Netcafé with Raj is this Friday

[Vodka_Vic]

Is it still up for sale? Someone told me it had been sold.
It's clear we're a pawn in a game of chess here. DFC are needed as a vehicle for a reason for any land development. Question is, how much would we stand to gain, or lose, from being part of any grand plan. This will have to be bloody amazing on Friday.

[m62exile]

hummm maybe. I'll be honest at this stage I am more concerned with what his motivations are from owning the club.

I fully expect that the moment an offer of FL management higher up the pyramid comes along Martin Gray will be off anyway.

I'm always skeptical about message board rumours - however Roadrunners post about the motivation being some kind of development of a partnership between Hodgson/DFC/MGFA with Singh providing the capital and the lodgings seems as logical as anything I can think of.

Buy the Blackwell Grange, convert it into flats - charge the football club a rent to accommodate players in the flats - Hodgson brings foreign players over, Gray gives them exposure - players sold on for profit split between DFC/Hodgson/Singh.

At a time when there's an increase in exposure in the media for non-league players with the Jamie Vardy story, and Vardy himself setting up an academy to help non-league footballers get into full-time football.

I'm not trying to be insulting but that's ridiculous.

I've no idea what Singh's motives are but I'm pretty sure it's not what you've got there.

[Darlo_Pete]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

[super_les_mcjannet]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

So do you think Singh is willing to bank roll Gray to the tune of say 1m a year in National League to push for promotion to FL?

[theoriginalfatcat]

Buy the Blackwell Grange, convert it into flats - charge the football club a rent to accommodate players in the flats - Hodgson brings foreign players over, Gray gives them exposure - players sold on for profit split between DFC/Hodgson/Singh.

Wow! It could be like a footballers battery farm. Bring em in, fatten em up, sell em on.

[Magical Quakers]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

Isn't that exactly the problem?

We don't want an investor. Investor want to get a return, to get something back for their money.

The only way it works is if someone is stupid enough to subsidise DFC to benefit us all. As soon as their is profit involved it will go wrong.

Not sure who said on another thread, but it has been nice not having to listen to our owner moaning about attendances.

[Spyman]

hummm maybe. I'll be honest at this stage I am more concerned with what his motivations are from owning the club.

I fully expect that the moment an offer of FL management higher up the pyramid comes along Martin Gray will be off anyway.

I'm always skeptical about message board rumours - however Roadrunners post about the motivation being some kind of development of a partnership between Hodgson/DFC/MGFA with Singh providing the capital and the lodgings seems as logical as anything I can think of.

Buy the Blackwell Grange, convert it into flats - charge the football club a rent to accommodate players in the flats - Hodgson brings foreign players over, Gray gives them exposure - players sold on for profit split between DFC/Hodgson/Singh.

At a time when there's an increase in exposure in the media for non-league players with the Jamie Vardy story, and Vardy himself setting up an academy to help non-league footballers get into full-time football.

I'm not trying to be insulting but that's ridiculous.

I've no idea what Singh's motives are but I'm pretty sure it's not what you've got there.

Like I said, not my theory, but it's one theory and would go some way to explaining why Hodgson appears to be involved.

I just can't fathom any other reason for wanting to buy the football club. If it's land he's after we have none and there is plenty available without a football club attached.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[super_les_mcjannet]

I may well be wrong but I don't believe Hodgson is involved at all.

Gray will have spoken to him about it and asked him to back it publicly but other than that I don't think he has any involvement.

[Quakerz]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

Right, and?

If we reject Singh then we simply cut our cloth accordingly and the club will end up at the level it ends up at.

As long as it doesn't go out of business, that's the important thing.

I've no problem with being at this level for another few years on a slightly lesser budget than this season, one way or another even fan owned we will go up at some point. We will eventually get the 5 year season ticket money finance gap bridged, we will see the full time clubs go up, we will have our time.

Talk of a spiral to doom and crowds of 500 if we don't go up asap are nothing more than baseless scaremongering. Even with investment, we WILL hit a ceiling, be that the conference, League 2, whatever. What are the scaremongers going to say at that point?

There will be a queue of managers wanting Gray's job if he walks.

[jjljks]

Would like to see or hear it 'live', perhaps as a mixlr radio stream? The lads managed to do a great job commentating on matches so this could be another way??

[poppyfield]

Would like to see or hear it 'live', perhaps as a mixlr radio stream? The lads managed to do a great job commentating on matches so this could be another way??

This sounds like a great idea, don't see how anybody can object to that.

[Geordie Quaker]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

That's a bit like sitting in your front room bemoaning the lack of offers for your house even though you haven't put it on the market.

[Spyman]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

Right, and?

If we reject Singh then we simply cut our cloth accordingly and the club will end up at the level it ends up at.

As long as it doesn't go out of business, that's the important thing.

I've no problem with being at this level for another few years on a slightly lesser budget than this season, one way or another even fan owned we will go up at some point. We will eventually get the 5 year season ticket money finance gap bridged, we will see the full time clubs go up, we will have our time.

Talk of a spiral to doom and crowds of 500 if we don't go up asap are nothing more than baseless scaremongering. Even with investment, we WILL hit a ceiling, be that the conference, League 2, whatever. What are the scaremongers going to say at that point?

There will be a queue of managers wanting Gray's job if he walks.

Precisely - even in the Northern League we still averaged over 1,000 fans. Even if crowds dropped again to that level after a couple of years of lower playing budgets, we'd still be getting some of the biggest crowds in the league so once the 5 year season tickets ran out we'd be able to compete with all but the heavily financed clubs.

People talk about Martin Gray as if nobody could do what he's done. We've got no evidence to suggest that is the case - he's won 3 promotions with good budgets. There are plenty of other proven non-league managers out there and I'm sure there are plenty of unproven ones as well - like he was when he took charge.

As said above, it is surprising that a man who runs his own academy has failed to blood a single product of the academy/youth system into the first team in 5 seasons.

[al_quaker]

Would like to see or hear it 'live', perhaps as a mixlr radio stream? The lads managed to do a great job commentating on matches so this could be another way??

Facebook live/periscope are very easy to set up I understand.

If Singh was serious about wanting the best for the football club, and if he was contrite about what went on before, let us see him answer the questions, let us know that it isn't pre-selected questions with pre-written answers. I fully understand why a fans forum type situation wouldn't be appropriate, but a live stream would be entirely appropriate for something of this magnitude.

[dfc4me]

Would another alternative be for RS to do a face to face Q&A session with the full DFCSG board. That would be 12 people who would be able to ask all the questions, observe how he answers them and report back at the SGM whilst avoiding pre prepared Q&As and possible shouting matches.

[Undercovered]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

Right, and?

If we reject Singh then we simply cut our cloth accordingly and the club will end up at the level it ends up at.

As long as it doesn't go out of business, that's the important thing.

I've no problem with being at this level for another few years on a slightly lesser budget than this season, one way or another even fan owned we will go up at some point. We will eventually get the 5 year season ticket money finance gap bridged, we will see the full time clubs go up, we will have our time.

Talk of a spiral to doom and crowds of 500 if we don't go up asap are nothing more than baseless scaremongering. Even with investment, we WILL hit a ceiling, be that the conference, League 2, whatever. What are the scaremongers going to say at that point?

There will be a queue of managers wanting Gray's job if he walks.

[Lincolnshire_Quaker]

Would like to see or hear it 'live', perhaps as a mixlr radio stream? The lads managed to do a great job commentating on matches so this could be another way??

I've just raised my own concerns regarding this NetCafe format in another thread. We need to see the whites of Raj's eyes and the hear the conviction in his voice. Anthing else is a whitewash.

[D_F_C]

There's not exactly a long list of alternative investors waiting on the sidelines.

Right, and?

If we reject Singh then we simply cut our cloth accordingly and the club will end up at the level it ends up at.

As long as it doesn't go out of business, that's the important thing.

I've no problem with being at this level for another few years on a slightly lesser budget than this season, one way or another even fan owned we will go up at some point. We will eventually get the 5 year season ticket money finance gap bridged, we will see the full time clubs go up, we will have our time.

Talk of a spiral to doom and crowds of 500 if we don't go up asap are nothing more than baseless scaremongering. Even with investment, we WILL hit a ceiling, be that the conference, League 2, whatever. What are the scaremongers going to say at that point?

There will be a queue of managers wanting Gray's job if he walks.

Absolutely spot on IMO

[leedscol]

Look I don't think anybody wants Martin Gray to go after what he has achieved.We know from the past how hard it is to get a decent Manager,but Singh is not the answer to our prayers and I am at a loss to understand how or why Gray or Hodgson think he is.
As for this rehearsed netcafe I see little merit.How about Ray Simpson interviewing him instead? He is calm and reasoned and would give him a fair hearing.

[D_F_C]

Gray has sooo much invested within Darlington Football Club. If he walks away, he's arguably risking his own wealth as we may not intertwine DFC and Martin Gray Soccer School.

I would rather he stay, and the players we have, but if they have to go for the good of the club then I can accept it. Don't expect that all players will have to or want to leave. I would think Gray would need something else lined up before actually quitting

[Lincolnshire_Quaker]

This NetCafe can all be done from the https://www.facebook.com/darlingtonfc page in a couple of clicks with a Live Video. We need to press for this.

[al_quaker]

Would another alternative be for RS to do a face to face Q&A session with the full DFCSG board. That would be 12 people who would be able to ask all the questions, observe how he answers them and report back at the SGM whilst avoiding pre prepared Q&As and possible shouting matches.

I'd imagine this has already happened (to some extent) - the club and the SG have met with Singh, and as John Tempest and the SG members are fans first of all, I'm sure they share our concerns/anger/mistrust of Singh after the events of the past. As such, I'd hazard a guess they've asked him plenty of questions over the last 2 weeks. A recommendation either way would certainly be interesting to hear!

[lo36789]

A recommendation either way would certainly be interesting to hear!

I don't think that will come to be honest it is really down to the fans to decide what they want - and that feels right to be honest.

[al_quaker]

A recommendation either way would certainly be interesting to hear!

I don't think that will come to be honest it is really down to the fans to decide what they want - and that feels right to be honest.

Oh absolutely I don't think it will come, and probably rightly so - I'm not sure it would be appropriate for a recommendation to be made on an issue such as this. It would just be interesting as they have sat down with Singh and asked him questions about the future (and I'd imagine about the past too)

[TFDM]

The live video, while easy to do, isn't so easy to make look halfway professional. Its all very well clicking the go live button but what are you going to film it on? A camera on a phone? Please.... this entire thing is a bit of a mess already without a joke of a live video on facebook done through someone holding a phone.

To do it halfway properly you need a proper (ideally two - one on the host and one on the person answering the questions) cameras. A couple of proper microphones rigged up and then all of this needs to go into a computer and then streamed live to facebook or whatever platform you've chosen. If you decided to do a two camera setup then you need a switcher in between all of that and something to monitor your two cameras on.

Probably far too late in the day to organise something like this. An audio only stream would be a better option imo as it would look more professional than a crap live video on facebook. Imo the club isn't coming out of this whole thing looking very good, the last thing we need to do is make the situation worse with an awfully done live video.

[Mr_Tibbs]

The live video, while easy to do, isn't so easy to make look halfway professional. Its all very well clicking the go live button but what are you going to film it on? A camera on a phone? Please.... this entire thing is a bit of a mess already without a joke of a live video on facebook done through someone holding a phone.

To do it halfway properly you need a proper (ideally two - one on the host and one on the person answering the questions) cameras. A couple of proper microphones rigged up and then all of this needs to go into a computer and then streamed live to facebook or whatever platform you've chosen. If you decided to do a two camera setup then you need a switcher in between all of that and something to monitor your two cameras on.

Probably far too late in the day to organise something like this. An audio only stream would be a better option imo as it would look more professional than a crap live video on facebook. Imo the club isn't coming out of this whole thing looking very good, the last thing we need to do is make the situation worse with an awfully done live video.

mixlr then, at least we'd know it's live.

Maybe you can tell us more about this Net Cafe thing - is it 2 blokes sat in the same room?

I think the guarantee we're all looking for is that it's not rehearsed or with cherry-picked questions emailed to Singh giving him time to come up with whatever answers he thinks will push all the right buttons.

[Vodka_Vic]

The board in their statement to be fair did say that Raj has been asked about 2012 and that this will come out at the Net Café (Pre-rehearsed or not). It's somewhere in there.

[TFDM]

I've no idea what the format or how they are run as I've never been involved in them. I just hate the idea of the club doing a crap live video that'll hang around like a fart in a locked room for ages... like that Spenny forum video where they spent half the time talking about us.

[Yarblockos]

I've no idea what the format or how they are run as I've never been involved in them. I just hate the idea of the club doing a crap live video that'll hang around like a fart in a locked room for ages... like that Spenny forum video where they spent half the time talking about us.

Would one of the commentary team be able to make it there with their broadcast equipment?

[spen666]

I've no idea what the format or how they are run as I've never been involved in them. I just hate the idea of the club doing a crap live video that'll hang around like a fart in a locked room for ages... like that Spenny forum video where they spent half the time talking about us.

Would one of the commentary team be able to make it there with their broadcast equipment?

" and now a question has been received on the computer screen....and Raj is typing something...and now another question has been received ......."


Probably not the most riveting event to commentate on