Spot on as usual mate, the downside is every day is another lost opportunity. Do we just stand by as Roker burns
100% this. Leaving us to drift in the wind is a bad decision by FPP imo. I heard something this morning that the first installment of the FPP loan was due back in February - that seems... odd. I hope it's not true, put it that way.
I'm puzzled as to how that fits into your previous comments about this being the position that suited them best.
This is my frustration If someone could come in and sweep all the last few years **** away and start again. Build the club on proper foundations, invest in the academy, get proper football people into the important roles they fans would back them in their 1,000's. In my head and obviously its through SAFC tinted glasses, I see it as this: - Buy SAFC for £20 million Employ the best football / finance people you cant get - £10 million - NOTE the Manager / Coaches etc to be responsible for a full footballing philosophy that runs through every level of the club Replace pretty much the entire first team squad with new players, not freebie has beens, but players that can move up to the next level and beyond - £15 million Overhaul the academy and scouting with the best coaches etc available - £10 million Generally update the stadium - £5 million Total initial outlay - £60 million That should get us out of League 1 and into the championship Improve the squad in the championship with lower premier league players etc - £75 million Then we end up in the Premier League... Invest further funds on better players - £100 million (bear in mind we would already have a half decent squad) Total Outlay - £235 million Income from finishing 10th in Premier League - £123 million Obviously wishful thinking and a lot of optimism, but if it was done right, there would be full houses every week, hospitality would be full, our commercial side would generate more funds. I know its all a dream, but its not a bad thing to dream especially in these current times
It would be lovely and I am dreaming a bit for someone to go and ask the FPP what thier plans are, I am sure people have already reached out to them to ask this but Donald did say best ask them why they chose not to do the takeover. It would be nice to hear even via a newspaper article what their plans were or still are. They hold all the cards and I appreciate that they may be waiting for Donald to fall on his sword over the price but the club is at its lowest its ever been so some clarity would be nice.
Whether or not protests by fans against Donald & Co. put prospective buyers off, any owner that wants to be successful should understand the mood of the fanbase and what it will and won't accept. As much as I'm a big di Canio fan, Short arguably didn't consider the political stance of a lot of fans when making that appointment. Similarly, Venky's didn't think about the reaction from Blackburn fans when appointing Owen Coyle, a former Burnley and Bolton manager. Not appreciating these things, and treating fans only as numbers, does not lead to success, as some of the examples in this Guardian article from 2016 demonstrate https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...otest-club-owners-blackburn-coventry-charlton
This was/is the position that suits them best, but if we are left with Donald pulling the strings for another year, do you think we'll get promoted? At that point, will they take us on? That's what I mean, even if they're acting in their own interests now, if they are serious about wanting us at some point, the longer we have Donald aimlessly trying to sell us to someone else, the worse off the asset they would be buying.
Well I don’t see it as Ellis Short being funnelled £25m of the club’s money, it was simply repaying him the money he had lent. Anyone who bought the club would have had to repay the £25m debt to Short. If he hadn’t sold it then, he could have repaid himself. Was it an odd way of repayment? Yes. No doubt there were all sorts of factors such as wanting to get the deal done before the new season, cash flows, tax considerations. But in the big picture does it really matter how Ellis Short was paid back? Whether he wrote off the debt but said they had to give him the parachute payments or didn’t write off the debt but the parachute payments got used to pay it off doesn’t make any real difference. The stupid mistake that was made was claiming that £40m was paid for the club when that was clearly not the economic reality. Having a £25m debt and knowing £25m in cash is arriving next month does not mean you have £25m. The parachute payments were never there. The money had already been spent before SD even turned up - that is why there was a debt. The convoluted way in which it made its way back to Ellis to clear the debt was odd but nothing more than that. I don’t have the emotional attachment to SAFC you are correct - though hoping for a Netflix Season 3 - but the basic facts are that Ellis Short lost something like £140m which he had pumped into SAFC. So to then say that the last £25m was ‘our’ money rather than his is the sort of conversation I have with my wife. My money is ours and hers is hers. I’m not suggesting Madrox haven’t screwed up but as far as I can see SD has put in £12m of his own cash, Sartori another £3m for the equity of the club. Then FPP injected around £10m then SD put up another £6m (the loan to Madrox). So there has been £16m of fresh funds put into the club since SD took over.
On the bolded bit, if Short had sold us for a £140m profit, what proportion of that would we expect him to give to the club when he left? I can tell you, but you know the answer. He ran this debt up himself, for his benefit as well as the clubs, but ultimately at his behest. He was by a couple of accounts now, willing to pay off the debt for other bidders, there seems to have been at least one bid that would have ended up with us debt free, and the club still having all the PP. And again, when Donald and Methven used the parachute payments, you can't deny that they got a £25m interest free loan out of SAFC that they have used for their own benefit, to inflate the price of an asset they stand to profit from, that they would not have been able to fund in normal circumstances. The argument that it was a club debt ignores all of this, it wasn't a club debt, it was Ellis Short's debt taken out using the club, and he bragged about funding these shortfalls out of his own pocket. When it came to put his hand in his own pocket, he left a third of that debt with us. Nice work.
I think they must have if it's true, but I sincerely hope this is not the case, because it means FPP have a more conventional loan into us, rather than an investment. Every penny he pays back is a penny towards them not owning us, and every penny he pays back takes away the amount of equity they can convert. If you want to own something this way, you don't set it up to be repaid that soon, it defeats the purpose. The source that came from is at the club but I don't know if he would know the financial stuff. I suspect it might be crossed wires, I hope so.
What I heard sounded more severe than that. I heard that he was deferring player wages in Feb to pay back FPP. I honestly can't see that having been the case because I reckon it would have leaked by now, and like I say, it doesn't fit with FPP's charge which implies that they haven't just made a standard loan.
Like you say, it would have been out by now and likely in the article from The Athletic. PFA have to be informed of wage deferral agreement iirc. Assume what you've heard is true in terms of February repayment, then the club (within normal cashflow) and Madrox are unable to fund it and if that were the case, the house of cards would be very vulnerable.
I honestly think that was the intention from day one, by all of them. Get us to the point where the details are so overwhelming that we just give up.
Well I don’t quite see the benefit of a buyer trying to inflate the price of an asset they are buying. That is normally the sellers job. I suspect it suited Ellis to dress the sale up as a price of £40m rather than £15m with the repayment of his loan as it was less embarrassing. What SD thought he was playing at claiming that he didn’t need the parachute payments I don’t know but let’s assume it was bravado as well. Either way, I just don’t see it as material. The main issue was that you had a League One club with premier league wage contracts running at a loss of £25m a year. They have managed tk hack the costs back but even with an extra £16m injected from SD and FPP, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. I think SAFC will get promoted in the next couple of seasons but getting out of the Championship is not going to be easy. There are some very good clubs in there.
