The Administration Thread

[vonwright]

20 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

He also appears to be labouring under the misunderstanding that restatement of our accounts would have instigated an immediate deduction of points for the previous season.

The restatement of our accounts, or, financials as he says, would then be reviewed by the EFL and if necessary a new disciplinary procedure started, which is what happened and ultimately the administrators agreed a 9 point deduction for.

Yeah it's interesting how the Wycombe and Boro claims actually seem to cut against each other, or are at least based on different arguments.

Wycombe: you should have published your accounts earlier, then the penalty would have been imposed earlier and we'd have been promoted.

Boro: doesn't matter when the penalty came in, the fact is you "cheated" (breached the limits) in season x, and that gave you an unfair advantage in that season, and that cost us money.

I don't think Wycombe are going to have any joy if we published our accounts within the agreed timetable, and the EFL then decided to apply the deduction in 2021/22. They might be better off making the same argument as Boro. (I think we did breach the limits it 2020/21, but it memory serves by a pretty tiny amount.)

Edited January 31, 2022 by vonwright

[RadioactiveWaste]

1 minute ago, Animal is a Ram said:

I find it really interesting that he's doubling down on the assertion it is somehow Derby's fault that the EFL couldn't (as they wanted, might I add) apply the points deduction to the season that Wycombe were relegated.

Is he deliberately not reading the reports from the LAP?

He should be going after Boro for their claim delaying the process, if he thinks releasing the accounts sooner would have meant the deduction would come in...

Yes, yes he is deliberately not understanding findings and the process by which the findings were reached and then the ongoing process which the findings outlined.

He is doing that because his position depends on not understanding those things.

My speculation on him is a mixture of "worth a try" "that club was in dispute, and where there's blame there's a claim" and quite possibly a chat with another club who have taken a damages claim route along the lines of "you've been done down too, put a claim in, then it's not just us"

Unfortunately for Mr Couhig, the litigation culture of the USA has not yet fully captured the British legal system and his experience as a trial lawyer may not prove to be so convincing to a panel of QCs as it may have proved to various juries in America, Cuba and the other places he listed.

 

[Tamworthram]

26 minutes ago, Sparkle said:

Missing some rather important things there! We don’t make the decisions the EFL do -he didn’t  mention that we broke no rules either. Also why would the administrators get back in touch with Wycombe if they consider their claims to be nuts 

Maybe Peterborough should sue the EFL for Wycombe being allowed to be promoted rather than them so that the EFL can say go and sue Wycombe! 

For me, the arbitration committee can ignore most of the waffle in his letter, why Derby got into such a debt and indeed why Derby were so late resubmitting their revised accounts. 
 

The salient points are:

1) What was the timeline for submitting the amended accounts: 24th August (after extensions were approved)

2) Who set the deadline: The EFL

3) Who agreed the extension: The EFL

4) Did Derby breach the extension deadline: No (not as far I can see)

5) Who decided that the 24th August was too late to allow for a points deduction to be applied to last season: The EFL

Provided point 4 in particular is correct, I really can’t see how Wycombe’s case against Derby has any merit whatsoever. 

[RadioactiveWaste]

1 minute ago, Tamworthram said:

For me, the arbitration committee can ignore most of the waffle in his letter, why Derby got into such a debt and indeed why Derby were so late resubmitting their revised accounts. 
 

The salient points are:

1) What was the timeline for submitting the amended accounts: 24th August (after extensions were approved)

2) Who set the deadline: The EFL

3) Who agreed the extension: The EFL

4) Did Derby breach the extension deadline: No (not as far I can see)

5) Who decided that the 24th August was too late to allow for a points deduction to be applied to last season: The EFL

Provided point 4 in particular is correct, I really can’t see how Wycombe’s case against Derby has any merit whatsoever. 

His beef is with EFL process. Does he seriously expect an opposing party to go out of its way to hasten a penalty which it is disputing?

[duncanjwitham]

2 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Yeah it's interesting how the Wycombe and Boro claims actually seem to cut against each other, or are at least based on different arguments.

Wycombe: you should have published your accounts earlier, then the penalty would have been imposed earlier and we'd have been promoted.

Boro: doesn't matter when the penalty came in, the fact is you "cheated" (breached the limits) in season x, and that gave you an unfair advantage in that season, and that cost us money.

I don't think Wycombe are going to have any joy if we published our accounts within the agreed timetable, and the EFL then decided to apply the deduction in 2021/22. They might be better off making the same argument as Boro.

The hilarious thing would've been, if they'd decided to immediately swap us and Wycombe between leagues after we submitted the accounts (with the 1-week extension), presumably the games we'd both played would have been expunged and additional games would have had to be played in their place. That would have cost 'Boro the point they got against in the 4th game of the season, and move them outside of the playoffs...

[Ramarena]

35 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

You have to wonder what Gibson hopes to gain from this.

he’s already spent legal fees trying to sue EFL, trying to sue us over the stadium sale , trying to muscle in on Efl action against us. All failed. 

now trying to bring  a separate action against us.., when we have  no money to pay him even if there was any merit to his claim. So he will be lucky to get his legal fees back. 
 

and then there is all the aggravation of being one of the most hated men in Derby .. and plenty of people outside of Derby having a go at him.. Ray parlour for one.

what is his point? 

He loves it!

This is the same guy who told a Church team in Dudley who help rehab  former offenders, to destroy their club badge as it resembled Boro’s!

The guy is a piece of work!

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/dudley-church-team-ordered-destroy-9281178.amp

[Crewton]

As has been mentioned before, the Decision on Sanction document from the Sheffield Wednesday case is highly relevant (see link below), which further referred back to the decisions taken in the Birmingham City case. In the SWFC case, the Commission determined that it wasn't appropriate to apply a points penalty at a stage of the season that would prevent the club from mitigating its effect on the field of play, and that there was a need for consistency in applying sanctions. They also made the highly relevant point (Cowboy Rob take note) that, in respect of delays in the EFL charging and hearing the case against SWFC, "There were probably faults on both sides during that period, but that it would be wrong to ascribe the whole of the blame to the club."

I can't imagine that any Arbitration panel would fail to consider the comments and decisions of other Disciplinary Panels when considering the timing of points deductions and other sanctions that would have an immediate effect on the league table.

 

https://www.efl.com/siteassets/efl-documents/201920/judgments/efl-v-sheffield-wednesday---decision-on-sanction.pdf

 

 

 

[duncanjwitham]

1 minute ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

His beef is with EFL process. Does he seriously expect an opposing party to go out of its way to hasten a penalty which it is disputing?

He actually seems to think we should have restated the accounts immediately on being found guilty, not waited for the sanction hearing.  Which is insane - there's no guarantee that the accounts would have had to be restated. Given the "club had no reason to believe they were doing anything wrong" type arguments in the actual sanction notes, they could have easily allowed the existing accounts to stand and just ordered us to submit them "correctly" going forward. 

[Tamworthram]

1 minute ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

His beef is with EFL process. Does he seriously expect an opposing party to go out of its way to hasten a penalty which it is disputing?

Exactly, and the EFL is who his beef should be with. Therefore, he should be suing them not us.

If I’m driving at 40 miles an hour on a road with a 40 MPH speed limit but someone, rightly or wrongly, thinks the limit should be lower then they have no case against me.

[BriggRam]

6 minutes ago, Ramarena said:

He loves it!

This is the same guy who told a Church team in Dudley who help rehab  former offenders, to destroy their club badge as it resembled Boro’s!

The guy is a piece of work!

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/dudley-church-team-ordered-destroy-9281178.amp

Jesus

[PistoldPete]

29 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

He also appears to be labouring under the misunderstanding that restatement of our accounts would have instigated an immediate deduction of points for the previous season.

The restatement of our accounts, or, financials as he says, would then be reviewed by the EFL and if necessary a new disciplinary procedure started, which is what happened and ultimately the administrators agreed a 9 point deduction for.

Exactly. That was the second question in my post above . No points deduction would have automatically applied even after august they would have to charge us first and then go through the disciplinary process.

in fact we agreed it all in November .. if we hadn’t it could have dragged on until next year. 

[Tamworthram]

4 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

He actually seems to think we should have restated the accounts immediately on being found guilty, not waited for the sanction hearing.  Which is insane - there's no guarantee that the accounts would have had to be restated. Given the "club had no reason to believe they were doing anything wrong" type arguments in the actual sanction notes, they could have easily allowed the existing accounts to stand and just ordered us to submit them "correctly" going forward. 

I don’t doubt that we delayed the submission of our amended accounts as long as possible partly, if not fully, in order to avoid the points being deducted last season but, it doesn’t matter what he THINKS we should have done. We did what we did within the deadlines set by the EFL.

[Ghost of Clough]

15 minutes ago, vonwright said:

Yeah it's interesting how the Wycombe and Boro claims actually seem to cut against each other, or are at least based on different arguments.

Wycombe: you should have published your accounts earlier, then the penalty would have been imposed earlier and we'd have been promoted.

Boro: doesn't matter when the penalty came in, the fact is you "cheated" (breached the limits) in season x, and that gave you an unfair advantage in that season, and that cost us money.

I don't think Wycombe are going to have any joy if we published our accounts within the agreed timetable, and the EFL then decided to apply the deduction in 2021/22. They might be better off making the same argument as Boro. (I think we did breach the limits it 2020/21, but it memory serves by a pretty tiny amount.)

Correct: 17/18-20/21 was just under £2m overspend

[duncanjwitham]

9 minutes ago, Crewton said:

As has been mentioned before, the Decision on Sanction document from the Sheffield Wednesday case is highly relevant (see link below), which further referred back to the decisions taken in the Birmingham City case. In the SWFC case, the Commission determined that it wasn't appropriate to apply a points penalty at a stage of the season that would prevent the club from mitigating its effect on the field of play, and that there was a need for consistency in applying sanctions. They also made the highly relevant point (Cowboy Rob take note) that, in respect of delays in the EFL charging and hearing the case against SWFC, "There were probably faults on both sides during that period, but that it would be wrong to ascribe the whole of the blame to the club."

I can't imagine that any Arbitration panel would fail to consider the comments and decisions of other Disciplinary Panels when considering the timing of points deductions and other sanctions that would have an immediate effect on the league table.

 

https://www.efl.com/siteassets/efl-documents/201920/judgments/efl-v-sheffield-wednesday---decision-on-sanction.pdf

 

The other interesting part of that document is part (i) here:

That's very relevant when we didn't actually overspend in the 3 years before the Wycombe season, so wouldn't have been given a penalty under normal circumstances.

[Indy]

59 minutes ago, JfR said:

In case anyone's interested, Rob "Lionel Hutz" Couhig's given an update to Wycombe supporters with some comments on the situation with us:
https://gasroom.org/discussion/7216/rob-couhig-update

"Derby is an interesting situation. Its administrators continue to peddle the premise that Wycombe is somehow responsible for its possible demise. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wycombe had nothing to do with its accumulation of approximately £60 million in debt, including nearly £30 million to the government, £20+ million to the holder of the note of Mr. Morris which is secured by the stadium, approximately £8 million of other football debt, and, of course, the many smaller non-football creditors from the Derby area.

As of today, the administrators have not stated their plans for the resolution of the debt with any of its creditors. Although they announced a "preferred bidder" would be known "before Christmas", it has not been named. Nor did they meet their own deadline of over a month ago of making the announcement "imminently". Nothing has changed concerning the disagreement between Wycombe and Derby. There have been no discussions, no calls, nothing since I visited their offices in London last November.

There are multiple reasons why Derby owes Wycombe money. Perhaps the simplest to understand is that Derby, once it lost its arbitration, deliberately delayed turning over its reconstituted financials to avoid relegation. It did not even meet the panel’s deadline of August 14 (note: this is wrong, the original deadline was August 18th), which probably would have still allowed Wycombe to compete this year in the Championship. This cost Wycombe the difference in net revenue between competing in the Championship and League 1 this year and created likely financial losses beyond this year."

If the "simplest to understand" reason for why Derby owes Wycombe money is because Derby were given an agreed extension to a deadline so they had to input their accounts four games into the new season rather than to input their accounts three games into the new season, and this somehow stopped Wycombe from being in the Championship, then I don't think I'll be able to get my head round the other reasons. 

As someone who works in political comms, it’s hard to emphasise how poor this is. If you’re going to try and spin something, the facts you do use need to be watertight. Getting the dates wrong, and following up with laughable conjecture that they would have been able to compete in the championship is amateur. Essentially, they’ve finally realised that the dates were beyond our control and are now trying to spin a tale that the dates themselves aren’t fundamental to their argument. Idiocy. 
 

And followed with the ham-fisted criticism of Quantuma that they still think will enact some ‘divide and conquer’ tactic on our side. 

[RadioactiveWaste]

You have to remember that the legal culture that Rob Couhig thrived in also had Rudy Giuliani as one of the country's top lawyers.

[duncanjwitham]

2 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

You have to remember that the legal culture that Rob Couhig thrived in also had Rudy Giuliani as one of the country's top lawyers.

If Couhig wants to host a press conference, I have a few suggestions as to where he could host it:

[RoyMac5]

14 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

I don’t doubt that we delayed the submission of our amended accounts as long as possible partly, if not fully, in order to avoid the points being deducted last season but, it doesn’t matter what he THINKS we should have done. We did what we did within the deadlines set by the EFL.

I do wish the EFL would just point this out to Couhig and the Wycombe 'fans'. Why is it so difficult?

[JfR]

21 minutes ago, Indy said:

As someone who works in political comms, it’s hard to emphasise how poor this is. If you’re going to try and spin something, the facts you do use need to be watertight. Getting the dates wrong, and following up with laughable conjecture that they would have been able to compete in the championship is amateur. Essentially, they’ve finally realised that the dates were beyond our control and are now trying to spin a tale that the dates themselves aren’t fundamental to their argument. Idiocy. 
 

And followed with the ham-fisted criticism of Quantuma that they still think will enact some ‘divide and conquer’ tactic on our side. 

I agree that it's an ill-prepared statement in terms of it's content, but I think the "chest out" confidence of the statement and the fact that a lot of people have already made up their minds that Wycombe have somehow been hard done by will mean that a lot of its audience won't realise how illogical most of the reasoning in that statement is.

Anyway, I'm half expecting him to fully embrace his inner Hutz and just put out a statement that says "Wycombe relegated? No, Derby down!"

Edited January 31, 2022 by JfR

[Ghost of Clough]

25 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

The other interesting part of that document is part (i) here:

That's very relevant when we didn't actually overspend in the 3 years before the Wycombe season, so wouldn't have been given a penalty under normal circumstances.

The Wycombe case comes down to which seasons the penalties should have been applied.

1. 14/15-16/17 = £7.76m = 6 points
2. 16/17-18/19 = £11.72m = 8 points
3. 17/18-20/21 = £1.96m = 3 points

There are only really 3 possible scenarios where the points deductions are applied. The first involves going back several seasons (which could never happen), the second is submitting some accounts much earlier than required, and the final option is what actually happened.

If penalised in the correct season:

1. 17/18 - Preston have a claim as they were 2 points behind in 7th
2. 19/20 - No impact at either end of the table. Derby finish 15th instead of 10th
3. 21/22 - We'd be 1 place higher and only 1 point away from climbing out of the bottom 3.

If the accounts were submitted for completed seasons in 20/21, then remaining season in 21/22:

     1&2. 20/21 - 14 points cumulatively we finish bottom, Wycombe stay up
     3. 21/22 - We'd be 1 place higher and only 1 point away from climbing out of the bottom 3.

If accounts were submitted as they were:

     1,2&3. 21/22 - 17 points reduced by 50% to 9 points as agreed with the EFL.

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Ghost of Clough