I actually find Bobs "give it time... everyone makes mistakes" lines quite nauseating. More so since I watched STID 2, and the fact that Donald has not got a fking clue.
I reckon we would have got promoted if season had continued. Think us and Oxford had best form in this calendar year. I do have red and white eyes but really think we underperformed considering our squad but would have won play offs. Automatic was not impossible if we could put another run together. Point I'm making is 'festering' not quite right. We were giving it a go, but making very hard work of it. Bounce back from Rovers game and we wouldbeen far more upbeat. Unfortunately the whingers and whiners, not you by the the way, great post, have completely taken over the social media asylum criticising iterally everything and anything, stirred up by mischievous forces. For example, look at the outrage of a loan agreement between SD and Madrox for anything up to 5m. 5m ffs. Doesn't impact us at all but fanzines and the like screamed indignation at length. What have we become? Isolation is not good for our football mental health. Fact is we're in a canny financial position but have underperformed, and managed by someone who is out of his debt. For all the good intentions SD completely underestimated the size of the club and intensity of support.
I think you make some fair points. In terms of whether we'd have gone up, I personally don't think we had the consistency to get top two. If you look at Parkinsons away record it was woeful and would have needed to significantly improve for us to match anyone else who went on a good run. Equally I think we'd have been more confident if we'd ever had a spell in the top two. I might be wrong but I don't think we've had anything more than a week or so in the top two since we came down, and the fact we were performing badly right before the close might have clouded opinion. With us being so shot shy I just didnt see us having the bottle for the play offs. You're right though, it was close and we can't guarantee anything. All I mean by festering is that the owners have brought a lot of people in, seemingly not as a result of some careful recruitment campaign but more just because they're mates of the owners and these people have contributed to what seems certain to be a third season in league one. With two bites at the cherry we really should have been comfortably top two and not having to worry. We're now likely to stay here , with a very average looking squad for this league, with underperforming recruitment and academy teams, I think there's a real risk we'll be stuck here long term unless something changes. You're right about the financial part, I don't think some of the things that have been brought up are major issues ; the £25m was club money paying off a club debt, I don't have a problem with that as long as they aren't asking for £35m when selling (which they seem to be). If they accept about £25m I think it would be fair. They don't help themselves though because they're the ones saying the money will come back into the club, when they say that they can expect people to bring it up. I also agree that isolation isn't helping matters, but the club aren't helping themselves either with stuff like the season card announcement. Little, easy things that they could be getting right they seem to be getting wrong and it's getting peoples backs up. I hope they sell up, but if not I hope they finally get it right and give us a good side next season, one that teams are anxious about, that can score quite freely. In league one that shouldn't be hard, especially if our finances are as strong as Donald suggests (we'll get a bit of an indication when the accounts are released I guess).
Frankly we are staggering along.. Still in the turd division for at least another season...and who feels confident about next getting promotion next season?... Particularly with Donald as owner!
I think that’s what doesn’t sit right with a lot of us. They came in as the great saviours of SAFC telling us they had all the answers. Then they go and give all the crucial roles to their mates. At that point a lot of us saw the writing on the wall but didn’t want to believe what it said.
we be no where near promotion next season if Donald is still here as be cheapest free transfers and cheapest loans we get and no parachute payments
Back to back worst finishes in the clubs history so far, and I reckon it’ll be a hat trick if Donald is still here
Add to that fan support leaching away, (can you blame them...) To think that Sunderland were once a good, proud football club...what have we been brought to!
The piss taking party isn't over. It just moved upstairs from the dressing room to the Boardroom. Unfortunately the hangover from this new party will last 10 times as long as the one downstairs.
Meanwhile the woman who is fronting the arabs ( not sure how that stacks up, with their women having to stay indoors and be 'crow's 'when they go out) takeover is suing Barclays for £1.6in. Tough lady is she not, iirc she also told pervy Prince Andrew to fcuk off when he showed interest in her.
Yeah I think you're on the right lines. with the first 2 paragraphs. I agree that it's highly unlikely that FPP would have invested hoping that Donald would be forced to sell to them by bankruptcy or administration. It would mean that the club was in a worse position than when they evaluated us and would therefore be a really long haul project and... well you don't do anything if you think that a business has further to slide, even if it's just to make sure that you get the best deal possible. I also agree with the very simple assessment that FPP don't seem inclined to take us on in L1, so I doubt that they planned to capitalise on a disaster, which I think it's reasonable to assume could only be brought on by us still being in L1 (or below :/ ) On your second point (and I saw someone bring this up the other day while reading) the price for the shares that they can convert will have already been agreed up front. This is because if they didn't and things went favourably for Donald, he could then say that if they wanted to convert what they thought was 50% of the club, it was now only 25% of the club based on his new valuation. This means that even if they set the price at £20m (so they'd receive 50% of the club instead of Donald paying back the loan), and Donald negotiates £15m with someone else, they would not automatically get 66% for their £10m based on that. They'd have to go back and renegotiate themselves with Donald, which fair enough, he may be happy to do, but I guess what I'm saying is that the potential value of their unconverted shares doesn't automatically shift with the value of the club, they and Donald have to agree a price together again. They wouldn't necessarily know what anyone else would have agreed either. I'm generally staying away from predictions at the moment because Donald is a ****ing dickhead and he's proved that he'll do anything within the bounds of the law, so there's no point in me saying that anything is impossible. I will say that I think FPP have more business sense than to negotiate a deal with someone who they think has further to fall. My guess is the complete opposite, that they thought even with his lack of football success so far, with £10m extra it would be hard for him to stop us going up If only...
Has anybody said what they have used this loan for? It certainly hasn’t been used for player recruitment or anything on the playing side. Did they loan it to Madrox or Donald himself. If they have loaned it to help us to achieve promotion so that they can buy us as a championship club, they must be pissed off that he hasn’t used it accordingly and must realise like us that he’s trying to do things on the cheap. I’m not up on anything financial wise so it’s nice for someone to put things into layman terms.
In my humble opinion Stewart Donald is using the FPP loan for day to day running costs of a football club the size of SAFC as he is not wealthy enough to cover any shortfalls himself. Methven even spoke of using it to fix lifts at the training ground and the tannoy system in the SOL. It certainly wasn't spent on "luxuries" such as improving the playing staff.
The FPP loan went into the club as cash, I believe. I don't think we actually have very big shortfalls, contrary to popular belief and in line with what @Guinness Guzzler mentioned before - it's a bit of a narrative that's crept in but the reality is that they've stripped us down to the bare bones, and that means that the day to day costs are actually lower than you'd think for a 'club this size' because we're being run like a league one club. Put it this way, there's no way that he's spent £10m on day to day costs, or the club would not have been able to declare itself solvent in December.
Not saying he spent "all" of it on day to day day running costs. Why did Methven say they were spending it on fixing lifts and the the tannoy system? That to me is day to day running costs, just like if you have to get something fixed in your home it is an essential day to day expense that you have to do from time to time to keep your home running properly, otherwise it will begin to fall into disrepair . They have certainly not spent it on improving the playing staff or coaching staff which is not an extraordinary cost to my mind either. Why borrow at all if you don't need to? I can afford to pay my bills and any costs associated with running my home without borrowing. When I start to borrow to pay for that I am living beyond my means.
I think because it was offered and based on everything they've done so far, they're not in the habit of turning down low risk lines of credit In their head they have thought 'this is basically £10m that we might never use much of, but it stops us ever needing another Close Bros or intra-company loan'. They also had the carrot that if they could get us up, FPP would probably come in and probably consider a full scale takeover.
That's me done never going back until these owners have ****ed off. I just hope I still have a club to go back too.
