How low can we go?

Looking grim fellow posters, by the look of things we're going to lose an entire first team, plus a good few kids, question is where do you see us in 2 years? I see a Status Quo scenario, down down deeper and down, hope I'm wrong.

We'll lose/finally flush the overpaid shit this summer. Retain our younger players and build around them for a tough but doable challenge of getting back into the championship at the first time of asking.

Although if we did receive a £2M + offer for Clough I think we'd sell him to pump that money into transfers.

That fee could buy you a lot of quality in league one

Boggersbelief wrote:Although if we did receive a £2M + offer for Clough I think we'd sell him to pump that money into transfers.

That fee could buy you a lot of quality in league one

No way we would get anywhere near that for Clough unless Brendan Rogers gets another gig.

It is all about cash flow from now on.

We simply don't have the money coming into the business to pay the fixed outgoings as it stands.

Unless we can shift most/all of the big wages for next season (Davies, Spearing, Amos, Pratley, Moxey, Dervite, Trotter, etc, etc) then put simply we will have to sell the likes of Clough and/or Vela to just help pay those players wages until they do leave (as well as borrowing against assets to make up the difference)!

The sooner we shift those players the better our chances will be - but who is daft enough to want to take them off our hands even if we give them on free transfers?

Then again Holdsworth / Anderson must have known this so maybe they have a plan to survive that is somewhat more radical than anything I can think of?

MartinBWFC wrote:

Boggersbelief wrote:Although if we did receive a £2M + offer for Clough I think we'd sell him to pump that money into transfers.

That fee could buy you a lot of quality in league one

No way we would get anywhere near that for Clough unless Brendan Rogers gets another gig.

We got it in january

Clearing out the over paid players is a must for financial reasons, if we can't get rid of them we'll probably loan them out and subsidise the wages. We will be getting young players who don't demand high wages. I am looking forward to the journey. I think we'll finish mid table 1st season, then pushing promotion the season after.

Boggersbelief wrote:Retain our younger players and build around them for a tough but doable challenge of getting back into the championship at the first time of asking.

I'll take that with a pinch of salt. Remember your prediction for this season?

Boggersbelief wrote:88 points

i think we will struggle again next season to be honest, i certainly can't see us challenging for promotion but i suppose we have to wait to see who is manager and which players we have left or come in.

It's too early to predict but the signs don't look great. Next season and probably the season after that should be about getting the club back on an even keel, whilst making sure we don't get relegated again. Once we've cleared out all the mercenary shitbags we can start to push forward as a club and hopefully start to push towards promotion back to the championship. That's what I hope will happen anyway.

Even getting rid of the high salary players won't be enough. The money coming through the turnstiles and other sources of income won't be enough to sustain the club. We've a modern and expensive stadium to maintain as well as the other running costs of the business. Expect wholesale decimation of nonplaying employees. I think during the recent crisis someone said we had 300 people on the payroll- expect about 200 of them to go. A great deal will depend on early season ticket sales. I reckon that normally brings in about £3,500,000- that's 10,000 people paying an average of about £350 ( but correct me there if I'm overambitious) and that should see the club through to about January ,particularly if the high earners are off loaded. There's no cash for transfers in and transfers out will bring minimal cash. Of course once you've got the season ticket sale money in, gate money after that is just petty cash.
I think when we have been relegated we'll have spiralled down as far as we will go.
I honestly believe that for at least 5 years we will be a League 1 side and we'll get used to getting excited about games against Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and the like.
And like a fool,I'll still be going!!

Didn't the previous regime borrow against future ticket sales for next season late last year or have I dreamt that?

I hope I'm wrong but I'm sure I read it in the BN.

Breadman wrote:Didn't the previous regime borrow against future ticket sales for next season late last year or have I dreamt that?

I hope I'm wrong but I'm sure I read it in the BN.

Bredders- you could well be right on this. I recall reading it as well, but whether it happened or not, I can't remember.
If they did borrow- then it makes the situation even more disastrous. we could be facing another winding up petition next year!

Sluffy wrote:
Then again Holdsworth / Anderson must have known this so maybe they have a plan to survive that is somewhat more radical than anything I can think of?

That's the key. None of us with business finance knowledge can see from the information in the public domain how the loan SS made approaches the requisite level to sustain the club over the next few years given the costs we are aware of.
It just doesn't stack up.
We can see the obvious savings in player salaries that could be made were the contracts not so restrictive but apart from that the club appears to be running on exhaust fumes.
Either there's a completely unknown factor that we have not been made aware of or SS are even bigger idiots than the previous owners/management team.
Or they are just going to sell everything and piss off.

I seriously think we'll be starting next season on -12 points.

We're on "monthly review" with the Football League for a very good reason - Sports Shield's plan looks flimsy and they don't think it's viable long-term.

At this point, we need to separate the HMRC winding up petition and the SS takeover in our thinking and look at them as unrelated events.

HMRC wanted their money, so they sued. That resulted in the club's various appearances in court which are now thankfully concluded.

Sports Shield (for whatever unfathomable reason) were desperate to get their hands on an ailing football club which was speeding towards relegation to League One, dragging a massive wage bill and unsustainable operating costs with it.

Why?

What was the appeal?

Can anybody offer a reason why that makes any business sense?

Especially for a company which exists solely to seek out investment opportunities for its clients which will give them a significant return with minimal risk?

So it doesn't make any sense, especially given that they had to take on the outstanding tax liability to get the deal done.

So now if we bring the two back together again, you've got new owners who would have struggled anyway because of the massive wages and other operating costs, now saddled with the extra burden of having even less disposable cash to try and make a success of things, thanks to having had to pay the tax bill.

I think someone at SS has taken a massive punt on being able to strip out everything but the bare bones, in the hope that they can keep the club going long enough to attract a new buyer and then flog it on for a (marginal) profit.

The fact that the club was in court played right into Eddie Davies' hands because he identified that SS were desperate to conclude the deal and this allowed him to roll the dice with his ridiculous personal demands, knowing that SS had gone "all in" and were never going to back out because they were certain that they could still flip the club and turn a profit.

So he sold to them.

On the face of it, the bare essentials have been covered - the tax bill's gone and there is funding in place to complete the season.

But beyond that, the future's far less certain.

A lot of SS's plan must involve a fair amount of crossed fingers in the hope that they can attract investment partners to fund the club's ongoing daily survival.

Hence why the FL aren't happy and have only conditionally sanctioned the sale, demanding monthly reviews for the next year and a half in the process.

And personally, I think the lack of any concrete revenue streams means that it's going to be a hand to mouth existence which will collapse as soon as it becomes apparent that they can't reduce the wage bill sufficiently over the summer and we'll be back in court and thrown into Administration well before the season kicks off.

With deano in charge the centre of the earth is probably a safe bet.

they will end up selling the hotel at some point i bet and closing the free school down. I think Breaders is right about them stripping back and getting us to a point where they can sell for a profit, not sure how much they think that will be though. 
I can't see it being a fortune especially with Saint Eddie and his retirement fund of £15million still in the club

It's beyond me how any sane individual can believe they can make a profit from the purchase of the club.

So why have the investors at The Inner Cirlce Club got involved with Deano and SS????

It's unfathomable.

Cajunboy wrote:It's beyond me how any sane individual can believe they can make a profit from the purchase of the club.

So why have the investors at The Inner Cirlce Club got involved with Deano and SS????

It's unfathomable.

I think the sanity bit is the most pertinent bit. Nobody with the usual big ego and spare zillions to turn around a football club like ours would deal with Eddie, who still wants to be part of the action and keep some chips in the game if things do turn around.

A rational buyer wouldn't do it, and there is only room for one Blofeld in any shady organization that specialises in laundering money, which sadly many Football Clubs have become.

Deano was able to soak up the demands from Eddie even though his backers got cold feet and even pulled out. I imagine his current backers hope they have a way of keeping thing afloat until Eddie's strings are cut completely. Then they can smooze the type of international playboys that are picking up clubs like Bristol Rovers. Eventually SS/Inner Circle cash in their chips, which will be secured on whatever remaining assets Eddie hasn't already sold or ringfenced for himself already.

Their website says they operate on an exclusive "by invitation only" basis.

I suspect they'll be sending quite a few invitations out in the post soon.

And leaving stacks of flyers on various takeaway counters.

In addition to sticking postcards in quite a few newsagents' windows and advertising on Gumtree......