‘I’m taking my ball and going home.” If you’re reading this, chances are that in your formative years you heard the above exclaimed many times by a friend or acquaintance as you kicked a football around a patch of grass.
It was always an announcement laden with subtext. If it was actually time for the child who owned it to return to his or her home, they wouldn’t say it like that. They’d say something much more casual, much less demonstrative.
No, what it meant was this: “you’ve p****d me off to the extent that I’ve had enough.” It was typically a childish reaction to having suffered a perceived slight. Or they just couldn’t take getting beat.
This huffy response is exactly what came to mind this past Thursday after Dunfermline Athletic released a lengthy statement on the club’s website. Across roughly 1,500 words, the German owners Fussball GmbH made it clear they’d suffered enough during their Fife adventure and were going to sell up, and there was only one group of folk to blame for this decision: the fans.
“... We have felt for a while now, probably since the middle of last season, that long term planning and putting in place the building blocks for future success is not what many are looking for. Many seem to prefer an investor who has deep pockets to throw at the first team... The speed with which last year’s heroes become this year’s discards , last year’s cleverness becomes this year’s inability is difficult for us to understand and, for us, makes our strategy of longer-term planning and building nearly impossible,” read the statement.
At first glance it appeared to be the latest example of investors buying into football and ultimately making the shocking discovery that it doesn’t work like any other business. But from digging a bit deeper it’s clear to see they’re just scrambling around, trying to blame anyone else but themselves for their own shortcomings and Dunfermline’s recent struggles. In the end, they’ve decided the best route before selling up is to try to gaslight anyone who has dared to question them.
They only used roughly about half of the 1,500 words to essentially call their paying customers impatient idiots, so there was quite a bit else covered and a lot of it doesn’t quite accurately reflect reality.
Fussball GmbH bought their stake in the Pars back in August 2020 as they decided to press ahead with their plans despite the ongoing football lockout due to the Covid-19 pandemic, something which they believe they deserve tremendous credit for after opening up the statement by going on about it.
They then boast about how they’ve invested in the club with a training facility in Rosyth and a club academy set up since they took charge. Both of these things are accurate. There is a new training base and a club-owned academy is up and running. But the facility, at this moment in time, is little more than one pitch and a couple of portakabins, and they were able to acquire the land with help from the local council and the SFA.
As for the academy, its mention leads to perhaps the strangest part of the statement: “The Academy is now up and running and players in the first team squad have come up through the ranks... Everyone in the DAFC community was delighted to see these local and loyal players making it to the top. Songs were sung and chants adapted to appreciate their achievements.”
Not only is that strange language to use for official club business, it isn’t even true. Songs have been sung about local heroes over the past couple of seasons, but they didn’t come through the academy. Before signing off, the board reveal that extra funds have been made available to sign more players as the squad, as constructed, isn’t strong enough. So, let’s just clarify this here: the nasty, impatient fans who care about nothing but signing new players and can’t recognise the importance of long-term infrastructure were... right? This is a year in which the Scottish Championship is wide open.
There’s no Hearts, no Dundee clubs. There isn’t even Roy McGregor’s deep pockets at Ross County to contend with. Dunfermline should be contending near the top. In fact, they should always be competitive towards the top end of that division. Hell, with the size of club they are, with the support they have (who’ve continued to back them through a pretty rough 20-year period) they should be a Scottish Premiership side. Instead, at the present time, they look more likely to head back down to League One.
There isn’t enough room left on this page to properly go through all of the other things wrong with the stewardship at this moment in time, but it feels particularly pertinent to add the following: they haven’t moved on from the team which won League One and seem to be flabbergasted at how players and management who worked so well at a lower level can’t continue to do the same at a higher one; the squad is so patchwork that they haven’t had an experienced substitute goalkeeper this entire season, and, to top it all off, they’re somehow both not bringing in players and hemorrhaging money. They posted a £1m loss earlier this year – something which, of course, wasn’t mentioned in the statement amid all the back-patting.
The ironic thing is that a lengthy announcement from Fussball GmbH is exactly what’s been missing for supporters during their reign. They don’t communicate anywhere near enough with the fans and that’s led to a lot of the impatience. Those who are the lifeblood of the club have been consistently left in the dark.
The future is now uncertain. The hope is that Fussball GmbH make good on their insistence that there are no “sour grapes” and sell Dunfermline to someone who a) has the club in their heart, and/or b) knows how to run it better. This is a sleeping giant, if you can describe a lower-league Scottish club in such terms. If they’re run properly they will return to the top.
