All Smoke and Mirrors

Can we stop this Evans bollox please? ITFC is his business, he is the owner, if the business is successful its down to him, if its struggling and losing money and running up debt he is responsible. We can either carry on as we are which makes no sense or serious investment is needed to bring success, if Evans isn't prepared to do this he should get out so we can get new ambitious owners who will.

 

fieldmarshall I think if Hurst doesn't get us promoted in 3 seasons he will put the club up for sale. If he is thinking about selling the last thing he'll want to do is load the club with debt and make it a lot harder to find a buyer.

 

I couldnt agree more FM.

 

Hasn't he already done that? Load the club with debt! First you say that we are £50 Million in debt and then you say the last thing he will want to do is load the club with debt! Which is it?

 

No Warky. I said with your approach we could add at least £50m of debt to the figure. Evans bought the club and its debt, and it's got bigger. If he wants to sell it he would presumably have to cut some of the losses, so if this is in his mind the last thing he is going to do is lose an additional £10m or £20m on top of the money he pumps in.

This is not very complicated to get your head around Warky, I thought you were an intelligent chap.

 

According to our last audited accounts, published last December, our debt to Marcus Evans stood at £89.26m. The good news is that the debt is owed entirely to Evans and not to any third party organisation, avoiding complications or forced repayments. The bad news is that if Evans was to sell the club on, a potential buyer would have to pay the value of club, plus the debt to Evans, and then anything extra Evans wants. The figure was £32m when Evans originally bought the club. That was the price for backing Keane and Jewell with wasted millions and then having to leave McCarthy and Hurst to work within tight budgets.

As Warky said, I’d love a big cash injection to help Hurst (hopefully Evans will be tempted in a couple of windows time if he sees progression), but that £89m figure will keep on inching upwards regardless. Surely it’s better to keep it manageable than risk adding another £20m onto it by splashing out? Had Evans surrounded himself with better advisors and football people when he initially took over, there is a good chance that the figure wouldn’t be that high and we would have had a promotion campaign by now.

 

Evans is not going to ask for extra. Either we get promoted or eventually he may decide he wants to stop losing money and would sell the club at a loss. If Evans is thinking that way why would he want to lose an extra £20m? Realistically £20m is not going to be anywhere near enough to guarantee a top two finish. It would be madness. The only way he can come out of this well is by not allowing the debt to rise by more than a controlled amount and waiting it out until we have a good season and go up.

 

Evans bought the club for a pittance and it would not take the full amount of the current debt to be paid back for him to make a profit. Everyone gets caught up in the figures but in reality he could wipe that number out and sell us for much less and still be quids in.

Nobody on here has thought to mention that maybe Hurst wanted rid of some of the players we got such good fees for, it's all just bashing on ME. Webster had a lot of injuries, Garner too, perhaps Paul didn't want to risk having a medical room full of players he can't use!
The outgoings were needed to finance the lads that were brought in so now he just needs to get them up to speed and create a playing identity. Like I said in another post, I hope we stay far enough from the relegation zone to let him do his work this season. Like somebody else mentioned, I also hope that if some of these new lads (or Paul himself) are a success that they don't get poached in a year or eighteen months. One of my current concerns is that if Paul is headhunted that he will be off in a flash. He seems driven to test himself at higher levels.

 

I think MM liked and used the lack of funds as an excuse for mediocrity.

 

Absolutely bang on.

 

I think this shows, more than anything else, that Evans gives a lot of freedom to the coaching staff in identifying targets.

If MM was still in charge we probably still would have sold one of Bart/Waghorn, on previous record I'm not confident the replacement would have been very inspiring.

I can't pretend it's not concerning that we now have what feels like a promoted squad without the benefit of momentum, but we do have experience in the squad, and ultimately we'll have more exciting football on display. It may take time, it may go horribly wrong, but we are at the start of a brave new journey, let's get behind the players Hurst has chosen and enjoy the ride.

 

Rubbish.

He got us 2nd in Jan 2015 and his reward - Fryers on loan / Chaplow and £200k on Sears.

He even had a right dig at us on BT sport earlier. Comedy gold. We stitched him up a ruddy treat.

Whether people like or hate him - I can take either viewpoint. But we never backed him at all in 5.5 years.

 

Have to disagree Westy.

Where do you think the names of targets came from. McCarthey can't take credit for Waghorn then disown the transfer policy. Warky started this thread complaining we're still not backing the manager financially, we are still being frugal - were the crosshairs are just pointing in a different direction.

 

Who did he want/ask to sign in Jan2015?

He never criticised lack of funds just used it to justify.....imo

 

Well I'm quite sure he'd have wanted more to get us over the line than who he was given!

The Knockaert U turn was a major kick in the teeth that season, and Woods going back when finally fit. Doh.