New beginnings - 25% Truth, 80% Bollocks

[JoeMezz]

My take from tonight - Clem won’t be around much longer and he’s regretting buying the club (he didn’t say this but he does not seem the same “Clem” as the one who took over).

[RobertT]

I said yesterday that we probably just have to accept that we have ownership that is feeding us a mixture of Incompetence and Bullshit, just unknown what percentage each side provides.

The reality is that we have a decent Manager - by trying out a few, rather than great planning - and we stand a chance of doing well under him.  However, it's entirely linked to Flynn, there is nothing behind him ensuring the club and business continue to be a success, much like Wellens under Power.  It's a sort of House of Cards, just we have a good hand for a bit.

The stuff about the Ground is more Bullshit, trying to sell a good story, badly by the sound of it.  The Trust started the process, the Council agreed to a sale but ONLY if the fans were involved and Eady funded it.  The club had ZERO rights to ownership and got given half the stadium, a rent reduction and a 250 year lease.  Fuck all to do with Clem, the Council were willing to sell with Power involved.  I imagine the Eady Trust were more willing to fund without Power, but Clem has no right to claim anything.  He paid off a debt owed by the club because it had the right to be called in against any assets owned by the club, and he was about to get a juicy one.

An example of the Incompetence/BS ratio is the stuff around the Academy - thus far the only physical thing purchased was actually gifted by a Scaffolding company, to support some camera's.  This months AB notes even add that the same company is providing some shooting nets which are delayed!!!!!!  It's all just made-up or not even being worked on, hence the lack of details or even agreed upon strategy.  To get Level 2 status is going to cost several million quid, let alone Level One.

Enjoy the ride.

[Mooneyraker]

Yeah, the mea culpa was limited wasn't it? Zero recognition of the club's perpetual shit comms which add to the mess. Clem clearly thinks he has done a great job so far. Maybe he has, but he runs such a shambolic operation no one can see it.

As you say, this wasn't avuncular Clem. He seemed angry at having to defend himself which isn't great.

[ChalkyWhiteIsGod]

I think he said weeks to bring him down to 5% or something, depending on the January window...

Interesting.

Sounds like he might let it wait if we're doing ok/need the extra funds to get us out of the league.

[RobertT]

My take from tonight - Clem won’t be around much longer and he’s regretting buying the club (he didn’t say this but he does not seem the same “Clem” as the one who took over).

That, i think, is the BS side.  He's involved with some murky people and an industry not exactly well known for etiquette.  I imagine the display he gave here is more like the real Clem -- he'll deal with some right idiots in his business world, it was bizarre to ever think he was an intellectual footballing man of the people.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Audrey]

Interesting.

Sounds like he might let it wait if we're doing ok/need the extra funds to get us out of the league.

Or flog someone to pay it off!

[RobertT]

Or flog someone to pay it off!

More likely - we don't actually have any insight into the terms of the deal they struck together.  The data points we have are that the Holding Co revalued the shares from a quid each to 1p each to enable Clem to dilute his shareholding.  The Memorandum and Articles of Association were amended, the shares were transferred and the Debentures were satisfied.  That's it.  Even the amount is not really a fact - just what was said.  It could be a loan, could be a mix of loan and share purchase, could just be a share purchase.  Nothing appears top have been secured against assets of STFC ( as far as has currently been updated on Companies House).

[RobertT]

On the losses front - I reckon he may even be confusing Losses with Cash.  I wouldn't betting he is adding up the money he has to keep popping into the bank account to pay off debt - but that may not be trading losses.

[Mooneyraker]

Fair play to Vic reading out the follow up question to the Eady money, saying it was a disgrace to Nigel Eady's memory or whatever the wording was.

[ChalkyWhiteIsGod]

Or flog someone to pay it off!

Fucking hell I didn't even think of it that way.

[Bob's Orange]

My take from tonight - Clem won’t be around much longer and he’s regretting buying the club (he didn’t say this but he does not seem the same “Clem” as the one who took over).

That's because someone took away his Season Ticket lorry/van and his bucket hat and parked it in Switzerland, next to a fleet of Mercs.

Looking forward to watching this on YouTube tomorrow.

[Bennett]

- The story with the debentures changed a bit from "wow where did those come from" to "we knew about them and my lawyer told me they could bite".
If they knew about the debentures I'm confused why the three day scramble for cash

- It was early for CM, but the last line of this excerpt is strange...
"I didn’t realise there was a debenture, I realised there was a debenture but i didn’t realise that Andrew Black had sold it to AC and LP, i believe he bought it for £1m (roughly), don’t quote me. I spoke to the legal team, I said do we have to, are these debentures going to bite. He goes yeah, they are going to bite. Now i had £1.5m of my own money which i refinanced one of the properties to get that to sort out the debenture."

- The comms about the shares having been reclaimed but CM confirmed they're in the process of being reclaimed was another oddity.

- Karachi being part of an STFC academy search is another contradiction to previous "this is Zav's thing". Last night CM said it's nothing to do with Zav

- Clem not seeking investors but looking to get funding for the stadium revamp could be semantics or whatever you label partners, but i thought that was another perhaps uncharitable takeaway.

- the implication that doing the AB (as shite as it is IMO) is something CM/STFC don't need to do is odd. I'm relative sure both CM/STFC wrote it into their manifesto when taking over.

[Bob's Orange]

Still none the wiser as to whether we are really losing 500k and how that's bridged.

Hey ho

I see you've made a friend on Facebook Batch!

[Briggany]

Thought that was a bloody good and honest interview. Answered the questions to the best of his knowledge and was pretty blunt about things.

I was never personally worried about things but I could understand why others were, but to my mind he put most people's worries to bed. Could have worded a few things better but everyone's different so won't hold that against him.

Massive respect to Clem for doing that as it was almost guaranteed to start another frenzy of theories. He's never going to satisfy some people in the fanbase but ultimately he doesn't have to.

Without trying to offend any of you, I have come to realise that this forum has become an echo chamber in the last few years. I get why and you're all well entitled to you opinions but it seems that when a bit of common sense and logic is applied to try counter some of the crazy it's either ignored or they get called a "happy clapper".

[The Artist Formerly Known as Audrey]

The problem with flip-flopping over certain answers is that it points to untruths. It’s easy to remain consistent with your answers if you’ve always told the truth. When you say different answers to the same questions it’s because you can’t remember the fibs you’ve told before.