Nowt new in those revelations. Anyone who has been on a messsge Board in the last 18 months would know must of that stuff
Despite it telling us pretty much what we already knew, its even more depressing having it all put down in one article. I have to hope that we can get an owner / owners with the balls and money to give our club the shake up from top to bottom that it needs
Exactly, nothing really new there apart from a couple of quotes but just the same crap we have heard before. The mags will be patting themselves on the back though for a job well done.
My only question is what is going to happen next, are RAWA,Als etc going to put pressure on are will they be too concerned about the current climate etc. I only know the three numptys over the road that defend Donald neeone else so having the fans backing shouldn’t be a problem. Bottom line is this can’t continue, daily criticism from the media is good for us wanting them out but generally poor for the image of the club.
That quote tells you all you need to know. The article is just a bit of propaganda by this consortium (Campbell presumably?) to get the price down. Explains why there is nothing new in it.
Yep! Everything in that article was common knowledge at the time it's from. So surely responsible journalists would have reported at the time. Not wait until the damage was done and write a eulogy.
They are just putting the boot in for some reason, keeping how bad it is in the public eye - maybe to put buyers off.
Different parties (including supporters) putting the boot in will surely make buyers have second thoughts.
If I were a potential buyer, I would look at the positives and negatives of the fan base - I can see both even as a fan. Overall, there are certainly more positives in my opinion and I hope that decent prospective buyers will also see that.
I'd say the vast majority of our supporters are reasonable people, but passionate. There's always a few shouty self important 'realists' who seem to regard hoping for the best is 'settling for shyte and deserving no better'. Things is, and no respect to clubs other clubs that could be bought, we're worth buying and investing in. The slightest glimmers of 'success' have seen a packed modern stadium and thousands away every time. Sensible planning and investment would be repaid ten fold.
This has been bugging me this morning talking with my mates about the Athletic article. Short ran up that debt. You may argue it was the club doing it, but it wasn't. It was Short using a loan mechanism to finance something he wanted to do, not the club as some sentient being. Even worse, he actually made himself a martyr at one point by then saying how good he was for doing so. And this is the crux of it Bob, perhaps as a non-SAFC fan you see it differently, but if our owner takes us on and 'funds significant shortfalls' that result from his mismanagement, his decisions and his desire to spend more than he is recouping, then why is the club left with a debt at the end of it? Does the club get a proportion of the money he makes if he sells for a profit? No. The club is passed to someone else as a clean slate for them. In this case, Short racked up hundreds of millions of debt funding us, and when the time came to pay it, he found two people who were willing to channel £25m to him out of the club's future money. Donald and Methven effectively used the club to give themselves an interest free loan that they sent to Ellis Short, and then wiped from their own liabilities before it was repaid, while simultaneously using it to inflate the purchase price they have not paid. Does that not strike you as odd? I have no sympathy for Donald here. He either had the money to pay for us and took £25m out of the club at a time when it was needed most, or he didn't have the money and misled everyone, including the EFL, as to his ability to buy the club. The one thing we can be sure of is that Ellis Short was in on either of those options.
The issue is timing. You're right, it's not good enough and he needs to go for the footballing side nevermind the rest of the stuff. Trouble is the season ending, the continuing financial stories, all of this is coming out in the middle of a pandemic. There's no way to really push a #donaldout thing now and some would criticise strongly for going on about football when there's still people dying and football isn't at the forefront of many people's minds. There was a lot of criticism of the original statement just because we eventually won a couple of games in league one, so the timing has to be spot on next time. I know for a fact that the RAWA will go again with it, but I couldn't say when. One problem though will be the next obvious time might be if the accounts are less than rosy and (since many aren't bothered about accounts) next season starts badly. But that's yet more wasted time, potentially another wasted season. Sadly there's just not an ideal time, a campaign now likely wouldn't gain much traction whilst there's no games being played, even if it's confirmed the season is finished some would say its harsh to criticise when we might have gone up had the season played out (however unlikely it was in reality). I still wish a good group like FPP would tip their hat, confirm they want the club, confirm they haven't got it because of an unrealistic demand from the owner. That would get just about every fan on side, would give a clear plan B as that knacker on smb would say, and would be a clearly good time to really turn up the pressure