New beginnings - 25% Truth, 80% Bollocks

[horlock07]

Can we debate what kind of shithole would this club be in if Jed hadn't taken over?

Can we debate what kind of shithole would this club be in if Power hadn't taken over?

We will never know is the short answer. Some people on here have said they'd have preferred to go full phoenix club to clear the decks which I understand, even if I don't agree with it.

I think some people are just tired of murky ownership and chucking their money behind false promises after a decade of this.

That said, it is possible to say I'm glad Clem took on the club when he did but I'm appalled at the way he has run it since.

So what is the ideal (and realistic) way to move forward then?

[Oaksey Moonraker]

Can we try to look at this from a different angle - can we debate what kind of shithole would this club be in if Clem hadn't taken over?

I personally think we'd be without a club or at best in the National League

Absolutely. Clem got the club relatively cheap through the pre-emption rights but has had to put in more cash than he anticipated to clear HMRC and now pay off the debenture.

Curran and Power (if they held the debenture) may have timed calling it in October 2023 to wait until Clem had sunk most of his available cash into the club and might struggle to pay it back.

If the club had gone into admin then, Clem loses £4-5M and Curran/Power might have used that situation to regain the club?. Who knows but Clem found the cash but the share deal was the trade off.

[Mooneyraker]

So what is the ideal (and realistic) way to move forward then?

Realistically it is what it is.

Step 1: Clem does a Japanese-style performative mea culpa for Vic tonight.

Step 2: There are positive signs this is happening already but The Trust complete the removal of their tongues from Clem/Zav's arseholes, strap their bollocks back on and move back to neutral position, possibly reshuffling some personnel.

Step 3: Reform the AB process to keep it to top level matters.

Step 4: New CEO or chosen club representative gets out there on the airwaves. We don't need a Steve Anderson.

Step 5: We all move forward in the knowledge that Clem isn't to be trusted.

Step 6: Support the manager and the team at all times, as always.

[ThreeDrawsMentality]

Can we try to look at this from a different angle - can we debate what kind of shithole would this club be in if Clem hadn't taken over?

I personally think we'd be without a club or at best in the National League

People are allowed to be thankful for Clem purchasing us when he did and for the funds he has injected via loans since, but also be allowed to scrutinise where they see fit. It shouldn't prevent them from doing so just because we may have been worse off without his intervention in Summer 2021.

I personally am thankful, but now find the Boris Johnson levels of truth shifting very troubling.

[Frigby Daser]

So many questions… - why does he feel the need to give half truths? Does he understand the impact that now has on his relationship with the fans, and the whole narrative? Repaid shares/no intention to repay. Austin is executive chair/now a matchday guest. The saviour narrative v raised funds by giving shares to the same lawyer who presumably failed to spot the terms and value of a debenture… the list goes on.

Just remove the feeling that most fans have that we’re being flounced by Zavier Austin and Co.

[RobertT]

But Louie Barry has fuck all to do with anything.   Other than sharing a surname with Gareth they are not related in any way.

Are you sure you aren't getting confused with Louise Barry, Gareth's wife?

Actually, the confusion was my memory of my dig around.  It was Louie Barry having a company set-up with Drury who is a Director of First Touch which was the agency owned by Standing that represented Gareth Barry.  Between the Barry's, Standings and Drury's, there are lots of company Directorships shared.  So ignore the Louie bit I suppose, but the point was more that Standing and Barry have a lot of business linked directly and indirectly together.  Again, which means fuck all really, other than supporting some of what Power was saying being likely, in the legal case and possibly our prior ownership set-up and who may have been owed money.

[ChalkyWhiteIsGod]

But Louie Barry has fuck all to do with anything.   Other than sharing a surname with Gareth they are not related in any way.

Are you sure you aren't getting confused with Louise Barry, Gareth's wife?

Could have sworn it was his nephew? Heard that all the time when he was here. Unless there was another Barry I'm thinking of.

[Nemo]

Could have sworn it was his nephew? Heard that all the time when he was here. Unless there was another Barry I'm thinking of.

That was Bradley, the rubbish Williams-era right back. Louie is the more recent winger.

[Mooneyraker]

Too many people called Barry...

[RobertT]

So what is the ideal (and realistic) way to move forward then?

Good question and one with an answer that I have already proposed - the Trust should be working on Clem's exit strategy for him on our behalf.  They should now be working on an investment proposal to buy the club from Clem over the next couple of years, which would also allow them to be ready and prepared if he does run out of willing shmucks to fund things he forgot about or can't see clearly in the Accounts.  That should involve a combination of fans efforts, but also external investors, which should now be much easier (not easy, easier) given the football club owns an asset of value which it got for free.  Clem will have done a decent enough job of steadying the ship and his debt is Directors loans with no terms, so a deal could be struck to pay that back over a number of years as part of any takeover.  The ground development is the carrot that can be dangled for those investors.

It's time to just accept our current ownership is not what it wanted to portray.  There is no other way of cutting it.  They can only be either incompetent or full of BS.

You mentioned how rich people make glib decisions, but Clem was in the building for long enough and with shares, to have discovered it was not a financial melting pot.  The Debentures were on public record and some of the terms were detailed in local press - because Black tried to get Power to pay it when he wrestled control from Jed.  Power cut some sort of deal that pushed that back top the next sale of the business.  The security was always the assets of the football club, the ground was always going to be a significant moment.  The fact is Clem got a little lucky in that nobody called it in when the club was sold to him.

Time to take what we get on the pitch and work on tomorrow, before it arrives and we have to be grateful of the next saviour.

[RobertT]

Whatever the club/Clem paid towards the debenture would affect that too though, wouldn’t it?

So if we were expecting a £500K profit for that financial year, but Clem has used £1m towards the debenture, you could see why we’d make a loss.

Or am I wrong?

Yes, and no.  The payment of the debt was made by the parent company, not STFC.  We don't actually know how the transaction was completed - was it a loan to the business, with security or was it a share purchase plus a loan, or just a share purchase?  It's not completely clear to me, although I suspect the middle one is the most likely one.  If the shares were security, pure security, you'd not transfer them, you'd simply record the secured assets in the company Accounts and list it as a secured debt and who to.  To have actually given shares away means a transfer of shares must have occurred, in which case it was an asset purchase and the money would be listed as share equity.  The numbers quoted seem a bit all over the shop, which is what makes me wonder if there was some sort of combo deal here - some shares for equity and some security for a loan.

How they then funnel that to the club is a question for Clem, and we may see in two years when the Accounts are produced.  I presume a connected company loan of money, which may or may not come with it's own security - maybe against the ground, or future profits, or who knows.  A clear and transparent owner would detail that.

[horlock07]

Good question and one with an answer that I have already proposed - the Trust should be working on Clem's exit strategy for him on our behalf.  They should now be working on an investment proposal to buy the club from Clem over the next couple of years, which would also allow them to be ready and prepared if he does run out of willing shmucks to fund things he forgot about or can't see clearly in the Accounts.  That should involve a combination of fans efforts, but also external investors, which should now be much easier (not easy, easier) given the football club owns an asset of value which it got for free.  Clem will have done a decent enough job of steadying the ship and his debt is Directors loans with no terms, so a deal could be struck to pay that back over a number of years as part of any takeover.  The ground development is the carrot that can be dangled for those investors.

I think its a lovely idea, but I really can't see how it practically works.

If the AB minutes are correct Clem is in for c.6M (not sure if that includes the c.£250k that he paid for the place, now one would assume that he is going to want that back, plus maybe a return of some sort, plus what the 50% of the ground is worth to the club, which I assume will depend broadly on what BAV has been ascribed to it by the bean counters.

It also assumes that Clem will be happy to be paid back over a prolonged period, which rather contradicts the often suggested conjecture on here that he is short of cash, so there is every possibility that he would want the money up front, especially if he isn't an entirely willing vendor.

So I dunno somewhere in the region of £6-9m being needed. Fans are barely going to scratch the surface on that (setting aside that for a lot of them the Trust have become part of the problem rather than a solution, so not sure if they will put hands in pockets if Trust are involved anyway) so we are looking at investors.

The development is an opportunity without doubt, but for credible investors you are competing in a field where there are plenty of schemes out there looking for money, many of which will be much simpler (clear sites, existing consents, easier planning, no neighbours - due to interest rates at the moment there are loads of such sites coming to market as developers find themselves being clobbered by commercial rates that many of them are entirely not used to) with better rates of return considering that the club will be looking for the development to provide a decent return to them as well to provide the mythical 24/7/365 income we have always lacked.

Plus they don't come with the additional hassle of a football club and a big group of people who are going to analyse everything you say, review your financial returns to death and air in public, at great length, anything they consider negative.

And if we drop down to the lower tier of 'investors' looking to make a buck we endanger getting into bed with some similar to whom the club have flirted with previously, considering the time and energy being expelled in cross checking every utterance that comes out of Clem's mouth, I'm not sure a large proportion of our fan bases blood pressure could take it.

To reiterate, fantastic and lovely idea to think about, but Christ it would need a lot of things to fall into place to happen. Not doubting investors could be found, but would they be the sort of investor who was acceptable to the fanbase?

[Wobbly Bob]

The 50 + 1 ownership rule (see Bundesliga) makes eminent sense, which makes it unlikely that it would ever be implemented over here.

[horlock07]

The 50 + 1 ownership rule (see Bundesliga) makes eminent sense, which makes it unlikely that it would ever be implemented over here.

I think the problem is that the horse bolted years ago on that, too many owners are too deep into clubs to make it financially viable for them to be removed.

[RobertT]

The effort required to make it work is precisely why I suggest they just revert to focusing entirely on that - let the couple of people tasked with being on the JV work on the ground.  All other Trust efforts become focused on a way to buy the club with a degree of fan involvement.  I don't even mean 50% - the fact the fans have 50% of the ground is already a way of protecting it to a degree, alongside a signed long lease (which sort of rules out people who'd be interested in using the club as a Trojan Horse from some other development opportunities).

I didn't say it would be easy, just a worthy goal.

You don't have to pay off the debt to Clem - right now he is getting none of it back.  You can structure a deal that pays that back through normal operations, so you would need to buy out his share value, which now includes the ground and lease.  Still a not insignificant amount - so here is the rub, if Clem wants to continue pretending to be in this for the club - start pegging him down now on what that exit deal needs to look like, in public.  Clearly he won't negotiate fully in public, but you can at least begin to tease what it may take out of him.  Then, work on an offer.

I am sure the fans buying the ground was a tough deal, possibly too much to think was possible, yet it was achieved.  There are ways, they may take a while, but ways nonetheless.