by Dirk Gently »
13 Mar 2024 10:17
The idea of fans directly running the club is laughable and always ends in disaster, and people suggesting that don't really understand the concept or support/community ownership.
The successful way to do this (for instance AFCW's model, and also the model of a community-owned professional club I'm very involved in right now, is that there are two organisations - the Trust or community-ownership board and the football club board itself.
The legal entity to which members contribute and elect board members (let's call it the Trust, but it needn't legally be a Trust) is the one that holds the shares of the football club, and appoints directors to the legal entity which is the football club.
Those directors get on with the job of running the football club on a day-to-day basis, including appointing managers, setting ticket prices etc, etc. There's then proper segregation of duties and confidentiality and the football club people can get on with their jobs - they have a duty to report back to the Trust board and act within the guidelines given, but this arm's length model is the only realistic one that works - otherwise you get fans trying to intervene in day-to-day stuff, or (as happened at Rushton & Diamonds, for instance) fans posting confidential business and team news onto message boards so they could be first with the news.
tldr: This is only successful if it's "Supporter owned" - not "Supporter run"