Who do you believe?

Any opinion about what's going on at Derby, Bob? Looks a right mess to me.

boltonbonce wrote:Any opinion about what's going on at Derby, Bob? Looks a right mess to me.

Bob and I had a bit of a thread going about Derby which might help fill you in a bit more on the background to this (link below) but basically Derby financially cheated (which allowed them to sign and keep better players than they would have been able to do otherwise) for a number of years and because they did so in one year they got to the playoffs and Boro lost out because of it and in another year they stayed up and Wycombe got relegated.

The club got found out, and has fallen into Admin since.

The problem for the Admin trying to sell the club is that both Boro and Wycombe have threatened court action to compensate for their financial losses due to Derby's cheating and no perspective buyer of the club from the Administrators want to take on the risk of two potentially massive court cases against them following them buying the club.

The former owner of Derby has offered Boro and Wycombe to take him to court and not the club, to enable a sale to go through to whoever might want to buy the club.

The EFL set a deadline for Derby to produce evidence of funding until the end of the season by midnight yesterday.

It didn't!

Sky Sport reporting the EFL has no plan to stop Derby playing but also reporting that the Admin has only funds to do so for the next few weeks.

The legal threat hanging over all this by Boro and Wycombe seems to be the stumbling block that needs to be resolved before any sale can go through.

https://forum.boltonnuts.co.uk/t23040-derby-county-administration

Thanks Sluffy. I'd heard Mike Ashley had been sniffing around, but it all seems to have gone quiet.

boltonbonce wrote:Thanks Sluffy. I'd heard Mike Ashley had been sniffing around, but it all seems to have gone quiet.

You're welcome Bonce, although I must add the position I stated above is only how I understood things from a few weeks back and there could be other issues that are ongoing that I simply am not aware of, for instance the former owner still owns the stadium which is not included in the sale of the club.

The big 'public know it all' on this is surprisingly not Wanderlust (I'm only joking!), is in fact Kieran Maguire (who personally I find obnoxious and holds too many personal biases and dislikes for him to be completely rational and professional in his reviews and critiques to be as objective and forensic as he really should be) but you may want to keep an eye out for his views - being he seems to be the only person the press seeks for comments about football financial matters.

I've looked today to see what his latest is on Derby only to find this below.

Perhaps you might now see my disdain for his lack of professionalism and impartiality in his behaviour evidenced in his tweet below.

The tweet being sent from Maguire is just before the midnight deadline expired (Quantuma being the Administrators (the same one used by Ken Anderson actually) and the £1.7m being their fees.

Have Quantuma been spending too much time looking at how they will spend their £1.7m fee for the administration of Derby and not enough time trying to sell the club? pic.twitter.com/wjwHDG9Hhv

— Price Of Football (@KieranMaguire) February 28, 2022

Just had another look at Maguire's twitter account to see what he might be saying about Derby and found this...

It might be funny (in a juvenile sort of way) but it's not the sort of things he should be doing if he sees himself as some specialist analysing financial accounts in a professional and unbiased way.

If he wants to state his views then do so but away from his accountancy critiques, keep those free from his obvious personal biases and him clearly playing to the crowd who follows him on social media.

Anyway...

On behalf of the Mel Is Lovable Fellow (or MILF for short) Society I am outraged. https://t.co/p2Lv5bToYC

— Price Of Football (@KieranMaguire) March 1, 2022

Thought this my interest you Bob, from my delve on to Maguire's twitter account just now - Forest seem to have 7 billion shares!!!

Nottingham Forest issue 1.2 billion shares at 1 penny each and paid for by writing off £12 million debt. Takes total number of shares to over 7 billion. Awaits comments from Celtic fans… pic.twitter.com/g8W9E8mNcB

— Price Of Football (@KieranMaguire) March 1, 2022

(He's made a few comments about Gillingham too if you are interested at all in what he says?)

Thanks Sluffy. I cancelled my Twitter account years ago but I go on it occasionally to follow a lead. Twitter don't allow me to follow very far though without me joining up, which I have no wish to do.

I haven't checked out the up-to-date info on Derby and Forest for a while but there does seem to be a whiff of typical Maguire pot-stirring in the air. I expect that it was Maguire that Professor Claptrap was following thinking it was Iles. "He followed a muck cart thinking it was a wedding", so to speak.

 I'm mostly wasting my time on FV and League 1 at the moment. My very good friend, Gudnib, posted this on TW regarding Gillingham yesterday:

'Next opponents, Gillingham, filed their 2021 accounts last week. Here's another club that seems to have survived the COVID challenge quite well. £1.3m in government grants helped them into profit and another £700K in loans from the EFL is bound to have helped liquidity'

boltonbonce wrote:Any opinion about what's going on at Derby, Bob? Looks a right mess to me.

Good morning Boncey. It was a beautiful day yesterday, for a change, so I was out practising my golf. I've got this daft idea about scoring less than my age over 18 holes. All I need to do is play a little bit better than I did 30 years ago and you never know.

Oh yes, Derby. Its like Sharon says, when you lose your owner-funding you're in trouble until you find another owner with deep pockets looking for some other way to spend their time and their money. And you need very deep pockets to sustain a competitive Championship club.

Back to Forest, Sluffy. The conversion of £12million of loans to Forest into 1p shares is not especially interesting. The owners have done similar things before.

I think I'm right in saying though that Forest were the last professional football club in the English League to become a limited company. Brian Clough was manager at the time.

Forest haven't filed their 2021 accounts yet but lost £16million in 2019/20 and £25million the previous year, despite aggregate profits on player sales of £22m. Together with losses in previous years, accumulated losses total £187million.

Forest is owned by a company called NF Football Investments Ltd which has a share capital of £100 and two directors with Greek names. The CH file doesn't seem to indicate who owns the shares or whether there is a Person with Significant Control (PSC) but its reported in the media that the owner is Greek media mogul, ship owner and also owner of Olympiacos, Evangelos Marinakis.

Interestingly, for the second week running, there have been complaints at PMQs today about lack of transparency in CH records of ownership of UK companies.

P.S. Although there seem to be no PSC declarations at CH, disclosures in the accounts indicate that Marinakis owns 80%, the other 20% being owned by Mr S Kominakis.

https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2002290-revealed-new-management-team-nottingham-forest

Here's a list of the limited companies that own football clubs in EFL League 1 this season and last. Interesting to note that Fleetwood Town is registered as 'Fleetwood Wanderers' but you might have difficulty finding Bolton Wanderers if you didn't know. Those that have filed last seasons accounts are in bold:

HULL CITY TIGERS LIMITED

PETERBOROUGH UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB.LIMITED(THE)

ROTHERHAM UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB (RUFC) LIMITED

SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

WYCOMBE WANDERERS FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

SUNDERLAND ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL CLUB,LIMITED(THE)

LINCOLN CITY FOOTBALL CLUB COMPANY LIMITED

OXFORD UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

CHARLTON ATHLETIC FOOTBALL COMPANY LIMITED

PORTSMOUTH COMMUNITY FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

IPSWICH TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB COMPANY LIMITED

GILLINGHAM FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

ACCRINGTON STANLEY FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

CREWE ALEXANDRA FOOTBALL CLUB COMPANY,LIMITED(THE)

MILTON KEYNES DONS LIMITED

DONCASTER ROVERS FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

FLEETWOOD WANDERERS LIMITED

ALBION FOOTBALL CLUB(BURTON-ON-TRENT)LIMITED(THE)

SHREWSBURY TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

PLYMOUTH ARGYLE FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

AFC WIMBLEDON LIMITED

WIGAN ATHLETIC A.F.C. LIMITED

ROCHDALE ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL CLUB,LIMITED(THE)

NORTHAMPTON TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED(THE)

SWINDON TOWN FOOTBALL COMPANY LIMITED

BRISTOL ROVERS FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

CHELTENHAM TOWN ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

CAMBRIDGE UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

FVWL FOOTBALL LIMITED

MORECAMBE FOOTBALL CLUB.LIMITED

Ipswich Town have now got an extension to their accounts filing deadline. Only them and Morecambe  have, so far, played the COVID card this time around. There's time for a few more yet though.

Today's opponents, Gillingham, filed their accounts last week. Well done them! They managed to turn in a profit with the help of £1.3m worth of 'government grants'.

'It's an ill wind', so they say.

boltonbonce wrote:

Thanks Boncey. I don't listen to this stuff much but that is worth a listen. Well said Simon Jordan.

Yes, thanks Bonce, I've listened to it also and agree with much he says - well the important stuff certainly.

Whether we'd be the best league in the world now, who knows but it is the unbelievable amount of money that flowed into clubs that killed the game for me and probably was the biggest overtly public driver to changes in people's attitude when football become more valued than normal life, when players were more important than doctors and nurses, where money wherever it came from become more important than how legally or morally it derived from.

Of course these things were going on before Sky, Abramovitch and the Arab billions came on to the scene but they weren't off the scale as they have since become.

One could say it was a natural progression I guess, there are always people looking to exploit things for their own gains but to my mind we crossed a moral threshold when states and very dodgy mega rich individuals were clearly using their questionable super wealth to build vanity projects in order to legitimise and cast themselves in a socially acceptable light.

Has our society sunk so low as to value more the success of the club we follow than all the ills of the world?  I suspect the answer to that for most fans these days is yes.

You only have to look at our own club to see that!

I'm not suggesting Sharon is using 'dirty' money to pay the bills at the Unibol but how many of our fans care or even wonder where that money is coming from?  

All they care about is the results on the pitch and what players we need to 'buy' for next season to strengthen the team.

Would the perception of Anderson have been completely different if he had been backed by some Russian oligarch's billions and we were a force in the PL now?

Of course it would!

It would be our fans chanting his name during the minutes tribute before kickoff for Ukraine.

That's how it is.

That's the world we live in now.

It's not going to change, someone will pay the £3bn or whatever for Chelsea, the players will still be earning their millions each month, the fans will be happy and nobody cares about the consequences, the change in society's values - just as long as footy is on the box and your club is winning.

Bugger everything and everyone else, eh!

DLTBGYD, Sluffy. I know you won't and neither will I.

I've been watching Clive Myrie and Lyse Doucet in Kyiv and wondering how much Auntie Beeb pays them compared to Lineker G.

Everton in bother too.

Interesting, thanks Bonce.

Funnily enough I've just been listening to this audio about Reading with Barnsley threatening to take action against them for very much the same reasons - Reading paying more than they earn to bring in better players and because of it Barnsley may soon get relegated because Reading knowingly and deliberately have broken the financial rules imposed upon them this season.

Kieran Maguire is the expert being interviewed but he seems to speak fairly (except when he names about seven 'big' clubs currently in our division but he never mentions us!0 and without playing to an audience for a change.

The link is here for anyone interested -

https://thetilehurstend.sbnation.com/2022/3/9/22968669/the-tilehurst-end-podcast-reading-fc-2020-21-accounts-royals?utm_campaign=thetilehurstend.sbnation&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Jordan now saying that he was wrong, and that, having delved further into the details, he believes Everton will not face any points deductions.

boltonbonce wrote:Jordan now saying that he was wrong, and that, having delved further into the details, he believes Everton will not face any points deductions.

Maybe he was mainly right in the first place?

Crisis deepens for Everton as they face biggest financial losses in English football

Relegation would be calamity for club who would have to sell off players and slash wages to meet Financial Fair Play rules

Relegation would be a financial calamity for Everton, with the club already facing the biggest losses over the past three years of any team in English football.

Everton are one place above the relegation zone — ahead of 18th-placed Watford only on goal difference — having lost their past four matches, and within the next two weeks they are expected to announce tens of millions of pounds in losses from last season, to add to the £252 million lost over the previous two seasons. The nearest clubs in terms of net losses for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons combined were Southampton (£117 million) and Manchester City (£115 million).

More here but is behind The Times paywall...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crisis-deepens-for-everton-as-they-face-biggest-financial-losses-in-english-football-w7p9r2hdp?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1647304660

Sluffy wrote:

Maybe he was mainly right in the first place?

Crisis deepens for Everton as they face biggest financial losses in English football

Relegation would be calamity for club who would have to sell off players and slash wages to meet Financial Fair Play rules

Relegation would be a financial calamity for Everton, with the club already facing the biggest losses over the past three years of any team in English football.

Everton are one place above the relegation zone — ahead of 18th-placed Watford only on goal difference — having lost their past four matches, and within the next two weeks they are expected to announce tens of millions of pounds in losses from last season, to add to the £252 million lost over the previous two seasons. The nearest clubs in terms of net losses for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons combined were Southampton (£117 million) and Manchester City (£115 million).

More here but is behind The Times paywall...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crisis-deepens-for-everton-as-they-face-biggest-financial-losses-in-english-football-w7p9r2hdp?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1647304660

Circumstances seem to change by the hour these days. I know you and Bob are trying to keep across it, but for the rest of us financial illiterates, it's all something of a Gordian knot.