S.A.F.C. - the future

This is the thing that still rankles with me and I don't understand. When we fell out of the PL Short basically put away the cheque book and let us drift into oblivion. He then gave the club away for nothing to Madrox
Had he invested £30m or so we could have gone back up to the PL and he'd have made some money selling us as a PL team worth what? Min £100m?

I'm sure I'm missing something and I know we were riddled with debt but it just doesn't add up

 

Think it's one of the many mistakes short made, yes he funded the club the best out of any owner in my time but his lack of knowledge of football and his judgement in certain personal left a lot to be desired. All started to go downhill when the only football person he had around him left.

 

I know I think it's always been the more likely outcome that KLD would increase his shares, but the JS buying more come out the the blue, there were a few rumours he would sell up.

 

It always seemed likely KLD would increase his shares, came out of the blue that JS has increased his shares, and the fact that SD has still kept some shares

 

Enjoy.

 

Does that mean Methven walked away with £3.6 m for his 5% ?

 

We were haemorrhaging £20million + or so a year at that point, and with the FFP regulations being introduced it was going to be harder and harder to manage. Look at Everton now as an example. £600 million spent in recent years and losses of £120 million reported for 2021 in March. They really don't have a lot of wiggle room at the minute to spend their way out of trouble without risking breaching FFP rules and copping fines/transfer embargoes etc. When you consider the EFLs FFP is much stricter than the EPL you can see we had even less room for maneuver. Spending £30 million or so might have got us back up, but we'd still be in the same position, facing more struggle but with the added threat of the EFL waiting to hammer us for breaching FFP if we went back down (they're waiting for Villa to drop down to punish them for doing it when they got promoted).

Also most of our debt them was to Short and the SBC loan, which he took on himself when he sold us. The deal basically said no one want to tske us on in the situation we were in because of the risks we were in. There was plenty of rumours through the 17-18 season that we were heading into administration. It's a horrible thought but that cost cutting then is probably what stabilised the debt enough to stop us going in to administration, even though he had to write off his own loans to us and agree to tske the SBC loan on himself to make the deal to sell us. The German consortium that was supposed to buy us in 2017 were rumoured to have planned to raise cash by selling off the SOL and the academy and leasing them back to the club, the kind of thing that's got Derby into all their trouble. How much worse would it have been if that had happened and we were still running up heavy debts?

In the end, Short washed his hands of the club and cut his losses until we were sold, but much as we can criticise him, it could have been a lot worse.

 

Nicely explained. Thank you

If what you say about the Germans is true, then we actually have a lot to thank Short for. Selling the stadium/academy/training ground ALWAYS ends in tears

 

I don't think that came out of the blue as you said there were rumours that he may sell up but there were also rumours he was staying. I was told before Wembley that he was looking to take a more active role and a few posters on here even hinted at the same thing. And if you read what people said it all centered around KLD and his inner circle of which JS definitely seems to be one. Trouble is people keep thinking of Sartori being aligned with Donald and Methven because of Madrox but to be honest I don't think they have been aligned for quite some time hence him being on the board and the other 2 not being on the board. Admittedly my thoughts were that MLD or even KLD mam may have taken shares but the fact Sartori did is no surprise and not really out of the blue for me.

 

Thanks for that clear and straight forward explanation.
I recall a very rare Ellis Short interview which he said that he had been advised to place the club into administration but he refused, quite worrying when you look at the mismanagement of the past.

 

Christ man that Kildare is an absolute ****ing idiot.

 

He needs to close his account now that he has sold his share.

 

What’s he said now

 

From the very little bits I heard at the time, Short fought really hard to prevent us going into administration, but there were quite a few vultures circling trying to push towards it.

Overall, I don't think that Short was a bad bloke and he did try to get us to succeed, but he was very badly let down by people he trusted because of his lack of football knowledge. He did what most people would do and put trust into people who should know what they're doing to run it for him. But, with out people with real football knowledge, it became open for people to take advantage of the club for their own ends. I've said before about an employee of the club charging the club to ship their wedding dress to Portugal for their wedding. Then you have Gary the Hair messing up the concerts and commercial side of things to consider. The people who could push back and stop them were marginalised or pushed out under Byrne and then quickly things got out of control. By 2016 the losses were becoming unmanageable without something drastic being done. Maybe if BSA hadn't went to England he'd have wheeled and dealed on a tighter budget and kept us up and given us a chance to start to repair the damage, but it may only have been delaying it and by 2017 Short had been badly burned enough that he wanted out. A bit like being in a bad relationship with your wife or girlfriend, there comes a time when you hsve to walk away. At least he did it without leaving us in a far worse position than it could have been.

 

Not sure what has taken you so long Billy, you seem quite switched normally.

 

Good summary.

 

The main point for Sartori increasing his shareholding, in my humble opinion, was to ensure no one else could reach the magic holding of 75% of the issued shares.
It's just good business sense and stops anyone forcing through changes that Sartori does not like.
However I do feel that he is aligned with KLD in his vision for the club and look forward to a brighter future.

 

Just the usual spamming ****e.

 

now haway, i know i said i would not reply but i will not let you put yourself down either...no one has said 'you' are boring, any reference made to anything being boring was directed at those who follow the same kind of routine and never to a particular person.

you are obviously as welcome as the next lad to post on here ( not that you need my permission, of course) and we welcome all input but we do tend to get a bit defensive if a poster seems to be having a dig at another...basically, we dont want this site turning into another 'word twisting site' as we see elsewhere.

 

honestly, i think Short finally realised how much he had been played, from all accounts (and many will be not true) there were a good few making a damn good living out of Ellis Short and the football club was left in the wake.

ok, i know ALL the arguments of it all being his own fault and i accept that, had he hired/fired the right people he may well have been able to give it a go but he figured he could do the same with a football club as any other business, not have a clue what to do but hire others to do the running of it and he ended up just being a check book.

i also figured if he put a little more into the club and got us back into the premier then he had a much better position to bargain from, unfortunately for us and himself i feel he had just hit that wall of no more fecks to give and just wanted away.