Thetownend.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/cardiff_city/8448330.stm

I wonder how much money the taxpayer has put in to football club (ourselves included over the years) who have done deals with HMRC.  Clubs seem to go into administration, write of debts and then start again racking up the debts again.

Im so glad we now seem to have fiscally sensible management of our club.

makes you realise just how lucky we are to have an owner like fitton. Fingers crossed were really on the way up!!!

Shouldn't be playing in the english leagues anyway.

Ridsdale really is a shitmagnet.

Its going to keep on happening until the FA and FL get serious about solving the problem of clubs spending money they don't have. The 10/15 point penalty for administration isn't working, so take it further and give automatic point penalties when payments to HMRC and staff are late. Or automatic relegation for administration.

They have to do something as the bad clubs just fuck things up for those that do manage their finances.

Can anyone name one team that isnt/hasnt been in the shit? Until the FA/League get their heads from their arses it's going to keep happening until the whole thing goes under, completely unrealistic wages need to be bought under control in the first instance.

I think there are a few out there that are run under decent management Franchise haven't ever had any problems :)

Basically Ridsdale has done the same he did at Leeds. Spent money banking on the club getting into the Prem but it all seems to be going tits up again.

To be fair to Ridsdale, it was Sam Hammam who spent a lot of money at Cardiff, before Ridsdale got anywhere near Cardiff.

Don't forget Sam Hammam screwed Wimbledon by pocketing the money from the sale of Plough Lane, despite the council giving the ground to the club for free when they were in non-league.

Ridsdale has continued it though and to some extent on an even bigger extreme. He's somehow found £50 million for a new stadium for a start.

Or not, it would seem!

I thought the only dumb thing Ridsdale did was to be part of the consortium that bought Cardiff from Hammam for a lot more than it was worth and leaving them (and the club) with a massive debt. Not sure about the money for the stadium either as it was part of a bigger re-development which to large degree probably paid for itself.

Its just scary that a club like Cardiff can run up such a large debt and then be reliant upon new investors to bail them out. The debts we ran up are peanuts compared to Cardiff. Though as I've said before, I still find it shocking that we're losing £1m to £2m a season and need to owners to put more money in to cover it every season.

Also Norwich have £23 million worth of debt. They're even considering selling their ground to pay it off.

It all just seems wrong. 

There is no level playing field when clubs are run badly throwing money they don't actually have around and expecting to get away with it.  Mind you it happens at every professional level -Salisbury in admin - bailed out by the taxpayer, clubs in southern league throwing money around on the hope of success to pay it off.

However I guess there is nothing that can be done without the playing field being leveled by clubs not being bailed out.  Its for that reason that I believe football has to have a few big casualties for its own good.

True. We were lucky we did it before the 10 points deduction came in.

Scunthorpe, Wolves & Birmingham are the only three clubs in the top two divisions that are not in debt.

But being in debt does not equate to being in a bad state - plenty of successful businesses go into debt, especially during times like these. It's continued overspending that is the problem, something which is much harder to measure until we hear reports of clubs being chased for money.