duncanjwitham

Behold the investigative power of a journalist going to the companies house website and downloading the publicly filed statement of affairs, that’s been there for months.

Behold the investigative power of a journalist going to the companies house website and downloading the publicly filed statement of affairs, that’s been there for months.

FYI, here's a little table of the teams who suffered P&S points deductions.

Inconsistencies throughout.
Birmingham the most harshly treated Delay in the season Sheff Weds got their penalty EFL's lateness in charging Derby for failed periods

Apologies for quoting myself, but just pondering where using company funds to pursue a personal vendetta against the ex-chairman of another rival company would fall on the director's personal liability scale. Asking for a friend...

I suspect it will be very hard to prove anything like that for our case.  As far as I can tell Morris has done nothing outright illegal (there's nothing like the minimum wage violation cited in that article, for example).  When you look at it, what he's actually done (on the financial side anyway) is commit us to spending beyond what we could afford, cover that shortfall personally, and then when COVID hit, stop covering it because the amounts he was required to put in went through the roof.  I don't think that's anywhere near to breaching the tests outlined in that article.
There's also this specific paragraph, which to me, pretty much underlines that we fall into the first category (no personal liability):
"It then drew an analogy between a director who deliberately breached the terms of a contract with a supplier by failing to pay a bill on time, to protect his company’s cash flow (no personal liability), and a director who uses horse meat instead of beef in burgers because it is cheaper (personally liable)."

Honestly, that paragraph sounds like the writer is completely confused about things.  The way I understood it was that paying HMRC 25% was fine (even with the change in their status), provided it was at least the 25% that the EFL insolvency policy requires.  And the updated law (that the EFL are out of date with) was more to do with compressing the 'Boro/Wycombe claims, and that's what the offer of arbitration is about - to sort out that issue, not force the EFL to update their rules. Can you even use arbitration to make the EFL change their rules?  I thought it had to go through a club vote etc.
More than willing to admit I could be wrong on this, but it sounds to me like the writer has conflated 2 or 3 issues into one and got in a mess over what belongs to what.

£20m is exactly the amount of that reserve valuation (or whatever it was called) from the Pride Park sale IIRC.  I'm fairly sure we were planning on using it to cover that particular hole (in one season at least).  The fact that the written reasons for the -9 points agreed decision explicitly mentioned it, and banned us from using it, suggests that the hold up between submitting our accounts and that decision was down to us arguing over whether we could use it. 

I agree it's probably a long shot now, but it won't take months. All we need to do is file a notice of arbitration:

That's going to take a lawyer like an hour to draft, and then you can tweak it for the other clubs.  We don't need to take any of them further. We don't need to appoint lawyers to argue our case or anything.  Make it clear to the clubs we're claiming against that we'll drop the claims as soon as we're cleared.  But the most important thing, is that any LAP hearing our case knows the full consequences of giving a decision against us.

I agree it's probably a long shot now, but it won't take months. All we need to do is file a notice of arbitration:

That's going to take a lawyer like an hour to draft, and then you can tweak it for the other clubs.  We don't need to take any of them further. We don't need to appoint lawyers to argue our case or anything.  Make it clear to the clubs we're claiming against that we'll drop the claims as soon as we're cleared.  But the most important thing, is that any LAP hearing our case knows the full consequences of giving a decision against us.

3) the years the penalties should have been applied weren't in the 20/21 season anyway

Honestly, that paragraph sounds like the writer is completely confused about things.  The way I understood it was that paying HMRC 25% was fine (even with the change in their status), provided it was at least the 25% that the EFL insolvency policy requires.  And the updated law (that the EFL are out of date with) was more to do with compressing the 'Boro/Wycombe claims, and that's what the offer of arbitration is about - to sort out that issue, not force the EFL to update their rules. Can you even use arbitration to make the EFL change their rules?  I thought it had to go through a club vote etc.
More than willing to admit I could be wrong on this, but it sounds to me like the writer has conflated 2 or 3 issues into one and got in a mess over what belongs to what.

Honestly, that paragraph sounds like the writer is completely confused about things.  The way I understood it was that paying HMRC 25% was fine (even with the change in their status), provided it was at least the 25% that the EFL insolvency policy requires.  And the updated law (that the EFL are out of date with) was more to do with compressing the 'Boro/Wycombe claims, and that's what the offer of arbitration is about - to sort out that issue, not force the EFL to update their rules. Can you even use arbitration to make the EFL change their rules?  I thought it had to go through a club vote etc.
More than willing to admit I could be wrong on this, but it sounds to me like the writer has conflated 2 or 3 issues into one and got in a mess over what belongs to what.

Honestly, that paragraph sounds like the writer is completely confused about things.  The way I understood it was that paying HMRC 25% was fine (even with the change in their status), provided it was at least the 25% that the EFL insolvency policy requires.  And the updated law (that the EFL are out of date with) was more to do with compressing the 'Boro/Wycombe claims, and that's what the offer of arbitration is about - to sort out that issue, not force the EFL to update their rules. Can you even use arbitration to make the EFL change their rules?  I thought it had to go through a club vote etc.
More than willing to admit I could be wrong on this, but it sounds to me like the writer has conflated 2 or 3 issues into one and got in a mess over what belongs to what.

I mean, if if it's genuinely the case that Ashley just isn't willing to pay what the administrators have negotiated with HMRC etc (and I'm assuming that's what Nixon means here by "administrators given less"), then is there really any point continuing with his bid?  HMRC and the other creditors get to decide whether to accept the proposal or not, so why bother working with him if it'll never get past that stage?

I mean, if if it's genuinely the case that Ashley just isn't willing to pay what the administrators have negotiated with HMRC etc (and I'm assuming that's what Nixon means here by "administrators given less"), then is there really any point continuing with his bid?  HMRC and the other creditors get to decide whether to accept the proposal or not, so why bother working with him if it'll never get past that stage?

The problem seems to be that Quantuma are basically stuck in the middle. It sounds like they've managed to negotiate something with Morris for the stadium and with HMRC, but the bidders have all rocked up and decided they won't pay one or both of them.  Similar sort of issue with 'Boro/Wycombe.  They're trying to do a massive multi-party deal with dozens of people involved, and there's just no consensus there at the moment.  You get 3 to agree, then the 4th blows the whole thing up.  I'm honestly not sure what Quantuma could actually do better - if HMRC won't accept less than 25%, and Ashley won't pay more than 15% (made up figures for illustrative purposes), then no amount of begging from Quantuma will bridge that gap.

The problem seems to be that Quantuma are basically stuck in the middle. It sounds like they've managed to negotiate something with Morris for the stadium and with HMRC, but the bidders have all rocked up and decided they won't pay one or both of them.  Similar sort of issue with 'Boro/Wycombe.  They're trying to do a massive multi-party deal with dozens of people involved, and there's just no consensus there at the moment.  You get 3 to agree, then the 4th blows the whole thing up.  I'm honestly not sure what Quantuma could actually do better - if HMRC won't accept less than 25%, and Ashley won't pay more than 15% (made up figures for illustrative purposes), then no amount of begging from Quantuma will bridge that gap.

The problem seems to be that Quantuma are basically stuck in the middle. It sounds like they've managed to negotiate something with Morris for the stadium and with HMRC, but the bidders have all rocked up and decided they won't pay one or both of them.  Similar sort of issue with 'Boro/Wycombe.  They're trying to do a massive multi-party deal with dozens of people involved, and there's just no consensus there at the moment.  You get 3 to agree, then the 4th blows the whole thing up.  I'm honestly not sure what Quantuma could actually do better - if HMRC won't accept less than 25%, and Ashley won't pay more than 15% (made up figures for illustrative purposes), then no amount of begging from Quantuma will bridge that gap.

I mean, if if it's genuinely the case that Ashley just isn't willing to pay what the administrators have negotiated with HMRC etc (and I'm assuming that's what Nixon means here by "administrators given less"), then is there really any point continuing with his bid?  HMRC and the other creditors get to decide whether to accept the proposal or not, so why bother working with him if it'll never get past that stage?

The problem seems to be that Quantuma are basically stuck in the middle. It sounds like they've managed to negotiate something with Morris for the stadium and with HMRC, but the bidders have all rocked up and decided they won't pay one or both of them.  Similar sort of issue with 'Boro/Wycombe.  They're trying to do a massive multi-party deal with dozens of people involved, and there's just no consensus there at the moment.  You get 3 to agree, then the 4th blows the whole thing up.  I'm honestly not sure what Quantuma could actually do better - if HMRC won't accept less than 25%, and Ashley won't pay more than 15% (made up figures for illustrative purposes), then no amount of begging from Quantuma will bridge that gap.

The problem seems to be that Quantuma are basically stuck in the middle. It sounds like they've managed to negotiate something with Morris for the stadium and with HMRC, but the bidders have all rocked up and decided they won't pay one or both of them.  Similar sort of issue with 'Boro/Wycombe.  They're trying to do a massive multi-party deal with dozens of people involved, and there's just no consensus there at the moment.  You get 3 to agree, then the 4th blows the whole thing up.  I'm honestly not sure what Quantuma could actually do better - if HMRC won't accept less than 25%, and Ashley won't pay more than 15% (made up figures for illustrative purposes), then no amount of begging from Quantuma will bridge that gap.

He’s always struck me as being a prime example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

He’s always struck me as being a prime example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

He’s always struck me as being a prime example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

I've listened to one of his podcasts, and I thought then what I thought tonight, almost every single thing he said was completely wrong ,  he talks rubbish.  Every single thing he said tonight was factually incorrect. He was a total emabarrassment, cringeworthingly bad.  

He may be good with spreadsheets but he knows nothing at all about the rules of football , the law, business, finance or football. Even worse, he pretends that he does.