Begs the question whether Tan saw this all on the horizon, and Acun seeing a challenge encouraged him to leave?
Having just read the whole thing, I can’t believe we had a window suspended. We should have had one added on Genuinely cannot believe the club put those arguments forward in appeal. I’d love to know what anyone genuinely thought might come of it. The club should have handled it with dignity and the response should have been holding our hands up and promising not to do it again. If I was the owner of another club I would be asking for payment up front for any real assets, so this could make signing proven quality quite difficult.
This last point is a good one. Mud sticks and if there is another club vying for a signature of one of our targets in future, why wouldn't the selling club pick them over us? Its such a daft reputation to get.
Whilst acknowledging that it's a pretty high bar, I'm throwing Barry's hat in the ring as our worst ever signing. Two starts - never stayed on the pitch an hour. Two subs appearances. Contributed nowt of any significance. We paid him a ridiculous wage for someone who's achieved the square root of **** all. The conditions of his signing results in us being placed under punitive measures. Worst. Signing. Ever.
In fact, notifying the EFL that we would be overdue on payments to other clubs due to cash flow issues would’ve been a mitigating circumstance in the appeal process. The EFL noted how we intentionally avoided paying Villa and hoped it would get brushed under the carpet. We didn’t act in good faith during the entire debacle. We probably would’ve gotten it down to one window if we just admitted fault due to cash flow problems.
Whilst I don’t want ‘my’ club to behave this way it is just as common in the UK to hold off payments to suppliers whenever you want or need to . And a CFO saying ‘they are not there to fund our club’ is a common variation of why should we wait , to help you keep going? The construction industry has been the worse for 30 years for doing this , my wife has this as a credit controller and she chases money on a daily basis , it’s not just the dodgy ones it’s the big companies too . Why do you think the utility companies want you to pay a fixed upfront sum every month, they make more off the flow of cash than the gas itself in a sense . That club took a risk it could pay when it liked but the CFO at Villa could have pushed this a lot earlier - because he didn’t the club got complacent . I have first hand experience of working at a company that for 6 years has had serious cash flow problems most of the time and brinkmanship is a daily duty - I didn’t like it but without this 55 people would have been unemployed pretty quickly - the owner and the CEO worked miracles to keep it going and still do . It’s not as simple as some suggest .
There's holding off to pay suppliers to sort your cash flow and then there's the EFL declaring that the club intended to get away with it as long as possible so as not to pay.
Then how come it’s only us and the other basket case Sheffield Wednesday currently under these restrictions? The 30-day rule is there for a reason. The CFRU even noted that other clubs like Oxford United and Newport County got off much lightly because A. the sums of money owed were significantly lower and B. they acted in relatively good faith throughout the entire process. We were 143 days overdue for the loan payment and 168 days overdue for the wages. It’s not some little common mistake that all businesses make. The CFRU were explicit in the appeal notes that our behaviour are exactly why the rules exist in the first place. They wanted to make an example out of us. At every point, the club made the wrong decision.