FPP to take full control

I asked a simple enough question Bob. If he negotiated a price of £80m with a buyer in cash, how much of that £80m would he have left to the club?

Because the short answer is none. He would have taken all of that cash for himself.

Yet in the reverse situation, people make excuse after excuse for him to leave the club in dire straits rather than paying debts that he claimed he was paying the whole time.

So yes, it is material, because the reason we are in this situation, facing a third successive season in League One, is because we have been unable to make progress on the pitch because there was no money available. We've stripped everything back, which is fine, but we are barely competitive in this division and that is at odds with the amount of money we should have been able to spend on the club when £40m+ has come in over the last 2 seasons.

You're just trotting out the same PR lines as Charlie, talking about how we were a failing club before the saviours Donald and Methven took over. Totally neglecting that there were other options.

 

I’m absolutely puggled mate. I can’t remember a time when following our club was complicated. I just used to rock up with my mates at a pub, few bevvies into the game and a few more bevvies celebrating or commiserating depending on the game. It was fun and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some fantastic people who share the same passion as me along the way.
I do feel that we have been very badly let down here though and the situation as it is is unsustainable. Something needs to change sooner rather than later.

 

Agreed. I just pop on to this thread now in the hope that something concrete happens.

 

And a fine dream it is too

The frustrating thing is that SD made out that he understood all that and he was going to implement his best version of it.

In reality he tried, badly, to flip the club, and ended up swimming in ever decreasing circles like a fat little duck wondering why people can’t stand him.

 

I just can't believe how hard it seems to be for successful businessmen to make a bloody appointment. I mean look from Short onwards, we've had De Fanti (because an agent will obviously be a mint director of football), Congerton, Bain, now we've got Hill, this Rodwell knacker, partly as a result of bad recruitment team we've seen countless managers look clueless and need to move on. At this level in particular you don't really need to be massively wealthy to run a club. You just need a good recruitment team and someone competent as a CEO with someone competent financially alongside if you can't do the job yourself. Get decent players in cheap, do quite well, sell for profit, get better players that fit the system. I'm not saying it's easy but **** me I don't know how we, for well over a decade, have managed to get it so wrong. If we had a good recruitment team we'd be up already and Donald would be gone for a profit, it shouldn't be this bloody hard

 

With Donald and his cronies this is entirely intended. The Kafkaesque smoke and mirrors, companies within companies, inter company loans and interest charges, and spin with words and phrases are meant to confuse Joe Public. This is what Salmon Pants meant by the "fantastically uneducated in business" accusation of Sunderland fans. I just call it not being staightforward and honest.

 

Youre right mate...an easy enough operation has been made so complicated and costly for the last 10 years or so within the club. I bet theres no other club that have.....

Employed a director of football with no experience of the role (De Fanti)
Paid £10 mill + for a player that never played for us again (Alverez)
Paid £13 mill + for a player that went AWOL and had to be sacked (NDong)
Paid £8 mill + for a player that played 1 first team game from the club we bought him from, went AWOL and had to be sacked (Dilibodji)
Paid £10 mill + for a Man City reserve with injury problems then milked the club for £70k a week for 4 years without playing in the first team (Rodwell)

There are many other examples but not as high profile as those listed but guess what?? The piss taking party is over by all accounts

 

Bingo. Everything they have done was exactly for this purpose, to obfuscate our view.

None of us can ever be completely right from the outside (even when we suspect they're up to no good) because it's been set up to deliberately make sure we look at the wrong things or get distracted by what happened a year ago, rather than what they're doing right now.

 

Spot on. And that started right at the beginning. Most people were happy to see them come in so they had goodwill. Literally no one would have complained if they'd been truthful and said "we've spent £15m to buy the club and we've had to commit to using the £25m parachute payment to pay off the loan to SBC, so things will be tight at the start but we're confident we'll turn it around". We knew that loan and its interest rate was a major headache for the club, seeing it gone was greatly welcomed. So why not just say that? Why not start with the truth? The only reason I can see is to immediately muddy the water. Its not just bad communication, its an obvious attempt to make things unclear despite saying they were all about transparency. Given that they misled from the start, you have to wonder whether they ever cared at all about being open and honest with the fans or whether it was all a bit of a ruse to get the fans onside, buying them more time to get out with a healthy profit. I don't think they expected so many educated fans to look into it, and they (or certainly Methven) seemed very put out when they did.

 

Its no different from many Business's .Why would you want customers, competitors or suppliers to know how your Business works or its financial details..If anything they have given too much info out. Thats why they have many hundreds of us lot trying to intervene or judge them on day to day matters. which just adds to the mess they have.

 

They've had too because they have been gutting the club and realised we aren't fools.

Hence why Charlie boy bottled it and ****ed off as he wouldn't be able to show his face now.

 

We all knew we had a Business model that failed in the PL and needed major cost cutting to survive two relegations . I just think we didn't really comprehend how bad it was. For me the financial engineering and company structures are just part of Business, it is their lack of resources and football nouse that undermines their plan to flip the club.
Ever since Murray sold we have had distant owners and ,I think this shows in the poor daily management and structure of us .We desperately need a local management team to run this club.

 

If managed correctly we will get back to the PL no doubt about it but at the moment we need these guys gone.

They way they are cutting the academy also which was one of our gems.

They didn't cost cut to improve and build foundations they've cost cut to try spend as less as possible and sell us on to a new owner.

 

The “unbelievably uneducated in business” was a bit rich coming from a windbag whose only real job was as a journalist followed by a cushy PR job.

All he’s done is talk a lot in a loud voice not unlike those people at graft who do **** all except pretend to be busy.

He’s often said the complete opposite of what Donald was saying

He’s done about 60 percent of the talking when he only owns six percent of the club.

 

Yeah I believe they thought it would be easy. Charlie clearly has believed we don't have the collective business acumen to understand this from before he started working with Donald. I think it was premeditated, they sat down and worked out a plan to make the entire thing as messy as possible from the outside and hope they could shift us before they had to publicly explain anything.

 

Ffs our Academy used to loan out players to league 1 teams...

You'd have thought that would be something to strengthen and looking back if they did we wouldn't be where we are now...

Soon as we got relegated from PL it was jump ship and been **** all investment since just absolutely gutted the club.

 

He's a blue blood ponce I'd be tempted to plant one on his nose and I'm not a violent person.

Can't stand the smarmy kernt.

 

He’s a disgrace to blue blood ponces tbf

 

Aye some actual are a success and not just along for the ride... ****er!

 

I also would like them to move on and quick.I'm not defending them, because the situation with the fans is of their own making ,but they cut cost to ensure we still had football club... how far and how deep can of course be argued over ..