with cash in the current climate so putting together funding after the possible event and in a short timescale will be very difficult if not impossible?
Jo King - March 18, 2009 at 9:03 PM |
If the club is placed or forced into administration then the level of debt, should Livi emerge at the other end, will be minimal, if at all. The Trust, or whoever is running the show at that time would then have a clean sheet to work with.
It might work?
Rocket Ronnie - March 18, 2009 at 11:25 PM |
Clean Sheet to work with.
Just like Flynn you mean? During his tenure the club run up over a £million of fresh debt!!
Jo King - March 19, 2009 at 9:37 AM |
No, that’s not what I mean.
The Trust would be party to the beginning of a new chapter in Livi’s short history and would have the opportunity to lay down roots that would never allow the club to get heavily into debt ever again. If that meant a Livingston FC that only spent a maximum of £999 for every £1000 it brought in and in doing so had to become part-time and even slip down the leagues then so be it.
For your average punter, a football club is for life. It’s not a two year plan to rack up huge debts and then bail out when the hoped for returns don’t materliase or you get rumbled by the press.
Rocket Ronnie - March 19, 2009 at 3:32 PM |