vonwright

Bad feeling... One of those games where we are trying to attack without creating many clear cut chances, and at the same time leaving ourselves open to much more dangerous looking counters. 

43 minutes ago, r_wilcockson said:

Starting again for Poland tonight in their must win game. 

Doesn't the manager even read this forum? Totally unprofessional.

50 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

On legal point, causation is decided by the proximate events , not the historic chain of events that preceded the event of administration.      

 

I'm not sure you can say the 'historic chain of events' will be irrelevant. It will be up to us to prove that COVID was the proximate cause of a forced administration. The EFL will argue that our COVID losses alone were not sufficient to force us into administration, that they at most exacerbated the losses and debts we recklessly incurred, and that that behaviour ('normal business risks') was the effective cause. A proximate cause isn't just the most recent contributory factor, and since this will come down to interpreting the rule book anyway, the EFL's wording is pretty clear: we will need to prove it was the sole cause of our (forced) administration.I  think we will fail, although a) I'm not a lawyer, and b) I fully accept it would be an interesting case.

On the other point, the Wigan case suggests the EFL will expect some explanation of why these specific COVID losses necessitated administration, above and beyond Mel just deciding he'd had enough. And the fact he'd willingly racked up bigger losses pre-COVID does seem relevant there. The EFL explicitly talked about how owners getting bored of losing money was sad, but their choice, and nothing to do with the FM clause.

1 hour ago, RoyMac5 said:

I don't see what isn't believable about the fact that Mel was mostly financing the club from income from the club. He might have been making up the shortfall - which would have been less in the past couple of seasons. But he couldn't have expected to cover the shortfall and the missing income?

I think the EFL's position will be that football owners are generally willing choose to cover losses, which may put them and their clubs in a precarious position but is done by choice. The extra financial burden of COVID was very real, and might have led Mel (or any other owner) to decide they wouldn't (or couldn't) cover the losses any more. But that wouldn't mean COVID was _solely_ responsible for us going into administration, since if we hadn't willingly run up huge debts before, we would have been able to absorb it. I don't think we have a good answer to the question why COVID losses were entirely responsible for forcing us into administration, and the (bigger) debts we had already run up before weren't responsible at all.

12 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

I'm sure Mel will be saying that he was able to repair the foundations and had started to do that with the employment of Cocu. The aim to rely more on Academy players eventually. Plus the surveyor had previously said the foundations were sound and we'd built the extra additions because of that.

Yeah, it will be interesting to hear it played out, and we might learn a bit more about how the club was run. My feeling is that when the debts and spending and so on are laid bare it's going to be hard to show we were an essentially sound and sustainable business that was flattened by COVID (and COVID alone) to the point where we had no choice but administration. But freely admit I could be wrong! 

I'm not sure it works to argue 'Yeah we were completely reckless and had run up huge debts but Covid tipped us over the edge and forced us into administration'. Putting aside the fact we weren't _forced_ into administration (which will be a massive issue in itself), the force majeure clause as drafted by the EFL states that we need to prove adminstration occurred 'solely as a result of a FM event'. 

It's not a great analogy but imagine our house is the only one on the street that gets destroyed after a hurricane. Turns out our house was built on terrible foundations and for years we'd failed to carry out the structural repairs necessary to make it more secure (in fact it had got worse). Plus the house didn't actually fall down - we just decided that the extra damage caused by the hurricane has made it too much of a money pit for us to continue with it, and we decided to pull it down ourselves. In that case saying the hurricane was the sole reason for the house coming down just seems... wrong. (And arguing that the other houses on the street were on almost-but-not-quite-as-dodgy foundations doesn't help either!)

Think we'll struggle to win this one, but it's an interesting question and I don't blame the administrators for trying.

On the written reasons for rejecting Wigan's (similar) appeal the EFL dwelled a bit on their interpretation of a "force majeure" event re football clubs (which are almost always run at a loss, and often on the whim of a rich owner prepared to underwrite losses).

First, we are satisfied on the evidence we have seen that the Insolvency Event arose because Mr Kay, the effective owner, made a commercial decision to choose to go back on promises of continued support and stopped putting money into the Club. That cannot be regarded as a ‘Force Majeure’ event.

"In circumstances in which it is by no means uncommon in football generally and in the Championship in particular for a Club to depend on external support from its ultimate owners to bridge the gap between income and expenditure (at least without disposing of assets such as the playing staff), it is, we consider, a normal business risk that an owner will lose interest or run out of money and/or choose to deploy its resources elsewhere. This is what happened here."

I guess we need to clear a pretty high bar here. It's true that one key difference is that we had the same owner before Covid devastated our revenues (and he'd proven willing to sustain losses in the past). The problem we are likely to have is that our finances were a train wreck even before Covid, and that Mel ultimately chose (rather than was forced) to walk away.

It would also set a _very_ dangerous precedent for the EFL given that it's probably the threat of a 12 point deduction that is stopping other clubs following us into administration.

39 minutes ago, Marriott Ram99 said:

Tomori, Mount and Martin in his prime because we need a goal scorer. 

Yep probably that although I think Hughes, Wilson, Thorne and a couple of others are better players than Martin (I'm also not sure we are set up for even 'prime' Martin these days, and I think he was always the kind of player who needed a team who played a certain way. But it just goes to show how few decent strikers we've had at the club over the last decade.)

I don't think we realised just how good Tomori, Wilson, and Mount were at the time - they made a squad of otherwise pretty average players look a lot better than they were (and made Lampard look a better manager than he was, too).

9 minutes ago, DerbyRam! said:

Exactly this, there was always a big chance we would lose today. We have showed at least a little fire and matched them until the sending off. Silly mistake in the final minute and a loss but let's keep behind the lads, on to the next game and let's keep the fight going!!

Under normal circumstances we'd probably all just shrug and take the positives (and there are plenty). Feels weirdly gutting when I suspect we are all hoping for a miracle. 

28 minutes ago, Remy the hare said:

These are really good points, but to me he’s bailing out. Even with a 9 points deduction we’d have a chance of staying up. He was the main decision making what got us in this mess, he should stay and get us out of it. 

They all run together. Arguably the risk-reward in the Lampard season was justified only if we had immediately slashed expenditure to make ourselves more sustainable once it failed. Otherwise you might find no one wants to buy your debt-ridden and loss-making business, and eventually end up with a huge points penalty for going into administration. 

The reason he couldn't find a buyer was because of the way he'd run the club. 

31 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

My point is quite a simple and obvious one. In the real world, if someone makes a general statement to the press,  what they are not doing is making some sort of formal undertaking to do something extraordinary. It’s quite simple. Unless it doesn’t fit your agenda 

You’ve confused this by saying what you think he ought to have done or said. You’re entitled to your view on that. That’s a different debate 

Fair enough. I don't know exactly what he said, and you are right - I'm not that interested in to what extent it could be considered a 'formal undertaking', as opposed to just part of a pattern of giving fans a false sense of security. 

54 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

And is that A an indication of his intention given the likely timescale or B an undertaking that whatever the EFl does to him and whatever else happens he will fund in perpetuity ?? 
B, you seem to be saying   Really ?

No. Not in the real world 

Is your point that in the 'real world', someone who has spent a fortune on a football club, saddled it with huge debts and completely unsustainable wages, who then finds out no one wants to buy that club, might one day decide to dump the club into administration and walk away if the EFL refuse him a loan to add to all the club's other debts? Even if he told the fans who cared deeply about his club that he'd protect it, and explicitly said he wouldn't walk away until he'd found a buyer?

Okay. Maybe that happens in the 'real world'. In which case what also happens in the 'real world' is that people like me judge people like him. With good reason. 

All the choices he made that put us here were his, all the reassurances he gave he chose to give. Or perhaps he wasn't living in the 'real world' when he did the reckless things he did, and gave the reassurances he wouldn't keep?

Hate is way too strong for me, but definitely angry. 

Complains about spending £200m of his own money on the club - well couldn't you have spent some of that not saddling us with a crippling, and possibly fatal mountain of debt? Fails to pay £26m of tax, fails to submit accounts, defends to the hilt accounting policies that appear to have hidden our slide into complete unsustainability. Says nothing to the fans for months, letting them  believe all is fine. Then bails, leaving us with a 12-point penalty (with more to follow), huge debts, and no stadium or assets to speak of. Staff out of jobs, suppliers out of pocket and the club facing the very real prospect of failing to find a buyer and going out of business.

This would be bad enough with any company. With a football club it's much worse. It means a lot to a lot of people. There is a reason Google don't get an open-topped bus tour through San Francisco every time they end the year as America's top search engine.

11 minutes ago, Gaspode said:

It would be great is someone cleverer than me could provide a breakdown of the debt that we're supposedly in - the way Mel has tied the finances in knots to protect himself and/or make our finances look a certaain way, I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of both the reported debts and the money that Mel reckons he's pumped into the club are actually owed to him or one of his companies.

I'm highly sceptical that he's put £200M in with no expectation of seeing a big part of that returned to him. Just how much of the debt is made up of his loans to the club?

In any case which fans does he really think are going to be sympathetic to the line: 'I spend £200m putting your club in such a perilous position it may now go out of business entirely. And now I only have £300m left!'

I would hope he's taken his moral responsibilities seriously in taking this step, and can honestly say he's done everything he could to secure the club's future. Because if we do get liquidated, that's the only thing he will be remembered for. 

24 minutes ago, TheresOnlyWanChope said:

Awful stuff. Could be the end of DCFC and Morris will be to blame. 
Really depressing time. ?

 

The more I read the angrier I get. It's one thing gambling with your own money, but this was gambling with the very existence of the club - in other words gambling with something which has been very important to generations of people with a fraction of the money that Mel has. It's not even like he's gone bankrupt in the process, just walked away with his overpriced stadium and list of people who are 'really' to blame. 

51 minutes ago, Spanish said:

Imo our amortisation policy was due solely to kicking the can down the road in the hope we could get promoted and avoid penalties

I agree, and in any case it feels like it barely matters any more whether it was 'technically compliant' or not. Like arguing whether we 'technically' met building regulations while the house crumbles to the ground.

If we don't find a buyer - and I really don't think we are an appealing prospect just now - we need to understand how serious this could be. 

34 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

By and large, I agree with you. The only questions I’d have (I’m sure someone out there has the answer) are: is the debt owed to HMRC actually PAYE and When did we start to run it up? I thought it was linked to Covid in the sense that the clubs income fell off a cliff but it still had PAYE to pay.

That's fair, and I'd like to know more about the tax bill, too. From memory our entire annual running costs were about £35m to £40m in the last two years for which we've submitted accounts, so an unpaid £26m PAYE bill feels high (and, I note in passing, higher than the £20m I think Mel claimed we'd lost in revenue due to Covid).

Bottom line for me is that while I can accept a) Covid has led to a huge drop off in revenues and b) the EFL hasn't covered itself in glory with the p and s stuff, it remains the case that we've been massively overspending for years, we've run up debts (and tax bills) that we can't settle, and it feels irrelevant now whether our accounting system was within the rules or not. What matters is the financial reality behind it, and for that - for the fact we were in such a precarious position when Covid hit - I'm afraid I do blame the owner. 

Who is going to fight the nine plus three now anyway? Mel?

It'll be 21 and we are going down, but in a way that's the least of our worries now. 

Just now, vonwright said:

Yep. Completely miss the big story, then take it out on Rooney because the people you should be holding to account won't talk to you. Journalists are so scared of having their 'access' revoked so they end up failing to do any actual journalism. But what 'access' do they really have? They just get a free ticket to the match and all these meaningless press conferences. I wish someone had been actually holding the club to account over the last few months rather than cravenly going along with the 'nothing to see here' line. 

I should probably have put this in a different thread, kept this one for saying: well done lads, bloody proud of you. 

8 minutes ago, JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta said:

Typical of him based on my experience of meeting him. Not a nice bloke. Perhaps if Dawes and the other local press had asked tougher questions of the actual club we might have been able to see this mess coming.

Yep. Completely miss the big story, then take it out on Rooney because the people you should be holding to account won't talk to you. Journalists are so scared of having their 'access' revoked that they end up failing to do any actual journalism. But what 'access' do they really have? They just get a free ticket to the match and all these meaningless press conferences. I wish someone had been actually holding the club to account over the last few months rather than cravenly going along with the 'nothing to see here' line. 

42 minutes ago, sage said:

I think we may have to go into administration, but if that was 100%, you'd just go in. 

He has done it like this as the last roll of the dice to try and get a deal with the EFL, who do not want another club in administration.

I'm not saying it will work or that we won't end up in administration, but in my opinion, it's a last ditch effort to find a way out of all this.

 

Okay so the club say nothing about their finances for months, despite loads of negative speculation. Then they file documents in preparation to go into administration. Journalists find out and the EFL issue a statement saying 'That is fine, when it happens we will apply a 12 pts deduction'. Finally DCFC put out a statement saying 'Okay yes it's true but it IS ALL THE EFL'S FAULT'.

It just doesn't feel like a negotiating strategy, does it? What are the EFL supposed to say in response? 'Sorry Mel we'd never thought of it like that, please don't go?' And negotiating for what? The EFL aren't going to pay our bills. They aren't going to give Mel his money back. We were supposed to be negotiating over the size of the penalty for our dodgy accounts. If threatening administration was a tactic relating to _that_, it would be a very odd one. 'You want 9pts, we want six. Very well. You've left us with no choice but to take an additional 12. Good day sir!'

9 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Exactly. 'I may have utterly messed up the finances but if the EFL hadn't appealed the stadium sale then I might have managed to sell up before any of you found out' isn't likely to get the fans onside. 

Agh, it just makes me so angry. How badly do you have to have run things if you are worth half a billion yet your only choices are to sell the club to whoever will buy (to pay for your expensive mistakes), or to put the club you claim to love in administration, forcing them into a lower league and undoing years of work on the academy/developing players, who can now leave for peanuts? 'The EFL made it hard to sell...' Cry me a river. You are only so desperate to sell because of the consequences of your decisions. It's your mess, no one else's. 

2 hours ago, DerbySmog said:

Derby are the ones that have dragged it out by not submitting the finances...... Now everybody knows why. 

Exactly. 'I may have utterly messed up the finances but if the EFL hadn't appealed the stadium sale then I might have managed to sell up before any of you found out' isn't likely to get the fans onside. 

Assets sold on the cheap, including any saleable young players, unless we get a quick sale to decent owners. It's so sad: any good work completely undone.