saint si

Absolutely. That's how they'll have to be seen to approach it - they can only test the bidder that is recommended by PKF and they cannot be seen to input to PKF's decision process. Their comments after last week's meeting said almost exactly that. But the reality is that they will know whether Chainrai's bid is the only viable one or not, and so will be aware of the ramifications of approving him or not. Frankly, if I was them I'd just fail everyone who applied for the owners and directors test. "Sorry, we have a duty of care to PFC as you keep telling us, so we can't allow it to fall in to the wrong hands". That'd shut the moaning ****s up.

Fair point. Sounds like they have enough flexibility in their rules then to essentially justify any decision they want. "Oh no, he was just a major creditor" vs "as the major creditor he had a significant influence over the day to day running of the club and the decision to go in to admin". Which we all knew anyway, to be fair. Interesting last note. FL are going to be between a rock and a hard place. They could be left with a helluva decision ... approve Chainrai to save the club, but get continued abuse from the few... or veto Chainrai and condemn the club to liquidation because the trust bid doesn't stack up...

Arguably if he was in a position to *try* and do anything, then by definition, he was acting as a shadow director...?

And it's also the Harry Redknapp school of management. Getting the best out of what you already have does not even register as being an option. Moan moan moan about needing new players all the time.

Seems like a whole lot of spin going on. Saying that the FL "failed to agree" and implying that this means they have rejected Chainrai/Portpin as owners. The FL's statement is entirely neutral on this. "It is for the Administrator to select his preferred bidder for the club. The Administrator is aware that any such bidder must meet The Football League’s requirements including the terms of the Owners’ and Directors’ Test,' said a league spokesperson. 'Once the preferred bidder has been selected the matter will be considered formally by the League Board."

Very reasonable and sensible projections. Clearly ticket price also a factor, but at roughly current prices, these numbers seem about right to me. The question then for debate is whether a business case can be built on these additional attendances. i.e. would a 40k stadium be worthwhile if filled 3-5 times a year when the really big clubs come to town? And a few mid-30s attendances thrown in for good measure. Some say yes, others say no - i'm personally in the "maybe" camp. I don't think it can be ruled out, but i simply don't think we have the information we would need in order to determine whether the business case would fly or not. We need to remember it's more than just ticket price x attendance = revenue. There's a whole load of knock on impacts from getting more people through the turnstiles - food & drink, merchandise, corporate, advertising etc - and these all have an influence. I bet Cortese knows exactly what the average spend per fan, per visit to SMS is today, and what premier league average is, and has a plan to improve it. What is likely is that any stadium expansion won't purely be for the purposes of getting more bums on seats - though that is obviously a big factor. It will also include the opportunity to develop additional revenue streams and more corporate and commercial facilities (to make better use of the place on non-match days). Incidentally, to that end, a lot has been done recently around the club's branding and image. The silver crest on black background is everywhere now; associations with ultra-luxury brands like sun-seeker; even the flight attendant style uniforms in the shop, and for the programme sellers. Cortese is definitely looking to position the club/brand as upmarket and fashionable... i.e. (in his own words) boutique. Any development of the stadium would be in line with these values and with the intention of attracting high spenders (corporate or otherwise).

I don't think the FL can do anything else. As they rightly point out, they are not the administrator, and therefore simply not empowered to be making the decision. However, it does seem to be an interesting stalemate. My guess at what's going on ... - PKF feel duty bound to creditors to go with Portpin, as there is miles between the two bids (and don't forget that Chainrai is also one of the creditors) - But PKF also expect Chainrai and/or Portpin to fall foul of the FAPPT - As a result, they want the league to make a statement in this regard, to give them evidence that allows them to throw out the Portpin option - The league won't do so as they'd get sued to kingdom come - This leaves PKF back where they started - i.e. without any "evidence" - and they can't pick the Trust bid over the Portpin bid without it Catch 22!

Well there are pretty obviously different degrees of culpability depending on intent, what the guilty party knew or didn't know etc., so I can't agree with that statement. And putting the nuances of criminal law to one side, looking at things from a moral perspective, there are clearly different degrees of immorality pertaining to different circumstances. It would be trivial to come up with extreme examples to show that, and there is a broad spectrum in between - that really being my point. Anyway, enough de-rail...

At the risk of confusing things with another thread, I think all hypo is saying is that there are all sorts of shades of grey here. As you say, some acts are "wronger" ... and thus by definition, some acts are less wrong also. Knowing the age of the victim vs not knowing the age. Checking and being lied to vs deliberately being ignorant of the likely answer vs actively seeking out an underage girl. Being attracted to someone who appears to be a woman (but is arbitrarily not yet considered to be one in the eyes of the law) versus being attracted to a girl because she looks like one. It is an emotive topic, and the media have certainly had their fun with it, but lumping all of these difference scenarios together as "sick paedos" doesn't help anyone - least of all victims or potential future victims.

Thought experiment: Two 15 year olds have sex. The guy turns 16, and then they have sex to celebrate. Then the girl turns 16, and more sex follows. Then through a bizarre twist of fate, it is discovered the guy was actually kidnapped as a baby and lied to about his date of birth. Turns out he is still actually 15 after all! Which one is a paedo?

So you were actively paying down your debts to HMRC when they petitioned to wind you up, yes?

Oh good, the forum is united on common ground at last!

Agreed - we took significant steps to address the debts we had, and severely impacted our competitiveness on the pitch to the point where we were - horrors - uncompetitive. Businesses take risks all the time - they spend money on research, or developing new products, or they make investments, or acquisitions - with the hope of reaping a return over a longer term. Sometimes it works and they grow or become more profitable, and sometimes it doesn't work. But the risks are weighed up, the business case is put together, and expected returns are understood in order to compensate for the risk. What beggars belief about the skates' whole approach is that they didn't have any kind of plan at all. They paid out silly money, achieved a modicum of success, but even that success didn't actually pay for the "investment" in players - they went bust after winning the FA cup, going on a European tour, and still whilst receiving premiership level income streams. So really... what exactly were they expecting to happen!?

Call it youthful exuberance. At least he looked for permission and did as he was told!

He wanted to come up for the corner at 2-2. Got as far as the halfway line and the bench waved him back. Brilliant character. Looking forward to seeing his save on motd2 as from the chapel end it looked a certain goal. Looks to have a bright future ahead of him for sure.

It's unfortunate, but transfers require a lot of pieces to fall in to place. Selling club needs to want to sell, at a price we are willing to pay, and then we need to agree terms with the player, whilst keeping within a wage structure so as to not f**k off the rest of the squad. And it's more complicated than that still... Selling club often won't want to sell until they know who they are bringing in or likely to bring in. As the deadline looms clubs (and players) get more desperate and are willing to compromise more. It's a massive game of musical chairs. So it's no wonder it all gets sorted out (or not) in the last couple of days of a transfer window as players shuffle round. Why is deadline day such a big event? So 4 months vs 4 weeks makes very little difference. Our failure to land players we wanted - and there is no doubt we wanted to strengthen at the back - should not be viewed entirely as cortese/adkins's fault. There is always a massive element of luck and the fact remains you can't force a club to sell or force a player to sign. I would (like everyone else I suspect) have liked to see us sign another fullback and a centre back. But I've been impressed with the players we have signed. With a fully fit first XI we are a match for most teams in this league.

That was like reading some of the posts on here at times. It's a media conspiracy!

My take on Cortese's quote is that he's referring to borrowing against "uncertain" future income streams - i.e. income driven by achieving success on the field (aka the Leeds model), such as prize money, CL TV money, and spectator revenues to a large extent. As opposed to the income that (it appears) we have borrowed against which is as close to certain as you can get (barring something like the collapse of Sky in the fashion of ITV Digital). The second part of the quote sounds like an aspiration, rather than a policy. I.e. wouldn't it be great if we didn't need parachute payments? And yes, it would. But we need to stabilise as a premier league club first.

Few random thoughts... - from what I can gather, this is borrowing against known, guaranteed, relatively short term sources of income - i.e. TV revenues and/or parachute payments - so this is entirely different from borrowing "on the never never" and hoping for continued income streams several years out, and also significantly different from taking out a loan secured against the club's fixed assets - would also therefore expect this to be a relatively low rate of interest as it's a very low risk loan - I suspect this is more about cash-flow than acquisition of a long term debt. Might also be some accounting advantages. - that quote from Cortese is pretty interesting and on the face of it, we're now at odds with that view. However, depending on the nature of this loan, then it could simply be a question of context. If we have borrowed against cast-iron guaranteed income, and if it does turn out to be a simple matter of cash-flow, then I don't think that is actually the kind of borrowing Cortese was criticising. - clearly until we have more details (which may be a long way away) then we are all idly speculating. However, it's good that people look to ask questions of the club and of its management. We must never stick our heads in the sand, like that lot down the road.

Was on South Today at lunchtime. Said that the a temporary "pause" had been agreed whilst some aspect of the specification is confirmed. I'm going for it being whether the statue of Guly should be solid gold or just gold plated.

I just happen to have looked at West Ham's results so far... played 5, won 2, drawn 2. Sounds like a pretty decent start on the face of it, but then they've faced Sunderland, Fulham and Villa at home, and Norwich and Swansea away. All games that I think we are well capable of winning, and I would probably expect us to get a similar return from those 5 matches (and of course we're part way there already). Next 8 games will go a long way to telling us our "true" position in this league.

Were they boycotting or packing the park this week?

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What exactly is it the Football League have done/not done this time? Are they supposed to be acting tough or acting lenient? I've lost track.

The end for fan owned football clubs? No. The end for fans dreaming of owning football clubs based purely on goodwill and "but we're the fans, innit!", and not actual financial facts? Yes!