If I were Roland then that's what I would do as well Let somebody else suffer the costs of running the football club while he keeps the major asset!
Are there willing buyers for that scenario though? I imagine the calibre of buyer it would attract would be the same quality as our signings.
I think that answer means 'no, that would not be up for discussion (in the context of a Takeover)...' Very open to interpretation; CAST need to clarify. To my mind we give CAST an easy ride, largely because they are mostly an irrelevance. They should be doing so much more, not just as a supporters group, but also in seeking the protection of the Club's future and heritage. I still think there is a strong opportunity to ease tensions if they were to draft a Supporters Charter; a kind of magna carta of the Club's values for the Owners to sign up to adopt. This would comprise 4 or 5 key points - perhaps regarding youth policy, safeguarding The Valley and sole control over transfers to the Manager - agreed by the fanbase and presented by the Trust to the owners. Should they then reject pledging to honour them then they would lose a PR battle and look stupid; and if they were to pledge to adopt them then the Supporters would have a degree of reassurance over the Club's management which would see the Trust in turn promote matchday attendance and cease hostilities. The Charter would provide a barometer to measure an Owner's management of the Club against; the only thing I'm still unsure of is how this could be enforceable. It would likely need FA buy-in, and a mechanism for adjudication of some sort. This may sound like my leftie brain has collapsed, but it is achievable; and crucially it is needed by fans across the country to protect football Clubs from Owners.
The CASTrust is like a union- only as good as its members. I don't know if anyone on ere is a member apart from me, but at the last count there were about 1100 members, at a fiver per year. Those who run it are elected at a meeting and do it on a voluntary unpaid basis. They are open to suggestion and will reply to correspondence straight away in my experience. The more fans who joined the more representative it would be, and therefore the more clout they would have, and the more constructive ideas they would have, like those of Kish. I don't believe any meetings with the CEO achieve anything, she is Roland's human shield. I told Richard Wiseman this and he agreed, but said a lot of the members didn't agree, and so they go ahead.
She won't disclose salary as the club is a private company... But later on she says that she doesn't think football clubs should be run as private companies... She is so deluded and contradictory, Corbyn should sign her up!
In all fairness @ForestHillBilly I wrote to them along that basis late last year and received instant and encouraging responses; I was told to sign up but never got around to it. Then in the New Year I became apathetic/pre-occupied by other issues. I should join.
I'm thinking of joining too. FHB should be on the recruitment team - as he says, it's only as good as its members and I personally think now there is more a place for them than perhaps there was 18months ago.
FHB sums it up for me. They basically try to do what their members tell them to. There is a fair amount of sniping aimed at them, but the logical step is always to join and vote. There was actually a suggestion to do this on ITTV around a month ago, with the intention of dragging CAST into a much more regime - supportive group. The problem all these organisations have is that they have to cover a wide umbrella of discontent, and an owner who paid for the club and seems happy to run it into the ground before admitting he isn't fit to own it.