Foreveram

I really hope they don’t get relegated.

47 minutes ago, McArthur Park said:

Did you get a picture @angieram? Saw lots of people having their pictures taken with them at half time! Fair play to them for watching with the fans.

My grandson did, and also with David Clowes outside the ground.

24 minutes ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

Warne going for the draw, lovely jubbly.

As they say in these parts, thas talking Bollox😂

52 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

Is that an actual "pea mix" (I think the term was), as described in other threads?

It would be but there’s a pie under there as well 😂

4 minutes ago, Mucker1884 said:

Yer soft git!  Man up!  😢

Tired and emotional 😉

Footy scran.

In the Dove, filling up already.

Barnsley 0 Derby 2 frgs NML

10 hours ago, TaahnRam said:

Literally just going to bed and remembered that I forgot to collect my barnsley ticket last weekend. Does anyone know if away collections are possible from PP on an away Matchday? 

The ticket office opens at 10 o’clock, presumably your ticket should still be there and should be able to pick them up.

Worth giving them a ring first though.

25 minutes ago, Alan Ramage 4 EVA said:

Used to see the bloke in the hat all the time never knew his name .Not seen him for years now !

I think it was Plod.😉

4 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

Because they were made to look very, very stupid by the original decision.  They made a massive song and dance about how naughty we'd been, dragged us through the mud for years about it, and then when it came down to it, it turned out we were right all along.  They'd employed two experts who knew absolutely nothing about the subjects they were supposed to be experts on, and got called out for it in a big way.  Wasted years of people's time and who knows how much of the league clubs money.  After all their shouting, we basically ended up with a slap on the wrist for a very minor deficiency in our record keeping.  Of course they were going to appeal that.  And that's not to mention the pressure being put on them by 'Boro and co.

Your last sentence is the telling one though. Presumably the appeal would also have cost more money, I wonder what the consequences would have been if we had won the appeal.

39 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

They were always going to appeal if they could find a reason.  And likewise, if the original decision had gone against us, we would have appealed too.

Why though when an independent panel had come to a decision did they feel the need to appeal it.

26 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

I have no memory of us pulling an expert at the last minute (and I read the IDC reports very thoroughly at the time).  There was something to do with their expert witness producing a report at the last minute, and we were offered the chance to delay the hearing and prepare a counter argument to it, but we declined to.  Not sure if this is what you are thinking of?  Presumably we thought our arguments were sound enough and didn't want the whole thing dragging out even more.

From what I remember (and my retelling may be slightly biased...), we put our accountant up as a witness to explain what our policy actually was, and there was a qualified accountant on the panel, who is supposed to be there to understand the accounting stuff.  We presented our policy, we believed it clearly met the accounting rules as they were written, so further expert witness testimony was not needed.  The EFL effectively put up an expert witness to argue that standard accounting terms didn't mean what everyone thought they meant, that up is down, the sky isn't blue etc. 

So the original panel basically ignored their expert witness on the grounds he was clueless, took the evidence of our accountant and the guy on the panels own experience to rule in our favour.  The expert witness didn't even understand the rules he was there to give evidence on.  Then the appeals panels basically said you can't do that - your accountant is there as a factual witness not an expert one, and the panel member is there as a judge, not a witness.  So the only expert in the room says up is down, so for the purposes of this decision, up is officially down.

Basically, we screwed it up.  If we had found any independent expert witness to stand there and say what we did was fine, it would have been he-said she-said on expert witnesses and the appeals panel would have left the original decision as is.  And given that even the EFL's own choice of forensic accountant on the panel agreed with our policy, it shouldn't have been difficult to find some else to agree with it.  But I stand by that we shouldn't have had to do that.  The purpose of having an expert on the panel is to deal with stuff like this.

At the end of the day the EFL didn’t have to  appeal the decision, they could have accepted it, but Mr Gibson insisted they did.

40 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

Not if you do it right like Brentford - now valued at £400 million . No business wants to show a profit - or you pay tax . Owners get their money back when they sell up . Bournemouth aren’t doing bad either , both with tiny crowds . 

Bournemouth are nearly £200 million in debt to a Russian and have borrowed money on the strength of two years future tv revenue from an Australian bank.

44 minutes ago, angieram said:

Is that Sheff Weds? Their adult prices much dearer than ours but concessions are really good.

Like us, they are budgeting for two divisions!

The problem for their fans is the early commitment, where we have until just before the season ends when hopefully we will know which division we will be in , they are already in the third phase.

They did this last year and obviously got promoted right at the end of the season, loads of fans then wanted a season ticket but wanted to pay phase one price.

16 minutes ago, NottmRAM said:

£903.75 for me. Daughter turned 13 so hers has gone up quite a bit.

This is the biggest increase, the price doubles from a 12 year to a 13 year old plus the increased cost from last season.

56 minutes ago, angieram said:

I do know the Club benchmarked us against both League One and Championship Clubs  when setting the prices and we compare very favourably with both.

Any of us that go to away games regularly know some of the ridiculous prices we have been charged at stadiums with far less adequate views/ facilities than ours and will testify to that. 

Got to raise the money to pay for Lee Gregory and Jeff Hendricks wages somehow.

16 minutes ago, Elwood P Dowd said:

Glass, China and Reputations are easily cracked and never well mended.

In terms of actually doing the job he is paid for he should be well above the average of what we are used to in this division.

10 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

I think it’s a bit weird that he’s still around.
 

Word has it he was remorseful when Q was appointed, feeling he should have ‘stood up’ to MM (as his duties required). He then worked his balls off to help Q and this - as well has his expertise - would have been readily apparent to DC as the sale negotiations were ongoing. I’d also assume he was not going to be employed by any other club on the planet after the debacle, so the detailed terms of his ongoing role would have been largely dictated by DC and his team. Perhaps the initial intention was to keep him short term, and it then seemed to make sense for him to stay…? 

But given the intent to ‘reset’ the culture and business of the club, and for that to be seen to be the case … yeah it’s pretty weird he’s still around. 

If you believe that people with a dodgy past don’t get jobs at other football clubs or even the governing body you must be very naive.

12 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

I think if the stadium had been sold off to a 3rd party because we needed cash into the club quickly, then absolutely that should have set off alarm bells.  What actually happened was basically shuffling bits of paper around.  The ultimate owner of the stadium never really changed, it was still Mel Morris's to do with as he wanted.  We made a paper profit to offset the paper losses from the amortization on player purchases a few years earlier.  And the only reason we were doing that is because the FFP rules insist on tracking profit/loss over everything else.  I'm not claiming it was a good thing or anything, but it's not necessarily a flashing red alarm that we were going into admin or anything.

Part of the problem with this stuff is we never really got to see what the actual endgame was.  The amortization policy was basically shifting paper losses further into the future (and if you are going to claim anything is dubious about the accounting methods, then this is the thing to look at, not overvaluing assets).  We never really got to see if and what the plan for dealing with those future-problems actually was, or if we were just going to end up with a big points deduction for failing FFP in a few years time.  The EFL basically rewriting years of our accounts by retroactively cancelling the amortization policy, and then COVID blowing everything up, meant we got hit with all those problems before we had a chance to put anything in place to deal with them.  Maybe we had a plan, maybe we didn't, but we'll never know.

And as an aside, there's definitely an argument that the stadium sale turned out to be a good thing in some ways.  If the stadium had still been in our ownership when we went into admin, the very first thing Quantuma would have done is sold it off for as much as they could to get some cash into the club.  And that's not a slight on Quantuma or anything, it would have been legally the correct thing for them to do.  So there's a decent chance we would have ended up with the stadium being owned by some random Panamanian loan sharks, and it would have cost us a whole lot more to buy it back than we ended up paying Morris/MSD for it.  Ironically, I seem to remember Morris making that argument when the sale occurred - something about wanting to prevent a potential unscrupulous owner from flogging the stadium to make a quick buck and screwing the club.  I'm not sure he ever thought he would kind of end up being that owner.

Surely the endgame was promotion to the premier league and all of the riches it brings.

We would just have been another club promoted with massive debt like QPR, Bournemouth, Leicester,Villa and Forest to name a few.

3 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Stoke sold their stadium for £70m without any critisism.

I believe this valuation included everything within a 10 mile radius.☺️

10 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

Glad to see no one on this thread has posted the ref's home address online yet. But it's only Thursday I guess.

Shoe box in middle of t’ road.

1 hour ago, TheHomunculusLives said:

I do find it quite surprising that a club who have invested as much as us in our Academy in recent years doesn't have a single homegrown player under the age of 21 in the matchday squad when we're currently a League One club. Others on this forum have explained that several of our best prospects in the 18-20 age group were poached by other clubs (e.g. Kellyman, Kaide Gordon) so that's why we have a bit of a gap between the Bird/Sibley/Thompson generation and some of the promising talent in the under-18 age group. 

Rooney made 3 appearances this season before being injured.

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

A bit late for that isn’t it? Some folk on here are already convinced that the referee fraternity in general have it in for us. Worst still, they think it’s driven by the EFL.😅

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.👀

13 minutes ago, angieram said:

That's Wycombe away moved, then.

Yes I had looked at that and then forgot about it.
EFL trophy final weekend, it’s already removed from our fixture list.

Another night match then.