vonwright

...and still ended up £60m of debt, only £20m of which was supposedly due to COVID (£20m being higher than the average annual matchday income of all championship clubs in 2018/19, the last season for which most figures are available, and more than twice the matchday income Forest declared that year when they had roughly the same crowds as us).
I think we have to be honest about just how much of a financial basket case we became under Mel. Are the EFL really singling us out for particular attention, or did we quite a lot to single ourselves out? No other club used our controversial amortisation policy, and the EFL were perfectly within their rights to appeal the original decision. Under normal circumstances nine points - if it represents a final settlement of P and S breaches - wouldn't seem so bad. We don't know what the accounts for recent years are going to show but there's a very real chance they are going to look pretty awful, given that the effect of the amortisation policy was to back-end transfer losses, and we've lost a lot on buying expensive but worthless players. 
We were also the only club to go into administration, and that's an automatic 12pts. We have now adjourned the appeal - presumably the administrators realised the chances of success were limited, and not worth delaying settlement of other issues. In my view that's sensible as there wasn't much chance we were going to win a force majeure case when we had been put into administration by an owner who had set the club up to make enormous losses, had previously shown a willingness to sustain these losses, but who had then decided he couldn't or wouldn't sustain further losses (not least because we already had huge debts). 
We need clarity, we need a sale to a more pragmatic and business-oriented owner, we need stability. I would have loved us to have stayed up against the odds but honestly, they are the real priorities this season. 
 
 

What are you including in commercial and hospitality here? Usually that would include sponsorship and merchandise, which are not 'small bits' and were not wiped out by COVID. Are you in any way considering offsetting income from people watching in alternative ways, ie online? 
In any case, say it was £20m if you like. My point was that even if this figure is correct, it needs to be looked at in context: the enormous losses Mel absorbed over multiple seasons, and the total £60m debts we apparently now have. The COVID loan that we were apparently cruelly denied by an EFL hell bent on destroying us was capped at £8.3m. That's roughly the sum we reportedly owe Cocu and his sidekicks for sacking them (in the middle of the pandemic).
Clearly a number of people need to believe that we are a victimised club, led by a visionary businessman whose masterplan of sustainable success was cruelly derailed by a combination of COVID and the evil Baron Gibson and his EFL minions. And I say that's wishful thinking, as the accounts we still have to publish for 2018/19 onwards will probably confirm. I trust the administrators are doing their best to get us back on track. 
Anyway I realise this is an unpopular view so I'm out. 

What are you including in commercial and hospitality here? Usually that would include sponsorship and merchandise, which are not 'small bits' and were not wiped out by COVID. Are you in any way considering offsetting income from people watching in alternative ways, ie online? 
In any case, say it was £20m if you like. My point was that even if this figure is correct, it needs to be looked at in context: the enormous losses Mel absorbed over multiple seasons, and the total £60m debts we apparently now have. The COVID loan that we were apparently cruelly denied by an EFL hell bent on destroying us was capped at £8.3m. That's roughly the sum we reportedly owe Cocu and his sidekicks for sacking them (in the middle of the pandemic).
Clearly a number of people need to believe that we are a victimised club, led by a visionary businessman whose masterplan of sustainable success was cruelly derailed by a combination of COVID and the evil Baron Gibson and his EFL minions. And I say that's wishful thinking, as the accounts we still have to publish for 2018/19 onwards will probably confirm. I trust the administrators are doing their best to get us back on track. 
Anyway I realise this is an unpopular view so I'm out. 

You're going to need to show some working. Our matchday income in 2017/18 was £9.1m. Our total revenue, including eg broadcast rights, was £29m. (In passing, our wages were £47m.) I'd like to know how exactly we get to £20m lost through COVID but even if we do, it's a fraction of the money we've lost or the debts we've accumulated. It's a factor obviously but it's absolutely not the sole cause of our problems.
It's absolutely fine for us to appeal the administration penalty! I'd love us to appeal and win. The club however has agreed an adjournment. Are we claiming they are doing this despite having an ironclad case? Sacrificing 12 points to bring forward an additional penalty of nine? It makes no sense. They know they are not going to win that appeal. 
You've convinced yourself we would win the administration appeal and you're now constructing a huge conspiracy theory around it. There's a much simpler explanation. The administrators know they were unlikely to win, that the finances are a mess, and that if they can leverage their minimal 'threat' of legal action to at least close off the threat of multiple points deductions when our accounts are calculated like every other club, then so be it.
If this was any other club, all this would be obvious. Since it's our club, it's painful. But it's true all the same. 

You're going to need to show some working. Our matchday income in 2017/18 was £9.1m. Our total revenue, including eg broadcast rights, was £29m. (In passing, our wages were £47m.) I'd like to know how exactly we get to £20m lost through COVID but even if we do, it's a fraction of the money we've lost or the debts we've accumulated. It's a factor obviously but it's absolutely not the sole cause of our problems.
It's absolutely fine for us to appeal the administration penalty! I'd love us to appeal and win. The club however has agreed an adjournment. Are we claiming they are doing this despite having an ironclad case? Sacrificing 12 points to bring forward an additional penalty of nine? It makes no sense. They know they are not going to win that appeal. 
You've convinced yourself we would win the administration appeal and you're now constructing a huge conspiracy theory around it. There's a much simpler explanation. The administrators know they were unlikely to win, that the finances are a mess, and that if they can leverage their minimal 'threat' of legal action to at least close off the threat of multiple points deductions when our accounts are calculated like every other club, then so be it.
If this was any other club, all this would be obvious. Since it's our club, it's painful. But it's true all the same. 

What are you including in commercial and hospitality here? Usually that would include sponsorship and merchandise, which are not 'small bits' and were not wiped out by COVID. Are you in any way considering offsetting income from people watching in alternative ways, ie online? 
In any case, say it was £20m if you like. My point was that even if this figure is correct, it needs to be looked at in context: the enormous losses Mel absorbed over multiple seasons, and the total £60m debts we apparently now have. The COVID loan that we were apparently cruelly denied by an EFL hell bent on destroying us was capped at £8.3m. That's roughly the sum we reportedly owe Cocu and his sidekicks for sacking them (in the middle of the pandemic).
Clearly a number of people need to believe that we are a victimised club, led by a visionary businessman whose masterplan of sustainable success was cruelly derailed by a combination of COVID and the evil Baron Gibson and his EFL minions. And I say that's wishful thinking, as the accounts we still have to publish for 2018/19 onwards will probably confirm. I trust the administrators are doing their best to get us back on track. 
Anyway I realise this is an unpopular view so I'm out. 

...and still ended up £60m of debt, only £20m of which was supposedly due to COVID (£20m being higher than the average annual matchday income of all championship clubs in 2018/19, the last season for which most figures are available, and more than twice the matchday income Forest declared that year when they had roughly the same crowds as us).
I think we have to be honest about just how much of a financial basket case we became under Mel. Are the EFL really singling us out for particular attention, or did we quite a lot to single ourselves out? No other club used our controversial amortisation policy, and the EFL were perfectly within their rights to appeal the original decision. Under normal circumstances nine points - if it represents a final settlement of P and S breaches - wouldn't seem so bad. We don't know what the accounts for recent years are going to show but there's a very real chance they are going to look pretty awful, given that the effect of the amortisation policy was to back-end transfer losses, and we've lost a lot on buying expensive but worthless players. 
We were also the only club to go into administration, and that's an automatic 12pts. We have now adjourned the appeal - presumably the administrators realised the chances of success were limited, and not worth delaying settlement of other issues. In my view that's sensible as there wasn't much chance we were going to win a force majeure case when we had been put into administration by an owner who had set the club up to make enormous losses, had previously shown a willingness to sustain these losses, but who had then decided he couldn't or wouldn't sustain further losses (not least because we already had huge debts). 
We need clarity, we need a sale to a more pragmatic and business-oriented owner, we need stability. I would have loved us to have stayed up against the odds but honestly, they are the real priorities this season. 
 
 

...and still ended up £60m of debt, only £20m of which was supposedly due to COVID (£20m being higher than the average annual matchday income of all championship clubs in 2018/19, the last season for which most figures are available, and more than twice the matchday income Forest declared that year when they had roughly the same crowds as us).
I think we have to be honest about just how much of a financial basket case we became under Mel. Are the EFL really singling us out for particular attention, or did we quite a lot to single ourselves out? No other club used our controversial amortisation policy, and the EFL were perfectly within their rights to appeal the original decision. Under normal circumstances nine points - if it represents a final settlement of P and S breaches - wouldn't seem so bad. We don't know what the accounts for recent years are going to show but there's a very real chance they are going to look pretty awful, given that the effect of the amortisation policy was to back-end transfer losses, and we've lost a lot on buying expensive but worthless players. 
We were also the only club to go into administration, and that's an automatic 12pts. We have now adjourned the appeal - presumably the administrators realised the chances of success were limited, and not worth delaying settlement of other issues. In my view that's sensible as there wasn't much chance we were going to win a force majeure case when we had been put into administration by an owner who had set the club up to make enormous losses, had previously shown a willingness to sustain these losses, but who had then decided he couldn't or wouldn't sustain further losses (not least because we already had huge debts). 
We need clarity, we need a sale to a more pragmatic and business-oriented owner, we need stability. I would have loved us to have stayed up against the odds but honestly, they are the real priorities this season. 
 
 

...and still ended up £60m of debt, only £20m of which was supposedly due to COVID (£20m being higher than the average annual matchday income of all championship clubs in 2018/19, the last season for which most figures are available, and more than twice the matchday income Forest declared that year when they had roughly the same crowds as us).
I think we have to be honest about just how much of a financial basket case we became under Mel. Are the EFL really singling us out for particular attention, or did we quite a lot to single ourselves out? No other club used our controversial amortisation policy, and the EFL were perfectly within their rights to appeal the original decision. Under normal circumstances nine points - if it represents a final settlement of P and S breaches - wouldn't seem so bad. We don't know what the accounts for recent years are going to show but there's a very real chance they are going to look pretty awful, given that the effect of the amortisation policy was to back-end transfer losses, and we've lost a lot on buying expensive but worthless players. 
We were also the only club to go into administration, and that's an automatic 12pts. We have now adjourned the appeal - presumably the administrators realised the chances of success were limited, and not worth delaying settlement of other issues. In my view that's sensible as there wasn't much chance we were going to win a force majeure case when we had been put into administration by an owner who had set the club up to make enormous losses, had previously shown a willingness to sustain these losses, but who had then decided he couldn't or wouldn't sustain further losses (not least because we already had huge debts). 
We need clarity, we need a sale to a more pragmatic and business-oriented owner, we need stability. I would have loved us to have stayed up against the odds but honestly, they are the real priorities this season. 
 
 

You know he could have done the sensible option of investing a little more than GSE and not so much that we'd be in danger of administration.... I mean I'm not a billionaire or a businessman so that might be an absolutely wild suggestion. 

We don't know that. Legal advice may have been that there is no chance of winning the argument.

This is pretty grim. I feel it must be Jozwiak's fault, somehow. 

We have the ball and somehow gift them a free kick which they just float upfield and it bounces in front of an unmarked Barnsley playing running into the penalty box to sidefoot home. Pathetic. 
Starting to feel more and more like the backend of last season...can't hardly score, when we do we always concede, we never come back from behind and gift wrap at least one goal a game...rinse and repeat.
Heading towards relegation form even  without points deductions.

Why does it feel like a punishment when we win a throw in? 

This is pretty grim. I feel it must be Jozwiak's fault, somehow. 

This is pretty grim. I feel it must be Jozwiak's fault, somehow. 

Well, at least the first 5 minutes looked good. 

Played in Steve McClaren's 2013-2015 teams he'd be very good in the (massively undervalued) Dawkins role, where you could get away with not being the most direct of players and always had good passing options on. Playing him in a team where he's got absolutely no support whatsoever and basically telling him to hold the ball up with defenders up his arse it's hardly a surprise he isn't performing.
We play a system which is all about the full backs getting up the pitch, the 'winger' is just a support player. On the right he often linked up well with an overlapping Byrne (not that anyone appreciated it), on the left he's got Buchanan.
For all Buchanan's qualities he isn't much of a link-up player. He's far more likely to ignore the option of a one-two designed to create space and instead just try to run all the way with it himself, leaving his supporting player with no real role to play other than trying to win the ball back should the full back lose it.
That's seen as Jozwiak 'doing nothing' because he hasn't pushed forward. He's stayed back to cover, but then he then gets criticised for not defending well enough (which may itself be fair) so really, he can't win - he ends up in no-man's land going forward and going backwards.
As I said a few months back, there's absolutely no point in Jozwiak staying because we do absolutely nothing to help him play his natural game; on top of that as soon as he steps on the pitch you've got a whole bunch of anti-support types waiting with bated breath for him to make an error so that they can (once again) single him out for criticism, often with disproportionate criticism to that which they'll dish out to other players

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."

Only player we've ever signed who sounds like a disease.
And played like one.

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."

God I hate it when commentators say: "REMEMBER THE NAME! A new star is born!"
If he's that good I won't need to remember his name, will I? It will be everywhere.
It really should be more like: "Con Blatsis! Remember the name, because he's not very good and if you don't make a real effort to remember him now, you'll probably forget about him very quickly."