The Administration Thread

[ThePrisoner]

3 hours ago, Half Fan Half Biscuit said:

To quote Ed Dawes “I find it astonishing that you take this money from PAYE and the  VAT and put it in an account - a resting account as it were - and not pay it at the end. I mean is that legal?

[Ghost of Clough]

3 hours ago, Half Fan Half Biscuit said:

Just listened to last night’s Rams Daily podcast.  
 

To quote Ed Dawes “I find it astonishing that you take this money from PAYE and the  VAT and put it in an account - a resting account as it were - and not pay it at the end. I mean is that legal?

Holy Moly - when the brown stuff hits the fan in any business, HMRC will be one of the first to have their payments delayed  on the basis that you can always do a deal - extend the time to pay for example. 
 

And it’s arguable that if HMRC had accepted 25% in the first place the Club wouldn’t have had to be placed in Administration 

Except HMRC will deal with each case on a case-by-case basis. There is no precedent set by HMRC accepting our offer of 25 p/£. If Bristol City now go into administration with only £10m of debt, all owed to HMRC, HMRC will demand 100% of it and not settle for less.

[littleover ram]

https://www.quantuma.com/our-team/andrew-andronikou

Quote

In his spare time, Andrew likes to visit Cyprus and is a football fan, choosing to follow of the fortunes of Arsenal FC. 

 

https://www.quantuma.com/our-team/andrew-hosking

Quote

In his spare time, Andrew is an avid follower of Liverpool FC,

 

https://www.quantuma.com/our-team/chris-newell

Quote

Chris enjoys following the exploits of Wasps and Arsenal 

 

Maybe Chris can do Wasps' admin?

[ram59]

On 04/11/2022 at 08:59, Half Fan Half Biscuit said:

Just listened to last night’s Rams Daily podcast.  
 

To quote Ed Dawes “I find it astonishing that you take this money from PAYE and the  VAT and put it in an account - a resting account as it were - and not pay it at the end. I mean is that legal?

Holy Moly - when the brown stuff hits the fan in any business, HMRC will be one of the first to have their payments delayed  on the basis that you can always do a deal - extend the time to pay for example. 
 

And it’s arguable that if HMRC had accepted 25% in the first place the Club wouldn’t have had to be placed in Administration 

And if the club hadn't entered administration, we could have stayed up and we would have been able to offer contracts to players who left for nothing or very little and so have more money available to pay off other creditors. If my auntie..............

[ram59]

The title of this thread finishes with 'yeah completed it mate', but thanks to these continued restrictions, we not going to have 'completed it', until we can trade normally again. The EFL, in effect relegated us and are now doing their best to ensure that we don't get promoted for at least 2 years. 

What could this mean in the future? Another team going into administration will be looking for a buyer, who will know that after saving that club, they will have their trading severely restricted for the first 2 years of their ownership. Only rich fans, like DC, will be interested in taking that on. 

The EFL should be trying to help their members not destroy them. They hammered Wigan after they became a victim of fraud and by not allowing contracts to be renewed at Derby, they reduced the value of the club and so reduced the amount of money being paid to creditors and now by continuing punishment through to the new owners, are further reducing the value of the club.

They are not fit for purpose.

[Tamworthram]

10 hours ago, ram59 said:

The title of this thread finishes with 'yeah completed it mate', but thanks to these continued restrictions, we not going to have 'completed it', until we can trade normally again. The EFL, in effect relegated us and are now doing their best to ensure that we don't get promoted for at least 2 years. 

What could this mean in the future? Another team going into administration will be looking for a buyer, who will know that after saving that club, they will have their trading severely restricted for the first 2 years of their ownership. Only rich fans, like DC, will be interested in taking that on. 

The EFL should be trying to help their members not destroy them. They hammered Wigan after they became a victim of fraud and by not allowing contracts to be renewed at Derby, they reduced the value of the club and so reduced the amount of money being paid to creditors and now by continuing punishment through to the new owners, are further reducing the value of the club.

They are not fit for purpose.

You’re making it sound like we’ve set a precedent. Maybe it’s been the case, before we came along, that clubs going into administration have to abide by an agreed business plan for a couple of years. Surely, even if there were no restrictions and clubs were allowed to pay transfer fees you’d still need a rich owner to stump up the money. Depending on the exact terms of the restrictions, it feels like a bitter pill we just need to swallow. 
 

Despite what we all think of the EFL, I really don’t think they’re trying to destroy Derby County. We’d all like to bounce straight back up to the Championship but if we have to face a couple of seasons (or more) in league 1 it isn’t going to destroy the club and the wages we can offer should mean we should be able to survive and possibly challenge during that period. 
 

I can’t comment on Wigan as I don’t know enough about their circumstances.

Finally, it wasn’t the EFL that relegated us, it was those in charge of the club that allowed us to go into administration. It’s a bit like complaining about facing financial hardship if you lose your licence for a year or two for drink driving. Don’t blame the police for catching you or the courts for imposing the penalty. Don’t drink and drive in the first place.

[Day]

11 hours ago, ram59 said:

The title of this thread finishes with 'yeah completed it mate', but thanks to these continued restrictions, we not going to have 'completed it', until we can trade normally again. The EFL, in effect relegated us and are now doing their best to ensure that we don't get promoted for at least 2 years. 

You are right, that amendment was down to @Boycie. I have reversed it now. Wasn't a good look either. 

[richinspain]

43 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

You’re making it sound like we’ve set a precedent. Maybe it’s been the case, before we came along, that clubs going into administration have to abide by an agreed business plan for a couple of years. Surely, even if there were no restrictions and clubs were allowed to pay transfer fees you’d still need a rich owner to stump up the money. Depending on the exact terms of the restrictions, it feels like a bitter pill we just need to swallow. 
 

Despite what we all think of the EFL, I really don’t think they’re trying to destroy Derby County. We’d all like to bounce straight back up to the Championship but if we have to face a couple of seasons (or more) in league 1 it isn’t going to destroy the club and the wages we can offer should mean we should be able to survive and possibly challenge during that period. 
 

I can’t comment on Wigan as I don’t know enough about their circumstances.

Finally, it wasn’t the EFL that relegated us, it was those in charge of the club that allowed us to go into administration. It’s a bit like complaining about facing financial hardship if you lose your licence for a year or two for drink driving. Don’t blame the police for catching you or the courts for imposing the penalty. Don’t drink and drive in the first place.

The major problem is that rich men buy clubs as toys, and although they lose an awful lot of money they leave behind debts sometimes bigger than their loses. Until something is done to deter this happening then I can't see another course of action from the EFL.

[Tamworthram]

6 minutes ago, richinspain said:

The major problem is that rich men buy clubs as toys, and although they lose an awful lot of money they leave behind debts sometimes bigger than their loses. Until something is done to deter this happening then I can't see another course of action from the EFL.

The rules for league 1 and league 2 seem to be the closest to a sustainable model. Wages will always be the biggest operational costs and, as I understand it, these are restricted to a percentage of turnover. It’s not a level playing field  as the likes of Sheffield Wednesday and Derby will have much greater income than smaller clubs but the purpose of the rules isn’t to create a level playing field. You can even include funds from rich owners in your turnover but only if it’s by way of a donation and not a loan.

[Gaspode]

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

The rules for league 1 and league 2 seem to be the closest to a sustainable model. Wages will always be the biggest operational costs and, as I understand it, these are restricted to a percentage of turnover. It’s not a level playing field  as the likes of Sheffield Wednesday and Derby will have much greater income than smaller clubs but the purpose of the rules isn’t to create a level playing field. You can even include funds from rich owners in your turnover but only if it’s by way of a donation and not a loan.

Dontations rather than loans should always have been the rule at all levels of the game - if a rich owner wants to help his club, fair enough - just don't expect to get the money back when you get bored.....

[Boycie]

1 hour ago, David said:

You are right, that amendment was down to @Boycie. I have reversed it now. Wasn't a good look either. 

Peg leg.

[ram59]

4 hours ago, Tamworthram said:

You’re making it sound like we’ve set a precedent. Maybe it’s been the case, before we came along, that clubs going into administration have to abide by an agreed business plan for a couple of years. Surely, even if there were no restrictions and clubs were allowed to pay transfer fees you’d still need a rich owner to stump up the money. Depending on the exact terms of the restrictions, it feels like a bitter pill we just need to swallow. 
 

Despite what we all think of the EFL, I really don’t think they’re trying to destroy Derby County. We’d all like to bounce straight back up to the Championship but if we have to face a couple of seasons (or more) in league 1 it isn’t going to destroy the club and the wages we can offer should mean we should be able to survive and possibly challenge during that period. 
 

I can’t comment on Wigan as I don’t know enough about their circumstances.

Finally, it wasn’t the EFL that relegated us, it was those in charge of the club that allowed us to go into administration. It’s a bit like complaining about facing financial hardship if you lose your licence for a year or two for drink driving. Don’t blame the police for catching you or the courts for imposing the penalty. Don’t drink and drive in the first place.

The EFL took the 12 points off us, their rules clearly have a defence of 'force majeure'. If covid 19 wasn't an example of force majeure, I don't know what is. Derby estimated the cost of covid to be in the region of £25M, if on the day the club entered administration, somebody had given the club a cheque for that £25M, would the club still have gone into administration? I think not, that £25M would have virtually cleared the HMRC debt.

It's rumoured that clubs are being allowed to write off player values because of the impact of covid, if this is the case, then it is scandalous that Derby weren't given any consideration regarding covid.

You use drink and drive as an example, which I would never do, but would you say rushing someone bleeding to death to hospital after being told an ambulance wasn't available, a reasonable excuse and would you not be happy with the police and courts if you were banned and lost your livelihood for doing such a thing. Things are not black and white in this world and sometimes there are legitimate reasons for breaking rules or laws.

The current restrictions seemed to be totally inflexible and unfairly restrict the new owner in taking the club forward. By all means, have a conservative business plan, in order to avoid a repeat debt problem. However, there doesn't appear to be any flexibility if the club raises it's income above this conservative estimate and to be able to use that money. Also, the club has a limit on wages and no allowance on transfer fees, why can't some of that allowance for the wages be diverted to small transfer fees?  We have the bizarre situation whereby Derby are making around £150k per match extra per home game, than the business plan, that's around £3.5m for the season and if we sell the likes of Knight, there will be even more millions sitting in the coffers which we can't spend. It is virtually impossible for us to sign any player in his peak years.

The EFL's language when commenting after court cases against us, their stance on the parasites' claims against us, their forcing the administrators not to appeal against the penalties are just some of the many instances where the EFL have been less than sympathetic to Derby's plight.

[Tamworthram]

7 minutes ago, ram59 said:

The EFL took the 12 points off us, their rules clearly have a defence of 'force majeure'. If covid 19 wasn't an example of force majeure, I don't know what is. Derby estimated the cost of covid to be in the region of £25M, if on the day the club entered administration, somebody had given the club a cheque for that £25M, would the club still have gone into administration? I think not, that £25M would have virtually cleared the HMRC debt.

It's rumoured that clubs are being allowed to write off player values because of the impact of covid, if this is the case, then it is scandalous that Derby weren't given any consideration regarding covid.

You use drink and drive as an example, which I would never do, but would you say rushing someone bleeding to death to hospital after being told an ambulance wasn't available, a reasonable excuse and would you not be happy with the police and courts if you were banned and lost your livelihood for doing such a thing. Things are not black and white in this world and sometimes there are legitimate reasons for breaking rules or laws.

The current restrictions seemed to be totally inflexible and unfairly restrict the new owner in taking the club forward. By all means, have a conservative business plan, in order to avoid a repeat debt problem. However, there doesn't appear to be any flexibility if the club raises it's income above this conservative estimate and to be able to use that money. Also, the club has a limit on wages and no allowance on transfer fees, why can't some of that allowance for the wages be diverted to small transfer fees?  We have the bizarre situation whereby Derby are making around £150k per match extra per home game, than the business plan, that's around £3.5m for the season and if we sell the likes of Knight, there will be even more millions sitting in the coffers which we can't spend. It is virtually impossible for us to sign any player in his peak years.

The EFL's language when commenting after court cases against us, their stance on the parasites' claims against us, their forcing the administrators not to appeal against the penalties are just some of the many instances where the EFL have been less than sympathetic to Derby's plight.

I accept that Covid had a serious impact on the clubs finances but I imagine our argument that it was the main reason for us going into administration is somewhat weakened by the fact that no other league club in the country (to my knowledge - happy to be corrected) have (yet) had to resort to such measures. I'm not sure we could convince the EFL that Derby are unique.

With regard to the drink driving analogy (of course I wasn't suggesting you would) but we weren't "bleeding to death" when we were reckless with our spending. We didn't have a legitimate reason to so seriously overspend.

With regard to the current plan, how do we know how flexible it is? none of us have seen it. Do you know what our restrictions are on wages? Perhaps the club are proposing to approach the EFL in time for the January window. In any event, even though our income will be significantly higher than most league 1 clubs (so will our costs), do you think we will have built up enough spare cash to pay any sort of transfer fees? How do you know we're making a surplus of £150k per game (happy to accept if you can point me in the direction of some reliable source). 

[Cam the Ram]

Haven't been on here much lately so apologies if this is old news that's already come out and I've missed it, but Wycombe had a trust meeting tonight and according to someone present it was mentioned that Derby had paid them a settlement of 400k which they accepted after suggestions from their lawyers. It's a shame they've managed to get anything out of Derby but at least it all seems to be over with now.

 

In brighter/sadder news (depending on your views), things at Wycombe themselves might not be going so smoothly. I've read a few comments from the Wycombe forum and on Twitter about the meeting and it's not sounding great judging by the fans' reactions. Couhig supposedly lost his temper after fans questioned him and stuff also came out about them losing big chunks of cash each season. I'm sure there will be a good summary coming out in the next day or two so I'll try and keep an eye out for it. 

[Day]

Can’t believe they got a penny out of us, that 400k could have gone to HMRC, or any other genuine creditor, not those chancers who’s lawyers must have been pissing themselves when the offer came in.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

1 minute ago, David said:

Can’t believe they got a penny out of us, that 400k could have gone to HMRC, or any other genuine creditor, not those chancers who’s lawyers must have been pissing themselves when the offer came in.

Hopefully, if they did, All these Forest and Leeds nobbers can start directing their faux outrage at Wycombe and ask them why they took 400k from local businesses who were genuine creditors.  It seems to be so high on their agenda.

[ram59]

On 07/11/2022 at 15:54, Tamworthram said:

I accept that Covid had a serious impact on the clubs finances but I imagine our argument that it was the main reason for us going into administration is somewhat weakened by the fact that no other league club in the country (to my knowledge - happy to be corrected) have (yet) had to resort to such measures. I'm not sure we could convince the EFL that Derby are unique.

With regard to the drink driving analogy (of course I wasn't suggesting you would) but we weren't "bleeding to death" when we were reckless with our spending. We didn't have a legitimate reason to so seriously overspend.

With regard to the current plan, how do we know how flexible it is? none of us have seen it. Do you know what our restrictions are on wages? Perhaps the club are proposing to approach the EFL in time for the January window. In any event, even though our income will be significantly higher than most league 1 clubs (so will our costs), do you think we will have built up enough spare cash to pay any sort of transfer fees? How do you know we're making a surplus of £150k per game (happy to accept if you can point me in the direction of some reliable source). 

As I said, a cash injection of the £25m lost through covid would have prevented us going into administration at that time and would have brought us more time to sell the club and/or sort out the finances. Of all the clubs in the championship, Derby with the highest gates, suffered the most from covid. What happened to other clubs should be irrelevant when discussing Derby's case, as each club has it's own circumstances.

As regarding the current finances of the club. People from the club have stated that the club is currently comfortably within the wage and squad number limits, as agreed. So for every pound we are below this limit, we should be able to go a pound over the limit for the second half of the season, in order that it averages out at the correct limit.

My £150k profit per match comes from my own estimates based on reasonable assumptions. It's reasonable to believe the EFL would have forecast the club's income for this season on a conservative estimation of attendances. Let's remember the speculation on here of the attendances we could expect for this season from us fans, who would largely be on the positive side. The low forecasts were coming in at a 15k average and we ridiculed B4, (sorry B4, you were right), for predicting an average of 25k, which is still nearly 3k below reality. The general feeling was that we would average around 20k and I would expect the EFL would only agree to a figure below this, allowing for a possible disappointing season. On this basis, our average attendance is 8-10k above what I would have expected. This would mean an extra income easily reaching 150k through ticket and merchandise sales with little extra costs, based on a well less than £20 per spectator total spend.

With the depleted transfer market ATM, even a few hundred thousand pounds, would enable to purchase a good player in his prime from a lower league club.

 

[Ghost of Clough]

6 minutes ago, ram59 said:

As I said, a cash injection of the £25m lost through covid would have prevented us going into administration at that time and would have brought us more time to sell the club and/or sort out the finances. Of all the clubs in the championship, Derby with the highest gates, suffered the most from covid. What happened to other clubs should be irrelevant when discussing Derby's case, as each club has it's own circumstances.

As regarding the current finances of the club. People from the club have stated that the club is currently comfortably within the wage and squad number limits, as agreed. So for every pound we are below this limit, we should be able to go a pound over the limit for the second half of the season, in order that it averages out at the correct limit.

My £150k profit per match comes from my own estimates based on reasonable assumptions. It's reasonable to believe the EFL would have forecast the club's income for this season on a conservative estimation of attendances. Let's remember the speculation on here of the attendances we could expect for this season from us fans, who would largely be on the positive side. The low forecasts were coming in at a 15k average and we ridiculed B4, (sorry B4, you were right), for predicting an average of 25k, which is still nearly 3k below reality. The general feeling was that we would average around 20k and I would expect the EFL would only agree to a figure below this, allowing for a possible disappointing season. On this basis, our average attendance is 8-10k above what I would have expected. This would mean an extra income easily reaching 150k through ticket and merchandise sales with little extra costs, based on a well less than £20 per spectator total spend.

With the depleted transfer market ATM, even a few hundred thousand pounds, would enable to purchase a good player in his prime from a lower league club.

I can't remember if I posted in this thread, another, or not at all, but my prediction for the season was a revenue ranging between £15-20m.
More accurately, my prediction was £17.8m, which included a £1.8m drop in match receipts, £5.5m drop in TV revenue, and sponsorship of £2m (it was £5m in 16/17 and 17/18 and it must have jumped up in the Lampard and Rooney seasons).

It was to be expected that the business plan as agreed with the EFL would work to a realistic worst case figure, but I was really surprised when there wasn't an agreement in place to revise the plan if revenue was better than was originally budgeted for. However, there were whispers recently that there was a meeting planned between the club and the EFL to discuss the possibility of revising it.

[Tamworthram]

13 minutes ago, ram59 said:

As I said, a cash injection of the £25m lost through covid would have prevented us going into administration at that time and would have brought us more time to sell the club and/or sort out the finances. Of all the clubs in the championship, Derby with the highest gates, suffered the most from covid. What happened to other clubs should be irrelevant when discussing Derby's case, as each club has it's own circumstances.

As regarding the current finances of the club. People from the club have stated that the club is currently comfortably within the wage and squad number limits, as agreed. So for every pound we are below this limit, we should be able to go a pound over the limit for the second half of the season, in order that it averages out at the correct limit.

My £150k profit per match comes from my own estimates based on reasonable assumptions. It's reasonable to believe the EFL would have forecast the club's income for this season on a conservative estimation of attendances. Let's remember the speculation on here of the attendances we could expect for this season from us fans, who would largely be on the positive side. The low forecasts were coming in at a 15k average and we ridiculed B4, (sorry B4, you were right), for predicting an average of 25k, which is still nearly 3k below reality. The general feeling was that we would average around 20k and I would expect the EFL would only agree to a figure below this, allowing for a possible disappointing season. On this basis, our average attendance is 8-10k above what I would have expected. This would mean an extra income easily reaching 150k through ticket and merchandise sales with little extra costs, based on a well less than £20 per spectator total spend.

With the depleted transfer market ATM, even a few hundred thousand pounds, would enable to purchase a good player in his prime from a lower league club.

 

I, and I suspect most of us on this site, really have no idea how much surplus we make for each home game so I can’t challenge your assumption. Have you factored in that every other week (on average) when we play away from home our income is next to nothing?

I agree that every club’s circumstances are/were different but I guess the onus was on the club/administrator (you can’t necessarily blame the EFL if the administrators didn’t try hard enough) to satisfy the EFL that our circumstances were sufficiently different to explain why we were forced into administration but no other club has been. I can’t find it now but I seem to recall to meet the definition of force majeure Covid had to be the only, or at least, the main reason for going into administration.

Finally, as I said, perhaps the EFL have agreed to review the business plan if our income has been significantly higher that predicted. We simply don’t know.

[angieram]

But we do know because they told us at the last  supporters' charter group meeting that they are under constant discussions with the EFL about our better than expected financial position,  and that the EFL are eing very helpful in this.