stevegrant

"Administration will be good"

Logic isn't something that comes naturally to councils, unfortunately.

Ron, I'm pretty sure they said that the proposed directors' list had been approved by the Football League, so they must all have passed the fit and proper persons test.

Something it's already started doing, if I remember rightly.

Can't argue with a word of that, to be honest. There are a lot of people who have a lot of explaining to do - it'll be interesting to see if there's any way of actually getting the truth out of these people rather than these "issues" with the Football League being used as an excuse.

I suspect someone's having a laugh at your expense...

2 for me.

He's in Dictionary Corner all this week. Pretty good timing by Channel 4... It will have been filmed about 6-8 weeks ago.

Yes, quite comfortably.

Christ. Are you 12? :confused:

He'd discuss things like that with anyone who had reached advanced talks because the sale of a player may have an effect on the perceived value of the assets they are trying to buy.

Is there one iota of evidence of this? :confused:

Are you sure about that? Soccerbase suggests they spent the princely sum of £475k in disclosed transfer fees and one undisclosed fee signing from Cambridge United. Leicester had a squad that shouldn't have been relegated in the first place, and one that was clearly good enough to get promoted from League One without too many changes. They've still got some high earners there - DJ Campbell "generously" agreed to halve his wages to just the £17k a week when they were relegated, and I'd imagine the likes of Oakley, Howard, Fryatt et al are on a fair wedge, but they got decent attendances for most of the season so they should have been covered.

It intrigues me that people naturally assume that someone taking over must have extra millions at their disposal to spend on strengthening the team. Look at it another way, we have a perfectly manageable wage bill now, at roughly 50% of turnover (the reason for the problems at the moment are due to the fact that season tickets haven't been put on sale yet), and once the takeover goes through, the club won't need to service a mortgage on the stadium at about £2.5m per year or reduce an overdraft by £2m per year. That's an extra £4.5m that will be available - clearly some of it will cover existing expenses to ensure the club at least breaks even, but I would expect there to be a seven-figure sum left over from that available. That means the new owners won't necessarily have to put any of their own money in - at least not this season.

Likewise, and I'd have thought matchday prices will be £20 for most games, possibly with £16 or £18 for some games where they're expecting particularly low attendances.

Finishing third in the group also means we'll be in Division One of the new P20 competition next season. Might as well lump all your money on Essex to win Division Two by a country mile...

If we can get agreement from the Football League on that basis I would consider it a resounding success on our part.

Right, have finally collected the master copy, should be posted to everyone at the end of this week with a bit of luck. Sorry for the delay...

The theory is that because Mascarenhas bowls at the same sort of pace with a great deal of success, Ervine should be able to do the same. Clearly doesn't work in practice because Ervine just isn't consistent enough. As a batsman, you know that you're going to get at least one full toss or short-pitched long-hop from him that you'll be able to hit over the ropes. Also, it doesn't help that Dawson's been woefully short of form in recent weeks, hence being dropped from the County Championship side.

Started well, and if Cork had held onto a tough one in the slips to get rid of Stevens we'd have had a very good chance. The main deciding factor was the two overs from Ervine and one from Dawson which went for a combined 34 runs. The other bowlers bowled pretty well.

FFS. I thought we'd got away from Sky having been relegated

Just sounds like a slightly foreign-sounding metaphor for Jouls, tbf...

SFC itself is only currently insolvent because they've closed off their only revenue stream over the summer... chicken and egg situation.

10,000 season tickets at £300 = £3m; that covers the wage bill for about 6 months (probably longer with the likes of Euell, Dyer, Wright-Phillips, John, Rasiak and possibly Davis gone). Add matchday sales (say 5000 @ £20) and that's £100k per home game, roughly another £200k per month if you assume we generally have two home games per month. That then gives the club a massive amount of breathing space in which to conclude a takeover deal, and if we're still struggling by January then any player with any sort of value gets sold for whatever price someone's willing to pay. There is absolutely no way we should be in the position where, in a week's time, the football club could cease to exist.

Why were the players not asked to take a wage deferral when we first went into administration? That would have bought the club and the administrator a lot more time to get a deal done. Also, what exactly is it that is stopping the club selling season tickets, which would bring in the revenue that would usually be used to ensure the club's costs over the summer are covered...