Thetownend.com

http://www.thisisswindontownfc.co.uk/Forum_New/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=28793&whichpage=1

Got the thisis chaps waiting on baited breath, no idea if it's a wind up but well worth a nosey when it finally appears.

:D  personally I think its a wind up.

As much as I dont normally go in for the conspiracy thery shit, most threads bearing his name have been deleted by the menagement in the last couple of weeks.

:D   Should be a good one then!

That is very random.  Who is that lamberchelo bloke?

err whos lambercello?

Greek mafia boss yeovil  :)

what did that sean-o for england guy write about in the first place then? i must have missed that before it got deleted?

My original letter (I post on there as Sean-O) read as follows:

Mr. Diamandis,

Please let me begin by saying that I mean no disrespect by the following, I'm merely a fan of the club wishing to express my opinion, as is the purpose of this forum.

As you quite clearly read this forum, and ususally request the removal of any post that expresses a negative opinion about you, no matter how valid, be removed, I was wondering if you'd care to explain your reasons for doing this?

If it wasn't for opinions, both good and bad, then there would be no point in having a forum. You clearly don't mind if we say negative things about the lacklustre players and management teams you have employed, yet you seem to believe that being on Sir Seton Wills' payroll should exclude you from such opinion. Even God himself is not immune to negative opinion, so I can only believe that you do, in fact, believe yourself to be more important than the creator of Heaven and Earth. You should perhaps note at this point that you aren't.

The fact that you would rather hide away from criticism than be a man and answer it leads me to believe that you are a coward. This would explain the fact that you seem to have all of the business acumen of a dying seal, because you don't have the guts to make the big decisions or deal with the public that you are responsible to.

If, having read to this point, you've managed not to have the thread deleted, I congratulate you. You're clearly beginning to show some signs of being a mature adult.

If you are any kind of man, let your critics criticise, then set the record straight. If you need help doing this, then I'm sure that Mark Devlin would be happy to help you. He is, by some considerable distance, the finest representative of the STFC board in recent memory. He answers his critics and takes on board all input from the fans, no matter how small and unimportant. You could learn a lot, and earn a lot of respect from doing the same.

As I said above, I don't mean any disrespect by this, but since you effectively run this football club, all I, or any of us, ask is that you treat the fans with a modicum of respect and stop looking down on us as merely people you can bleed into poverty with extortionate pricing and poor conditions. I have been a Swindon Town fan my whole life, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone more loyal, but I refuse to stand by and watch you treat the fans like pawns while you run this club out of business. If you would like to sit down with me face to face and try and persuade me of whatever good it is you do for this club, I'm happy to listen. I'm not a coward. I'm happy to take criticism to my face, and I'm happy to criticise you to yours.

I'm going to finish this message by leaving you an ultimatum - either answer your critics or turn in your resignation. As they say in my line of business, it's always better to walk out under your own power with your head held high than to be forced or carried out.

It's not much of an ultimatum really though is it? Answer your critics or turn in your resignation, how are you going to make him turn in his resignation if he just ignores it?

Do I have to do anything :shock:

No offence, but if you think that open letter is going to do or change anything then you're having a laugh. I'd like to see Diamandis come out and say something publically as much as the next STFC fan who knows a little about how the club is run but your letter is just a thinly disguised attempt to goad him into doing it.

As for the ulitamatum at the end - you are not really in the position to be issuing one are you?

Regardless of what anyone thinks about him he has been appionted by the majority shareholder in the club and a fan calling for him to tender his resignation or post on a forum to defend himself is probably slightly laughable to him to be honest.

 :mrgreen:

He didn't respond to being asked politely to do either, so if I have to stoop to the level of goading him into it, I will do.

I'd be surprised if it works. Diamandis has shown no interest in becoming a public figure in the past

Do bees fly out of your mouth?

Ala The Green Mile

Nice one Birdy !

I don't get it :|

you are called Kandiman but you haven't seen the film?  Say it 5 times and Darren Jordan will come and kill you with his hook whilst you get stung by bees  :D

Meh, I'm only called Kandiman because my first two names are Kriss Andi and I thought it sounded good. Can't be doing with Hollywood B movies.

You've got some pretty fucked up names there kandiman :shock:

you haven't had a childhood if you haven't seen candyman 1 & 2

The guy who plays the Candyman was in todays episode of Murder she Wrote - at least I'm fairly sure it were 'im.

Spooky eh? :|

ace, he scares me

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:
Cheers for cheering me up Birdy  :) To this day i would never say Candyman five times,what if its true?

then Darren Jordan from BBC news will kill you with his hook whilst you are stung by bees  :D

 :soapy tit wank: I almost covered my computer screen in hob-nobs due to laughing at that :)

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e380/Lucy78/_39532646_jordan_darren.jpg

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e380/Lucy78/candyman01.jpg

The Statement

The following is a statement from Mike Diamandis and provides a brief history of his direct involvement with Swindon Town Football Club:

”I have been involved with the Club for more than 15 years as a supplier, however I became seriously involved about 5 years’ ago when Sir Seton Wills and Cliff Puffett asked me to help when things had gone seriously wrong. I supplied the management and financial support on a day-to-day basis with backing of the Wills family. At that time some of my advice was not heeded and control of the Club was handed to a consortium which you all know about.

It is well documented that a new consortium made up of Willy Carson, James Wills, Cliff Puffett and myself (represented by Bob Holt) was formed. This consortium fought for about a year to remove the incumbent consortium, which is also well documented. Upon taking control of the club we discovered that the club’s balance sheet had now deteriorated to minus £14 million.

The club was within two hours of going into liquidation. With the help of Hacker Young we were able to rescue the club by raising £1.5 million through the Wills family and a further £1.5 million through St Modwen.

At about that time you would have read in the Adver that at the time the Club had a debenture over it and without it’s removal the Club would have been destroyed. With the help of the Wills family and St. Modwen we were able to remove this threat.

I found myself in the unenviable position of being responsible for putting the necessary resources together to ensure the club’s survival. The Wills family would not have continued to support the Club had I not been involved. Since then every year through one method or another, I have been able to raise approximately £750,000 a year to keep the Club going. During this period before Bill Power joined, more than £5.5 million was raised through my leadership, through my own company, with the dynamic share coming from the Wills’ family and St. Modwen.

Through successful negotiation we have been able to negotiate with all the creditors so that for the first time in the next month or so our balance sheet will go from a minus to a plus £3-4 million and, with Bill Powers total monies raised will top £6.5 million. The Club will still however require the average gate to rise for it to be safe and in the long term we do require a new stadium to ensure the future stability of the Club.

In 2000 Swindon Town FC employed 98 staff and was loosing over £2m a year. I brought in a professional manager, Bob Holt, who then carried out the cost cutting plan I had developed with the then Finance Director, reducing the staff on the payroll from 98 people to 61, and eventually to the 48 it is today. At this time brought in Mike Sullivan as Marketing Manager (someone who had worked for me in the past). I knew of Mark Devlin as a customer of my company; he was a Commercial Manager at QPR. Mark Devlin then joined us as Chief Executive and as a result of his football knowledge and his media skills we were able to steer the Club successfully for the period that he was with us.

When the opportunity came for him to return to QPR as Chief Executive as you all know he left STFC. Last autumn as soon as I heard that he had left QPR I telephoned him and asked him to return as we all know we had dropped the ball when it came to PR.

After his return we eventually had a discussion that lead to me meeting Bill Power.
I believed that with Bill Power’s football knowledge and Mark Devlin skills, they would create a great management team for our Club and after further negotiations it was agreed that Bill Power would invest in the club and join the Board. That investment is still to be completed. We are hoping it will be complete in the next few days.

Recently many discussions took place amongst the Board regarding the club’s manager. Mark Devlin had the idea that Dennis Wise would be an excellent candidate. I had met Dennis Wise recently at Chelsea when I was a guest of a mutual friend, who is also Dennis Wise’s agent. I met with Dennis Wise again in a London hotel the following day and we struck a deal. I am absolutely delighted that he is joining us with Gus and his team and so is Mark Devlin and Bill Power. For those of you who did listen to the press conference you would have heard Dennis Wise confirm that he was persuaded by a nice man, called Michael, who had talked him into joining. That Michael was me!

During my working life I have employed many people and unfortunately once or twice these relationships have failed. Certain people who have been associated with me in the past are using your forum which is for the specific purpose of discussing football matters as a method of attacking me. I cannot say I am too pleased about all these attacks.

I have now reached a point whether these personal attacks just have to stop to protect myself and my family. For those of you that are interested I am married with a young child and have two grown up children. I have been an employer for more than 25 years and within my various companies there are over 200 employees whose welfare is replied upon and obtained on my ability to move amongst the business community in an open manner.

I have known the Wills family for the last five years and I have come to think of the family and of Willie Carson as my friends. I have worked previously with the ex-board, in particular Cliff Puffett and Mike Spearman, to improve the Club’s position. All of the current Board, and everyone involved with the Club knows me, speaks with me and deals with me in normal manner. I speak to Bill Power everyday and we are all looking forward to the footballing future of our club.

I am often persuaded to take a more public role. However, I am not the best public speaker, in-fact I get tongue tied the minute a microphone gets thrust in my face, and although I have tried to overcome this I am not a natural, and I have always felt that there are other people who are better spokesmen for the club than me. My preferred choice is that on a Saturday I go to the game with my family, sit in the seats that I’ve always sat in, and watch a game of football. I am not interested in a high profile life and I hope you all enjoy Mark Devlin as the public face and spearhead of our Football Club.

The Adver has removed various posts because they have been of a libellous and non-proven nature. My lawyers have written to the Adver and explained how we understand the legal position with regards to chat rooms. Once the Adver have been notified by the person who is being libelled they have no alternative but to respond and remove the postings otherwise they will be knowingly publishing a libel.

This is the only statement I am ever going to make on this subject, thank you for taking the time to read it."

Mike Diamandis

26.5.06

all seems fair enough to me. i think we owe this person.

to be honest i dont have a clue wot this was all about? ne 1 like to explain?

from my understanding certain individuals have been slagging off diamandis and his involvement with the club. Kandiman, from the looks of things is one of these people and have asked for him to come out and explain a few things. so he has............

and i think hes a legend

fucking hell, that all actually sounds quite reasonable.

get kandiman banned from this site.

Looks like someone needs to apologise!! The word OWNED springs to mind!

Yep, sounds like we owe Mike D a great deal of gratitude for what he has done over the years.

It's sad that all this had to come out in this manner, if he doesn't like public speaking then fair enough - he shouldn't have been treated unfairly for that.

Hopefully everyone will read this and those that need to will swallow their pride and admit they were wrong about him.

Cheers for the statement.

it's nice to gain some clarification on diamandis' role within the club and he certainly doesn't seem to be the villain he's often been portrayed as.

Comes across as a fairly honest statement, although of course as it's coming from the man him self, it's still settled a lot of doubts I had with his involvement at the club.

Of course if any of his critics can come up with a well structured response backed my more than comments like "he's dodgy" then I'd be interested to read that aswell. Of course the standard of previous critisism seems to based on nothing other than conjecture so I think it's unlikely.

to be honest i haven't read diamandis statement cos ive got to get out but from my dad's involvement in the club he's a shady character without the best interests of the club at heart

Fair play to Diamandis. That's a pretty comprehensive statement, our 2002 accounts do show minus £12 million in our profit and loss account so it will be interesting to see the accounts now.

I'm not expecting a response to this really but I'll ask the question anyway.

Does going to a +£6.5m blance sheet figure mean that the Wills hamily have written off their loans? The vast majority of the clubs debt was payable to them so it seems the only logical step.

Fair play for that summary of his involvement, sounds like hes done a lot of work behind the scenes.

My only comment would be that all this could have been avoided by a little more transparancy in the 1st place.

I appreciate that MD may not want to be a public figure -thats fair enough, but cant help but think that a statement like the one above would have helped avoid all the riumours and "shadowy figure of chaos" accusations that have been flying around for a couple of years now.

It's a good statement, and if all true then fair play to the bloke.

Agree with Pie,  why wasn't this released years ago. Mike D has always been the shady figure responsible for putting up prices, lowering playing budets and caused a rift between SSW and the Trust.



Interesting? !

There's a poster woodystfc or woodiestfc who's obviously one of his former associates, maybe even Dunwoody. Haven't really paid much attention to his posts but it's fair to say he's not a Diamandis fan.

(reposted from the Trust site)

It's more in the nature of debt being restructured than paid back - a big chunk of the £14m owed initially was swallowed up in the CVA, and as I understand it some of it was later taken off the balance sheet by being restructured ie the money is still notionally owed but it doesn't show up on the balance sheet. Which, to be fair, is more than just the smoke and mirrors it might seem from this fairly inadequate description - it's still worth doing as it makes the club a much more viable proposition for attracting investors.

Apologies to all concerned if I've misrepresented the exact position - that's the situation as I understand it. Hope that helps answer your question, Piemonte

Sorry for being thick, are you saying your understanding is once the CVA is payed off at the end of the season we only 'owe' money to our creditors such as SSW but that this isn't represented as balance sheet debt?

Fair play must admit I’ve been a critic and that statement goes a long way to answering a few of the questions that have hung over his head since his arrival.

It would have been far better coming years ago and doesn’t say anything that’s not already in the public domain but from the horses mouth so to speak gives it some repute.

Batch I'm fairly sure that's what PD is saying.  The investment from SSW and St Modwen as I understand was in the shape of loans and unless they've been annulled then it’s not shown in the ‘balance sheet’ above.  That said they’re to a degree they're friendly creditors that are unlikely to pounce with the taste of blood in the water.

I'm going to employ dazza as my spokesman - he explains what I mean so much better than I do

My terms are a packet of nuts and a glass of orange juice a day.  Non negotiable.

What are the Trust's or if your thoughts on the above Paul?

Don't be foooled fellas....the only reason Diamandis has been in the background, is because he was banned from company directorship, until Nov 04.

   I look at facts in the running of the club, and we've just had our lowest ever finish, in the 3rd Div since its formation in 58.

   The appointment of Wise and Poyet, as things stand is irrelevant until we see some signings then football, then we can judge.

 The verdict on the shadow in the background, is that he's been only slightly less than disastrous.

Isn't Diamandis supposed to be a shady bloke?

He's banned from running companies and stuff I believe?

Why's it all cropped up anyway, he has fuck all to do with the club publicly.

Sean-O/Kandiman, you're coming across as a bit stupid.

You're posting blatant libellous material, accusing MD of censorship and corruption, where's your proof?

Good thing you're not up against Davis or you'd be out of pocket  :wink:

On the packet of nuts? Well, I can't speak for the Trust, but personally ......

As for the statement (and this is solely my opinion, not an official Trust line) I think the statement's fair enough in so far as it goes. I can understand why Mike D would be annoyed at people having a pop at him in the way they have on the Adver board (especially if it's ex-employees or business partners with a grudge), but equally he has to understand (and we've told him this many times) that you can't expect to be involved in running a football club, especially not one that's been thru the kind of ups and downs (mainly downs) that our has over the past few years, and not come under public scrutiny. And that's particularly so when there seem to be unpaid bills and winding-up orders flying out of every nook and cranny. Inevitably having a "shadowy figure behind the scenes" is going to raise questions, and if people also feel they're not being told the whole truth by the "front-men", that's going to give rise to suspicion. So just as I can understand why he's peeved about some of the wilder stuff that was posted on the Adver forum (been there, got the writ) to some extent, it's self-inflicted. Football is not just any other business and you can't expect to have that degree of lack of scrutiny.

But a lot of this is to some extent looking to how the situation has been up until now. TBH, I'm more interested in how the situation moves on from here with Bill Power in the boardroom taking a more active interest from board level in the football side of things, Mark D confirmed as Chief Exec (which he has been in all but name for a while anyway, but nice to see it confirmed so we all know where we stand), and Wise/Poyet running things on the pitch. Looks like more grounds for optimism than we've had for some time from where I'm sat.

Oh, and one thing I would agree with Mike D wholeheartedly on is that a short-term injection of cash while very welcome and providing much-needed stability we haven't had for far too long doesn't "solve everything". For a viable long-term stability we need the CG redevelopment. And one thing I think I can say on behalf of the Trust is that we will continue to work with club, council and local residents to achieve that.

Not any more  - his ban on being a Company Director expired in November.

It was Nov 05 actually - but it's not the only reason, he's shown no inclination to take a more public role since then either. I think his being publicity shy is genuine but as I said above he has to accept that if he wants to lurk in the shadows as it were, that's always going to be open to interpretations he may not like in an organisation under such intense public scrutiny as STFC

very interesting......

as Paul says it'll be decided on the pitch next season.
 No-one invests in a small club and expects a profit especially when  they don't own the ground and the council is, how shall I put it, deep in the shit and never liable to get behind the club. If we achieve success next season it's a small step on the way to achieving a great community club that can be used by the whole town in the long term.
I am looking forward to our first match.

   You sure about that?  Not that it really matters, other than trying to work out what year it is now.

Er, I was! But as you say, it's kind of immaterial really. He was disqualified he isn't now. Those who wish to put weight on the disqualification will do so irrespective of how long ago/recent it was, those who wish to brush it aside as one of those minor glitches that happen in business will do likewise.

anyone know why he was disqualified??

Mr Diamandis was disqualified from being a company director in 1992 for trading while insolvent

this came from an article about Dunwoody thinking about suing to get the trading name back (which I think he decided not to do because of the costs if he lost).  Was in Jan 2005 and went on to say Diamandis was no longer disqualified, which suggests 2004 would be right.

thanks rob

As Paul has said, he should really have known the sort of public scrutiny his role will bring onto a person.  He doesn't seem to be exactly a rosey person if you take into account everything(his statement included) that has been written about him, yet if others involved trust him enough to be in a working relationship with him then what can we say ?  If most, as it seems, trust Mark Devlin, then do we not also trust Mark Devlin's opinions' on the people he chooses to work with ?


The disqualification means little to me.  Most likely an act of desperation 14 years ago is hardly something to chastise someone for.

Anyone actually care is more to the point. It all sounds very MHWG to me!

It's definitely not MHWG, he has a very distinctive style.

The statement is definitely from Diamandis, Lamberchelo works for him.

Can confirm that.

As can I - he's a nice bloke, actually, for what it's worth.

I cant confirm anything im afraid .

I can confirm what others have confirmed.  :shrug:

If it was definitely from Diamandis, how come he spelt Willie Carson's name'Willy'...?  And there are a few simple mistakes in the 'statement', which should be ironed out if it really is a professional statement.  So it's either a big hoax or unprofessional IMO, not that I'm overly bothered anyway - why the sudden interest?  Are we running out of scapegoats?

I take it you've not read the "letter to Shareholders" issued before the AGM last season in the name of SSW in which he roundly berated the "Football Trust" then? That's Mike D, all right. And lamberchello definitely works for him.

And I can confirm Yeovil's inability to confirm anything - he'd make a rubbish vicar.