Eddie Hitler

Renting at Twerton again, Yeovil, maybe Torquay and play on Fridays as Tranmere used to do since Torquay and Truro have the Saturday afternoons booked.

Yes, staff of two IIRC costing £250k per year. Here's one of the staff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karimmardambey/ Steve Hamer did his usual blather to defend its costs but freely admitted that it existed and cost that much. As per my previous post it makes no sense if you look at Rovers as a football club but if you view them as a property asset currently used for football then £250k looks like a reasonable short term investment to obtain a development partner.

Yes. Though I did prefer my version!

Exactly. I think the operation in London is actually very revealing. I have been involved in major development schemes with the most complicated involving three parties (they get more complicated but that's my highest one) and they take a huge amount of work to set up and may need to change if one of the parties drops out; raises the price etc. I think that the purchase of Rovers by the Al Qadis had two sides: 1) A foootball club to let Wael live out his dream of being a smaller scale Roman Abrahamovic; this will be an overhead to the main business but may possibly come good if they get a run and get promoted to the Championship or Premiership. Obviously both are incredibly unlikely but this doesn't matter anyway. Because this was only a sideline to the main reason: 2) Property development: on buying this looked like a fantastic deal - sell the Mem for top dollar, move to s ahiny new part-owned stadium, take the money out and sell the club as a going concern. This however collapsed so onto a new plan to get a return on your investment. You own a big piece of prime Bristol land from which you want to make money, to do this at best profit you need to develop it as housing rather than sell it as a devlopment site to somebody else. To develop it you need: Land - got that Financing - either a loan for development finance or a joint venture partner who will provide financing equal to the land value and then share profits on sale; ideally the latter as this is lower risk. This is who the London office has been tasked to find. Planning permission - owning the club helps with this; couch it that the development is needed to "save Rovers" and councillors start lining up to back it with a view to votes. So with this you can get away with densisty / lack of affordable that a normal developer couldn't. If they can get ths off the ground with a suitable partner / investor within a couple of years then they stand to make a profit on buying Rovers. The football club is a sideshow to give Wael something to do and help with the planning application when it goes in. There will be no big money purchases, the money is needed for the development scheme, and there will be no substantial spend on the Mem when the aim is to flatten it. This why a pleasant old buffer like Steve Hamer was brought in: to keep the fans quiet by encouraging words so that they don't realise that there is zero interest by the owners in the football club; they just happen to play on a valuable piece of real estate. If you want to do nothing but still want to pretend to be doing something then what sort of catchphrases would you come up with? How about? Evolution not revolution. These things take time.

It is based on speculation but its possible, as in administration rather than going bust. That the then directors didn't want to put any more of their own money at risk was evidenced by the "wonga" loans at high rates which were timed to repay at the time after Sainsburys paid the vast overvalue (was it £30m?) for the Memorial Ground and the UWE stadium started. That Sainsburys pulled out meant they were then down to repaying those loans out of their own pockets and looked like they didn't wnat to do that so that would have meant administration. Just ticking back through their year end accounts with the AQs taking over Feb 2016 shows that the loss has doubled, with the costs of the £250k London office clearly not helping. Even an optimistic valuation of the Mem is £15m now so the net assets of the club will be near as damn it zero come 30 June 2018 or, to put it another way, now. Years ended 30 June Net liabilities exc. the ground 2013: £5.8m 2014: £6.4m - increase £0.6m 2015: £8.4m - increase £2.0m 2016: £10.1m - increase £1.7m 2017: £12.7m - increase £2.6m Annual Operating Loss 2013: £0.8m 2014: £0.6m 2015: £0.9m 2016: £0.6m (plus a £2.3m write off of previously capitalised costs for UWE so headline £2.9m) 2017: £2.1m (plus a £0.9m write off as above so headline £3.0m)

Just how wrong can you be? "I think if we now get our debts paid, UWE built and the club own the stadium - we've done extremely well. Anything else is a bonus." Debt now c. £11m, secured upon the Mem UWE expensively dead in the water as far as Rovers are concerned so no chance of owning that. Best players sold and not replaced. Thiugh they have bought a training ground, or rather a field, and Rovers don't own it anyway. I'm trying to think what beneficial things they have actually done since taking over; was it something like new toilets and a refurbished club shop? Wael Al Qadi, with these gifts you are spoiling us!

Cracking spot! We tend to assume that it was the golden age of journalism back then.

Just had a read of that whole thread. They have collectively smelt the coffee and woken up; it took a while but they got there in the end. Will they now take the next big step of organising Sack the Board protests now that they have realised that the next bit of evolution is relegation?

Absolutely. From time to time you get people on here saying that their son has been offered a youth place by Rovers and should they take it? The answer is of course: yes, every single time. Opportunities to play professional football are incredibly rare so you should take whatever is offered.

That's bitter beyond belief. A reasonable stance would have been "Fine, but we would expect similar help if we were in financial difficulty". Whether councils should bail out football clubs with taxpayers money is questionable but many do. Plymouth council seems to buy the freehold of Argyle's ground for millions every time they hit financial difficulty then sell it back when a new owner comes in.

I think the yellow kit's ok but you can't really go wrong with block colours. I agree that the home kit is one of the worst examples of "the famous quarters" that I have seen.

Exactly. He is their forum prat who most of them are embarrassed about. We have had posters who are nearly or even as bad but they don't last very long for whatever reason; maybe sheer weight of numbers calling them out.

I feel so ashamed

It looks like a surgical truss!

I genuinely thought that the opening "doing up their shop" paragraph was the precursor to a whole set of improvements. No, that was it, plus mentions of previously announced work on the bar and getting the cheap sand off their pitch. Double wow. Build and they will come and they will be locked out.

Given that the enormous wealth of the Rovers' owners comprises shares in a Jordanian bank this is probably relevant; just think back and remember what happened to UK bank shares in 2008: RBS went from 6000 in 2006 to 121 in 2009. Protests in Jordan against tax rises and austerity measures - the biggest demonstrations in years - continued for a third consecutive night. Police fired tear gas and blocked roads in the capital Amman to stop protesters getting close to the cabinet office. The protesters say a new tax bill backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will hurt the poor and middle class. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44345136

Has "Dwane Developments UK Limited" of 5 New Street Square, London, United Kingdom, EC4A 3TW (just the legal office) been mentioned yet? This was founded in March this year with Hani Al Qadi the only current director; and owned 100% by Dwane Sports (yes, that one) in Jersey. No accounts as yet but the title suggests that the intention is rather more than merely putting some portakabins at the Colony training ground which is owned by Dwane Sports rather than Rovers. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11253528

He did call us his friends

I didn't realise it was that low. At the last accounts they'd pumped in (lost) £10m and had extended the debt facility to £14m which covered another two years' losses. That's more than a fifth of the family wealth gone on a delapidated football ground, a field with a fence round it, and some white plastic garden chairs.

Rich did ask!

You are a poster for whom I have a lot of respect and for that reason I will drop this now.

And he is being slaughtered for it on here and called out for it by several gasheads on gas chat. I would say that is enough. Lies on a forum get a response on a forum. It's not like his rubbish is being reported in the BEP. Start putting his personal details and workplace up and the response moves outside the forum into harassment. I do not think anyone posting on this thread, which ranges from amusing to laugh out loud funny, would consider taking any such action but every football club has its share of loons. LJ received death threats and had to move house, Matty Taylor the same. There are people who do such things and I don't see such response as being commensurate to Henbury Gas making a total tit of himself on gas chat.

Thanks.

Thanks for the support Bianconeri. I don't think there's anything remotely malicious from any of the guys posting here who are just trying to have a laugh but it's now crossed the line IMHO.

I wouldn't be happy if a normal poster on here, say you or me, was having photographs of their business, its address, and their own picture plastered all over a gas public forum so to me the same courtesy should be extended. The only post I have reported is my own in order to flag it up because I don't think anyone on this thread is being deliberately malicious. Just sometimes banter crosses a line.