stevegrant

Dan Williams, ****ing hell, that's a blast from the past HelpMeRhonda

I'm led to believe he's a Saints fan

Was the issue of how the period of administration is to be funded raised in court? Not seen any mention of it so far.

According to our accounts for the year ended 30th June 2010 (the latest available from Companies House), the average number of employees during the year was 214 (61 "administrative", 153 "football"). In addition, we employed around 250 temporary staff on matchdays.

How many times has he actually been right with any of his "throw enough mud and eventually some will stick" transfer predictions?

The judge may yet oppose it, and ultimately he's the one that matters.

Surely if they were breaking even, they wouldn't need to go into administration?

HMRC (surprisingly, IMO) not opposing administration application, but opposing proposal to appoint UHY

He's a ****ing idiot. "Shock horror a football club relies on owner subsidy" - well yes, but a football club who's just come out of administration having wiped around £80m of debt from their books doing so (and not for the purposes of debt repayment) is rather reckless, I'd suggest.

Textbook

Coventry aren't looking that useless anymore, especially at home, and of their 7 remaining home games, only one is against a top-half side (Birmingham). The rest are all very winnable (Barnsley, Palace, Pompey, Peterborough, Millwall, Doncaster)

I see Appleton's fallen into the "it's not fair on everyone else if we've got a depleted squad, so we should be allowed to sign loads more loan players" trap. I wouldn't say that's to the detriment of the division, I'd imagine the likes of Coventry, Doncaster, Nottingham Forest and Millwall will be quite happy to see a limbs-nearly-falling-off starting lineup for the rest of the season.

That must be a ****ing huge wall

Last call for players - if I can't get at least another 5 by the weekend (long shot), we'll probably have to cancel.

I'm not sure the £83,700 for 3100 adult tickets will stretch that far, to be honest.

Sadly, I'm not entirely convinced that publicly saying "we're going to ask the court on Friday to allow us to enter administration" is the same as lodging a Notice of Intention to Appoint an Administrator. I suspect the latter has to be done in court. Also, I assume the rules on what constitutes an Insolvency Event have changed in recent years because Coventry DID lodge that particular Notice to the court a few years ago, giving it ten days to appoint someone, and on the final day, SISU rode in on their trusty steed to bail them out with their ill-thought-out business plan, bought the club and avoided a points deduction.

Early conspiracy theories when that claim came out was that Chainrai had someone waiting in the wings to be the new "saviour", so anyone who had any genuine interest was scared off by AA with a ridiculous price tag.

FIFA and UEFA have jurisdiction over the FA - to an extent (they wouldn't want to be seen to be dictating how national associations should manage the game in their country) - but not over the leagues affiliated to the national associations, especially in the cases of the Premier League and Football League as they're not run by the national association. In many countries, the national league IS run by the national association, but not here.

All results voided, we go back to the top of the table

A scruffy cockney who needs a shave, I reckon

They are effectively private members' clubs and can basically impose whatever eligibility criteria they like. One of those criteria is that creditors deemed "Football Creditors" must be satisfied in full in the case of an insolvency event, otherwise membership will be revoked/refused. If I had run up a bar bill at a members' club and then tried to renew my membership, I'd expect them to refuse until I'd settled that debt.

As far as I'm aware, foreign clubs do not count as "Football Creditors", hence why Udinese (I think) were heavily involved in the CVA process last time around, so they're left waiting in line with the likes of Terry the Builder and St John's Ambulance for a percentage of the scraps.

In Pompey's case, IMO, the main problem is that there's been a whole succession of owners with a somewhat chequered past, so why would any legitimate potential owner believe the numbers they're presented with if they showed an interest in buying the club? Sporting sanctions will do the trick for the vast majority of clubs, who haven't had money launderers, arms dealers and tax dodgers as owners - realistically, the authorities should be putting a framework in place to cover the majority, while accepting that they're unlikely to be able to legislate for every single issue that may arise. The idea of making an owner personally responsible is a non-starter, football clubs are nearly always limited companies - legally, the shareholders are not personally liable for losses sustained by the company directors/management. The escrow account is an interesting idea, but you're then getting into the very dodgy ground of the authorities basically running the club. The club should be (within reason, clearly) free to run their business as they see fit, within whatever restrictions the authorities place on all clubs. There's a fair argument to suggest that clubs with a history of financial mismanagement should be subject to additional scrutiny, but as we've seen with your situation with CSI, there's still plenty of scope for it to go horribly wrong. How the FL justified allowing CSI to pump in what seems to equate to £2m a month genuinely baffles me.

Schneiderlin cost €250k. No idea where this bizarre £1m figure comes from. I'm intrigued as to what Leeds offered, then, considering we signed him on a free transfer.

Definitely. The Football League/Premier League (actually, **** it, it should be an FA directive, they should re-stamp their authority on the game they are supposed to govern) should basically replace the Football Creditors rule with sporting sanctions for non-payment of agreed transfer fees and tax. If clubs knew they'd be docked points if they missed payments (or were significantly late), they'd soon get their house in order. The Conference should be used as a blueprint here, they regularly impose points deductions for teams missing payment deadlines.