benjii

This is true. Look at the expensive ****e WBA and West Ham have accumulated.

This is correct. Even when "fit", I've been told he can't play Sat, Weds, Sat as his knees aren't up to it. If we stay up we could do with a major overhaul of our striking options (even though we've just spent 19m on one of them).

Not sure. The accounts will say whether we paid a dividend or not. I don't recall us paying a dividend.

The point is, you don't know. As things stand, the evidence suggests she has put around 40m into the club and taken zero out aside from perhaps some relatively modest interest on an 11m loan. Being paid by Gao is not taking money out. If Gao is shown to have dodgy motives or to be a bad owner then perhaps we will need to reevaluate but, as it stands, for someone who was essentially a reluctant owner one might say she has been a model custodian.

You don't understand what you're talking about pal.

She converted 38m of debt to equity according to this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/26813363 Odd move for someone looking to take cash out.

Answer the question. What money has SHE taken out? That doesn't concern whether or not Gao will or won't take money out but what money has she taken out? The money she got from Gao hasn't come out of the club and if a loan was repaid that's not money out either, it's netting off money in, save for any interest but the whole point of that loan was to be on better terms than the high interest loan Cortese took. So, I'll ask again, what money has she taken out? See if you can muster an intelligent response.

What money has Kat taken out then? As far as I can tell she wrote off about 30m of debt and she refinanced Cortese's offshore loan in better terms. Neither of those activities takes money out of the club. If her loan was paid back as part of the sale then ultimately Gao would have paid that one way or the other.

Probably not

We registered an identical charge in November 2016 as well.

The loan was taken out by the club. Read the ****ing document. The borrower is the club, not Gao.

Yeah, but if it is just a cash flow facility because the PL payments are lumpy then any lender would want to take security and an assignment of the payments. That would be very normal and it's so normal that there is even a detailed procedure for it in the Premier League rules. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I suspect it is all perfectly benign.

I agree that it's right to be concerned and I find the silence from the new owners very odd - I don't want big mouth owners but some sort of statement of intent and vision.

That's speculation. We've just published our best ever results. Edit - the on the pitch bit obviously isn't speculation!

The money goes to the bank to be distributed in accordance with the loan document. The loan will say how the debt is dealt with and what the club has left. Even if the whole of the money was kept by the bank, the club would have an equivalent amount of cash (less interest) from the bank to pay the wages. So, your scenario, is that the club changes its business model drastically. The loan is neither here nor there in that scenario.

Could well be as simple as that. Effectively releasing the value of the payments sooner and smoothing cash flow.

Yes, that's probably correct. It would be interesting to know what the size of the loan is though.

I've checked the rules and Central Funds is basically all broadcasting revenue.

The Premier League "Central Funds" go straight to Macquarie and they distribute them in accordance with the loan. We don't know what the loan says about that distribution. I am trying to find out what Central Funds means....

We don't know. Maybe. Either way, and irrespective of this, I don't plan to buy another season ticket unless he reassures me of his intentions and credentials. And if we start ****ing other people's (charities, schools, small businesses, other football clubs, tax authorities etc.) money away on players to achieve some sort of success (which doesn't look likely), I won't be celebrating and I will expect the club to suffer what punishments come its way.

We have no confirmation how big the debt to Macquarie is.

SFC has taken out a loan from Macquarie and has indeed agreed to assign all Premier League central fund payments to Macquarie during this season and next season. See clause 6.9. This doesn't necessarily mean the loan is being used to fund the purchase. We simply don't know how much the loan is or what it is for. You might speculate though, given the timing, that it is connected in some way with the takeover.

If all scheduling was "fair", this would be fair. Given that scheduling is often completely unfair (over Xmas, for example) this looks suspiciously like trying to give Chelsea the best possible chance in the semi final!

Lambert is a legend but he can't be excluded at the expense of our only manager to have won a proper trophy.

Really? It looks the same from my recollection.