The men who sell football

[Macintosh]

As I see it, they had to throw in four minutes of nice stuff, a trip around the ground and some informal stuff to pad the bit about our club to make it a story. Otherwise, they would have had 30 seconds at best to fit the Rams bit in.

 

The whole documentary had whiffs of the fake sheikh, the Sam Allardyce sting and Princess Diana interview. Does it make it credible hiding the guy's identity?

 

In conclusion, having football clubs run by foreign investors, countries and individuals comes at a price, often dirty money is involved, human rights issues, or they just take money out of the game for their share holders as our Americans did. With the riches we have here in the game, that should not happen, the £5.1bn Sky deal, plus Amazon, BBC and BT is everything we needed to have a clean game, if we had competent people running things.

[Sidd10]

Fascinating watch.

I agree with the opinion Mel doesn't really do/say much that reflects bad on him or the club. I thought we'd be more of a scandal than that tbh. Although i'm not sure Mel's decisions to talk to someone like Samuelson in the first place are very clever. 

Glad we seem to have distanced ourselves now though. Although after Mr X fell through why he continued a year later to still be having conversations with him is beyond me. He must be desperate, more desperate than we thought to sell.

The EFL though, the letting these things happen time and time again... they need to be investigated themselves. Unbelievable to allow this man and others i suspect to conduct business like this. And to think they are taking us to the cleaners for 'loopholes'.

Pot kettle black.

 

[May Contain Nuts]

3 hours ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

BZI werent the principle buyers, they were a broker, the main buyer was a construction firm based in Dubai. They pulled out last minute and the delay was down to BZI trying to find someone else dumb enough to buy us.

What of the payment they claimed to have sent and which never arrived?

[Woodley Ram]

15 hours ago, David said:

Watched this earlier, having read this topic I feared that would be more focused on us, however it appeared to be more about Samuelson, the Mr fixit of football thankfully.

Whilst Mel suggested an idea which “went against the spirit of FFP” according to Karen Maguire, it was to leave us in the best position to move forward remaining as a minority shareholder to give us headroom to invest in the team.

This is football, if this has shocked anyone you must live under a rock. You only have to look at PSG signing Messi on top of what they have to realise the spirit of FFP isn’t something that is universally adhered to.

Let’s be honest for a minute, FFP/P&S is a joke anyway, with EPPP, parachute payments, then you look at Bielik, he’s been injured most of the time he’s been here, can’t even play him yet his transfer fee and wages still count towards that. We can chuck George Thorne into the mix here as well.

If you’re on the limit, how’s that fair? It’s not. The rules I do believe were with the best intentions, however they are too restrictive for clubs with an ounce of ambition.

The game is littered with agents and brokers, it hasn’t been a “clean” game for a number of years now, all looking to get their slice of the pie doing whatever is needed to get signatures on paper.

Samuelson did not come out of it well at all, sales of Villa and Reading to front men disguising where the money had come from.

Interesting that the end statements from all involved all looked to distance themselves from him.

Saying all that, don’t be surprised to see him mentioned in future take overs with other clubs, unless he finds a front man for himself.

Whilst he’s been exposed, comes across as an intelligent man that knows how to find a way, that will be invaluable to some that require his services.

NOt in the spirt of FFP , like Fulham defering he payment of Wilson for 2 years

[Stive Pesley]

4 hours ago, i-Ram said:

Morris has often been quoted as saying he wants to sell the club on to the right kind of people. I would suggest he just wants to sell and get back as much as he can. The fact that Samuelson appears to have been involved in the BZI deal as well, some 12 months later on from Mr X, and the well documented issues that were discussed on here, suggests again that the sale might have been more important than the person. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on the Erik Alonso saga. Total fantasist that bloke.

So as a long time supporter of the Rams, I think the current situation at the Club is of huge concern, and based on the programme contents, and the information that filtered out on the subsequent failed deals with BZI and Alonso, I think I have good reason to worry about who might get their hands on our great club in the months to come.

Hands up- i've not watched it yet, but is there a possibility that the reason the BZI and Alonso deals fell through was because Mel did indeed smell too big a rat and was putting clauses in there to protect the club - which then caused the buyers to lose interest? No matter what, I can't help but see MM as a fan who wouldn't knowingly throw the club down the pan

 

 

 

[Stive Pesley]

4 hours ago, Sidd10 said:

The EFL though, the letting these things happen time and time again... they need to be investigated themselves. Unbelievable to allow this man and others i suspect to conduct business like this

They have a conflict of interests I guess - because they want as much money invested in the League as possible, to "grow the brand", make it as entertaining as possible and keep the bubble afloat*. As long as they maintain plausible deniability about who is and isn't a wrong'un. The Fit & Proper Person test is not much more than a way of making them appear to be doing due diligence

 

*classic example being Chelski - it's well documented that Abramovich's cash was deeply suspect in provenance, but hard to argue that him investing it in a UK football club didn't benefit the Premier League as a whole