Eddie Hitler

That was precisely the reason for the structure coming into place, the football club company could go bust but the ground wouldn't form part of any liquidation and so a phoenix football club could be started up with a ground already in place. Of course an unscrupulous or desperate owner could lose the ground as well by borrowing with a charge against it or, in the case of Kevin Healey, property developer and erstwhile owner of Truro City, actually selling the ground without telling anybody. It is now a a big Lidl. Truro City still have no ground. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/19371372

I thought that many lower league clubs would go the Supporter Trust ownership model that is working well for Exeter. But no, there is a constant queue of wealthy people desirous of making themselves less wealthy by buying a professional football club and losing millions every year. I have always found that a bit odd.

Maybe so, but the council has done the right thing thus far so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile the football club killer seeks their next victim.

I can't say that I have been following the saga closely but this is from Feb 2024 and says that the council had very sensibly refused to sell Osborne the freehold. The Gulls’s Plainmoor ground is owned by the council and leased to the club under and agreement which has nearly 60 years still to run. Previous owner Clarke Osborne, who stood down last week, had wanted to build the club a new stadium away from Plainmoor. But the council had been adamant that Plainmoor itself is not for sale, and Mr Osborne would never be able to build homes on it. https:w//www.torbayweekly.co.uk/news/home/1435351/council-pledges-to-be-an-anchor-for-torquay-united.html

Any sensible potential buyer will wait until the club goes into administration before making an offer as then they are negotiating with the administrator who will sell much more cheaply than the owner, as the owner has already lost their money and only the creditors have a vote on each bid. I don't know why people are surprised that Torquay have gone into administration as this almost always happens and it is actually a better deal for the club's future as the buyer's money goes purely to the creditors and not to the previous owner. Also AFAIK the freehold on Plainmoor is owned by the council and the strategy of the previous owners was to have this transferred to them, which didn't happen as the councillors are not retarded.

I worked with a Plymouth season ticket holder, each season a group of them used to have an away weekend at a game. One season they were in the same league as Rovers for the first time for a few years and I asked if they were going there, given how close it was. He said that the facilities for away fans were so poor the last time they had gone that they had decided not to go back there until the ground was rebuilt. Similarly I went to watch City at Brighton in an evening game when they were still at the Goldstone Ground. It was terrible, the terraces were crumbling to the extent that some had to be roped off for safety and the toilets were swimming in piss. I was never going to go there again, though TBF they were in their last season there as the ground had been sold. It does make a difference.

Having mulled over this the likeliest scenario, that the registers weren't kept properly up to date, makes these corrections a non-event. The correct shareholders haven't missed out on any dividends and any voting rights missed wouldn't have made a difference to Board decisions. It's also not unknown, I was assigned to update the shareholder register of a very well known listed company and the first thing I was told was not to try to reconcile it as it won't reconcile, this was being worked on as a separate exercise, but just to book the changes. The company didn't know that its shareholder register was wrong, albeit only in a very small way. An outside chance though is that there is a more fundamental error in that substantial shareholdings have actually been missed, there will then be a prior year adjustment in the accounts and possibly the last two takeover deals will be revisited. If you paid for a 75% shareholding but only received 70% then you will want some of your money back. As I say though this is highly unlikely and, if the accounts had actually been filed when they were meant to be filed, then this option could be easily shown to be incorrect.

I noticed an oddity in that the 2020 and 2021 Confirmation ststemenst have been re-filed. In the 2021 refiling nothing shows up but in the 2020 refiling there look to have been major changes to the shareholdings of some individuals, the below being the most obvious change. I assume that is connected to the change of firm being their Company Secretary, who upon taking it over have realised that the register of shareholders is wrong. Hmm. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04501223/filing-history?page=1

Their accounts are late again. BRISTOL ROVERS (1883) LIMITED Company number 04501223 Registered office address The Memorial Stadium, Filton Avenue, Horfield, Bristol, BS7 0BF Company status Active Company type Private limited Company Incorporated on 1 August 2002 Accounts overdue Next accounts made up to 30 June 2023 due by 31 March 2024 Last accounts made up to 30 June 2022 https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04501223 That's currently a £150 fine doubled to £300 as they were late last year. £750 if they don't file by the end of April. Max £3k if they go over six months. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/late-filing-penalties/late-filing-penalties This doesn't mean they're in trouble and the amounts aren't material but it suggests that the back office is a shambles, based on their past behaviour they probably have an unpaid intern trying to make sense of their accounts. City doesn't file late accounts, Steve as a business man knows the importance of a good back office. Edit: and double those already doubled fines because the football club subsidiary hasn't filed yet either.

A long standing director of Plymouth resigned the week before this game for "personal reasons", which can mean anything. I would say that they have problems.

I remember a run of this one time under I think Wilson, every time we beat a club they sacked their manager. It was as if we were the litmus paper test that season: "Right, he's lost to Bristol City so that means that he's out".

Or, just a nice gesture by the club? It's not compulsory to knock everything.

Yes. It was a throwaway line rather than a personal attack as it has been taken as being. It's not like you know the guy. A humorous response noting war service would have been the appropriate response rather than a meltdown.

The strongest objection I read to that was by Kier Starmer of all people. I think he was going for a "man of the people" image. Personally I was outraged by the sheer profiteering by the FA and Nike in charging £120 for a polyester top. That should have been enough on its own to trigger a boycott. What do these cost to make? Probably less than a fiver.

The "reward' used to be membership of the London branch of the Supporters Club, of which I was a member. By the time I joined, mid 90s, I had the impression that the perks had mostly fallen away but you met up with people to travel and had entry to the Supporters Bar at Ashton Gate. It was also a great way of hearing what was happening at the club in the days before internet forums (Rob Fernandez / @Olé's Net Centre starting about 1998) and without spending half your salary on calling Team talk only to hear that nothing had occurred. This might still be going, it's a very long time since I lived in London. This was however run by the fans rather than the club, the club does perks for membership and season ticket holders which is about all it has ever done AFAIK.

Yes. Whilst we may all think that the club should be doing better that isn't the same as saying that the club is doing terribly. This isn't to say that people should lower their sights, no, dream away, but don't say that we are doing badly when we really are not. The infrastructure is of course excellent, and it's almost a cliché to say that, but also the Academy produces excellent players, we can attract in decent players, and a series of disasters excepted we look no more like dropping into Division 3 than we have for the last few seasons. If it was a school report it would be: "Has done okay, but can do better".

Now you're talking! (Joke!)

Simon Hallett, well intentioned chap. He was allowed to buy a stake by Martin Brent to make sure that he looked like a reasonable person to be owner and after a year or so Brent sold him the rest of the shares. Brent was almost a reluctant owner who took over when Plymouth was in one of its regular going bust phases with the promise to return it to financial stability which he absolutely did and had them turning a small profit. Hallett also looked sensible and did the right things but then promotion to the Championship happened and all the costs went up, then he realised that he was rich enough to underwrite a league 1 club, but not a championship club for which realistically you need to have in the hundreds of millions.

They clearly made a good team. I have noted that I find SL to be ridiculously stubborn but if you're stubborn over the right things then that's a good thing. Here his stubborness manifests himself in denying the obvious because the fans are calling for it and he refuses to back down, e.g. LJ being retained well past his sell by date.

That is though the position of most non-Premiership and quite a few Premiership clubs though. I know that Exeter is owned by a fans trust so I wondered what their finances were looking like. Not bad at all is the answer. Clubs don't have to be run at a stonking loss if they are well run. Columns are the latest accounts, to 30 June 2022 and then 2021: Profit (no debt interest!) Balance sheet:

Oh yes, for in its every life the ageing phoenix has to die in order to be reborn.

The problem is that outside of the top premiership clubs who make money football clubs aren't comparable to other PLCs with vast numbers of shareholders and independent board members because they are hugely loss making and rely upon a single large shareholder putting ?£10m a year in, or whatever, to keep them solvent. If I owned a club and it was personally financing it to that degree then I wouldn't be giving other board members the power to overrule me. The ideal is probably a Scott Davison type Chairman bringing in, as he did, wealthy individuals as shareholders and directors to fund the club and make decisions collectively. SL has said he is open to new investors coming in so maybe that will happen and SL will take the Scott Davison role, until then he's paying for everything so he's going to make the decisions. I would do that, anyone would do that.

Miss, he's at it again!

Which is a perfectly valid, and I would say nuanced viewpoint. If only more posts were as thoughtful.

I know this isn't strict forum etiquette here but it is possible to hold a nuanced view of somebody rather than opting for the usual binary hate / love opposition. I think that Tinnion has done good work at the Academy and is therefore not automatically some useless Machiavellian schemer who wants sacking because of "what he done to our Nige" and that we should be mounting a hate campaign to see him ousted. This is a normal bloke with a job and a mortgage who was being cheered as the best thing since sliced bread not so long ago after an earlier spot on SOTC discussing the Academy and how it worked with NP, and is now apparently the devil incarnate who is trying to destroy our club from within. Maybe he is neither. On another thread I pointed out the source of a term that Joey Barton had used and then I had one poster trying to start a huge row with me as he was delighted, in his mind, to have found a Barton-supporter with whom he could have a row. That I actually can't stand the lying violent criminal clearly hadn't entered his mind, I had posted something that was not entirely and unequivocally critical of Barton and therefore I must be a fan of his. It's schoolroom stuff.