You are a legend Mr Clowes. Now, please plan for the next stage

[ramsbottom]

I really don't think Mr Clowes needs you to suggest this course of action to him.  I'd hazard a guess it's been in his thoughts since he signed on the dotted line to become our owner...

[May Contain Nuts]

17 hours ago, Duracell said:

We could've gone out of business. Keeping ourselves afloat in the top three tiers without doing a Portsmouth or Bolton - or even just completely vanishing like Bury - was in itself a miracle.

Instant promotion to the Championship isn't realisitc.

Only in the sense that it didn't happen last season, so the time for it to be instant has already passed.

Promotion this season is an entirely realistic proposition.

Edited December 8, 2023 by May Contain Nuts

[MadAmster]

1 hour ago, RoyMac5 said:

If only the working out wasn't on the back of a fag packet, or nowhere at all?

We were acquitted by the first committee, which contained accountants, of any wrongdoing. The appeal committee contained zero accountants and they found us guilty of breaching a catch-all clause which deems it an offence to do anything that might be construed as being unfair to the other clubs in the division. Nobody else used that 100% legal methodology so the appeal committee decided we were guilty of practice unfair to the other 23 clubs. That led us to having to repost several season's accounts using linear amortisation and that saw us break FFP and the 9 point deduction. That saw MM decide to put the club into admin which brought the other 12 point deduction as he could see us going down and thereby lose any chance of him recouping the £140M the club owed him....

[RoyMac5]

14 minutes ago, MadAmster said:

We were acquitted by the first committee, which contained accountants, of any wrongdoing. The appeal committee contained zero accountants and they found us guilty of breaching a catch-all clause which deems it an offence to do anything that might be construed as being unfair to the other clubs in the division. Nobody else used that 100% legal methodology so the appeal committee decided we were guilty of practice unfair to the other 23 clubs. That led us to having to repost several season's accounts using linear amortisation and that saw us break FFP and the 9 point deduction. That saw MM decide to put the club into admin which brought the other 12 point deduction as he could see us going down and thereby lose any chance of him recouping the £140M the club owed him....

The amortisation figures/workings still weren't written down thoroughly though were they. And although we were 'acquitted' there were still problems. But hey much easier than staying within accepted guidelines, why the need to push the rules? 

[kevinhectoring]

1 hour ago, ramsbottom said:

I'd hazard a guess it's been in his thoughts since he signed on the dotted line to become our owner...

Perhaps. In which case, no harm done  
 

And interesting to note how many think it’s a $hit idea 

[ramsbottom]

27 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

Perhaps. In which case, no harm done  
 

And interesting to note how many think it’s a $hit idea 

I'm entirely for finding other investors to bring into club as long as - 

- They have the best interests of the club in mind

- Still run the club in a sensible and sustainable way

I for one wouldn't want to go back to Uncle Mel's way of ludicrous spending, but I'm not a fan of the supposed penny pinching either.  I'd rather we had a middle ground where we use whatever funds we have wisely instead of spunking £4m + wages on the likes of Jacob 'Smiler' Butterfield

[MadAmster]

30 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

The amortisation figures/workings still weren't written down thoroughly though were they. And although we were 'acquitted' there were still problems. But hey much easier than staying within accepted guidelines, why the need to push the rules? 

My guess is that he saw the methodology he chose to use from 2015 as a way of making exceeding FFP limits more difficult. He was right. He also told the EFL he was going to do it. It wasn't until 2019 when that Smoggie chap got upset that they decided to "investigate". In the meantime they had accepted 4 years of accounts using that amortisation method. If you tell the EFL you intend to change and then do so and they don't complain, you can be forgiven for thinking there isn't a problem...

It's also not impossible that, without the 9 point deduction which we wouldn't have had if the appeal hadn't found that catch-all clause. No 9 point deduction, maybe MM doesn't put us into admin... and who knows what would have happened then?

 

[RoyMac5]

edit.

Edited December 8, 2023 by RoyMac5

[LeedsCityRam]

18 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

You don't need to be loaded to get to the Premier League. You need to be smart.

This in spades. Many folk have such a fundamental misunderstanding of how to achieve success in football - it is all about thinking smart. Proper structure behind the scenes (so not dependant on one manager), an elite academy, hiring & firing in line with agreed values and style of preferred football & of course, savvy recruitment. Money helps but is not the dominant criteria & the idea we'd want a fan to sell us to a 'benevolent' billionaire who will of course have our best interests at heart, is naive in the extreme.

A club the size of Derby is perfectly capable of being a competitive side in the division above whilst operating sustainably - we will be top 5 in terms of crowd numbers & commercial revenue and only dwarfed income-wise by sides recently relegated from the Prem. From then on, it is a case of slowly building the squad for a Prem promotion push - buying cheap & selling expensive and developing own talent. This is not a short term fix though & I fear that is the crux of the OP's post.

Edited December 8, 2023 by LeedsCityRam

[Foreveram]

14 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

But as I said we still didn't keep very clear records - even the Tax man can re-examine things, not just the EFL.

I see you’ve moved you negativity away from the match day and Warne out threads 😉

[RoyMac5]

15 minutes ago, Foreveram said:

I see you’ve moved you negativity away from the match day and Warne out threads 😉

Yeah nothing like being negative about Mel to deserve a personal post from you. 👍

 

[Crewton]

23 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

DC needs NOW to employ a smart well-connected agent to prepare a detailed proposal for a sale and to quietly and selectively market it to football mad billionaires across the globe.

I think it's those highlighted bits that some of us think is a bad idea, not necessarily finding an investment partner to share the burden/benefits, which is something DC talked about doing from the early days.

[kevinhectoring]

1 hour ago, MadAmster said:

My guess is that he saw the methodology he chose to use from 2015 as a way of making exceeding FFP limits more difficult. He was right. He also told the EFL he was going to do it. It wasn't until 2019 when that Smoggie chap got upset that they decided to "investigate". In the meantime they had accepted 4 years of accounts using that amortisation method. If you tell the EFL you intend to change and then do so and they don't complain, you can be forgiven for thinking there isn't a problem...

It's also not impossible that, without the 9 point deduction which we wouldn't have had if the appeal hadn't found that catch-all clause. No 9 point deduction, maybe MM doesn't put us into admin... and who knows what would have happened then?

 

Catch all clause?  It wasn’t a catch all clause that tripped us up. It was the rule that requires accounts to be in accordance with the FRSs.

Gibson caused us plenty of damage but it was McGuire who got everyone interested in the amortisation issue in the first place 

EFL doesn’t ’accept accounts’. There’s nothing in the rules that allows it to. Even if it wanted to, it can’t. We tried that one out in our defence and it was batted away by the first panel (the one with the accountants on it). We also trotted out the line that EFL had approved our approach in advance and got the same result. 
 

Many experts say the ultimate decision was technically wrong. But we took a big risk and I doubt many neutrals were surprised by the result: it was naive for one club in 72 to adopt a preferential approach to accounting and expect to get away with it in a system that aims for a level playing field 

[MadAmster]

48 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

Catch all clause?  It wasn’t a catch all clause that tripped us up. It was the rule that requires accounts to be in accordance with the FRSs.

 

The amortisation method used wasn't against EFL rules. The catch all "deemed to be unfair" clause was what caused the accounts to have to be reposted showing linear amortisation and that led to the -9.

[ramsbottom]

2 hours ago, LeedsCityRam said:

This in spades. Many folk have such a fundamental misunderstanding of how to achieve success in football - it is all about thinking smart. Proper structure behind the scenes (so not dependant on one manager), an elite academy, hiring & firing in line with agreed values and style of preferred football & of course, savvy recruitment. Money helps but is not the dominant criteria & the idea we'd want a fan to sell us to a 'benevolent' billionaire who will of course have our best interests at heart, is naive in the extreme.

A club the size of Derby is perfectly capable of being a competitive side in the division above whilst operating sustainably - we will be top 5 in terms of crowd numbers & commercial revenue and only dwarfed income-wise by sides recently relegated from the Prem. From then on, it is a case of slowly building the squad for a Prem promotion push - buying cheap & selling expensive and developing own talent. This is not a short term fix though & I fear that is the crux of the OP's post.

Recruitment is key.  Some of the best players we've had in the past 10 years cost us peanuts.

Martin, Forsyth, Bryson, Davies, Morrison, Byrne, Bird, Cashin, Sibley, Knight were brought in, or developed for less that it cost us to buy Nick Blackman...

[SK47]

Ipswich are doing well in the Championship and they came 2nd last year. They haven't had billions of pounds spent on them, they just bought well with what they had and they've gelled immensely. 

My eldest Godson plays for their U18s, and I've got to say, they're a good club. Sometimes it's the people that make a club, not the money spent on the fancy banners. 

If we buy well in January without overspending and it gets us over the line, that's been the perfect season. If we add to what we have in the summer with a proper goal scorer, there's no reason why we can't have a go at the Championship. 

 

🙏

 

[kevinhectoring]

1 hour ago, SK47 said:

Ipswich are doing well in the Championship and they came 2nd last year. They haven't had billions of pounds spent on them, they just bought well with what they had and they've gelled immensely. 

My eldest Godson plays for their U18s, and I've got to say, they're a good club. Sometimes it's the people that make a club, not the money spent on the fancy banners. 

If we buy well in January without overspending and it gets us over the line, that's been the perfect season. If we add to what we have in the summer with a proper goal scorer, there's no reason why we can't have a go at the Championship. 

 

🙏

 

This below outlines the Ipswich ownership and recent developments. I agree with those (including you) who say good management and player recruitment is key. But you also need an owner who will splash the cash when the (strong) management team recommend it. Last summer Paul Warne told us DC was spending less that the EFL would allow because he wanted to contain operating losses. Fair enough. But not a recipe that will keep our fans happy    
 

A US pension fund would be a good owner for us, so would an existing owner of a US sports franchise. A billionaire from say China or India could be a much more difficult ride and might end in tears

………..,…,..,….,……………….

IPSWICH TOWN: The new owners have certainly put their money where their mouths are to date, spending a lot on the squad and the club’s infrastructure. However, this has been part of a well though-out plan, as they have made some astute recruitment choices. As well as McKenna, they brought in former Bristol City chief executive, Mark Ashton, to lead operations off the pitch.

Ashton spoke of the solid nature of Ipswich’s new investors, “In a period where people are questioning where money is coming from into clubs, we are so fortunate to have a financial institution, a US pension fund, that backs the football club.”

For their part, the new owners believe that Ipswich Town represents an excellent investment opportunity, as ORG CEO Ed Schwartz explained, “Our view is that we've bought, at a lower value, an asset that has potential and history. Ipswich really was the perfect scenario for us.”

[Tyler Durden]

I heard that Chris Kirchener is a pretty shrewd businessman 

[G STAR RAM]

7 hours ago, MadAmster said:

We were acquitted by the first committee, which contained accountants, of any wrongdoing. The appeal committee contained zero accountants and they found us guilty of breaching a catch-all clause which deems it an offence to do anything that might be construed as being unfair to the other clubs in the division. Nobody else used that 100% legal methodology so the appeal committee decided we were guilty of practice unfair to the other 23 clubs. That led us to having to repost several season's accounts using linear amortisation and that saw us break FFP and the 9 point deduction. That saw MM decide to put the club into admin which brought the other 12 point deduction as he could see us going down and thereby lose any chance of him recouping the £140M the club owed him....

Not overly relevant to the point of the post, but the club did not owe MM £140m.

[G STAR RAM]

10 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

Fair enough.

Will you say the same in 3 years time, if we are still in the third tier and if Portsmouth and Wrexham are about to join Forest in the PL ? 

Yes.