I doubt he's out of his depth Plymborn but the fact is that when somebody is trying to sell something - especially when it's not particularly attractive - and others are considering buying but aren't particularly bothered either way, then the buyers always have the whip hand. The seller can posture and gesticulate and set deadlines and monetary demands as much as he likes but in the end it's more heat than light. It's such a case here. Nobody with the necessary money wants PAFC for itself and we are just lucky in the extreme that there's some one-off property development value to attract a buyer at all. As I've said before, that's a trick that can't be pulled twice and so we'd better hope the club is run conservatively in the future. We're also lucky as it's turned out to have Ridsdale, who's managed to pick up the football club from the wreckage for the £1 he had to spend when otherwise it might simply have been discarded. That's a very big thing for me to say because I hate the bloke! We've had a very lucky escape and we shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth this close to the abyss - to mix my metaphors just a bit. Of course, there would have been one other party who'd have taken the club on and that's the fans. I have to include myself in that so it's not a criticism as such but clearly as a group we haven't been as effective as those 40 miles up the road in Exeter in rescuing our club. Somebody's had to do it for us.
Precisely Distant if Exeter did, why not Plymouth? Was it the level of debt? Lack of a catalyst to kick start the process? Or the typical Plymothian attitude/platitude:- Talk big - act small ??
It would be a complicated deal Nicky because of the property content - it's not just buying a football club. Given the size of the debts and the fact the property deals make the break-up value much higher than the value of the club, any fans group would have still have had to get in bed with a property developer to raise the necessary money, otherwise the creditors wouldn't have approved the offer. We would however have had fan ownership rather than Ridsdale, we could have picked a property developer with local interests and a sympathetic attitude [if such a beast exists] and maybe got slightly better terms. However, the dynamics wouldn't have been very much different and to be honest I think it's beyond a group of fans to pull that sort of a deal off. Still, don't criticise what you can't do yourself, eh? If we'd been a similarly sized club in London or the London travel to work area with City connections in its fan base maybe it would work. I'm not so confident about clubs in the depths of Devon!
just added DS to my ignore list. I no longer have to even see anything that the plank has to say. What a wonderful facility!
Why does it have to be all cloak and bloody dagger! They wanna buy then let's see who they are. They make you suspicious of them and that's not a good start to the relationship is it.
I have only put one person on my ignore list and that is the way I will keep it despite my loathing for the other contender. Having criticised the previous Boards for not spending money it didn't have and then criticising them for doing it eventually I find it hard to follow his logic at all. I have only ever read that Argyle is a train wreck from him whatever they have done. One excuse after another not to support the club and then the gaul to add the word "we" when referring to other supporters. You DS are a total 100% contradiction in your views. You won't agree with that because you will have conveniently forgotten all the naff things you have estolled the club to do. What you are saying now is that the club is not worthy of support at all. Well fine if that is your view but please have some respect for the view of others who are still willing to give it a go.
Again, fair play Distant - a reasoned response - as usual. All down to assets/property & land, But as Karl (not Groucho) Marx said: Property is theft. Or as Groucho said (ish): I never forget a face, but in your (DS) case, I'll make an exception
Moan bloody moan moan Reid-all-about-it. Blind dates can be just as successful as picking up one in a pub after viewing. I bet you look on all of the labels on the food you buy to see who made it don't you.
It is all about the property Nicky but as I keep on saying [although I'm not sure anyone's listening], if it wasn't for the property, who'd want PAFC? It's being portrayed as theft or worse whereas it's quite conceivable that without it, we'd be in liquidation not administration. And it's not a trick that can be pulled again so Ridsdale had better run the club conservatively. I think old Karl is a bit of a broken record but Groucho has a quote for every occasion. Like PAFC he said that he'd worked his way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Thinking it over, I had another listen to Guilfoyle's radio interview. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/plymouth_argyle/9519561.stm If there's one thing that gets us over-excited in all this, it's the expectation that something's going to happen and then it doesn't, giving rise to the suspicion something's wrong somewhere. What Guilfoyle says at the very top of the interview is that the TERMS of the Sale & Purchase Agreement have been agreed between the parties and that it's now down to the lawyers to write the contract before signing. That's a good thing but not at all the same as saying the SPA itself has been agreed. From here on in there'll be lengthy debates between lawyers on the exact phraseology to be used. This isn't just time wasting and lawyers inflating their fees [although it often looks a lot like it], there's a whole sackful of law behind specific phrases and two ways of saying something which may look identical to a layman actually have quite different legal interpretations so there can be battles royal about which is used. If the two parties are very keen to get it done quickly and control their lawyers, things may be relatively quick but if anyone thought that meant completion might be expected in a couple of days I'm afraid we may still be looking at a couple of weeks. Equally of course it's possible for a deal that's been agreed commercially to fall over in the legals, but perhaps it's best not to think about that........
