[SaltergateBorn]

After enough meanderings to make it thoroughly dizzy, Dancing`s “Can we do it” thread seems to have made its way onto the subject of ‘plastic’’ clubs and whether they should be held in contempt for being such. That`s an interesting question; well it interests me anyway, so can I put a hypothetical question out there for anyone who happens to stumble across this thread, whether you`re a Spireite or not, and ask for your honest opinion?

Suppose a multi-billionaire came along who happened to be a lifelong follower of your club – that could be the Spireites / Stags / Blades / Owls / Terriers or whatever; the name of the club doesn`t matter - and pumped enough money into it to allow it suddenly to reach heights it had never dreamed of before. In our case that would be the Premier League, in the case of United, Wednesday, Huddersfield etc that would probably be the Champions League. How would you feel about that? Would you be embarrassed by the fact that you had suddenly become a ‘plastic’ club and the object of resentment from others? Or would you be elated by your rise in status and determined to enjoy every second of the ride for as long as it lasted?

I`m asking the question in all seriousness and would be fascinated to hear all of your opinions.

[Devongone]

If I were the millionaire I'd be delighted, because I'd attempt to build a community and sports around the club as it grew and went through the tiers, but that's not the question.

If my club were a small club within a community, winning and losing but achieving at a reasonable level and loved by local people, I wouldn't want it turned into something unrecognisable to us. If we were suddenly likely to be hosting 10,000 Man Utd fans and what we were was lost then I'd hate it.

Maybe if we were Eibar in Spain, a small-ish town which has over-achieved and kept on doing it, I'd love it when we beat Real Madrid or Barcelona. If we were Basford, a very small club with quite big ambitions, I wouldn't be going into it without a few qualms. I'd know how unlikely it was and how far away the Premier Leaguer was, but I'd also know you get exactly what you aim for if you aim low.

Carrying people with you, is what stops you being plastic. Wakefield is a big enough place to avoid that accusation if its team began to progress. MKD has landed in such a big place it is difficult to level the accusation of being plastic at it ........ but thousands still do ......

[Dancingwilldoit]

I like the idea of the Trust owning us. It feels like the fans have something to be proud of. I dont want a season of getting hammered in the so called Premier League. Competing in the Championship would make m wish come true. We can go on to do that as we are, we dont need a multi millionaire controlling our fate ever again.
Lets be honest with ourselves and go for whatever we are capable of and that for me is the Championship. Forget the Champions league and Prem, that's not the game of football to me. VAR just helped to seal its fate, I dont even watch or care any more. let them pretend its the best league in the world. Watching my team once or twice a week gets the adrenaline and blood flowing, its honest and its great. The only thing that spoils it are the odd cheats. That Stockport winger or whinger the other week was it Read? He spent more time on the floor than he did on his feet. At least the ref saw through it most of the time. If a player is seen to fake contact I thought it was supposed to be a yellow? I dont think I have seen that happen once and there are a lot of cheats in this league. It gets my blood pressure up and more bloody tablets.

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Speaking of plastic clubs, if you want to watch the game tomorrow dont leave it until the last minute to pay. Its a total pain in the arse.

[Devongone]

A community-owned club is about as far as you can get from plasticity, but when you start to think about it, with the level of debt underwritten by super-rich criminals, what is the difference between them and a club we might call plastic. When disaster strikes they don't have many resources and their fans are left to rescue them.

[spireitematt]

It's a very interesting question. I associate a plastic club with the likes of MK Dons and the Red Bull franchise, clubs which have been created out of thin air or been taken over. All clubs need money and financial injections to help them progress and get through the leagues but it has to be done correctly and that means not putting the club at long-term risk of going out of business. Certain fans of traditional clubs talk about history and that other clubs don't have history well that history comes about from creating it.

If a multi-millionaire or billionaire took over Chesterfield then I would welcome it as long as it didn't become soulless and treated the fans as 'customers'. Owners who buy football clubs are just custodians the club technically belongs to the fans and the towns, cities, and communities. Football without fans is nothing and we've seen it already through this pandemic that the players, clubs, media miss the fans in grounds. Football fans deserve more say in how clubs are run.

Now if I was a millionaire or billionaire (I can dream can't I) I would buy Chesterfield but I would also want the fans to create a consortium and I would sell shares to the consortium and have a democratic process of 1 vote 1 member where fans could vote things like ticket prices, designs of kits and have a say on what they want, it would be a mixture of private ownership and fan ownership.

[St Charles Owl]

It's a very interesting question. I associate a plastic club with the likes of MK Dons and the Red Bull franchise, clubs which have been created out of thin air or been taken over. All clubs need money and financial injections to help them progress and get through the leagues but it has to be done correctly and that means not putting the club at long-term risk of going out of business. Certain fans of traditional clubs talk about history and that other clubs don't have history well that history comes about from creating it.

Matt by your measure every club is a plastic club, all clubs were initially created out of thin air. I have never understood the plastic tag being thrown at MK Dons, they were a club with no ground, a council that wouldn't support them and no prospects of getting a ground in London. They did what I think was the right thing, they moved to a city that wanted them, that could provide the financial stability they were unable to gain at Plough Lane or in Merton and that would allow them to create an identity that they could be proud of. Your last line in the above aptly describes MK Dons, they stopped waiting for help from places they were not getting any from and they are doing their best to create their own history.

As an Owl, I still dream of seeing us play in the PL again. I am not that bothered about the Champions League but the occasional good cup run, Wembley appearance and maybe a year in the Europa Cup would be nice. I would also be happy to accept that bar maybe 8-9 teams just about every other one should expect to be relegated at some point but its having the resources to be able to bounce back from that when it happens.

We have a so called wealthy chairman, he has sunk a ton of money into the club and we have been penalized for that while really getting nowhere, so getting a billionaire at any level below the PL is fairly pointless as they cannot spend their money anyway now. Get rid of FFP, allow owners to inject money but do not allow them to loan the money or put the club in debt, its a gift and therefore up to them what they put in. I would be fine with an owner who spends his money and gets us promoted and would feel no embarrassment or shame from that if it means the club is safe, secure and successful.

[spireitematt]

It's a very interesting question. I associate a plastic club with the likes of MK Dons and the Red Bull franchise, clubs which have been created out of thin air or been taken over. All clubs need money and financial injections to help them progress and get through the leagues but it has to be done correctly and that means not putting the club at long-term risk of going out of business. Certain fans of traditional clubs talk about history and that other clubs don't have history well that history comes about from creating it.

Matt by your measure every club is a plastic club, all clubs were initially created out of thin air.  I have never understood the plastic tag being thrown at MK Dons, they were a club with no ground, a council that wouldn't support them and no prospects of getting a ground in London.  They did what I think was the right thing, they moved to a city that wanted them, that could provide the financial stability they were unable to gain at Plough Lane or in Merton and that would allow them to create an identity that they could be proud of.  Your last line in the above aptly describes MK Dons, they stopped waiting for help from places they were not getting any from and they are doing their best to create their own history.

As an Owl, I still dream of seeing us play in the PL again.  I am not that bothered about the Champions League but the occasional good cup run, Wembley appearance and maybe a year in the Europa Cup would be nice.  I would also be happy to accept that bar maybe 8-9 teams just about every other one should expect to be relegated at some point but its having the resources to be able to bounce back from that when it happens.  

We have a so called wealthy chairman, he has sunk a ton of money into the club and we have been penalized for that while really getting nowhere, so getting a billionaire at any level below the PL is fairly pointless as they cannot spend their money anyway now.  Get rid of FFP, allow owners to inject money but do not allow them to loan the money or put the club in debt, its a gift and therefore up to them what they put in. I would be fine with an owner who spends his money and gets us promoted and would feel no embarrassment or shame from that if it means the club is safe, secure and successful.

Maybe I should clarify what I mean. I'm on about clubs which have been taken over by a franchise and they change the identity, name, colours, badge and do away the history of the club. Teams like Salzburg and Leipzig who have been taken over by Red Bull are teams which I associate as plastic.

The MK Dons thing sits in people's craw because they took Wimbledon moved it to Milton Keynes but also they took a league place where most teams which are created and set up have to start right at the bottom of the football pyramid and work there way up. It was the way MK Dons came about which annoys people, if they had done it the right way and set up a club and entered a regional non-league division then I think fans of other clubs would have respected it more. I know in America it's very popular for owners to buy sports franchises and move them to different cities and change the name, identity and rebrand them. How would you feel if someone bought Sheffield Wednesday and then moved that club to Surrey and called it Surrey Wednesday and did away with the original history of Sheffield Wednesday?

[St Charles Owl]

It's a very interesting question. I associate a plastic club with the likes of MK Dons and the Red Bull franchise, clubs which have been created out of thin air or been taken over. All clubs need money and financial injections to help them progress and get through the leagues but it has to be done correctly and that means not putting the club at long-term risk of going out of business. Certain fans of traditional clubs talk about history and that other clubs don't have history well that history comes about from creating it.

Matt by your measure every club is a plastic club, all clubs were initially created out of thin air.  I have never understood the plastic tag being thrown at MK Dons, they were a club with no ground, a council that wouldn't support them and no prospects of getting a ground in London.  They did what I think was the right thing, they moved to a city that wanted them, that could provide the financial stability they were unable to gain at Plough Lane or in Merton and that would allow them to create an identity that they could be proud of.  Your last line in the above aptly describes MK Dons, they stopped waiting for help from places they were not getting any from and they are doing their best to create their own history.

As an Owl, I still dream of seeing us play in the PL again.  I am not that bothered about the Champions League but the occasional good cup run, Wembley appearance and maybe a year in the Europa Cup would be nice.  I would also be happy to accept that bar maybe 8-9 teams just about every other one should expect to be relegated at some point but its having the resources to be able to bounce back from that when it happens.  

We have a so called wealthy chairman, he has sunk a ton of money into the club and we have been penalized for that while really getting nowhere, so getting a billionaire at any level below the PL is fairly pointless as they cannot spend their money anyway now.  Get rid of FFP, allow owners to inject money but do not allow them to loan the money or put the club in debt, its a gift and therefore up to them what they put in. I would be fine with an owner who spends his money and gets us promoted and would feel no embarrassment or shame from that if it means the club is safe, secure and successful.

Maybe I should clarify what I mean. I'm on about clubs which have been taken over by a franchise and they change the identity, name, colours, badge and do away the history of the club. Teams like Salzburg and Leipzig who have been taken over by Red Bull are teams which I associate as plastic.

The MK Dons thing sits in people's craw because they took Wimbledon moved it to Milton Keynes but also they took a league place where most teams which are created and set up have to start right at the bottom of the football pyramid and work there way up. It was the way MK Dons came about which annoys people, if they had done it the right way and set up a club and entered a regional non-league division then I think fans of other clubs would have respected it more. I know in America it's very popular for owners to buy sports franchises and move them to different cities and change the name, identity and rebrand them. How would you feel if someone bought Sheffield Wednesday and then moved that club to Surrey and called it Surrey Wednesday and did away with the original history of Sheffield Wednesday?

To be fair the taking over of the league position is a gripe that should be aimed at the EFL rather than the club as I am sure they were the ones who sanctioned it. I am sure they claimed they were the same club but obviously a change of name was going to be needed. I get the comparison of what we see in the US, I certainly wouldn't call it popular in terms of fans but you see it every couple of years over here. For me the problem over here is that the most important part of a franchises name is the Bulls or Dodgers rather than Chicago or Los Angeles, that makes the teams more portable as they keep that part of the name. In football, the city name is more important than the nickname.

[Devongone]

Plastic in football seems to have become short hand for any form of ownership we don't like, and which has proved successful.

MKD became a new club, in a place well capable of supporting a team. They didn't play to an empty stadium. Their crowds have grown and were they to cement a place in The Championship we might well find the place was capable of supporting that level. Forest Green had a long history prior to Dayle Vince. They now attract a crowd bigger than I would have imagined and are challenging for promotion to Div One. They have an identity and a brand. Would they be plastic if they were exactly the same off-field but had only made it to mid table in National North or South?

There is a lot to admire in the involvement of fans in German football, and no doubt they are celebrating Hoffenheim's dreadful season, but it is a model which has created a competition dominated by a single team for years. Why is Leipzig, owned by Red Bull any more plastic than Chelsea's Abramovich, is it simply because he does not use the club to advertise the names of his many companies?

Salford was a real team before the Neville syndicate. They made it something else. Salford is a City. It had no league team or any prospect of one before that Man-Utd money. Is it a plastic club? All clubs form from somewhere. You start a village team and maybe it is all lads from the village. Then a couple of the lads get mates from outside to sign on and you are top of a league. And you bring in a few more outsiders and suddenly you find you are beating everybody, and players from all across the county are banging on your door to sign. You raise a bit of money, the Parish Council approves, a cheap little stand appears. You're fencing off the ground and charging a small fee for entry ......... every other Saturday the village grinds to a halt from cars parked everywhere, there's the ref and his assistants all in cars, there's all your players, the backroom staff, and there's a paying public and hey look a couple of press men ........... You've been talking over the idea of player contracts. Are you plastic and when did that happen? The moment the village lads brought in a couple of outsiders? Are the villagers turning out to watch, or are all the faces just ground-hoppers keen to get the flavour of this new club on the up? Is this what you always wanted, or has it become something unrecognisable to you?