Football

I don’t think a fans group would be able to pay off the debts. There are 3 credible offers from potential owners but we can’t accept them because the EFL want us to treat the Boro and Wycombe claims as football creditors when they shouldn’t even be a consideration.

Wycombe still would’ve been relegated even if our points deduction had happened last season. Boro are claiming for lost earnings when their form was terrible and they slipped to 7th in the table.

The manager, team and supporters have paid the highest price for the owner and boards failings so far. Mel Morris needs to be held accountable.

Not sure many of the fans were complaining when Morris was potentially bankrupting the club to sign Darren Bent.

Only the owner and board would have had access to the accounts and would have known the real financial situation. The fans pay their money, turn up on match day hoping for the best, trusting that powers that be have the clubs best interests at heart and all is well.

Football clubs are businesses and have a duty to manage them responsibly, but also to seek maximal profit for shareholders, so it’s a catch 22 situation. However, once you start pulling tricks like Morris has done then it’s no longer responsible and there is only one person to blame imo.

Villa pulled many of the same moves such as ‘selling’ the stadium and trying to have one over the tax man and they very nearly faced the same fate.

Why does HMRC allow clubs to rack up £30m of debt?

Ashley will want the debt/outgoings pared to the bone before he takes the club on. He knows exactly how to play this. He should never have been allowed to dodge the responsibility for pensions when he bought HoF.

Why does HMRC allow clubs

They have no power to stop them, HMRC isn't a regulator

But why don’t they make more effort to start recovering the debt when it’s more manageable and the club is more solvent.

Only the owner and board would have had access to the accounts and would have known the real financial situation.

Accounts get released every year. It's pretty obvious that the majority of Championship clubs are screwed if their owners can't fund them.

We were doing our accounts each year, but we were using a form of amortisation that was uncommon in football and the EFL (who originally signed off on these documents) eventually took exception and we had to redo our accounts with the industry standard straight line method. They then redid the rules to stop others using the method we were.

Morris had been looking to sell the club since 2019 at least, but his decision making and ongoing battles with the EFL has made the club unappealing to investors for the value he wanted.

Now we find ourselves in admin and the rumour is that Ashley has bid the highest amount £50m which should pay off creditors at an agreed value (unclear of this structure as it’s just a rumour) and include buying back the stadium (rumoured to be ~£20m of the value). It’s an absolute mess, but the EFL are blocking the route out of admin due to these vexatious claims and this could lead to the end of the club as we know it.

Not sure how it got to such a figure. One school of thought is that Morris stopped making PAYE contributions as he looked to alleviate costs incurred while he was trying to sell. The longer the thing dragged on the more the debt grew. The Covid situation meant they could delay tax filing and this allowed him to rack up higher debts to HMRC.

I think Darren Bent was the least of our worries. Looking at the books around that time we were paying rather high wages to make that gamble for promotion. Lots of teams do that.

The problem was we kept trying to sustain it instead of having a couple of years of resetting the accounts and poor transfer dealings (Ikechi Anya for £4m and 5 year contract -4 of which plying in reserves - for example) and firing managers for a range of reasons racked up some serious costs which wasn’t kept under control.

We went to the Playoff final twice in the last 8 years and obviously failed, but either of those results going the other way and the gamble that Morris took would’ve paid for itself.

There’s a lot of championship clubs about to pop and a lot are conveniently finding ways of using Covid to circumnavigate fines and deductions. Stoke have signed off a load of debt, Boro have been getting money from Gibsons haulage company, Reading had a massive loss they just received a 4 point deduction for, Bristol City announced they lost £40m last year. There will be more of this happening.

The championship is fucked. Too many people gambling to make the leap into the EPL. I think only Brentford in the last 10 years haven’t pushed the FFP regulations to the limit (or had complete disregard for it).

Play off finals are such ridiculously high stakes games for many clubs.

See arsenal are trying to call off a game with only 1 covid case. This really is getting stupid now. Why not just call it a winter break and wait till everyone gets back from afcon FFS.

This really is getting stupid now.

Leicester had a game postponed on 1 case, bit off to change the rules now.

I thought they had a few, but regardless, cancelling a game when only 1 player is missing through covid is ridiculous. Especially after you send 2 players out on loan a few days before. Its a farce.

Xhaka to be sent off in the rearranged fixture tho'. Admittedly daft, given Arsenal U23 played last night, so plenty of players to fulfil the fixture, just not the ones they want. Guess the rules will be changed for next season?

Phrases you don't hear much anymore: -

'Tommy Tuchel has got Pep's number'

It's been a farce since the first day.

I'm not surprised that it's taken Arsenal benefiting for anyone to notice.

I was rather hoping that Arteta's £20,000 security dog was going to get a game. Bolster Arsenal's defence a bit.

Fuck yeah. Off the bottom of the league. No doubt EFL will engineer something to see us lose more points or take away our league status soon.

yeah all that was a bit over the top. both good coaches both decent teams. City this year have been outstanding only a massive collapse will stop City getting the league.
Can city do the big cup this year ?
No way Chelsea were winning that game with both wing backs out.

Rooney doing a gret job there. May well end up in consideration for futur PL vacancies unfortunately for Derby.

I think only Brentford in the last 10 years haven’t pushed the FFP regulations to the limit (or had complete disregard for it).

We’ve had more than a helping hand from parachute payments, but we’ve not been close to breaching FFP at Carrow Road as a ‘self-funding’ club.

Delia and Michael certainly haven’t put their hands in their pockets for years…

He'd be an upgrade on the managers at two of his former teams that's for sure.

You could see him taking over at Everton very shortly.

Fucking hell. He doesn't deserve that.

If he goes we’d be relegated but hopefully get enough money from Everton to survive the season.

If he stays, we might just stay up and his stock would be so high that he could well be in line for a good job and not another relegation scrap.

We’ve been here before with Lampard. Former club needs a manager and the obvious link is to a young rookie who is doing a good job elsewhere. Rooney seems to have a bit more about him than jumping ship at the first opportunity.