G STAR RAM

Wonder if we will ever lose a match again where it isn't because the manager is rubbish, his tactics are pathetic or the players are awful?

Correct on both accounts!

Despite that we are 2 goals behind the top scorers in the division who just 8 weeks ago were the best team to ever visit Pride Park and certainties for promotion.

I know our auditor had definitely been doing his job longer than 4 years, so would have been just as qualified as Pearce for suggesting the change of amortisation. Funny that Pearce never suggested it at Chelsea given their record on spending too.

That's good, can start referring to myself as highly qualified on here then.

Yeah he might have done. How 'highly qualified' is he out of interest?

That doesn't mean that the accountants/auditors could not suggest new policies. Recommending a fully compliant policy to a client is hardly compromising their independence.

Its only not obvious to me as I have zero knowledge of how the club was operating at the time or how much input or influence Pearce had on decisions. Having been lucky, or unlucky, enough to have met Morris it would not surprise me if he was running the show himself.

Having be subject to audit file reviews by the ICAEW in the past, I can assure you they are very thorough.

Impossible to tell from their accounts

I was meaning I don't think the club benefited from the cash following the sale, think it merely covered cash MM had previously injected into the club.

£20 a match isn't bad value I guess if we are in the Championship. A bit on the high side for the current standard of football we are watching I'd say.

Perhaps not the findings but, yes, it was recorded in the report by the IDC.

My only argument against this is that I am very doubtful that any money changed hands with regards to the stadium sale. I think instead it reduced the amount owed to MM via his inter-company loans. So it was used to cover his previous financing of the club, rather than his financing going forward. Just to be clear hear that is my own thoughts on what happened, not facts!

Don't know, it was just a suggestion. I don't think many owners come up with their accounting policies, that is what they pay their professional advisers for.

The ground sale had been done by numerous other clubs so that wasn't something new invented by us. The amortisation method could have been suggested by the accountants/auditors?

Can't disagree that we were poorly run, as is pretty much every club it the owners should fall on hard times or pull the plug. The other clubs in the Championship received funding from the EFL to help with cash flow problems post Covid, we didn't and were forced to take out loans at ridiculous interest rates. I don't know as I am not a commercial property valuer. But one of the most highly respected commercial property valuers believed that given its potential it was worth £80m. From the findings of the IDC it was valued even higher than that but the EFL asked us to reduce the valuation, which we duly did only to then be charged with using the EFLs recommended valuation. The sale of the ground, and the way that it was covered up and not disclosed to the fans, is the thing that irks me most, especially when there was a fans forum and neither Morris or Pearce thought it was worthy of mention.

Once again you are referring to an over inflated price of the stadium, something which experts in the field and an Independent Disciplinary Commission disagree with. To form a view, should you not be using facts, rather than your own personal views?

Once again though, I'd re-iterate to go around accusing a business of being crooked without any evidence, is a very unprofessional thing for someone who is very highly regarded in their field to do. The fact that Independent experts who have had access to all of the information have basically shown that claim to be false should really tell you everything you need to know, and if you're incorrectly continuing to use that label against Stephen Pearce then it is obviously going to unfairly sway your opinion on him. Just my take on matters. Even taking the MSD loan of £20m into account, it is highly plausible that this was covering costs all incurred post Covid, once again making Pearce's comment made in May 2020 truthful at the time it was told. At what point MM stopped funding the club will never be known (In the last accounts signed off, MM had given written assurances that he would continue to support the clubs financing requirements up to June 2020 at the earliest.) but my guess would be post Covid) What Pearce could do about that I am not sure?

Personally I think Barkhuizen or Sibley would be much more reliable players to have as impact subs. 5 or 10 minutes here or there for Brown might give him something to prove though I suppose.

Is he having an impact when coming on as sub for Gateshead do you know?

Complicit in?

I think having different views is quite a leap from calling something crooked, when it isn't. Unless your brother in law was privvy to the valuations assigned to players and had his own reliable method for proving they were over inflated I really struggle to see how he could come to the conclusion it was crooked and I'd say his opinion was anything other than professional and is more akin to the Kieran Maguire type comments made with no justification. I'm afraid I just can't agree with you on the last point. We were left bankrupt because our owner refused to continue to financially support us. With regards to what I said earlier regarding the timescale of us getting in the mess,.with a wage bill of over £40m it would literally only have taken 9 or 10 months to rack up a PAYE debt of £25m. Hence how we went from being in a good position pre Covid to tens of millions in debt when we entered administration in September 2021 (from memory).

The only thing I'd say about the amortisation policy is that the fair value of players is very subjective but, for me, the principle of lower amortisation in the early years of a contract seemed fairly logical and more realistic than straight line amortisation. The only argument I could see against it in our situation is that we overpaid for older players with very little residual value, even taking that into account the end result would always have been the same.