Quote ="Mrs Barista"Pearson sees a business opportunity at FC because, despite finishing 3 seasons out of the last 4 in the bottom half of the table, we showed can still get a 14k+ gate (excluding away support) when the "excitement" on offer amounts to scrapping for a play-off place. The potential is pretty obvious.
Success for Pearson is therefore to get a successful team at FC and to try and fill the stadium, or at least get gates higher than the relatively dismal 11k average we've sunk to under Hetherington and Agar. If Pearson achieves this goal, who loses out, exactly? Pearson won't be at FC forever, but first of all he will have to speculate to accumulate, therefore it's unlikely he'll bail after one or two seasons to recoup his initial investments. Second of all if he's after selling FC for a profit, he'll have created a compelling investment for someone to buy through adding shareholder value to the club. Again, a good thing. Isn't it?
Of course it may go to hell, as already said, but the club was in danger of
sliding further in 2012 51 days ago, with an ambitionless board embracing mediocrity and giving Agar a merit badge for perpetual underachievement. Pearson has brought hope to the fans. This hope may end up being unfulfilled, as it is essentially at 10 out of 12 SL clubs, but compared to what might have been 51 days ago, I think we're in a very positive position.'"
I don't disagree with much of what you say.
Pearson is a skilled administrator no doubt, but he most certainly isn't the 'White-knight' some are making him out to be.
Unlike the likes of Hudgell, Moran, Davy, McManus, Hughes et al, Pearson is purely in the game for what he can get out - he will demand a significant return on his investment, whether that is through keeping profits or fattening the club up for a sale, ala what he did at City.
We all know he is taking over an under-performing club now but what happens if/when he helps it achieve it's maximum potential? Where is the investment opportunity for anyone else? With no benevolent oligarchs of Oil-rich Arabs likely to be interested, who can he sell it to?
Either he is just prepared to 'milk the cow' for all it's worth over the next few years by taking a couple of hundred grand profit out of the club (which I find hard to believe, given he usually plays to bigger stakes) or there is a hitherto unrevealed 'end game'.
All of which links him back to the Allam's and the KC Stadium plans!
