League 2 General Chat Thread

[The_Viking_Magpie]

None of his other businesses will miss out as it will be a tax write off between any intergroup companies but you're being flippant for the sake of it #hashtagyoureawanker

You make a really good financially valid point and then you ruin it.

Flippant? And what did you do personally when the Owls were criminally mismanaged on more than one occasion to such an extent in past? This should be good

 

[SoutheySWFC]

Flippant? And what did you do personally do when the Owls were criminally mismanaged to such an extent in past? This should be good

Championship Sheff Wed fan

Criminally? Heck of an accusation that, almost libel.

As for being in a League 2 thread, that's what this site is good for, being able to chat about 100+ clubs not just your own.

 

[The_Viking_Magpie]

Almost libel as in not libel at all. Lol

I never just about chat my own you can never accuse me of that, although I don’t venture on the L1, Championship or PL forums. Can’t really see the point. Stylish Magpies first then the rest

Are you going to answer the question or just avoid it? What did you do when your club was so badly mismanaged to multi million pounds levels ? Did you lose sleep? Did you protest?

It’s obvious what’s Hardy has Attempted to do with that open piece to the fans in the local rag. Makes sense, after what’s happened so far this season. Whether he pulled it off, whether it works I have no idea. The wording isn’t the best but his intentions are clear.

It’s pretty much a nothing story in my eyes

 

[Vanni]

Em, I think I know where's this thread heading - something along the lines of 'not open for further replies'..... speaking of which, surely it's a better idea to simply delete the offending post/s

 

[T.A]

Grow up.

 

[JJ1532]

Some posts removed.

Hey guys, look, actual football to talk about today. Lets talk about that.

 

[Conker]

Accidentally spending £750k is bizarre.

Notts County have had a few times now where they could have disappeared due to silly financial stuff.

 

[The_Viking_Magpie]

Nice to see the offensive post quickly edited.

 

[Indian Dan]

I’ve said it before, but I believe that there is a large number of, especially, lower league clubs that are being run for the benefit of the owner not the club. I’d imagine most are mismanaged, some are being defrauded and others involved in criminal activity.

A football club is the ideal vehicle for money laundering.

 

[Chief Rocka]

I’ve said it before, but I believe that there is a large number of, especially, lower league clubs that are being run for the benefit of the owner not the club. I’d imagine most are mismanaged, some are being defrauded and others involved in criminal activity.

A football club is the ideal vehicle for money laundering.

This 100 times over, we're still recovering after being on the receiving end of financial buggery by criminal owners, the fit and proper test is the biggest mockery in the game.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

There's a cluster of lower league clubs that overspent, got into significant financial trouble then repeated the overspending process again (with some then courting administration for the second time).

Bournemouth, Vale, Rotherham, Crystal Palace, Notts and Bury are the six that immediately come to mind. Swindon used to be one of those clubs but now they seem to have taken the new extreme of spending sod all in comparison.

I'm not saying Notts are guilty of this under Alan Hardy because they're not, and there are no signs that they're about to court financial oblivion, but on the wider scale I think there should be stronger punishments for clubs who leave non-football creditors badly out of pocket. It's not right for businesses to go to the wall after being offered 10p-20p in the £1 that they're owed, only for that football club to experience a subsequent meteoric rise under new ownerships like Bournemouth, Rotherham and Crystal Palace. It's also not right for well-run football clubs who cut their cloth accordingly only to see a multi-millionaire owner buying a financially ruined football club and pumping it full of money. It's like a reward for failure.

Personally, I think businesses should be given the same rights as "football creditors" and should be repaid over a number of years the full amount plus interest owed. If that means some clubs go to the wall then so be it. The Football League has been very, very lenient on overspending football clubs for years, preferring to let the Conference deal with them once the affected clubs are relegated to that level. There's no chance of the league expelling a club like they did with Aldershot and Maidstone in the eary 1990s. They'll do everything they can to avoid it.

 

[Indian Dan]

We did it once - indulging di Canio. The owner wasn’t even a Football fan let alone a Swindon fan so I don’t know why he flounced £10m on it. It’s when clubs lose their sugar daddy that the real sharks circle.

It’s why I live for the day Bournemouth fall apart - fucking bucket shakers.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

We did it once - indulging di Canio. The owner wasn’t even a Football fan let alone a Swindon fan so I don’t know why he flounced £10m on it. It’s when clubs lose their sugar daddy that the real sharks circle.

It’s why I live for the day Bournemouth fall apart - fucking bucket shakers.

Didn't you go into admin in the 90s/early 2000s and almost went bust around 10 years ago as well though? Seem to remember the first one was overspending and the second one was a series of unfortunate events beyond your control which would later pave the way for the Di Canio era.

I'm bitter about Bournemouth. Twice they defrauded local businesses only to get a shiny ground renovation and a meteoric rise to the Premier League out of it. Should never have been allowed to happen and it'll only happen again the day they fall out of the PL and struggle to get back up there.

 

[Imp in Branston]

There's a cluster of lower league clubs that overspent, got into significant financial trouble then repeated the overspending process again (with some then courting administration for the second time).

Bournemouth, Vale, Rotherham, Crystal Palace, Notts and Bury are the six that immediately come to mind. Swindon used to be one of those clubs but now they seem to have taken the new extreme of spending sod all in comparison.

I'm not saying Notts are guilty of this under Alan Hardy because they're not, and there are no signs that they're about to court financial oblivion, but on the wider scale I think there should be stronger punishments for clubs who leave non-football creditors badly out of pocket. It's not right for businesses to go to the wall after being offered 10p-20p in the £1 that they're owed, only for that football club to experience a subsequent meteoric rise under new ownerships like Bournemouth, Rotherham and Crystal Palace. It's also not right for well-run football clubs who cut their cloth accordingly only to see a multi-millionaire owner buying a financially ruined football club and pumping it full of money. It's like a reward for failure.

Personally, I think businesses should be given the same rights as "football creditors" and should be repaid over a number of years the full amount plus interest owed. If that means some clubs go to the wall then so be it. The Football League has been very, very lenient on overspending football clubs for years, preferring to let the Conference deal with them once the affected clubs are relegated to that level. There's no chance of the league expelling a club like they did with Aldershot and Maidstone in the eary 1990s. They'll do everything they can to avoid it.

We did it once - indulging di Canio. The owner wasn’t even a Football fan let alone a Swindon fan so I don’t know why he flounced £10m on it. It’s when clubs lose their sugar daddy that the real sharks circle.

It’s why I live for the day Bournemouth fall apart - fucking bucket shakers.

I agree entirely with the above posts, it's bordering on the piss take for clubs to be able to simply wipe off the debt by going into financial problems via mismanagement and abhorrent overspending, then doing the same again without real punishment.

We had serious financial problems following the TV deal fiasco and then the Co-op bank wanted a loan back in a lot shorter time than previously negotiated but it wasn't down to ridiculous overspending.

 

[Indian Dan]

Been in admin twice but not for overspending just plain fuckwittery by the owners. There’s always the lure of getting a club to go bust and turning the ground into houses.

Torquay and Hereford spring to mind.

 

[Indian Dan]

There are clubs that turn financial meltdown into a springboard for success. Lincoln, Luton and Oxford, for example. Stronger now than before their fall into non league. It’s clubs, probably like ourselves, where you just become mediocre and stay that way that is worse in some ways.

I’m afraid that without significant financial backing the best clubs can hope for is to retain the status quo

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

Been in admin twice but not for overspending just plain fuckwittery by the owners. There’s always the lure of getting a club to go bust and turning the ground into houses.

Torquay and Hereford spring to mind.

Wrexham are a club I feel sorry for. They're two leagues below where they were only because some selfish prick wanted to knock down the ground and build a massive B&Q on it.

Hartlepool with those spivs from Essex, Darlington with that idiot George Reynolds (I'm sure their fans didn't want that white elephant of a stadium when it was built), Mansfield with Haslam, Northampton with Cardoza, Luton with those scumbags that run them into the ground, Hereford with David Keyte, Chester with Stephen Vaughan. Those are clubs I feel sorry for because the owners took those clubs backwards through immoral and borderline illegal means.

As Indian Dan has said, club who were about to hit the buffers financially but used non league football as a springboard for greater prosperity and a stable well-run club are admirable. Sure you get the odd bankrolled team like Doncaster. But Shrewsbury are a lot better off than when they were 15 years ago for a start. Lincoln are at their healthiest in over a decade. Even in the past, non league turned Carlisle from League Two cellar-dwellers into a side that should've made the Championship in 2008. It makes teams get their house in order or face the consequences like Stockport have done. Whilst it'd be great to have Stockport back in the league again, I don't have as much sympathy for them, as their supporters trust brought on most of their mess themselves by paying unaffordable fees and wages and failing to pay back loans and taxes (although the fans didn't deserve to see them drop to the Conference North as that was through chronic football mismanagement rather than a financial one).

 

[Conker]

Mansfield are still suffering from Haslam to a extent, well Radford is anyway - the last payment on the ground is next year I believe.

I remember we were actually locked out our ground at one point in the conference - Haslam sent the baliffs in!

We have come out of the conference stronger and we are a club 'on the up' but only due to being lucky enough to get brought out by a local multi-millionaire with plenty of personal and company funds to buy the ground back, build a training ground and restart the academy and actually start producing decent player.

The training ground and Academy actually costs the club £0, thanks to our chairman and directors.

We are incredibly lucky to be honest.

 

[The_Viking_Magpie]

It’s a story as old as time, sadly

 

[RLC]

As Indian Dan has said, club who were about to hit the buffers financially but used non league football as a springboard for greater prosperity and a stable well-run club are admirable. .

Hopefully we will be another example in the next 5-10 years. We are certainly in a much better place now than we were five years ago.

 

[shoddycollins]

Whilst it'd be great to have Stockport back in the league again, I don't have as much sympathy for them, as their supporters trust brought on most of their mess themselves by paying unaffordable fees and wages and failing to pay back loans and taxes (although the fans didn't deserve to see them drop to the Conference North as that was through chronic football mismanagement rather than a financial one).

Their supporters trust was taken over by a slimy chancer who just happened to be a mate of their major investor and who didn't even support Stockport, that was the problem there. There's a certain 'experienced football administrator', who can't be named because he likes to Google his own name and get his lawyers onto any forum that mentions him, who has spent the best part of twenty years going on a tour of the North conning money out of every football club he encounters. Posing as a supporter, joining the trust, getting elected chair of the trust and then engineering a trust takeover of the club is his modus operandi. Cut his teeth on Scarborough and has been at it ever since. Even turned up at Bournemouth at one point.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

Their supporters trust was taken over by a slimy chancer who just happened to be a mate of their major investor and who didn't even support Stockport, that was the problem there. There's a certain 'experienced football administrator', who can't be named because he likes to Google his own name and get his lawyers onto any forum that mentions him, who has spent the best part of twenty years going on a tour of the North conning money out of every football club he encounters.

Oh I have sympathy for them with the Brian Kennedy fiasco which badly left them out of pocket and unable to own their own ground.

It was the wages they were paying for a few years to get back up the leagues (alright nowhere near as big as some teams spend in the third and fourth tier right now) that they simply couldn't afford and by the conclusion of the 2008-09 season the administrators were called in. The trust knew they'd have to loan money because Brian Kennedy fucked them over (that's where my sympathy lies), so why increase the wage budget through the Liam Dickinson money instead of ring-fencing some of the fee to repay back that fatal loan which sent them plummeting down the leagues?

In some ways I was sympathetic for them because Brian Kennedy ruined that club by starving them of the cash streams that their 90s heyday funded for them. But on the other hand, if you take a loan out without being sure if you can pay it back and by trying to keep a squad that wasn't cheap together, then you face the consequences.

 

[wangle]

There are clubs that turn financial meltdown into a springboard for success. Lincoln, Luton and Oxford, for example. Stronger now than before their fall into non league. It’s clubs, probably like ourselves, where you just become mediocre and stay that way that is worse in some ways.

I’m afraid that without significant financial backing the best clubs can hope for is to retain the status quo

Had Clive Nate’s (investor, now chairman) and the Cowleys not turned up there’s a solid chance we’d still be in the non-league and perhaps even a step lower. Sometimes you need some luck from the football gods (I.e. cup runs).

 

[PaulHaddock]

When we got hit by the ITV Digital meltdown, instead of going into administration, Fenty took the moral way out and a double relegation followed. Amazing to think that administration would’ve been the best option!

 

[wangle]

On to our game today, as it doesn’t look like there is a match specific thread for this one. Should be an interesting one. Crawley seemed to have started okay with our old big man Ollie Palmer, somewhat surprisingly, banging in the goals. I still think Akinde is a substantial upgrade, but Palmer should get a warm reception as he was a bit of cult hero towards the back end of last season.

Not enjoying the timing of Crawley getting a new manager as players may up their game. Added to the Cowleys getting manager of the month it is a superstitious nightmare.

Would be nice to get another 3 points today, but it will depend which lincoln turns up. Thankfully the Lincoln at home has been pretty good so far this season.

 

[wangle]

When we got hit by the ITV Digital meltdown, instead of going into administration, Fenty took the moral way out and a double relegation followed. Amazing to think that administration would’ve been the best option!

I was fairly young when the itv digital metalsown took place, but for some reason I didn’t consider it would reach that far up the pyramid.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

When we got hit by the ITV Digital meltdown, instead of going into administration, Fenty took the moral way out and a double relegation followed. Amazing to think that administration would’ve been the best option!

You'd have ended up in League Two either way. Nearly every club with four figure gates relegated in the last 20 years from the Championship has ended up in League Two, most within 3-4 years. The gulf is that massive that if you don't go back up you face a squad rebuild and that can kill teams badly.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

I was fairly young when the itv digital metalsown took place, but for some reason I didn’t consider it would reach that far up the pyramid.

When us and Grimsby were in the Championship in 2001-02, we got £3 million from ITV. League One clubs got £750,000 each and League Two clubs £500,000 each. There were no such thing as solidarity payments that we get today either. So when ITV Digital went pop and Sky offered 25% of what ITV paid for the rights, you can quite clearly see where the crisis lay. The split suddenly became £750,000, £250,000 and £125,000 per club...

Because of the trojan horse that are the solidarity payments (designed so clubs can give bang average players six figure salaries to appease fans whilst the PL hold a gun over their chairmens heads), clubs have never been as rich as they are now from handouts. League Two clubs get nearly £1 million just for being in this league, but half of that is from the PL.

 

[PaulHaddock]

You'd have ended up in League Two either way. Nearly every club with four figure gates relegated in the last 20 years from the Championship has ended up in League Two, most within 3-4 years. The gulf is that massive that if you don't go back up you face a squad rebuild and that can kill teams badly.

Agreed. My point was that we wouldn’t still be under the fist of Fenty 15 years later!

 

[The_Viking_Magpie]

Using non league as a springboard? Not all that enter NL spring back. Not sure many if any plan that#stain