Barnsley FC Account to 31 May 2016

From memory approx. £2.85m. You need to ask yourself how he managed to raise that and get it secured if he didn't 'buy' the land.

 

I can only see BMBC having a 50% share as a good thing. Means we can never be in the same situation as Coventry City found themselves.

 

Why would the club wish to buy back the ground?

 

The reason he used the people he did for the loan, and paid such an extortionate rate of interest was because no- reputable bank would touch him, because the loan was not secured. If you remember from that time, he was talking about moving the club to a new out of town stadium with reduced capacity. This made sense because he was having to pay the Administrator to use the ground. I have no idea what the Administrator was charging by the way. In the end, the whole façade crumbled away, and he had to be rescued.

 

None of which really explains why we have lost nigh on £1m last season while Burton made a £162,000 profit.

 

Me too.

We got into the mess that led to us going into Administration because the club borrowed money using the ground as security. When it became obvious to the bank that we could not meet our ongoing commitment to paying interest and capital repayment, they brought in the Administrator. Admittedly, if we had not had the support of Mr Cryne over the years, the club would have had to behave more responsibly and cut its cloth differently, but Mr Cryne believes in the academy, and as long as he is picking up the tab, then you cannot fault him.

 

That isn't how I recall events. I could be wrong but Doyle bought the lot for next to nowt, then promptly secured the Sterling loan against the land and land assets.

Then when the Doyle bubble burst, Cryne split the ownership of the land and the club to prevent this from happening again.

 

They borrowed against the assets. Which they could not then service

They being Doyle

 

Try deducting the cost of the academy from our loss.

 

Fair enough. We have you agree to disagree then.

 

We were forced into admin when the club was asked by the NatWest not to use its overdraft facility therefore removing any working capital the club had.

As I understood it, the long term loans were not the issue, what was the issue is the playing liabilities that became unserviceable due to relegation and the collapse of ITV Digital.

The club brought the administrator in itself too.

 

I think you'll find it was the land that was mortgaged to raise the finance to buy the club.

The 'club' at that time being the football business, stadium and other land.

 

So without the white elephant/vanity project/sound investment we'd actually be making money?

 

I sorry but I do not want to nit pick with you, especially as the events being nit picked happened 20 years ago.

 

Well I could quite easily have not remembered it correctly

 

No you've remembered correctly.

 

Red Rain: The bit in the accounts that intrigues me is the reclassification of the share subscription account. You refer in your opening post to the deficit on retained earnings as "accumulated losses". The figure appears to be boosted by the reclassification (and also the repayment of the bank overdraft?). Given that there is a ship laden with £10M coming in in the next accounting period, I wonder if this is all to do with section 45 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010? I'm not a tax lawyer, so I don't know!

As regards your other comment in the thread "I wonder if the none attending rate payers of Barnsley think that this is a good use of their rates", I've always assumed that this was the local council being cognisant of the feelgood factor and the unifying effect on the local community of the football club doing well. I think in particular of the '96-'97 promotion season (and summer) when it seemed even non-followers were agog at the club reaching the Premier League.

 

Don't other clubs i.e Burton have a youth set up?

These questions are all immaterial anyway as we don't know what the turnover was.

 

As I have said in my opening remarks, the fact that there is no longer a requirement for small companies to file everything with Companies House means that there are some gaps. In previous filed accounts, the £3.9m described as Share Subscription Account was in a sort of half-way house. It looked like Mr Cryne intended that Barnsley Football Club issue more Share Capital, but could not finally decide. It looks like he has finally opted to reclassify it as a loan, which I guess it always was. Making it a loan, rather than Share Capital means that it is far easier for Mr Cryne to get his money back, but before anyone starts assuming Mr Cryne has taken his loans back from the Stones and Mawson transfer windfall, let me say right away that I have absolutely no idea what has happen to that money, and I will not have any idea until next February. Interestingly, to be classed as small, the company must fulfil two out of the three following criteria:

Turnover less than £6.5m
Assets less than £3,260,000
No of Employees less than 50

So it looks like the company will have to file full accounts again next year. I afraid I do not know what section 45 of the Companies Act 2010 covers. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

I read all the time on here about how the football club was sold down the river by Mr Cryne and Barnsley MBC when they took away the land and buildings. I'm afraid that I was just trying to restore some of the balance. The argument about whether Barnsley FC should own the ground has the same effect on me as someone running their nails down a blackboard. It is a dead parrot. Just move on and argue about something worth the effort. I know that nothing I say or do will end the debate. In 100 years, our successors will be telling other posters what their grandfather said, and it will still be a waste of breath. The club does not need to own its ground.