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Pissed-Off Merkie's 2002 AFC AGM report continued...

Pittodrie AGMs gone by have been notable for two things - first, that the minutiae of the football business have taken the focus away from the bigger plc picture; second, that the level of antipathy towards the directors is directly proportional to the team's league position. Peculiarly, neither of these were problems that dogged this particular AGM. As one shareholder pointed out, it was 33 minutes before the name Ebbe Skovdahl was even mentioned, and though a fair bit of time thereafter was devoted to the managerial vacancy (nowhere near as much as had been feared, given the standard Radio Scotland nature of the discourse), no complaints about the pies, the cheerleaders, or those bastards flogging fanzines outside the stadium. Judging by past performance, then, this should have meant a rough ride for the directors of a club whose team had not won any of its last seven league games and sits ninth in the SPL (Ltd).

Quite the opposite.

Those who had been disappointed (if not at all surprised) by the whitewash at last year's meeting, with the Dons in the middle of the famous home run and on the road to Europe, were flabbergasted to find that this year's pantomime was even worse. Milne and Ian Donald could have been forgiven for pinching themselves afterwards to check it hadn't been a dream, so smoothly did it go for them. Could this really be the same club whose supporters, only two days previously and again the day after, had been chanting 'Sack The Board' in the stadia of Scotland?

That was never going to happen. The re-election of Milne and Gilbert, who retired by rotation (a spit and open fire come to mind), was always a formality, if for no other reason than that they each control enough of the share capital to scratch the other's back. However the abject lack of dissent beggared belief - in a gathering of close on 400 shareholders, Milne gathered no more than 20 nays; Gilbert (of Aberdeen Asset Management notoriety, remember) fewer still. Sack The Board? An empty threat indeed.

Never mind, as ever the resolution phase wasn't due to be the real meat of the evening anyway. For the record the accounts were accepted and Chris Gavin's appointment to the board of directors ratified unanimously - the only vote, from where I was sitting, to be unopposed (someone in from Ernst & Young mischievously voted against the retention of Deloitte & Touche as auditors). The reason everyone was there was the question and answer session from the floor: Milne's announcement that this was scheduled to last 20 minutes was met with both scepticism and cynicism. Both proved to be well founded.

Most of the questions accepted by the ringmaster were from the front of the hall. I'm not suggesting these were plants, but it is undeniable that certain people towards the back of the room were strategically ignored ("Some more questions down at the front, Eileen…"). With Milne and Wyness looking into the whites of their eyes perhaps the shareholders afforded the privilege of the platform didn't feel brave enough to press the issue. Certainly they were close enough to the lectern for Milne to be able to judge that their threat was going to be minimal, and the early agenda was as innocuous as it was predictable. Bellfield was a favourite, despite the fact that, until UEFA decides on Euro 2008 and the Scottish Executive decides whether we really want it anyway (ie the public inquiry), there was nothing new for AFC to tell. We were told that redeveloping Pittodrie isn't feasible because (a) it would cost too much without the revenue from selling the site; and (b) the hassle of playing in a building site for three seasons would not be worth it (didn't seem to do Hertha any harm mind you). This isn't news. But then Wyness can only answer what he is asked - it can only have been the surprise at actually getting an answer that caused a second shareholder to later ask the same question again, to make sure. There's not, we're assured, enough space in the immediate environs to meet UEFA standards at Pittodrie anyway. Nobody saw it necessary to follow up this by pointing out that this is not unrelated to the fact that AFC has consistently allowed plots adjacent to the stadium to be bought up by developers for years without any sort of rival bid. Only the last questioner of the night noticed that nobody else in the room had seemed to share the board's enthusiasm for the Bellfield project, and he was beaten off with the statistic (see Skovdahl, E., 'Miniskirts etc') that a "Shareholders' Association" (sic, a favourite miscalling of Milne's) poll had shown overwhelming backing. Don't know where he got that from. Wasn't the poll result I saw anyways.

One punter even had the nerve to thank Milne and his board for their financial stewardship of the club! Perhaps he was being sly and hoping to get them to damn themselves with lavish praise, but he'd have been lucky. Answers were generally less straight than an England tail-ender's bat - the directors seemed very fond of the club "going forward", leaving us to wonder how much better off the first team would be if they received their pep talks from Wyness and Milne rather than Skovdahl and Spiers. Memorably, Wyness responded to a pro-Ebbe question by saying "aye, there aren't many Ebbes around"; later an anti-Ebbe shareholder was filled in on all the man's shortcomings and informed we really needed a "ruthless" coach who took an interest in the young players outwith the first team squad. Milne could have had a brief palpitation when one shareholder commandeered the mic and declared: "John Stephen here…". The asker of another unanswered question was not, in fact, the chairman of the Supporters Trust, but a namesake - nevertheless, this gave Milne an extra piece of ammunition when the Trust version finally got his chance. Things went from bad to worse.

The passage of time may cause another version of events at Pittodrie on Monday night to pass into legend. Milne's take on things - which, refreshingly, was not swallowed by many of the papers - was much different to mine. Here is what really happened.

The AFCST chairman rose to ask his first (and, as it would prove, only) question of the evening, announcing, as is the form, that he too was called John Stephen. Milne interjected "ah, the REAL John Stephen". Milne said this. Not Stephen. Uncalled for, disrespectful to the Mr Stephen who had previously taken the floor, and clearly designed to suggest to the audience that here was a man with ideas above his station. Not Milne's first sojourn of the night into Semantics Avenue - he had previously, introducing his newest colleague, snippily informed us that Chris Gavin would find and has found that the job is a lot more difficult than it looks "from the outside" (one estimable fan would later upbraid Wigless on that and remind him that the supporters are not to be seen as being 'outside' the club). So Stephen hadn't even begun his question, and Milne was scoring points already.

Carrying on regardless, 'the real John Stephen' asked on the record a question which had been presented by the Trust in advance of the meeting and which had been carried in that night's Evening Express. Listed were a series of low points during Milne's reign, all of which were statements of fact (such as the disappearance of the £10m share issue money; the constant and costly turnover of managers; the halving of the share price and the massive net loss in the transfer market, not to speak of the dreadful fare on the park). The board obviously did not find the question terribly offensive when it arrived, for they furnished it with a 12-line response (this was not the case with all other pre-submitted questions: 'Does each individual Board member believe 100% without reservation that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman have (i) the track record that will convince existing investors to put more money into the Club, and (ii) the ability to make the right executive decisions to rescue the Club from its financial plight?' received the perfunctory answer: 'Yes') and printed it in the document handed to attendees. The reply contained admissions that bad decisions had been made but offered in mitigation that everyone else in football was doing the same. The board did not object to the question in writing.

They objected on the night.

First, Milne (on a roll) mused upon what Stephen "was trying to achieve" (heck, an answer would have been nice) by asking the question aloud, recommending that he could have assumed that those present "are able to read". Well that's as may be, but who, in all honesty, had at that point read this entire script (shareholders were not in possession of it until they arrived in the meeting room)? In any case, I do not believe Stephen entered the AGM intending to re-cover this ground - his decision to thrash the question was prompted by earlier comments made by Ian Donald which framed it in a different light. [Donald had stated, acting as chair for the Milne re-election vote, that Stewart had made and would continue to make an important contribution to the stability of the Club: Stephen reiterated the points from the written question and asked Donald to expand on why, given those facts, he felt that was the case.]

Worse still, Milne then got himself into a bit of a strop with Stephen, and told him that using the AGM to launch "personal attacks… does you no credit".

Stephen, understandably, attempted to respond. Milne said "Next question". Stephen continued with his next question. Milne said somewhat louder "Next question". Stephen's mic was cut.

Even worse again was the reaction of the massed AFC stakeholders to this censorship of their AGM. THEY APPLAUDED. They actually genuinely fucking well applauded Stewart Milne for cutting off a speaker who, the chairman's tantrums aside, had done little to deserve such treatment. Whether Stephen was wrong to ask the question is another matter - personally, I think it was ill-judged and there were other areas to explore. But whatever culpable conduct he may have been guilty of was far less than that of Milne. If it's "personal attacks" you're after, try the 'real John Stephen' tag, try the 'they can read' gibe, try the 'this does you no credit' potshot. I consider each of these graver than an AFC shareholder asking a director to expand upon a statement which the facts do not bear out (remember, it was Ian Donald who had first brought up, without supporting jusitifcation, Milne's invaluability to the club). The other shareholders present, well, they clearly didn't agree. Rarely am I ashamed to be associated with Aberdeen Football Club, but for the sickening seconds that applause rang out I certainly was.

Can it really be that we have reached the stage where everyone in Aberdeen is HAPPY with the way things are going at their club? Have they succeeded in lowering our expectations so far, that £2 million a year losses, a £10 million overdraft, two months without a win and the impending possibility of a relegation scrap despite the "third highest football budget in Scotland" and completely hopeless U-18 and U-21 teams are judged a SUCCESS? Have they drained us so much of ambition that anybody querying whether business is being done to the optimum level is branded an infidel and burned at dawn? That's the intention - perhaps the only laugh of the AGM came when the long-past-sell-by Ian Donald tried to sing the praises of Milne and his club by highlighting "a good second half against rangers two weeks ago". A comment beneath contempt.

If the fans want AFC to once again achieve anything approaching a position of eminence in Scottish football, it is imperative that they hold the board of directors to account for their stewardship of the club. The shareholders will have to do much much better in future - the conduct of the chairman on Monday was a DISGRACE, but the performance from the floor was ABSOLUTELY PITIFUL.

As one disgruntled supporter said as he left the meeting, you get the club you deserve.

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Pissed-Off Merkie's 2002 AFC AGM report continued...
Pittodrie AGMs gone by have been notable for two things - first, that the minutiae of the football business have taken the focus away from the bigger plc picture; second, that the level of antipathy towards the directors is directly proportional to the team's league position. Peculiarly, neither of these were problems that dogged this particular AGM. As one shareholder pointed out, it was 33 minutes before the name Ebbe Skovdahl was even mentioned, and though a fair bit of time thereafter was devoted to the managerial vacancy (nowhere near as much as had been feared, given the standard Radio Scotland nature of the discourse), no complaints about the pies, the cheerleaders, or those bastards flogging fanzines outside the stadium. Judging by past performance, then, this should have meant a rough ride for the directors of a club whose team had not won any of its last seven league games and sits ninth in the SPL (Ltd). Quite the opposite. Those who had been disappointed (if not at all surprised) by the whitewash at last year's meeting, with the Dons in the middle of the famous home run and on the road to Europe, were flabbergasted to find that this year's pantomime was even worse. Milne and Ian Donald could have been forgiven for pinching themselves afterwards to check it hadn't been a dream, so smoothly did it go for them. Could this really be the same club whose supporters, only two days previously and again the day after, had been chanting 'Sack The Board' in the stadia of Scotland? That was never going to happen. The re-election of Milne and Gilbert, who retired by rotation (a spit and open fire come to mind), was always a formality, if for no other reason than that they each control enough of the share capital to scratch the other's back. However the abject lack of dissent beggared belief - in a gathering of close on 400 shareholders, Milne gathered no more than 20 nays; Gilbert (of Aberdeen Asset Management notoriety, remember) fewer still. Sack The Board? An empty threat indeed. Never mind, as ever the resolution phase wasn't due to be the real meat of the evening anyway. For the record the accounts were accepted and Chris Gavin's appointment to the board of directors ratified unanimously - the only vote, from where I was sitting, to be unopposed (someone in from Ernst & Young mischievously voted against the retention of Deloitte & Touche as auditors). The reason everyone was there was the question and answer session from the floor: Milne's announcement that this was scheduled to last 20 minutes was met with both scepticism and cynicism. Both proved to be well founded. Most of the questions accepted by the ringmaster were from the front of the hall. I'm not suggesting these were plants, but it is undeniable that certain people towards the back of the room were strategically ignored ("Some more questions down at the front, Eileen…"). With Milne and Wyness looking into the whites of their eyes perhaps the shareholders afforded the privilege of the platform didn't feel brave enough to press the issue. Certainly they were close enough to the lectern for Milne to be able to judge that their threat was going to be minimal, and the early agenda was as innocuous as it was predictable. Bellfield was a favourite, despite the fact that, until UEFA decides on Euro 2008 and the Scottish Executive decides whether we really want it anyway (ie the public inquiry), there was nothing new for AFC to tell. We were told that redeveloping Pittodrie isn't feasible because (a) it would cost too much without the revenue from selling the site; and (b) the hassle of playing in a building site for three seasons would not be worth it (didn't seem to do Hertha any harm mind you). This isn't news. But then Wyness can only answer what he is asked - it can only have been the surprise at actually getting an answer that caused a second shareholder to later ask the same question again, to make sure. There's not, we're assured, enough space in the immediate environs to meet UEFA standards at Pittodrie anyway. Nobody saw it necessary to follow up this by pointing out that this is not unrelated to the fact that AFC has consistently allowed plots adjacent to the stadium to be bought up by developers for years without any sort of rival bid. Only the last questioner of the night noticed that nobody else in the room had seemed to share the board's enthusiasm for the Bellfield project, and he was beaten off with the statistic (see Skovdahl, E., 'Miniskirts etc') that a "Shareholders' Association" (sic, a favourite miscalling of Milne's) poll had shown overwhelming backing. Don't know where he got that from. Wasn't the poll result I saw anyways. One punter even had the nerve to thank Milne and his board for their financial stewardship of the club! Perhaps he was being sly and hoping to get them to damn themselves with lavish praise, but he'd have been lucky. Answers were generally less straight than an England tail-ender's bat - the directors seemed very fond of the club "going forward", leaving us to wonder how much better off the first team would be if they received their pep talks from Wyness and Milne rather than Skovdahl and Spiers. Memorably, Wyness responded to a pro-Ebbe question by saying "aye, there aren't many Ebbes around"; later an anti-Ebbe shareholder was filled in on all the man's shortcomings and informed we really needed a "ruthless" coach who took an interest in the young players outwith the first team squad. Milne could have had a brief palpitation when one shareholder commandeered the mic and declared: "John Stephen here…". The asker of another unanswered question was not, in fact, the chairman of the Supporters Trust, but a namesake - nevertheless, this gave Milne an extra piece of ammunition when the Trust version finally got his chance. Things went from bad to worse. The passage of time may cause another version of events at Pittodrie on Monday night to pass into legend. Milne's take on things - which, refreshingly, was not swallowed by many of the papers - was much different to mine. Here is what really happened. The AFCST chairman rose to ask his first (and, as it would prove, only) question of the evening, announcing, as is the form, that he too was called John Stephen. Milne interjected "ah, the REAL John Stephen". Milne said this. Not Stephen. Uncalled for, disrespectful to the Mr Stephen who had previously taken the floor, and clearly designed to suggest to the audience that here was a man with ideas above his station. Not Milne's first sojourn of the night into Semantics Avenue - he had previously, introducing his newest colleague, snippily informed us that Chris Gavin would find and has found that the job is a lot more difficult than it looks "from the outside" (one estimable fan would later upbraid Wigless on that and remind him that the supporters are not to be seen as being 'outside' the club). So Stephen hadn't even begun his question, and Milne was scoring points already. Carrying on regardless, 'the real John Stephen' asked on the record a question which had been presented by the Trust in advance of the meeting and which had been carried in that night's Evening Express. Listed were a series of low points during Milne's reign, all of which were statements of fact (such as the disappearance of the £10m share issue money; the constant and costly turnover of managers; the halving of the share price and the massive net loss in the transfer market, not to speak of the dreadful fare on the park). The board obviously did not find the question terribly offensive when it arrived, for they furnished it with a 12-line response (this was not the case with all other pre-submitted questions: 'Does each individual Board member believe 100% without reservation that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman have (i) the track record that will convince existing investors to put more money into the Club, and (ii) the ability to make the right executive decisions to rescue the Club from its financial plight?' received the perfunctory answer: 'Yes') and printed it in the document handed to attendees. The reply contained admissions that bad decisions had been made but offered in mitigation that everyone else in football was doing the same. The board did not object to the question in writing. They objected on the night. First, Milne (on a roll) mused upon what Stephen "was trying to achieve" (heck, an answer would have been nice) by asking the question aloud, recommending that he could have assumed that those present "are able to read". Well that's as may be, but who, in all honesty, had at that point read this entire script (shareholders were not in possession of it until they arrived in the meeting room)? In any case, I do not believe Stephen entered the AGM intending to re-cover this ground - his decision to thrash the question was prompted by earlier comments made by Ian Donald which framed it in a different light. [Donald had stated, acting as chair for the Milne re-election vote, that Stewart had made and would continue to make an important contribution to the stability of the Club: Stephen reiterated the points from the written question and asked Donald to expand on why, given those facts, he felt that was the case.] Worse still, Milne then got himself into a bit of a strop with Stephen, and told him that using the AGM to launch "personal attacks… does you no credit". Stephen, understandably, attempted to respond. Milne said "Next question". Stephen continued with his next question. Milne said somewhat louder "Next question". Stephen's mic was cut. Even worse again was the reaction of the massed AFC stakeholders to this censorship of their AGM. THEY APPLAUDED. They actually genuinely fucking well applauded Stewart Milne for cutting off a speaker who, the chairman's tantrums aside, had done little to deserve such treatment. Whether Stephen was wrong to ask the question is another matter - personally, I think it was ill-judged and there were other areas to explore. But whatever culpable conduct he may have been guilty of was far less than that of Milne. If it's "personal attacks" you're after, try the 'real John Stephen' tag, try the 'they can read' gibe, try the 'this does you no credit' potshot. I consider each of these graver than an AFC shareholder asking a director to expand upon a statement which the facts do not bear out (remember, it was Ian Donald who had first brought up, without supporting jusitifcation, Milne's invaluability to the club). The other shareholders present, well, they clearly didn't agree. Rarely am I ashamed to be associated with Aberdeen Football Club, but for the sickening seconds that applause rang out I certainly was. Can it really be that we have reached the stage where everyone in Aberdeen is HAPPY with the way things are going at their club? Have they succeeded in lowering our expectations so far, that £2 million a year losses, a £10 million overdraft, two months without a win and the impending possibility of a relegation scrap despite the "third highest football budget in Scotland" and completely hopeless U-18 and U-21 teams are judged a SUCCESS? Have they drained us so much of ambition that anybody querying whether business is being done to the optimum level is branded an infidel and burned at dawn? That's the intention - perhaps the only laugh of the AGM came when the long-past-sell-by Ian Donald tried to sing the praises of Milne and his club by highlighting "a good second half against rangers two weeks ago". A comment beneath contempt. If the fans want AFC to once again achieve anything approaching a position of eminence in Scottish football, it is imperative that they hold the board of directors to account for their stewardship of the club. The shareholders will have to do much much better in future - the conduct of the chairman on Monday was a DISGRACE, but the performance from the floor was ABSOLUTELY PITIFUL. As one disgruntled supporter said as he left the meeting, you get the club you deserve.
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