Ian Buxton's Bat

Excerpt from 'Stephen' in urban dictionary

"Stephen can be stubborn, and often doesn't accept losing"

I'll be desperate to get one over them on Saturday but, taking a long term view, I'm quite relaxed about Boro away.

It feels a bit like a free hit.

Win and it helps us stay up. Lose and Boro have 4 points from us that could be like gold dust for Mr Steve Stevie-Stephen and his desperation for the play-offs at the end of the season.

Imagine if he dragged this out until then and we decided to self-liquidate during the last week, expunging our points and thus pushing them out of the play-offs.

Losing could actually be a decent bargaining chip in the whole drawn-out saga.

15 minutes ago, The Big One said:

We need a complete reset.  I am done.  Its an utter mess.  Lets do a Rangers or a Aldershot, rise from the Ashes.  Northern Premier League be fun.

Be careful what you wish for.

I'm very close to the 'don't give Gibson a penny - and sod it if we have to start again' position...... but I did go to watch a Northern Premier League game on Saturday. The occasion, ambience etc was great but the the game was utter, utter rubbish.

High court with Mel or high court for the club, underwritten by Mel, is the only sensible option.

23 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

That's an interesting sidestep from Parry

The EFL's cop-out has always been that they have to represent ALL member clubs and cannot be seen to be favouring one over the other

So here, he is basically saying - "if MFC and WWFC agree to it, then we have no reason to disagree - none of it is our fault"

Which in turn means that MFC and WWFC either agree to it, or they are explicitly admitting that they DO want to extort an "out of court" settlement from DCFC the club - because they've been given an opportunity to take it up with MM directly, and have it dealt with properly in a court of law - outside of our administration/insolvency process.

If they believe they have a case - they should be confident enough to take that opportunity

If they don't take it - it's because they know they have no case, but instead know that they can extort money from the club who are on the brink of liquidation

 

 

 

Maybe I'm being pedantic and paranoid - but surely it's up to the individual clubs to decide so it should read "if MFC OR WW". I would have thought it's perfectly plausible and entirely fair and proper for each club to make their own mind up ........but then again the three entities (MFC, WW and EFL) may just be working together? 

16 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Today Nicko seems to be bashing the B/WW claim trolls. 

 

Alan Nixon clearly knows a lot about what is going on - the main quibble has been that he's been dishing out the info in something akin to Times crossword clues.

However it does seem like it's national come off the fence day.

First the EFL - nailing their colours to the good ship Steve-Stephen-Stevie and then Nixon speaking clearly....... literally calling Wycombe ambulance chasers and having a pop at the size of Steve-Stephen-Stevie's claim.

It's long overdue and welcome.

EFL have now come off their fence and officially opened the can of worms.

Surely Q must give some sort of notice of their intention to pursue claims against QPR and Villa ASAP.

If this goes to court and we lose v Boro then it's almost a given that we'd win vs QPR and Villa.

Now that spurious claims have been legitimised as football debts, surely the £300 m or so that we'd claim from QRP and Villa could be popped on our balance sheet and we could become quite attractive to a buyer.......like buying a house with a winning lottery ticket left in the attic.

If we'd got one of their CB's sent off in similar fashion we'd have been praising our midfield for pressing so quickly.

They'd done their homework but when we see we're getting pressed so quickly (we'd already mucked around about 3 times in the first 2 minutes) we should change tack and go longer - but without Fozzy or CKR we seem to have no appetite for an out ball.

Strangely enjoyable. Thought Huddersfield were decent and impressed with their work rate so we did massively well to hold out and essentially lose to a fluke.

For once it wasn't a quiet, sombre drive back......very proud of the team and support was immense.

They've not slithered away after the transfer window 'slammed shut' so now the parasites' motives are becoming clearer - money or liquidation. Or the real threat of liquidation to get SOME money......where they take their knees off our neck at the 11th hour.

I'm actually heartened by the radio silence from the MP's. They pushed to bring this to a head and almost certainly pushed for the arbitration / civil case - and I would hope that they would have got satisfactory assurances from the EFL that the process that was about to happen would be fair and proper.

As fans, what we could do with is at least some sort of trusted overseer - such as one of the MP's - to have access to a timetable, structure and process so they could at least reassure us that things are progressing and being done fairly even if they can't share details. I'm thinking along the lines of the American chap that oversaw the IRA destroying their arms so they could do it in private but without suspicion.

46 minutes ago, TheresOnlyWanChope said:

I think whatever happens this season, we really have seen some awful behaviour- people like Gibson with fictional claims, Birmingham fans singing about Derby County dying, Mel Morris putting DCFC into administration after promising he would never leave the club in a bad state, EFL spinelessness etc etc. Brainless fans who go on about ‘Derby cheated they deserve it’ - Derby have been punished already. Even people criticising Derby for not selling players- we’ve lost 4 senior players in Jan and we have a load of teenagers! 
Im sure we will never forget. 
Great to see Boro sold out already. We would have taken a lot more. Unreal that there are so many Boro fans defending Gibson. He really has no integrity. 
Definitely don’t approve Derby fans singing about Gibson’s death. That’s awful. But I hope there are a million songs criticising him next month. 

Song for Boro......to the tune of Will Grigg's on Fire

Teeside is dire

Your chairman's a parasite

Na,na,na...etc

Obviously we don't know exactly what is going on because of the paucity of decent information.

However, as a previous poster said, this is now probably about egos as much as anything.

Yesterday I spent around £120 on trains, food and drink for my family on top of the season ticket costs and I guess a lot of other people do the same. The amount spent in the local community per game on top of tickets must be huge. (25,000 spending £40 is a million)

Both Mel and Mr Steve Stephen-Stevie have got Queen's honours that could be removed, Mel's for 'services to business' and Steve's for 'services to the economy, sport and the community'. Surely deliberately taking actions that could result in a club being liquidated and catastrophically affecting a local economy and community undermines their legitimacy to hold those titles?

Perhaps Dame Margaret could suggest that they may perhaps lose their inferior honours if they don't see sense and find a way forward. Failing that then maybe a UK Govt petition would allow all MP's to consider it.

I know that threatening to take away someone's title seems petty but the previous poster may be onto something. Going away quietly with an OBE intact may be a choice an egotist would make.

54 minutes ago, Rammy03 said:

 

I see this as positive. Bringing things to a head.

Clearly the MPs have banged some heads together and have broken the impasse.

EFL saying "you need to name a PB but we're not telling you what they are bidding for" has been rumbled..... and onwards we go to arbitration, court cases etc.

Unless it's the jury from the O.J. Simpson case I think we'll be in a better place this time next week (and I don't mean Middlesbrough).

25 minutes ago, Shipley Ram said:

Actually I think Wycombe are owed an appology, by the EFL for persisting with the duel fixture farce after the the DC gave us until after the season had started to restate our accounts. It's clear the EFL were desperate to relegate us and launched the duel fixtures to put pressure on the DC,  but thankfully the DC had a mind of their own.

Duel fixture list? Freudian slip?

Wazza vs Gibson in the last shootout of the season.

7 minutes ago, angieram said:

All this "we", who is "we"? 

WE are in administration,  and the administrators are in charge. They can't be suing anybody.

 

Very interesting article here on director's personal liability.

So far, everyone has assumed that operating within a limited company offers total personal protection. It doesn't.

https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/when-can-company-directors-be-personally-liable

"In this case the defendants had failed to comply with the National Minimum Wage, and did so with intent, and this factored into the court’s decision; however, the court ultimately found it was more the fact the Directors had wrecked the reputation of the company in the eyes of the community which rendered their conduct as falling outside the scope of their authority, and contrary to the interests of their company.

The court concluded the desire to maximise the profits of the company in the manner in which they did, were neither in the interests of the company nor its employees."

Presume all those owed money could consider seeking money from ex-directors.

Rick Parry was on 5 Live last week saying that 'the EFL have processes to deal with club disputes', referring to the Boro and Wycombe claims.

We are all guessing at what's really happening and what the order of priorities is but we do know that if the vexatious claims went away, or were classed as non-footballing debts, then we'd be in a better position.

We should encourage the MP's and media to force the EFL to convene a meeting/tribunal (or whatever the process is) in the next week.

If we win and they are dismissed and/or deemed non-footballing debts, then we're over a hurdle.

If we lose and they are deemed footballing debts, we may lose a bidder and ultimately we may get liquidated but..........

......as soon as they are deemed footballing debts, we go after QPR, Villa etc and register those made up figures (£200m?) on our balance sheet. When pressed, they will not dare to legitimise the Boro and Wycombe claims.

We have to bring this one to a head.