OK here's a draft of cold reality.
There will be no way of telling whether or not extra money raised by dna will be used for signings or on the football side. So the idea that fear of being caught would keep Milne honest has no real basis.
Let's assume no dna. The club would have income from the usual sources. Say £10m. Let's also suppose it would have been spent, football budget £6m, admin £2m, contribution to the new stadium out of ordinary income £2m. All figures plucked out of the air for illustation purposes.
Here's the rub: no one will ever know what those numbers would have been. Even if there are some forecast budgets nominally drawn up, they were at the mercy of events and changes of mind. Say new signings are a disappointment and we have a couple of long term injuries and are struggling come Christmas: football budget goes up. etc etc.
Say dna raises £1M. The club spends its £11m, £6.5m on the football budget, £2M admin, £2.5m stadium. The club will argue that without dna the football budget would have been £5.5m. No-one will know whether that is true - possibly not even the club itself. The club may even genuinely believe it, because it didn't know that £6m would have been spent without dna.
I'm not saying this is all hocus pocus and the intention is to spend the dna money on things other than players. Frankly I don't know. But I do think there's something not quite right when the club makes a promise when it must know that there is probably no way of telling whether it was kept, and certainly no way of proving whether it was kept. I think anyone saying "give me £x and I guarantee Y will happen" should be able to demonstrate whether or not Y did in fact happen.
Last edited by DollyLongstaffe; 02-06-2018 at 01:21 PM.
All the dna members are getting shafted by Milne and his multi millionaire board members. There is absolutely no chance of the club spending the extra cash provided by its own fans to also go on top of our normal playing budget.
That money might at best be kept for a rainy day.
Say for example that McInnes desperately wants Ryan Christie permanently signed from Celtic. Celtic say he will cost £1m. McInnes normal budget won’t allow him to be able to make that signing as his transfer funds will be vastly depreciated. The dna money is £1m strong in the bank (example), do you think McInnes can just say well that money was extra funds for my transfer window etc so I am going to sign Christie as now we have the available funds...and Milne won’t mind as it is not his money anyway.
Absolutely no chance! The quicker you folks realise that you are keeping the multi millionaires from spending their vast funds the better. It’s a disgraceful con at best!
The element of supposition is introduced purely to illustrate the argument. The argument itself (that there will be no way of telling whether or not the dna money has been spent purely on the footballing side, and that it is questionable to raise money on the basis of a promise that you will not be able to demonstrate has been kept) is not supposition.
His brain works similar to a sat nav. When you don’t follow the route it tells you it will quickly tell you another way to the same destination. afc190mad is the Aberdeen FC propaganda sat nav. Don’t question the manager’s ability, players ability or even the dna money as the replies will always be everything is good at Aberdeen FC.
S.Milnes very own comical Ali.