Norman Smurthwaite

[Pie1862]

Question for you all,

With the club in the turmoil that its in and prospective buyers being as evasive as Lord Lucan - would you take having Smurthwaite as owner & chairman?

Pros:
Experience running a football club
Would have contacts in the football world
Property developer - could utilise the land to make money for Notts

Cons:
Property developer - could utilise the land to clear off Notts and make himself money
Hated by most all Vale fans

Any more?

[jackal2]

Question for you all,

With the club in the turmoil that its in and prospective buyers being as evasive as Lord Lucan - would you take having Smurthwaite as owner & chairman?

Pros:
Experience running a football club
Would have contacts in the football world
Property developer - could utilise the land to make money for Notts

Cons:
Property developer - could utilise the land to clear off Notts and make himself money
Hated by most all Vale fans

Any more?

My impression of Smurthwaite from a distance is that he's a fairly typical football chairman with a fairly typical football chairman's story. A mixture of football fan, egotist, risk taker and dictator. These are the kind of people who are generally crazy enough to even want to own a lower league football club, and then they spend most of their time trying to square an impossible circle between fans' expectations and financial reality. This usually ends in tears, with the supporters turning on the owner and eventually viewing them as the devil incarnate, and the owner feeling resentful that they receive no appreciation for any good work they did, and so the divide just grows.

If it was a choice between Smurthwaite and Notts County going out of business, I'd take him, but unless he somehow manages to inspire a consistent climb up the leagues, it would only be a matter of time before he becomes a target for fans' frustrations, just as happened with all the recent owners. What we really need is a billionaire benefactor with enough money not only to fund success but also iron out their mistakes. Not easy to find!

[BanjoPie]

My impression of Smurthwaite from a distance is that he's a fairly typical football chairman with a fairly typical football chairman's story. A mixture of football fan, egotist, risk taker and dictator. These are the kind of people who are generally crazy enough to even want to own a lower league football club, and then they spend most of their time trying to square an impossible circle between fans' expectations and financial reality. This usually ends in tears, with the supporters turning on the owner and eventually viewing them as the devil incarnate, and the owner feeling resentful that they receive no appreciation for any good work they did, and so the divide just grows.

If it was a choice between Smurthwaite and Notts County going out of business, I'd take him, but unless he somehow manages to inspire a consistent climb up the leagues, it would only be a matter of time before he becomes a target for fans' frustrations, just as happened with all the recent owners. What we really need is a billionaire benefactor with enough money not only to fund success but also iron out their mistakes. Not easy to find!

Your posts make such good reading jackal2 - obviously a well educated person.

[jackal2]

Your posts make such good reading jackal2 - obviously a well educated person.

Thanks for the compliment Banjo, although I'm sure there are others on here who would say you're obviously a bad judge! XD

I don't go trawling other football message boards often, but I would be surprised if there are many (if any) with a better quality group of posters than we see on here representing a wide range of opinion, both on Notts County and wider football matters, and on other topics.

Plus, I think Swalepie deserves immense credit for voluntarily moderating these pages and enabling the whole thing to continue.

[DelroyFacey22]

Personally I don't think he's ever been interested, people just put 2+2 together when he attended a couple of Notts games, he was desperate to get out of Port Vale so why he would jump at the chance to get straight back into it so soon, at Notts of all places I have no idea.

Saying he might be interested if we went into admin (which I think was reported) isn't really saying much either, I imagine there will be plenty that come forward at that stage.