CornwallRam

3 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I thought we already knew that MM had also given a personal guarantee on the MSD loans, secured on his private properties.

I'm not sure we 'know' anything. There are also upto four different MSD loans out there. Not impossible that each is secured differently.

9 minutes ago, derby8 said:

see you mention L2 for new team but we'd be much lower than that, new teams don't start in the efl.

The FA guidelines say 3 divisions so we should be Conference, but it has been speculated that a deal has been agreed for League 2.

Just now, SaffyRam said:

Am I being thick or doesn’t Morris lose out big time if we’re liquidated?

No. PPS would be repossessed by MSD, but it wouldn't cost Mel any more than he's already lost. 

If he sold PPS for £10m, it'd cost him another £12m to pay off MSD - assuming he owes £22m and he has not put up any personal assets as extra security. 

IMO, if Ashley buys us, it will be post-liquidation. We'll be a Pheonix in League 2 with no debt, sharing a ground until MSD agree a cut price deal for PPS. Ashley will effectively get the club and the ground for less than £10m - and that is Ashley's style.

My biggest worry about that is whether we'll have to miss a season, given the 11th hour nature of all this.

It's a bit cryptic, but Nixon seems to be indicating that Mel is using his 'soft loans' to prevent a ground sharing deal. I might have the wrong end of the stick, and I'm not convinced it's actually possible, but the intimation seems to be that if we try to leave Mel holding a white elephant called Pride Park Stadium, then he'll pursue his claim as an unsecured creditor and Kirchner will need to find an extra £40m or so.

3 minutes ago, Coconut's Beard said:

1st line from the first post on this thread

"Now the American’s withdrawn"

Not the ideal day to accidentally open the first page of the thread instead of the latest! 

Surely everyone knows that the withdrawal method can lead to unwanted consequences months later.

I wonder how much it would cost to build a temporary ground?

Would it actually be viable to return to the Racecourse, lease a pitch, put up temporary seating stands along two sides and terraces at both ends. Use the cricket club infrastructure for toilets and refreshments. 

Would it be financially viable? Would it be possible in time?

It would certainly make a great story - maybe Netflix could fund it?

1 hour ago, Donnyram said:

Does anyone know why CK can’t or won’t lease the stadium from MM?  You can only assume MM is asking for a lease cost way above market rates…….. perhaps the positioning on leasing other stadiums is “tactical” and they have done the benchmarking of costs to support negotiations.  Maybe MM put the lease rates so high to force the stadium purchase……. hence why the council are involved as they would give reasonable lease rates.
 

If this reflects reality then I remain hopeful that there will be a positive outcome from this mornings meeting. ??

Because the charge from the original MSD loan is against both club and stadium.  Unless that charge is settled, if Mel doesn't pay the loan, MSD could come after the club.

Semi facetiously, we could always play at Gigg Lane. 

29 minutes ago, ColonelBlimp said:

If covid hadn't happened I reckon we wouldn't now have the HMRC debt we do.

Mel would have changed the amortization policy, taken a 9 point deduction and settled with Gibson.

A couple of player sales, (Knight?Sibley?) to pay down debt and heavy use of the academy a la this season and where would we be?

Lower mid in the championship, a team with sell on potential, lower overall debt and a more saleable club.

So, are we being too harsh on Mel? Does he deserve the level of abuse he's getting on here?

Amazing that the other 110ish professional football clubs in England and Wales managed to come through Covid without calling in the administrators though.

The pertinent question is why did Mel Morris stop putting money in? Until we know the answer, we won't know how much vilification Mel deserves. IMO, if he was physically and economicly able to avoid administration, then he deserves our scorn. If he wasn't, he probably deserves our sympathy. 

6 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

As a bit of a counter to this, its worth noting that GSE were still in charge the year we got to Wembley. 

Yes they were. However, my understanding is that they were struggling to fund losses at that point as the investors had started to refuse cash calls. It would not have been stable after Wembley, it would have been selling the better players and borrowing money to keep things ticking over.

Getting to Wembley was, IMO, a bit of a fluke. Nigel built a team on a shoestring but was too cautious to get the best out of it. McClaren and Simpson got the best out of the players, but later events showed that they weren't very good a adding their own players.

Off field, something similar was happening. Glick came in with a 'moneyball' plan, but it turned out to be wasteful - there were reasons why players were in decline, and bringing them in 'cheaply' with a view to making a profit when their decline was reversed simply left us with lots of crocks. When Appleby realised that this was failing, Glick was tasked with cost cutting. He cut Nigel's promised budget and tried to bring down costs by driving FFP through the EFL. 

The problem was that cost cutting produced boring football and FFP was a disaster - not least due to increasing parachute payments. Our crowds were dwindling and we seemed to be getting further from promotion. 

Glick was replaced by Rush. Rush convinced Appleby that more investment was needed. Nigel got some cash to spend and the football improved. However, the increased demands on the investors didn't go down too well and they started to refuse the cash calls - just as the wages and amortisation losses were increasing.

GSE ownership was in trouble, despite the happy accident of 13/14 - which is why Mel was needed at the time.

9 hours ago, Archie said:

We were a sustainable club too, living within our means, building a competition team and turning a profit. 

Seems a lifetime ago...

No we weren't. We were losing about £8m a year and the ownership group were split - some wanting to invest more to push for promotion, some completely fed up of wasting their money on a costly investment with no chance of a return. 

That's why Mel was bought in - to add a separate line of investment outside the GSE group, which was paralysed by an agreement that each investor would answer 'cash calls' proportionately to their holding. 

My view is that Wembley 2014 marked a watershed. As it turned out, Mel's ego and incompetence led to a massively wasteful and unfocused period of overindulgence which has driven us to the edge of a precipice. However, I think had GSE remained, there would have been a gradual decline from a complete lack of investment. Dwindling crowds and eventual relegation were, IMO, the inevitable outcomes of GSE remaining.

Hopefully, they would have found a different buyer, but let's not forget that GSE as in investment vehicle was failing massively - which I believe is why Andy Appleby couldn't raise the funds to actually make a bid this time.

33 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

Why would anyone need to show proof of funds for more than two years? any football owner can pull the plug at any time.. look at Wigan the guy pulled the plug after a couple of weeks. Kirchner has shown liquid funds of £100m I believe so this sounds like BS.

I believe it's because he's intending to pay 35% over three years. That means he has to show funding for three years.

I read a few weeks ago - might have been @The Baron, that it's part of The EFL regs that to sanction a takeover, the new owners have to have a deal in place for at least 10 years occupancy of a ground.

To get the City Council to buy the ground and prepare a lease in a couple of weeks looks very optimistic to me.

I suspect that this is the hold up. IMO, Kirchner will  have to fund the club for a few weeks before the deal goes through or lease the ground directly from Mel.

Plange will be the most successful. He's got all the attributes for a top class centre-forward and he's got a goal-scorers instinct. 

Give him another two year's of development and he'll be a quality Premier League striker.

3 hours ago, ImARam2 said:

This is a very interesting comment, as I've done a very rough estimate based on what I spend going to a home match, as follows:

• Season Ticket per season = £495 / 23 = £21.50 per game
• Travel by car = £3 fuel + Car Park - £10 = £13, or, Travel by Bus = £5
• 2 pints of beer before/after a game = £8
• Something to eat before the game (e.g. fish & chips, etc.) = £10
• So my total per game is between £44.50 to £52.50 x 23 games = £1,023.50 / £1,207.50
• If you take the average Pride Park attendance as 22,000 x £1,000 per season = £22 million.

So that's a long way from the £100m, but I'm just an average fan, but I'm sure other fans spend more than that amount, and if the attendances go above that figure, especially when there is a good away support, then the I would imagine the figure would be nearer £25-£27 million, just on "going to the match", and not extra's such as overnight rooms; restaurant meals; train fares; DCFC shop sales, etc.

To add to that, there's the wages that the club pays. It's usually £20m plus going directly to local people. OK, it's mainly concentrated on about 20 'locals', but the economy would still feel their loss.

It went wrong when he changed the shorts to black...obviously:-)

2 hours ago, ollycutts1982 said:

I have been but it drops down again on each page. Extremely annoying. The Ads in the threads I can live with. The format is terrible. 

It's Mel Morris's fault

25 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

 

I suspect part of the reason for sacking McClaren was to snap up Gary Rowett.

I heard from a friend of a friend in the game that Mel and Rowett had become very close. Rowett was almost functioning as Mel's footballing advisor- I believe they lived near each other.

Mel had wanted to appoint Rowett for a while, but our vacancies and his availability hadn't matched up. 

Rowett was available at the end of that season, but was attracting attention from other clubs. Mel didn't really want to sack McClaren, but he thought that it could be his only chance to appoint Rowett.

Roos is the better shot stopper, but Allsop is a far better keeper overall. He also fits Rooney's style. If Ryan can improve his shot stopping, he'll be the best keeper in Championship...which will, of course, mean he won't be with us.

4 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

It is irrelevant what the other 71 clubs were doing. Accounts have to follow FRS, not what other companies are doing.

If a players value decreases on a linear basis, it should have been very easy for the EFL to prove this, they must have had thousands of examples.

The method that DCFC chose for amortisation eas probably much more realistic than straight line amortisation. 

The only reason it was so bad for us was because our signings were awful and so many of them left for nothing at the end of their contracts.

I seem to remember that the much esteemed and missed Ramblur said that we needed to change our amortisation policy from straight line to remain FRS compliant. The implication was that residual values offered a more realistic valuation, so all clubs would have to change to remain compliant. 

I have sometimes wondered if Ramblur's surname is Pearce...or maybe I have just remembered it incorrectly. 

40 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

Difficult to see how there could be scope for differences. It’s Paye and vat taxes which should be easy to calculate. Not so easy to pay. 

I wonder if the figure also includes the non-preferential HMRC debts, eg, employers' NIC and corporation tax? The latter is still possible even though the club made a loss as I believe the figure includes all the chains of companies and the academy, clubDCFC etc. It's possible that one or more of them showed a profit.

38 minutes ago, Unlucky Alf said:

He aint yet, But as I was/am an MA advocate.

 

Rah Rah Rah...Mike Ashley

Rah Rah Rah...Mike Ashley

Rah Rah Rah...Mike Ashley

Sung in a very loud voice ?

Ra, Ra Mike Ashley, Shirebrook's greatest love machine.

It was a shame how he carried on.

Byrne will get a lot of votes. If you accidentally hit the 'vote now', it defaults to him. ?

2 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

 

Although it's one of our finest songs, the alez, alez, alez bit didn’t make sense. Surely now it has to be Aly, Aly, Aly.