Hopeless Unbeliever

This is increasingly coming across as a very bitter vendetta against the current board/manager and a blind defence of the previous manager. Most of your last post there is not even worth engaging with it's so baseless. You are now dragging down every thread you appear in with your incessant arguments which detract from the sensible points you do have (which are in there somewhere).

Glad we finally cleared that up.

But you are allowed to count substantial six-figure income from unreliable and irregular events entirely outwith the board's control.

I think the conflation of TJF and the club board is lazy at best, and disingenuous at worst. On TJF firstly, I think people forget how bleak the outlook was little more than a year ago. The fact that TJF have got us to where we are today is nothing short of miraculous and they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for that. I say that as someone who was extremely skeptical about a group putting themselves up for election as a block, but it probably helped them to hit the ground and, in my view, they have delivered in spades. Regardless of your views on fan ownership, that is what Colin Weir wanted and TJF have brought us from a position where fan ownership was effectively going to be stymied indefinitely to a position where we have an entirely open and democratic structure, effective engagement and a massive income stream for the club. It gets overlooked how quickly they got people to rally behind TJF and the number of members they have managed to accumulate has been incredible in a short space of time (a greater % of home gates than the Foundation of Hearts which has been established a lot longer). I don't think people appreciate how bad the alternative could have been. The Club board are, relatively speaking, pretty fresh in the door, inherited a disaster and appear to have cut our underlying losses from c. £600K in 22/23 season to c. £150K in 23/24 season. I don't know (as I suspect most/all on here also don't) how much they've invested in hospitality facilities versus how much they've invested in "ordinary fan" facilities but I'd be willing to wager a year's TJF subscriptions that more money has gone into the fan facilities than hospitality facilities (even proportionate to their numbers/income per game). The simple fact is that maintaining a ground the size and age of Firhill to a basic standard is a considerable cost even before you look at improvements. It's also somewhat unfair to simultaneously demand that losses are reduced while also demanding that expenses are increased. Any board in Scottish football would love to increase gates by 10% overnight, but the quickest way to that is putting a good team on the park, which the board have done a pretty good job of facilitating given our summer losses. In the absence of informed opinion it's very easy to fill the void with accusations and supposition. Our journey since the previous board were ousted appears to be on a positive trajectory so it seems to me that they deserve the benefit of the doubt in continuing that. I do have concerns about the level of turnover in the boardroom but hopefully that will settle over the next 12 months. One point common to both the TJF board and the club board - generally speaking we appear to have people in these roles eminently qualified to hold them. Ours is a small fanbase and the options available relatively limited. David Beattie and Billy Allan aren't coming back to Firhill to serve on the board of a fan owned club. Be careful what you wish for and where you want to end up.

Agree with all of this, especially the last paragraph.

I can see both sides, but if you accept that referees can be influenced by crowds, and whether you think VAR balances that or exacerbates it, then either way there is a potential advantage for one side if it's installed at one ground and not the other. I think even if you don't find that argument convincing, it has to be seen to be equal conditions for both teams across the two legs and VAR in one leg but not the other risks that.

Killie and County can't both catch St J so they're guaranteed safe.

Graham dropping into midfield created our only goal against Ayr. He did similar to good effect against QP. With Turner, Lawless and Tiffoney we have plenty of other players capable of getting forward and scoring. Graham is a better player when he drops off a bit and gets the ball into feet than when he gets involved in wrestling matches with the centre half.

Docherty started the two QP away defeats (but was absent for the real horsing at home) and also the Hamilton home game recently as well as the Caley defeat.

I wasn't there, but I struggle to believe it was as bad as the late 90s (Albion Rovers at home in particular springs to mind) or some of the demolitions at the hands of Gretna under Campbell. Mine was gone completely after Cove at home but a flicker of hope has re-emerged and Doolan clearly deserves the credit for that. Agree with every word of this unfortunately.

I think it is the Peterhead game, I think it's Marc Smyth in the picture? Could have been Billy Gibson though, not 100% sure.

But who will manage the permanent players?

I thought it was Thursday but there was definitely something there. Doesn't appear to be there any more though.

We are now evidently being lied to by people at the heart of the process to put our club into "fan ownership," and yet some people would rather focus on the appropriateness of the behaviour of The Jags Foundation? Whether or not you agree with TJF's approach to everything, or even if you agree with fan ownership at all, it's absolutely critical that we try to understand why we are being lied to here? What is the motivation? I don't honestly believe there is a wider existential threat to the club, but we are not being lied to for no reason. Stewart Macgregor is clearly closely involved in this whole situation and he doesn't want us to know it, the club don't want us to know it and the PTFC Trust guys don't want us to know it.

Nobody seems particularly upset around here. Everyone is entitled to post. Everyone is entitled to ignore who they wish. I think given the way the discussion has gone over the last few pages, suggesting the use of the ignore function will hopefully improve the debate on here such as it is. Denis' views on TJF are well documented. He clearly has issues regarding their approach. He is, in my opinion, repeatedly misrepresenting the comments of one of the Board of TJF. I don't believe that his posts over the last few pages have added anything new, they are just rehashing the same points and the same debates with people. This is a hugely important topic to the future of the club and my concern is that the more the discussion here gets bogged down the more risk that this thread slowly peters out. I don't think TJF is immune from criticism however repeating the same criticism desipte numerous responses from various Directors of TJF is getting us nowhere. There is a separate thread regarding action against the Board where people who are of the opinion that that is the correct course of action can discuss options in that regard. Meantime as a member of TJF I do not believe that that is the correct approach for TJF at this stage. Again various members of the Board have explained that this is not the current view of the board of TJF (including at the EGM which WJ has helpfully posted). I'm sure if they received representations from a majority of their members that this was the approach they wished them to take, they would adapt accordingly, they have shown considerable flexibility to date. This thread can remain useful if it remains a forum for TJF Directors to be available to discuss and answer points openly and honestly, which they have done admirably well thus far. At times I wouldn't blame them for walking away and think that people need to start agreeing to disagree on certain poins rather than pushing them incessantly if we want this to remain a useful discussion. Edit: I should add that I think Denis has added a lot to the forum and his contributions on many of the other threads have been interesting and informative.