In case you didn't catch todays result --..................Colchester 5 Gills 1 Is it too early to despair about a result where Gills concede goa5fls ( 5f in 'goals' ) against lower league opposition in a pre season friendly* * (not including Mark Byrne.)
I really don't want to be negative - before the season starts --- but -- I am not inspired, let alone confident that we won't struggle against relegation. The wins against the non- league teams, count for nothing. Against Colchester, Gills fielded what will probably make up 9 or 10 of the starting line up next week - and we were humiliated. Colchester could have scored more ( without Byrne's help ). Other forums have raised the issue of Scally giving NO money for transfers. Comments also point out that Gills have received unexpected money from Dack's transfer ( bonus for Blackburn's promotion ), and Egan's sell-on. The total of just these two windfalls must surely be £1,000,000 ------- and I'm not going to mention Centreplate, £1.36 Million (( alright - I've mentioned it ! )). My question to Mr.Scally " What are you doing with the mo'f'ney ?"
Don't despair alwaysright. Yeovil 5 - 1 Argyle. You aren't the only ones to have to suffer pre-season crap.
Yes we have had extra windful from those 2 players. No money spent on players transfers. We should have paid a decent fee for someone. If that player was on the up we could still make a profit on the right player. I like you am losing patience with chairman. He is still picking up 250k a year.
Not really sure how you can write off these players that Lovell has brought in yet with them haven't even playing a league game yet. Yes so we lost to Colchester but it was a friendly. Byrne got sent off early and the coaching staff wouldn't have done any homework on Colchester as it's not a league fixture. Accrington Stanley won League 2 last season with the lowest budget in the football league. Let's see how the boys get on after some actual competitive fixtures before being willing to throw the towel in yeah?
How do I feel after the Colchester defeat? "disappointed" One of our big problems last season was our defence, I know people will say that we didn't concede that many goals, but a lot of that was down to Holy. The number of shots he faced/saved was the highest in the league, hardly suggests the defence were good, the problem was being caught on the break while defenders were stranded out of position. Ehmer especially is too fast to push up into attack and too slow to get back when possession is lost, let's not pretend Byrne's sending off was the problem, we were already getting thrashed by then. Hopefully this was a bad day at the office (though Ebbsfleet was the same) and we have got it out of our system, I do worry that whilst our midfield look to have improved creativity, they have lost some grit. 5 days in which to get our minds focused and positivity levels high, today I can only see a struggle ahead and so hope I am wrong again, alwaysright and alwayswrong agreeing is probably a bad omen.
PegLeg, Desperation is second nature to Gills' fans! I've said many times that, it's not so much that we lose - but the way in which defeat is achieved. Against Colchester it wasn't a very professional display. Don't use Byrne's dismissal as an excuse - we were 0-3 before then, and looking poor. As for not knowing anything about the opposition - they are a L2 side -- what more do you need to know ? Despite the result, I actually feel that we have enough quality to avoid relegation - just -- but only if there is proper commitment from the players (( which I am not sure is totally given in 'friendlies')). However, after relegation fights in the last two seasons, another season of struggle holds no appeal. I understand that Mr. Scally will see the unexpected cash windfall as a way of balancing the books for the next 2 or 3 three years - but, we have had several cash 'bonuses' over several years ( without expenditure on players ) - surely some of that cash could be used to get one or two players who could make a big difference............... but, one difference is, that I don't have to rely on GFC for my £250,000 a year ( i wish )
grumpygit - don't apologise for stating the obvious............. wasn't it you who said that you can't polish a turd ?
Regardless of what level Colchester are at, for a league or cup game you would do your homework to find out their strengths and weaknesses. Colchester actually has a good squad and should be there or thereabouts for the play off positions. When you think about it, that's only really a handful of positions below us so there probably wouldn't be too dissimilar in terms of quality. With regards to the finances that's still a very tunnel vision approach. Yes we've had cash bonuses from Dack & Egan, but our recent financial figures show that we rely on this cash to try and stay afloat. We still at least £1.8m in debt and a possible missing £3-5m possibly owed to Barclays. If a business still owes money, it's very difficult to justify paying additonal funds when we haven't got the money in the first place. Financial fair play dictates we can only spend 60% of the club's turnover on players wages and if I remember correctly for 16-17 we ran at about 58% so about right. We can just throw additional money at a player if we're not getting the revenue from other sources and with falling attendances, that's very much where we are financially.
I can understand what your saying PegLeg, trouble is this isn't about money or doing homework, it's about responding to the situation. You don't need to be 3 goals down before realising that all is not well, SL needed to react quicker on the day. Are you suggesting that Colchester did do their homework on us and we just couldn't be bothered, that sounds equally bad.
Thank you grumpygit for keeping this thread on track - and Pegleg - I'm sorry for mentioning mon'f'ey........ Grumpygit has stated my thoughts on the game 'situation,' ..... and if we're talking money and FFP - I will take a lot of convincing that our Premier League sides have a 'turnover' large enough to be paying MULTI million £££ for players ( more than one in some cases )..... I may not have any business expertise - but surely, if a business makes a profit - why shouldn't it be allowed to spend the money how it likes ! ( regardless of the source of the profit ).............................. ................ and whilst I still have my blinkers on - we won't have to worry about Mr.Scally splashing any cash on transfer fees -- because he will always remind us that there is no 'f ' in money.
More the latter. From what I've read and heard, SL tried changing the formation and system various times to try and combat Colchester but were to no avail. Sometimes there is just a bad day at the office, Southend away was an example of this. I would much rather we had a bad day at the office during preseason than when the season is alive and kicking. One swallow does not make a summer and neither does one preseason game define how we will do this season.
FFP rules change from League to League. In the PL you are allowed 100% of your total revenue to be spent on players wages, a rather large increase than in League One. Each club in the PL earns a minimum of £100m from TV rights alone, this doesn't include the multimillion pound sponsorship or partnership deals the clubs may have. Manchester United for example has in excess of 30 different sponsors for various reasons and therefore can use whatever money they've got from that to purchase expensive players. We made a pre-tax profit of £2,000 which included the Egan money. How are we expected to go and buy players if we're only making enough profit to cover one players wage for a week? There is obviously still a major cash flow problem at the club currently if we can't survive without these additional sell on clauses and going out and buying players would just make it worse.
Thank you PegLeg - If there are different rules in each league - I'd be interested to know where the fairness bit comes in ! --- and, of course it's not as if we're awash with sponsorship money (( have you noticed that I didn't include any f in money as far as it relates to our wonderful sponsor ))
If clubs in league one and two were allowed to spend all of their revenue on player wages then sadly a number of them would trying to get to the promise of the next league up. That in my opinion would spell disaster for most of them that tried because their owners would walk away once the debts caused by the rest of their expenditure would prove too high. Clubs would fold. At least by starting at a 55% line that is avoided for most of them. Some still cook the books to artificially inflate their income figures but not that many. There will always be clubs in every league that is considered rich compared to others where owners prop up the bills. I have never understood the use of fairplay when it comes to finance.
As I'm away at the moment I don't have access to the current situation but from memory although the club has debts these are counter balanced by assets, notably the ground which was conveniently revalued in the 2015/16 accounts. This results in GFC actually having positive net value according to the balance sheet. If you've got a mortgage you've got a debt, but providing your property is higher than the amount of the mortgage you have positive net value. But what intrigues me is your comment about a possible £3-5m owed to Barclays. Can you please elaborate.
Found this on a message board from 2016... Quote: I think the below post is a good summation except that he gets his knickers in a twist over the valuation of the ground. It was £5m not £1.1m. £5m in total was repaid to BOS as part of the deal. Note 1 Scally has said that he has confidentiality agreements with BOS so he'll never discuss it. 2. It is not uncommon for banks to write off football club loans - Sheffield Wednesday had a write off of £17m and many other write offs will not have been declared publically. It's bad publicity to put a club into administration and in this case BOS would probably not have been able to get more than £5m anyway at the time. 3. Note that the Barclays loan has now been repaid and the only loans are owed to the directors. 4. Note that the ground was now able to be returned to the ownership of the Club from Priestfield Developments, that no outside party now has a charge over the ground (since Barclays have been repaid) but that Three Directors Ltd does have a charge. Postby ****** Sat Oct 22, 2011 9:39 am 'Just to expand on the Priestfield stadium ... Gillingham's Priestfield stadium was sold by the club for £10.1MM in May 2008, to Priestfield Developments Ltd (PDL), a fellow subsidiary of GFC Holdings, funded by loans from Bank of Scotland of £10.1MM. This was though basically a corporate restructuring. The £10.1MM wasn't 'new' money, it simply reduced the existing £13MM overdraft the club had with BOS. So in effect, BOS started off owed £13MM, lent £10.1MM to PDL, which paid Gillingham FC £10.1MM, which repaid BOS £10.1MM. So then BOS had a £3MM overdraft at Gillingham FC and a £10.1MM loan at PDL. In August this year, the stadium was apparently due to be sold back to the club for £1.1MM. PDL's filings state that mortgages over the property have now been satisfied, and the club now has legal charges over the ground due to another company, Three Directors Limited. Barclays also now has charges over Gillingham FC's assets. The joint owners and directors of Three Directors Limited just happen to be the same three directors of Gillingham FC (owner Paul Scally, Michael Anderson, and Michael Quarrington). My guess is that when the BOS overdraft came up for renewal in May, the group said it would not be able to repay / renew it unless the £10.1MM loan was reduced or written off - the stadium at this time perhaps valued at £1.1MM. (If BOS called in the mortgage/ overdraft and owned the stadium, they perhaps think its value is just £1.1MM). So BOS then say if the club can repay the overdraft and PDL can sell the stadium for £1.1MM, they will walk away - better to lose £9MM then lose the full £13MM they were owed. So what I think has then happened is that Three Directors Limited have scraped together £1.1MM and secured a new overdraft from Barclays. BOS lose £9MM. BOS is of course tax payer owned. So Gillingham have had a run in the Championship, have a fairly decent rebuilt ground (for home fans), of which £9MM has been paid for by the taxpayer.
Thanks for that brb. Although I was aware of much of that my brain has started to hurt from trying to work out the relevance of it to the current situation, and the potential liability to Barclays. More to follow when I'm back home on a rainy day.
Somebody on the Gills vital board has noted that there is a £5m debenture owed to Barclays which has appeared on the last few accounts but this is attributed to GFC Holdings and not Gillingham FC Ltd. He's under the impression we still owe £5m to Barclays. Where this has particularly come from I'm not sure. So with the three directors loan and also PDL also having had a debt of £9.5m which has now been dissolved, there still appears to be some financial irregularities in the accounts. I'm not an accountant and I'm not aware of what everything means in terms of how it affects us but it doesn't all quite add up.
