Agree with Nick W and I would argue further that the inner circle are the exact reason we’re in the situation we’re in because they’d rather hold on to their positions and relevance than see AFC Wimbledon succeed.

Both boards are too busy playing I own/run a football club and have no interest in suggestions from anyone

Laurence is on the naughty step, Timmy. Banned more times from Discord than a insert metaphor here.

TM- I am going to go to the meeting on 3 Feb(if nothing else we get much more sense from the club board than the DTB), but I fully expect that every sensible question will be met by the phrase “ we can’t tell you that”. I also agree that, given the massive flaws in the electoral process which we saw last year, we may have fan (ie trust) “ownership” but control is very definitely in the hands of a small inner group, so losing that fan-ownership won’t actually be a big deal.

Laurence - could have fleshed it out more but I think the broad point (every club is unsustainable but they can afford to cover £5m of losses whereas we are struggling to meet £1-2m) was addressed. I accept people might ask what more we could be doing to reduce that loss but I can’t see us closing that gap by any significant amount (and sadly others will only spend more and more anyway).

And I’m glad Laurence had just popped in- I’ve been following his suggestions and dialogue to the trust via discord etc - some great ideas and someone with great business experience- why is there no offer to take some ideas up/get Laurence on a working group/co-opt etc

TM - the goal was to get back to Merton in our own stadium. There was no second goal for supporters to buy into. Getting to the Championship was dangled, but not really realistic for supporters as a collective buy in.

Well, let’s see how transparent the Boards are at the meet the board event on the 3rd Feb. But again, there’s likely to be only 80 people in the room, do we deserve fan ownership when there seems to be so much inertia around it

Nick D - yet failed to explain why the club might be unsustainable.

TM - the irony about things being kept from members is that the club have said twice now that we are “unsustainable as a FL club” and everyone is just ignoring it as if it isn’t true.

RP - yeah can’t see either of those happening. Truth is football won’t be fixed by more money trickling down. It needs a whole lot less money at the top end. The numbers are insane. People talk about the super rich and how unfair it is, but no-one blinks when a Prem team pays tens of millions of pounds to sign a player in what is ultimately a completely pointless and inconsequential move.

Or... the academy could perhaps churn out an additional £3m per season of sellable players, and our catering assets can be sweated for another £1m

Does it even really feel fan-owned anymore? There is so much hidden from the members, so much power concentrated in a few circles and a few rich people bailing the fan-owned out. This model has had its day, we need to adapt somehow

The only way we can remain fan-owned seems to be if 1) The Regulator forces the prem clubs to make trickle-down payments of £4m per season to each club in L1 and £4m in L2 2) Player wages are capped at the current level.

I'd say in priority order for me it would be 1-sustainable 2-successful on the pitch 3-the best community club 4-fan-owned. 2 years go I'd have put fan-owned as number 1 but sadly I think that idea has had its day now.

Look on the bright side we could be in the relegation zone by full time Tuesday night.

Silk- I agree with your point that the DTB should have done a study to see at what level (if any) we could be solvent while fan-owned- that is the biggest failure over the last few years. If we could be solvent at L2 or even NL level I personally would be fine with staying fan-owned at that level. If (as I suspect) we would need to sell the ground and drop back to Ryman level (which is the level where FCUM, for example,have stuck) I am not interested in that at all and I doubt that many supporters would prefer that vs selling to an “owner” who would fund enough losses to keep us in the league (I suspect that such a person exists, but again this is something that the DT should be pursuing, rather than wasting time on “50%+1”)

Not in the last PL season we didn’t.

Hackford is at his most effective when we play balls behind the back four for him to run on to. Did we do that yesterday? He is this season's version of Andy Clarke.

Thanks Silk 👍

Not sure what formation we played yesterday but it was not 5 at the back. Oggs played as a CB next to Johnson. Tilley was a RB. We looked more like 4-4-1-1. Browne did track back and put a shift in. We've got the Stevens back from the 2nd half of last season where games passed him by because he needs service and is getting none. Nkeng wasn't effective. Hackford barely touched the ball when he came on. We definitely looked better after the quadruple substitutions, but it took ages for Jackson to react when up until that point in the 2nd half we were lucky only to be a goal down against a garbage team who missed a sitter at the end with a free header in our 6 yard box near the end.

Nick W and Nick D - I am not debating about the survival option. I accept we have to sell for that unless someone can do the sums and show we can survive at a level like the NL and still compete. Isn't that what the DTB should be doing - showing us what level we can survive at so we can make an informed choice.

Nick D - successful on the pitch has many definitions. In the D1/Prem days we knew we were never going to challenge for the title but it was challenging in every game. It was about having a system that allowed us to attack. Sometimes we win, sometimes we would lose but we always went to games thinking we could win anywhere.

Silk - this is human nature. Always wanting more. Original sin. Reject that and football, and the whole world, would be a much better place. But I don't ever see that happening, so we are left in the impossible position we have found ourselves in trying to please everyone. And people say, "we can be fan-owned, sustainable, the best communuity club, and successful on the pitch", but we can't and at the end of the day, we have to work out which of those we want above all else. And I think the majority of memebrs would go for the last of those options. I wouldn't, but we live in a democracy.

Silk - Getting an owner is about survival not progression.