The current situation has probably made many re-evaluate how they would like/accept the club to be run. I'd take long-term sustainability and realism any day.
The problem is... that never lasts.
Exeter had more than reasonable fans, after enduring the odd convicted fraudster and Yuri Geller. Then, against the odds, Tisdale got them not just back into the league, but into our division too. When the board didn't spend money, there was an ever louder muttering from the fanbase that they weren't showing any ambition, they weren't looking to improve the club - this completely missed there was actually no money *to* improve the club!
So the fan-owned model saw tension, fan against fan. It saw the club start to lose its focus as a result, as the cry of those demanding marquee signings got louder. Where they are now is a bit shit... but is probably a damned site better than it could have been, had the board not resisted the babble in the background to the extent they did.
Ultimately, however, they're crippled by not having the capital to ride out a dip. Ultimately they have a choice of, do they accept falling down, maybe, back into non league or do they accept that to reach their general level (fair to say Exeter are a mid-lower bottom division team as the mean, occasionally going higher) then they need to abandon a fan-owned model?
It's the same issues the likes of Notts County, Mansfield, Lincoln etc. have found - in this country fan ownership works for firefighting, but the system isn't set up for long term. Wimbledon will be an interesting case study long term, as to whether a desire to move back to Wimbledon actually ends up putting too much pressure on the ownership structure.
Notts County are the extreme example of this, of course. They found themselves under financial pressure and also fan pressure, so sold to chancers with zero cash whatsoever, who nearly killed the club in so doing... the fan pressure wasn't happy with fan ownership and a struggle to survive.
