Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers....

Luxfox · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

It's been really eye opening reading this thread.
When I first started reading I thought, well this Barnsley fan has a huge dose of sour grapes. His team beats Forest giving hope of a resurgence and then against all hopes gets beaten by Leicester, poor chap is as frustrated as I have been, as a Leicester fan for 40 years. I know what's it's like to watch my team play like a second rate pub team, despite huge wages etc. Leicester are not Man U or Chelsea or anything close.

But then I got a little offended.

Why are we cheats? Because a Thai businessman decides he wants to run a football club and essentially gives the club a big chunk of money? If that's the case then Man, City, Chelsea et al should all be banned, not to mention Barcelona and a host of Italian sides.

The problem is that once SKY money began to impact football the writing was on the wall for smaller clubs. And by small I mean clubs from small towns with small followings. They say that promotion to the prem brings with it 90 million of TV money, once there that money on its own us not enough to keep things going, you need gate revenue, marketing, international interest and shirt sales etc...

So I agree that all this money has ruined the beautiful game, Bosman has done for an effective England team, and FFP could even spell the end for the very teams it's trying to help (in terms of fines) anyway, I'm no expert.

I am not happy about the arrogance shown by some at the game, it's not true to form for our club, but after 10 tears of disappointment I can understand why it happens, I don't condone it however. Bransley is a great club, it's a little churlish of you to make such unqualified statements about Leicester as well as throwing around accusations of cheating.

Your team played well against forest and not so well against us. What will you say if you lose to Watford? (I truly hope you beat them)

Anyway, all the best, I hope you stay up!

Jimmy viz · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Luxfox said: ↑

It's been really eye opening reading this thread.
When I first started reading I thought, well this Barnsley fan has a huge dose of sour grapes. His team beats Forest giving hope of a resurgence and then against all hopes gets beaten by Leicester, poor chap is as frustrated as I have been, as a Leicester fan for 40 years. I know what's it's like to watch my team play like a second rate pub team, despite huge wages etc. Leicester are not Man U or Chelsea or anything close.

But then I got a little offended.

Why are we cheats? Because a Thai businessman decides he wants to run a football club and essentially gives the club a big chunk of money? If that's the case then Man, City, Chelsea et al should all be banned, not to mention Barcelona and a host of Italian sides.

The problem is that once SKY money began to impact football the writing was on the wall for smaller clubs. And by small I mean clubs from small towns with small followings. They say that promotion to the prem brings with it 90 million of TV money, once there that money on its own us not enough to keep things going, you need gate revenue, marketing, international interest and shirt sales etc...

So I agree that all this money has ruined the beautiful game, Bosman has done for an effective England team, and FFP could even spell the end for the very teams it's trying to help (in terms of fines) anyway, I'm no expert.

I am not happy about the arrogance shown by some at the game, it's not true to form for our club, but after 10 tears of disappointment I can understand why it happens, I don't condone it however. Bransley is a great club, it's a little churlish of you to make such unqualified statements about Leicester as well as throwing around accusations of cheating.

Your team played well against forest and not so well against us. What will you say if you lose to Watford? (I truly hope you beat them)

Anyway, all the best, I hope you stay up!
Click to expand...

Nice post and from the heart. If we lose to Watford we lose. I guess in some ways there's a battle going on for the heart of football at championship level. The Premiership was list to the dark arts many years ago. So it's not about us or winning of losing I've seen us bottom of the old 4th division I've witnessed every 7 nil defeat in my lifetime I'm used to losing and winning. No this stuff feels more important than that. The souls of clubs are being sold Hull Tigers, Cardiff playing in red. I want clubs like yours to have a team for the genuine fans like you. I don't want more clubs like Portsmouth or Coventry.

Good luck in the Premiership you'll need it!!

Luxfox · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Thanks, we will need lots of luck IF we make it (fat lady ain't singing just yet!)

John Peachy · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Portsmouth....
Coventry.....
Luton town....

Gordon Ottershaw · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Maybe cheat is a strong word, but you've certainly been cheating the system. As already mentioned, the way you took advantage of the administration system last time led to outrage and a major change in the rules. Many teams have gone into administration, us included (although we went into administration when we didn't need to, due to the greed of the board at the time, and for a debt equal to two and a half weeks of Wayne Rooney's wages),but most learn from it and don't make the same mistake twice. Obviously Portsmouth are the best example of how not to behave, but had the Thai businessman not come in with a large chunk of money you would have been next.

Just because someone comes in and bails you out with silly money, that doesn't take away from the fact that, despite the outrage at the way you handled yourselves when you went into administration, you learned nothing and went and made the same mistakes again. You have spent the past few years living beyond your means and that makes it very unfair for clubs that do balance their books. Are we supposed to spend £80-100m (depending on who you believe) so that we can attract players to compete with you, in the hope that a friendly rich foreigner (and the track record of that type of owner is not particularly good in this country) will bale us out? What kind of business model is that? And what kind of message is that sending out?

The football authorities are trying to bring in rules to stop this kind of thing happening and that can only be good for the game as a whole. It's therefore rather telling that Leicester are spending a lot of money on expensive lawyers to try to challenge this rule.

Your team yesterday was by far the best I have seen at Oakwell in recent years, but by what means did you put it together? Even now your wage bill is above your turnover. Honestly, what type of example is that to clubs aspiring to climb the league. And your friends higher up this thread bragging that you are not in debt are missing the point. You had run up an incredible amount of debt and didn't clear that by fetching more fans in through the gates, or by developing and selling players, you did it by inviting the wolves through the door. And at what cost? Your saviour now owns your ground, as well as your club, is that right? Well if you take a look around the country and around the bottom of the Premiership at next season's rivals you will see many clubs whose fans were bragging about being 'debt free' as they rode the waves of success, before realising they had taken on a whole different kind of debt.

What's to stop it happening to us though, as your friends asked earlier? Our owner is a lifelong Reds fan. He's wealthy, but far far nearer to my level of wealth than your owner's (I am skint by the way!), and his family have shown no interest in taking the club on from him, so he knows that at some point someone else will own the club. He has therefore split the ground and land from the football club and the ownership of the ground and land is shared with Barnsley Council. There is therefore no way that someone can come in, buy the club, get bored, shut it down and build a supermarket. Our owner is also not a bottomless pit of money. He had to invest, albeit modestly by your standards, initially, but the short term plan was always to make the club self-sufficient, which we have been for the past few years. Our income comes from developing players like Stones, Vaz Te, Butterfield, etc and making a profit. A much more sensible method than spend, spend, spend, oh heck, we really need someone to give us £100m or we're going to have to tell all our creditors they're not getting paid again.

And why Leicester and not Man City you ask? Well, we don't like what they are doing either, but we weren't playing Man City yesterday, we were playing Leicester. And it was Leicester fans with short memories who were acting like arrogant t0ssers towards us yesterday. And Leicester strikers acting like arrogant t0ssers yesterday. It made you very difficult to like or even appreciate. Your fans seem to have forgotten how embarrassed they should have been in the circumstances in which they last got promoted to the Premiership and you certainly should have a little more humility about how you are doing it this time too. Last time you wiped your debt by manipulating the administration option, splashing out big money on players as soon as you had told all the local businesses that they would be getting x pence in the pound. This time you ran up unmanageable debt and were fortunate enough to have a rich foreigner deem you as his latest plaything. You played well and are going to win this division easily, but don't kid us that the team you have is all through hard work and good coaching, because it was put together with money you didn't have.

There are others like you in our division. Blackburn abused the parachute payments by splashing out on Jordan Rhodes and continuing to let the debt rise. The football authorities shouldn't allow that. They give the parachute payments to cover the debts and silly contracts he existing players are on, but like all things in the world of football it gets abused. Without Rhodes' goals (incidentally, Rhodes walked out on us as a teenager and we were awarded £10k from Ipswich for his development) Blackburn would have gone down again, but they manipulated the system and stayed up. Similarly, Bolton took our leading scorer because we couldn't match what wages they were offering. Yet they are £163m in debt. How is this fair? How is this in the spirit of the game? How does this make for a game where eleven men are supposed to be pitting their wits against eleven others on a level playing field? There's a lot wrong with the game and, whilst Leicester are not the worst culprits, getting our noses rubbed in it like we did last night under the circumstances in which you built that team is pretty difficult to swallow. And keep carrying on like that and you will find you have no friends when the bubble bursts and you have your collection tins out again. And don't think you'll have any loyalty from those wonderful players (most of whom will be in the reserves next season anyway), who will smile as you're rattling your collection tins because they're getting paid whatever happens.

I know you find it difficult to believe that there are Barnsley fans who wouldn't swap places with Leicester, but trust me, we are not kidding. We'd like to watch football as well as you are currently playing it, but we'd also like to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and sleep at night.

CalgaryTyke · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

That is the single best post I have ever seen on here. Absolutely spot on. It's a shame that it likely won't reach its target audience (Leicester, Portmouth, Blackburn fans to name a few) but good on you. I agree with every word.

jptykes · Mar 13, 2014

Well said, Gordon! Excellent post.

Mido · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Gordon Ottershaw said: ↑

Maybe cheat is a strong word, but you've certainly been cheating the system. As already mentioned, the way you took advantage of the administration system last time led to outrage and a major change in the rules. Many teams have gone into administration, us included (although we went into administration when we didn't need to, due to the greed of the board at the time, and for a debt equal to two and a half weeks of Wayne Rooney's wages),but most learn from it and don't make the same mistake twice. Obviously Portsmouth are the best example of how not to behave, but had the Thai businessman not come in with a large chunk of money you would have been next.

Just because someone comes in and bails you out with silly money, that doesn't take away from the fact that, despite the outrage at the way you handled yourselves when you went into administration, you learned nothing and went and made the same mistakes again. You have spent the past few years living beyond your means and that makes it very unfair for clubs that do balance their books. Are we supposed to spend £80-100m (depending on who you believe) so that we can attract players to compete with you, in the hope that a friendly rich foreigner (and the track record of that type of owner is not particularly good in this country) will bale us out? What kind of business model is that? And what kind of message is that sending out?

The football authorities are trying to bring in rules to stop this kind of thing happening and that can only be good for the game as a whole. It's therefore rather telling that Leicester are spending a lot of money on expensive lawyers to try to challenge this rule.

Your team yesterday was by far the best I have seen at Oakwell in recent years, but by what means did you put it together? Even now your wage bill is above your turnover. Honestly, what type of example is that to clubs aspiring to climb the league. And your friends higher up this thread bragging that you are not in debt are missing the point. You had run up an incredible amount of debt and didn't clear that by fetching more fans in through the gates, or by developing and selling players, you did it by inviting the wolves through the door. And at what cost? Your saviour now owns your ground, as well as your club, is that right? Well if you take a look around the country and around the bottom of the Premiership at next season's rivals you will see many clubs whose fans were bragging about being 'debt free' as they rode the waves of success, before realising they had taken on a whole different kind of debt.

What's to stop it happening to us though, as your friends asked earlier? Our owner is a lifelong Reds fan. He's wealthy, but far far nearer to my level of wealth than your owner's (I am skint by the way!), and his family have shown no interest in taking the club on from him, so he knows that at some point someone else will own the club. He has therefore split the ground and land from the football club and the ownership of the ground and land is shared with Barnsley Council. There is therefore no way that someone can come in, buy the club, get bored, shut it down and build a supermarket. Our owner is also not a bottomless pit of money. He had to invest, albeit modestly by your standards, initially, but the short term plan was always to make the club self-sufficient, which we have been for the past few years. Our income comes from developing players like Stones, Vaz Te, Butterfield, etc and making a profit. A much more sensible method than spend, spend, spend, oh heck, we really need someone to give us £100m or we're going to have to tell all our creditors they're not getting paid again.

And why Leicester and not Man City you ask? Well, we don't like what they are doing either, but we weren't playing Man City yesterday, we were playing Leicester. And it was Leicester fans with short memories who were acting like arrogant t0ssers towards us yesterday. And Leicester strikers acting like arrogant t0ssers yesterday. It made you very difficult to like or even appreciate. Your fans seem to have forgotten how embarrassed they should have been in the circumstances in which they last got promoted to the Premiership and you certainly should have a little more humility about how you are doing it this time too. Last time you wiped your debt by manipulating the administration option, splashing out big money on players as soon as you had told all the local businesses that they would be getting x pence in the pound. This time you ran up unmanageable debt and were fortunate enough to have a rich foreigner deem you as his latest plaything. You played well and are going to win this division easily, but don't kid us that the team you have is all through hard work and good coaching, because it was put together with money you didn't have.

There are others like you in our division. Blackburn abused the parachute payments by splashing out on Jordan Rhodes and continuing to let the debt rise. The football authorities shouldn't allow that. They give the parachute payments to cover the debts and silly contracts he existing players are on, but like all things in the world of football it gets abused. Without Rhodes' goals (incidentally, Rhodes walked out on us as a teenager and we were awarded £10k from Ipswich for his development) Blackburn would have gone down again, but they manipulated the system and stayed up. Similarly, Bolton took our leading scorer because we couldn't match what wages they were offering. Yet they are £163m in debt. How is this fair? How is this in the spirit of the game? How does this make for a game where eleven men are supposed to be pitting their wits against eleven others on a level playing field? There's a lot wrong with the game and, whilst Leicester are not the worst culprits, getting our noses rubbed in it like we did last night under the circumstances in which you built that team is pretty difficult to swallow. And keep carrying on like that and you will find you have no friends when the bubble bursts and you have your collection tins out again. And don't think you'll have any loyalty from those wonderful players (most of whom will be in the reserves next season anyway), who will smile as you're rattling your collection tins because they're getting paid whatever happens.

I know you find it difficult to believe that there are Barnsley fans who wouldn't swap places with Leicester, but trust me, we are not kidding. We'd like to watch football as well as you are currently playing it, but we'd also like to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and sleep at night.
Click to expand...

Fantastic post that mate, don't expect them to understand though.

dreamboy3000 · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Luxfox said: ↑

Thanks, we will need lots of luck IF we make it (fat lady ain't singing just yet!)
Click to expand...

King Power Stadium is soulless. Now Filbert Street that's a ground I wish i'd gone to before you swapped grounds Could see on Dispatches the other monday what you have to put up with due to away fans chanting Taliban FC and the like to you just because you have a big asian population.

Redstar · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Gordon Ottershaw said: ↑

(although we went into administration when we didn't need to, due to the greed of the board at the time, and for a debt equal to two and a half weeks of Wayne Rooney's wages),.
Click to expand...

An absolutely fantastic post except for this bit. The NatWest forced us into admin by withdrawing an un-used overdraft.

Gordon Ottershaw · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Redstar said: ↑

An absolutely fantastic post except for this bit. The NatWest forced us into admin by withdrawing an un-used overdraft.
Click to expand...

No, they called in the debt and someone offered to clear it, but the board didn't agree to the terms (which would basically render their shares worthless), so the board took the decision to decline the offer without putting it to the rest of the shareholders. That started the downward spiral to administration, whereby the board got nothing for their shares anyway. The man who had offered to bale out the club prior to administration ended up getting the club a year or so later, but with ten times the amount of debt to clear, and the less said about that affair the better! Administration was totally avoidable though, if the decisions the board took would have been in the best interest of the club, rather than themselves.

Old Gimmer · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Gordon Ottershaw said: ↑

Maybe cheat is a strong word, but you've certainly been cheating the system. As already mentioned, the way you took advantage of the administration system last time led to outrage and a major change in the rules. Many teams have gone into administration, us included (although we went into administration when we didn't need to, due to the greed of the board at the time, and for a debt equal to two and a half weeks of Wayne Rooney's wages),but most learn from it and don't make the same mistake twice. Obviously Portsmouth are the best example of how not to behave, but had the Thai businessman not come in with a large chunk of money you would have been next.

Just because someone comes in and bails you out with silly money, that doesn't take away from the fact that, despite the outrage at the way you handled yourselves when you went into administration, you learned nothing and went and made the same mistakes again. You have spent the past few years living beyond your means and that makes it very unfair for clubs that do balance their books. Are we supposed to spend £80-100m (depending on who you believe) so that we can attract players to compete with you, in the hope that a friendly rich foreigner (and the track record of that type of owner is not particularly good in this country) will bale us out? What kind of business model is that? And what kind of message is that sending out?

The football authorities are trying to bring in rules to stop this kind of thing happening and that can only be good for the game as a whole. It's therefore rather telling that Leicester are spending a lot of money on expensive lawyers to try to challenge this rule.

Your team yesterday was by far the best I have seen at Oakwell in recent years, but by what means did you put it together? Even now your wage bill is above your turnover. Honestly, what type of example is that to clubs aspiring to climb the league. And your friends higher up this thread bragging that you are not in debt are missing the point. You had run up an incredible amount of debt and didn't clear that by fetching more fans in through the gates, or by developing and selling players, you did it by inviting the wolves through the door. And at what cost? Your saviour now owns your ground, as well as your club, is that right? Well if you take a look around the country and around the bottom of the Premiership at next season's rivals you will see many clubs whose fans were bragging about being 'debt free' as they rode the waves of success, before realising they had taken on a whole different kind of debt.

What's to stop it happening to us though, as your friends asked earlier? Our owner is a lifelong Reds fan. He's wealthy, but far far nearer to my level of wealth than your owner's (I am skint by the way!), and his family have shown no interest in taking the club on from him, so he knows that at some point someone else will own the club. He has therefore split the ground and land from the football club and the ownership of the ground and land is shared with Barnsley Council. There is therefore no way that someone can come in, buy the club, get bored, shut it down and build a supermarket. Our owner is also not a bottomless pit of money. He had to invest, albeit modestly by your standards, initially, but the short term plan was always to make the club self-sufficient, which we have been for the past few years. Our income comes from developing players like Stones, Vaz Te, Butterfield, etc and making a profit. A much more sensible method than spend, spend, spend, oh heck, we really need someone to give us £100m or we're going to have to tell all our creditors they're not getting paid again.

And why Leicester and not Man City you ask? Well, we don't like what they are doing either, but we weren't playing Man City yesterday, we were playing Leicester. And it was Leicester fans with short memories who were acting like arrogant t0ssers towards us yesterday. And Leicester strikers acting like arrogant t0ssers yesterday. It made you very difficult to like or even appreciate. Your fans seem to have forgotten how embarrassed they should have been in the circumstances in which they last got promoted to the Premiership and you certainly should have a little more humility about how you are doing it this time too. Last time you wiped your debt by manipulating the administration option, splashing out big money on players as soon as you had told all the local businesses that they would be getting x pence in the pound. This time you ran up unmanageable debt and were fortunate enough to have a rich foreigner deem you as his latest plaything. You played well and are going to win this division easily, but don't kid us that the team you have is all through hard work and good coaching, because it was put together with money you didn't have.

There are others like you in our division. Blackburn abused the parachute payments by splashing out on Jordan Rhodes and continuing to let the debt rise. The football authorities shouldn't allow that. They give the parachute payments to cover the debts and silly contracts he existing players are on, but like all things in the world of football it gets abused. Without Rhodes' goals (incidentally, Rhodes walked out on us as a teenager and we were awarded £10k from Ipswich for his development) Blackburn would have gone down again, but they manipulated the system and stayed up. Similarly, Bolton took our leading scorer because we couldn't match what wages they were offering. Yet they are £163m in debt. How is this fair? How is this in the spirit of the game? How does this make for a game where eleven men are supposed to be pitting their wits against eleven others on a level playing field? There's a lot wrong with the game and, whilst Leicester are not the worst culprits, getting our noses rubbed in it like we did last night under the circumstances in which you built that team is pretty difficult to swallow. And keep carrying on like that and you will find you have no friends when the bubble bursts and you have your collection tins out again. And don't think you'll have any loyalty from those wonderful players (most of whom will be in the reserves next season anyway), who will smile as you're rattling your collection tins because they're getting paid whatever happens.

I know you find it difficult to believe that there are Barnsley fans who wouldn't swap places with Leicester, but trust me, we are not kidding. We'd like to watch football as well as you are currently playing it, but we'd also like to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and sleep at night.
Click to expand...

Just as I'm beginning to despair a post like this comes along. Probably the best contribution I've ever read on here, and not just because it expresses my feelings so accurately. I also echo what someone said the other day: I still love my club but I'm beginning to hate football.

Luxfox · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Hello there from sunny Luxembourg (yes I am a lifelong Leicester fan) and before you all jump up with the 'tax haven' comments, I pay just as much tax as most people on this board!

Anyway, I agree with some of what written in Gordon's excellent if bitter and somewhat naive post. Just a few points to be made.

1 The club was doing well right up to the point that Martin O'Neil went to Celtic, top of the prem for a couple of days in 2000, league cups, and some great top half finishes...(Actually it might have been under Peter Taylor that we went top. although it was with a MoN team). Great team on a tight budget, doing well as it should be. Peter Taylor's misguided efforts broke the bank, and after we got relegated, the On Digital fiasco( remember that?) killed us off. So yes we did go into administration, but it wasn't by choice.

2 We were acquired by his great benevolence Milan Mandaric whose takeover introduced more debt and disastrous fiddling. A whole host of managers later we finally lost touch with the premiership. Sven Goran Spendalot almost did for us again, until the King Power took over.
Nobody in the club, players or supporters had any say in any of this. As supporters we want to see our team do well, and welcome any investment in the side that would enable us to leap out of the pool that is the championship into the rarefied atmosphere of the premiership.
In the end, can money be really made from a football club? If you are Man Utd. with a huge catchment and average gates of 70k every week, probably. If you can sell image rights all over the world and have plastic fans that are willing to pay lots of money for shirts certainly. The same applies for Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Man City. If you do well you get to play in the Champions League, even more revenue.

The difference in size and value of the teams in the top 6 of the prem versus the rest is huge. The difference between the bottom end of the prem and the championship is also huge (apart from the three relegated teams perhaps). So how does a team get into, and stay in the prem?

Sugar Daddies

Some very wealthy individuals who are lifelong fans, like your owner, and Mr Ashley at Newcastle, others see owning a successful club as some kind of badge of superiority or hobby like at Chelsea. The Owners at King power decided they wanted to buy Leicester. We have been lucky in that they have not made loans to the club in order to buy players (although i think it started like this), they have used their money, as owners, to settle debt and have demonstrated that they are true to their word in committing money to boost the club to the prem. How long will it last? Dunno. Will I enjoy it while it does? Absolutely, makes up for the last 15 years.

Are you a little jealous? be honest.

How else does a team, from a small city, with a big Rugby following earn enough money to buy the necessary players, manager and stadium to equip them for life in the prem?

BTW we all have a few bad apples in our clubs, you should see the reactions to the poor sportsmanship shown by some of our fans on our own forums, so yes sorry for that. Why would i lose sleep at night? If A Thai Billionaire wants to throw money at my team, and be astute enough to have a degree of success, why complain? Lots of clubs have spent lots of money and got nowhere.

my final point, Man U have enough debt to buy all the clubs in the top 5 places of the championship, but that's ok because they are a big club with lots of turnover....FFP will ensure a Euro Premier League with a couple of sides from each country that can afford to pay the required wages. The rest of us will have to make do.
Good Luck Barnsley, I wish you the very best for the rest of the season.

Jimmy viz · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

I would welcome a euro premier league myself let the teams that want to do they bugger off and do it. Well watched on tv and would probably after the novelty were off die a death in the grounds.

FFP if policied properly and effectively will stop teams distorting the beautiful game of football. Whether it will be or not is another matter

In terms of the Thai billionaire I don't thinking there's jealousy here. That's the last sort of person I'd want being involved with our club. I think after last time and not learning your lesson in terms of financial management when the inevitable happens in 3 or 5 or 10 years and you are in the financial crap again you'll get zero sympathy from anyone.

DEETEE · Mar 13, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Do you honestly think ting ting or whatever your chairmans called has used a £100m of his own brass to bank roll your club?

If you do then your deluded.

AthersleyRed · Mar 14, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

The question we need to ask ourselves as football supporters: Do we really want our sport to be tarnished by these people who have no affiliation whatsoever with English football, let alone our clubs? I can understand the desire for glory, but at what cost? Football is too short term. Money has ruined football completely. People just aren't interested in it anymore

Old Gimmer · Mar 14, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Brilliant thread, and at least it's made me shake of the inertia and cancel my Sky subscription. Which I've been meaning to do for at least 3 years!!

Redstar · Mar 14, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Gordon Ottershaw said: ↑

No, they called in the debt and someone offered to clear it, but the board didn't agree to the terms (which would basically render their shares worthless), so the board took the decision to decline the offer without putting it to the rest of the shareholders. That started the downward spiral to administration, whereby the board got nothing for their shares anyway. The man who had offered to bale out the club prior to administration ended up getting the club a year or so later, but with ten times the amount of debt to clear, and the less said about that affair the better! Administration was totally avoidable though, if the decisions the board took would have been in the best interest of the club, rather than themselves.
Click to expand...

At the risk of turning this into a debate about the whys and wherefores of that time, the offer made would have resulted in said person controlling the club had the loan not been repaid within 12 months. Perhaps this should have been put to all shareholders.

And let's be reight, the amounts of debt were due to said person allowing another person get hold of the club and that other person then proceeding to borrow money against the ground. These debts were not the debts of the previous board.

Marlon · Mar 14, 2014

Re: Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers

Gordon Ottershaw said: ↑

Maybe cheat is a strong word, but you've certainly been cheating the system. As already mentioned, the way you took advantage of the administration system last time led to outrage and a major change in the rules. Many teams have gone into administration, us included (although we went into administration when we didn't need to, due to the greed of the board at the time, and for a debt equal to two and a half weeks of Wayne Rooney's wages),but most learn from it and don't make the same mistake twice. Obviously Portsmouth are the best example of how not to behave, but had the Thai businessman not come in with a large chunk of money you would have been next.

Just because someone comes in and bails you out with silly money, that doesn't take away from the fact that, despite the outrage at the way you handled yourselves when you went into administration, you learned nothing and went and made the same mistakes again. You have spent the past few years living beyond your means and that makes it very unfair for clubs that do balance their books. Are we supposed to spend £80-100m (depending on who you believe) so that we can attract players to compete with you, in the hope that a friendly rich foreigner (and the track record of that type of owner is not particularly good in this country) will bale us out? What kind of business model is that? And what kind of message is that sending out?

The football authorities are trying to bring in rules to stop this kind of thing happening and that can only be good for the game as a whole. It's therefore rather telling that Leicester are spending a lot of money on expensive lawyers to try to challenge this rule.

Your team yesterday was by far the best I have seen at Oakwell in recent years, but by what means did you put it together? Even now your wage bill is above your turnover. Honestly, what type of example is that to clubs aspiring to climb the league. And your friends higher up this thread bragging that you are not in debt are missing the point. You had run up an incredible amount of debt and didn't clear that by fetching more fans in through the gates, or by developing and selling players, you did it by inviting the wolves through the door. And at what cost? Your saviour now owns your ground, as well as your club, is that right? Well if you take a look around the country and around the bottom of the Premiership at next season's rivals you will see many clubs whose fans were bragging about being 'debt free' as they rode the waves of success, before realising they had taken on a whole different kind of debt.

What's to stop it happening to us though, as your friends asked earlier? Our owner is a lifelong Reds fan. He's wealthy, but far far nearer to my level of wealth than your owner's (I am skint by the way!), and his family have shown no interest in taking the club on from him, so he knows that at some point someone else will own the club. He has therefore split the ground and land from the football club and the ownership of the ground and land is shared with Barnsley Council. There is therefore no way that someone can come in, buy the club, get bored, shut it down and build a supermarket. Our owner is also not a bottomless pit of money. He had to invest, albeit modestly by your standards, initially, but the short term plan was always to make the club self-sufficient, which we have been for the past few years. Our income comes from developing players like Stones, Vaz Te, Butterfield, etc and making a profit. A much more sensible method than spend, spend, spend, oh heck, we really need someone to give us £100m or we're going to have to tell all our creditors they're not getting paid again.

And why Leicester and not Man City you ask? Well, we don't like what they are doing either, but we weren't playing Man City yesterday, we were playing Leicester. And it was Leicester fans with short memories who were acting like arrogant t0ssers towards us yesterday. And Leicester strikers acting like arrogant t0ssers yesterday. It made you very difficult to like or even appreciate. Your fans seem to have forgotten how embarrassed they should have been in the circumstances in which they last got promoted to the Premiership and you certainly should have a little more humility about how you are doing it this time too. Last time you wiped your debt by manipulating the administration option, splashing out big money on players as soon as you had told all the local businesses that they would be getting x pence in the pound. This time you ran up unmanageable debt and were fortunate enough to have a rich foreigner deem you as his latest plaything. You played well and are going to win this division easily, but don't kid us that the team you have is all through hard work and good coaching, because it was put together with money you didn't have.

There are others like you in our division. Blackburn abused the parachute payments by splashing out on Jordan Rhodes and continuing to let the debt rise. The football authorities shouldn't allow that. They give the parachute payments to cover the debts and silly contracts he existing players are on, but like all things in the world of football it gets abused. Without Rhodes' goals (incidentally, Rhodes walked out on us as a teenager and we were awarded £10k from Ipswich for his development) Blackburn would have gone down again, but they manipulated the system and stayed up. Similarly, Bolton took our leading scorer because we couldn't match what wages they were offering. Yet they are £163m in debt. How is this fair? How is this in the spirit of the game? How does this make for a game where eleven men are supposed to be pitting their wits against eleven others on a level playing field? There's a lot wrong with the game and, whilst Leicester are not the worst culprits, getting our noses rubbed in it like we did last night under the circumstances in which you built that team is pretty difficult to swallow. And keep carrying on like that and you will find you have no friends when the bubble bursts and you have your collection tins out again. And don't think you'll have any loyalty from those wonderful players (most of whom will be in the reserves next season anyway), who will smile as you're rattling your collection tins because they're getting paid whatever happens.

I know you find it difficult to believe that there are Barnsley fans who wouldn't swap places with Leicester, but trust me, we are not kidding. We'd like to watch football as well as you are currently playing it, but we'd also like to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and sleep at night.
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Fantastic post Gordon
The post needs to be fast forwarded to the authorities asap not that it will do any good but it shows people still care

Solvent, debt free, well ran club : 0 - 3 : £100m Debt ridden, baled out chancers....

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