Thetownend.com

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/328511/Match-fixer-Alberto-Comazzi-takes-legal-action-against-Swindon?

FFS.



Edit: Just noticed that the Daily Star has only just posted a story about Mason signing, so apologies if this is also old news and I just missed it the first time round.

I think this is new news, another thing the new board have had to deal with.  I wonder how much money PDC cost us with his first bunch of signings who were then moved on.

Wonder how many more like this are going to come out of the woodwork?

Oh Comazzi.

 ::)

Just shows money and supposed 'business sense' does not equate to running a football club properly.

New board slated for being skint cowboys without a clue when they took over, but it appears the wealthy Fitton/Wray/Black and these ridiculous contracts they handed out are still damaging the club.

What a cunt.

There is a very good reason why businesses carry out due diligence and obtain indemnities for pre transfer liabilities. There is also a very good reason that chancers don't always win.

This is ridiculous.  Why has it taken until now for the claim to surface?

It does make you wonder if there are other 'compensation' packages that were agreed and subsequently not paid.  I'm pretty sick and tired of the ongoing mess caused by Di Canio et al tbh.

fucking Italians

FFS.

ah yeah that old chestnut

Oi, don't tar us all with the same brush

This and would just add that not only PDC but Wray and Watkins - the "messiahs" in some people's eyes!!

Couple of points before we go to deep into board bashing on this.

Firstly the payments were due from July 2012 and thus the decision that they were not liable for them was taken well before JedCo took over.

Secondly whilst they did not do DD before they took over, did they not have an extensive DD process taken post takeover, was this not why certain things were delayed.

Thirdly are we sure they don't have any form of indemnity to the previous lot, if nothing else I would expect any payments to Fitton etc for Austin sale (if it ever happens) would be placed in some form of suspense account whilst such claims are sorted.

Finally do we know that they were not already aware of this, I know Jedders has come out and acted all shocked, but if you are fighting any claim be it legitamate or not that would be the stock response for now, if he public acknowledges the existance of the perceived debt it could be used in any future case.

Once again I am not saying all is rosy in the garden, it looks pretty riven with weeds where I am, but can we please have some perspective before everyone piles in and just blames the board for this.

And if Jed or any other consortium would have done we would be in a completely different place than we are now probably the Conference remember it was Patey and Black who forced the ridiculous timescales for the takeover

Indeed the scary thing is that we would have been paying him £11k a month up until this month for leaving 18 months ago! But hey thats obviously Jeds fault isn't it.

How many more of these are we still paying!

I seem to remember when Black sold the club we were told the only money owed was to the outgoing board and that debt was written off leaving the club with no outstanding liabilities?

To be fair to Black it wasn't that stupid a timescale as he had been trying to sell for at least 6 months.

Sadly I suspect that the club (and by extension both Jed and the fans to a degree) were the unwilling victims of what became a very risky game of bluff between Black and his former friends, whereby Wray etc possibly suspected that he would not pull the plug up to the very last minute when sale to Jed and sale of Ritchie became necessary to avoid liquidation.

Most of the above is pure speculation, but hey ho that seems to be the norm these days - I blame Jed.

That is, of course, assuming you take the account in the Star at face value. Which given that:

a) That's Comazzi's lawyers version of events, the club's is likely to be startlingly different
b) It's in the Star

I'd suggest would be a slightly unwise thing to do.

(Not aimed at horlock but everyone on the thread) Maybe wait to hear the other side of this before assuming we actually owe Comazzi £140k as he's claiming?

The article says the payments would be reduced if Comazzi found another club.

One would think this will wipe out a chunk of any claim straight away as it is because of his own cheating actions that he was (presumably) banned and therefore unable to find a club.

I intend to take it very personally!

Are you suggesting that the italian legal system and (Ohh arr) Daily Star are not reliable sources... disgraceful.

I noticed this in the adver article today and nearly spat out my cornflakes.

We were paying this clown 2.75k a week? My worry is that we paid off a load of duds that the scarf waving muppet brought in and how many are going to crawl out of the woodwork now and claim their pot of gold?

I actually feel quite sorry for the current board for the amount of shite they are having to pick up now from the Black era. Of course they had to come in quickly to avoid admin but how long are they going to have to try and sort out the previous era before we can finally move on?

If what Flashheart says is true, then this makes this story even more comical!

I said in a post a while ago. Can any of you continue to wonder why AB wanted out? I cannot stop wondering if the previous management kept Black in the dark over a lot of this shit until one day it suddenly came out in the open and then boom.

Exactly!  Let us not forget that this club was up for sale last summer and the spending still carried on.  Had Black been a football man he would have had a better handle on it, Wray could not say no to the Italian muppet, Black was in the dark but being told everything was hunky dory and obviously believed it thanks to the hero worship that was going on throughout the town.

Yes indeed.

However its a bit of a surprise that this has come out of the woodwork unexpectedly. Could be the old board thought it was done and dusted. Also could be the old board swept it under the carpet/stuffed up, which would be indefensible.

If he was under contract, the match fixing would have been cast iron gross misconduct and a sacking. Would the same not apply to a (for want of a better term) a 'please fuck off' agreement?

2,750k a week!! :eek:

I dread to think what we were paying eggs like Atiku and Lanzano!

Pitchforks back out so soon....I'm with PaulD on this.

Whether this issue was disclosed by the previous board or not to the current board is the issue here.

The timing of this and Paolo's case can't be mere coincidence, can it? Either someone has had a word in his ear or he's picked up on the news sharpish.

He's 34 and suspended from football for 4 years, guess he's angling for one last big payday

Brilliant. What a mess, I really do feel sorry for Jed and co having to deal with all the shit that has been dumped on them.

what if Jed and co knew of this arrangement and chose not to honour it?

So, would we have to counter-sue the Italian courts for the money because Comazzi could claim off us because the courts wouldn't allow him to get another club?

How do you work that out? It says he hasnt been paid since Aug 2012

good point. If true I stand corrected.

Read the article ;)

Consider your self told!

I have no idea about Atiku but I was reliably informed by someone connected to the club who was always a bit of a Paolo basher due to his connections with Bodin that Lanzano was on £5,000 a week and at that time was under contract in Italy getting paid.

I did. This should still have be known by the current board. Whether they checked or were not told is the question.

I get your point. I dont reckon they told em

If Jed hadnt taken over and we'd gone into administration again, what would the FA have done?

At least with a longer due diligence period we wouldnt have this shit comng out the woodwork every 5 minutes!

Supposedly there was a threat of liquidation due to our sterling record of pissing off the FA.

As a point of information, our problems have tended to be with the Football League, rather than the FA

I meant the FL. I blame fcb as I'm easily led.

Just no.

Assuming Italian leopards don't change their spots, imagine what amount of damage he could do at Sunderland with all the PL money sloshing around.

Does anyone think any of his actions are tantamount to fraud

Fraud???

He did what he said he would at Swindon, he got us promoted the first season and then towards the top of league one, the aftermath has been a complete fucking mess and he leart a lot of valuable lessons at our expense.  A fantastic manager with an ego the size of Jupiter which will probably see him destroy his own career.

I think thats quite a strong suggestion to make as I have not seen anything to suggest that anything was done illegally, more possibly stupidly by messers Wray et al who would not say not to Paolo's evey whim.

However I would be very interested who was representing all these players that we employed on high money then shunted out through negoatiated settlements as I would imagine that their Agents got a pretty tasty double bite of the cherry.

I am sure they won't care as they will be riding the wave that we did 18 months ago, but if I stopped and thought a little it would be a tad concerning to be a mackem supporter.

I still can't get my head around how Wray agreed to all of this? It's a clusterfuck of a scenario.

I thought the close season was supposed to be quiet. And coming on top of the PDC* tribunal "settlement" this is like a kick in the teeth when we are down on the floor.

I've never seen him play, so if anybody wants to post a potted history** of his time with the Town, I'd appreciate it. Though with just 4 appearances for us (wikipedia is never wrong) that might be asking for too much.

I can't wait for 3rd August, so we can get this summer behind us and forgotten....




* I see PDC is up to the same tricks at Sunderland, he's now in double figures for new signings
** Potted histories for any town players would be nice, perhaps in a different thread, as the only current employee that I have actually seen play is Frazer Digby

It was, this is pre-season.

If you want to find out about Town players and other STFC stuff, try http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/

On twatter just now

"It is alleged the clubs then owners agreed to pay him £40K, a relocation payment of £2,500 & 12 monthly payments of £11,750, from 01/07/12"

Because he just completely lost all sense of rationality when it came to Di Canio and gave him whatever he wanted because, well, he's Di Canio and he's brilliant, right? More than a few on here (and in the fanbase generally) in the same boat.

That's just reiterating what Comazzi's lawyers already claim in the Star article though, adds nothing to it, does it?

Think you've got that spot on on both counts sonic. Be interesting to know who represents Comazzi, both as agent and legally, and whether those person(s) are the same as represent Di Canio. Suspect this won't be the last one we'll see come crawling out of the woodwork

Spencer represented a lot of the players Di Canio signed didn't he?

You know to the contrary?

I don't need evidence to know that Lanzano was not on £5k a week. That's just plain stupid.

I believe so. As someone else pointed out earlier in the thread, whoever did represent Comazzi probably got double bubble on this deal as well, on the signing on and the paying off. Nice work if you can get it.

18 months later we offered Adam Rooney a contract on £8k a week which has come out as fact, is it really that unbelievable?

Yes.

He wasn't on 8k a week, that was the cost of everything associated of the length of contract, things like agent fees etc. However he was still on way more than he should of been.

I thought he was employed as agent to the club, i.e. did the negotiations with the players agent. Might be wrong, and it hardly changes things much even if I'm not.

That 8K figure has always bothered me.

Take Charlie Austin. Assume he signed for Burnley on a 3.5 year for 1.2M. you could argue that the transfer fee alone is 6.5K a week to the club. Not including wages, relocation, win bonuses, scoring bonuses, agent fees and god knows what else.

Obviously Burnley were financially better off, and it doesn't change the point we couldn't afford Rooney.

Signing Comazzi on whatever terms he was on could be seen to be poor judgement on their part, but then both Wray and Di Canio inherited a club with a first team squad I could count on my fingers so we had to get some buggers in.

Negotiating his departure to lower the cost to the club when it became apparent he wasn't up to it, however, seems reasonably sensible to me. What was the alternative? Keeping him for the duration of his contract and paying him his full weekly wage to train with the youth team?

Why we haven't been paying the agreed amounts - if his claim is true - I have no idea, nor do I know when we stopped or if we even ever started, but I'd like to think any claim we 'owe' him anything since the day he was banned from playing football would be laughed at.

You've missed the point - mrverve's original post (and certainly my reply) referred to the ludicrous scale of the sums involved for what were fairly average players, assuming the figures being reported (in other cases as well as here) are true. Even if they're half-way true, it's clear we were grossly overpaying for not very good players. It might make sense to pay off a contract to get rid - but if £11k a month is lowering the cost, then we were paying well over the odds in the first place. It's on those grounds that (I asume) mrverve suggested Wray had lost the plot and on which I replied. There's "getting some buggers in" and just being plain bloody stupid

Agreed, it was patently untrue but the rumour was allowed to persist to strengthen the club's hand and cast a shadow on the workings of the previous regime. Now we have people taking it as fact that Jeremy Wray offered Rooney an 8k-a-week contract, all supported by the notion that Andrew Black (a man not without an agenda) put out there that rather than being the decent businessman who was able to help persuade Black to get involved in the first place Wray was actually little more than a cheerleader with a schoolgirl crush.

It seems I did.

Whether the £8K a week is made up in wages or paid via other means, the club still have to honour that surely?

 (or perhaps not any longer)

Can't agree, I think it's believable.

If we were paying him 11k a month from July 2012, what the hell did we do between his departure (was it before Christmas) in 2011 and that date, I know there was £40k plus relocation costs but were we paying him in full until July 2012?

I cant believe this was missed under due diligence process from Jed and co. If he was indeed given a months payment in July 2012 then it’s a fairly substantial number on the balance sheet and pretty appalling if it was not picked up on. 

Given that we had refused to  make the payments again it’s a pretty significant thing to miss when purchasing a company.  Either someone has not done their job or someone has done a great job of sweeping this under the carpet.  I cannot imagine given the sum owed that this is the first the club have heard about it.  Surely the Crab or his representatives would have made contact several months ago before it got to the stage of going public.

Not justifying the wages here but didn’t he have the option of going to a recently promoted Serie A team and opted for Town?  May go some way to explaining the silly wages he was offered.

All the finances should have been checked with a fine toothcombe...lets face it they had plenty of time when the league was making there minds up.

When you go from non league to the big boys you learn the hard way,Jed and co are learning the hard way for sure.
I wish them luck...they are going to need it.

Has everyone forgotten that Black insisted that the purchase went ahead without due diligence being undertaken? That's why all the other bidders other than Jed's group dropped out remember.

Clearly, as people have said, it's difficult to get a totally clear picture of what contractual obligations the club have lumbered themselves with from stories in the very shittiest of shitty tabloids, but it's becoming clear from mulltiple stories in multiple media outlets that the money being paid to players under the previous regime was a bit fucking mental.

If the numbers in this story have been inflated by 200% and the compensation payments were "only" about £3.5k a month, rather than £11K, then if that represents a saving on his contracted salary then it's still fucking outrageous.

And people can people stop rubbishing the Rooney story by completely misrepresenting what it claimed. No-one other than some brain-deads on thisis ever said Rooney was earning £8k a month. Nearly £8k a month (I think £7,800) was claimed to be the total cost of the deal to the club. Presumably this included a signing on fee, agents fees, probably a relocation allowance, plus salary and emplyers on costs.

Knock off 30% and it's still a lot of money for a 3rd choice striker at a League One club.

I don't ever recall Black insisting on no due diligence.  That would be just be ridiculous.

It was reported at the time of the takeover that the new board had completed the process in a matter of weeks and they had obviously done some due diligence by virtue of the NDA and the quoting wage bills to the local press.

Given the size of the clubs turnover a decent account should be able to rattle through a few years of accounts within a couple of weeks and raise any concerns.  That is provided they were in some sort of order and up to date.  For all we know they may have been a right mess and the July payment was "buried".

Either way the previous board were either very clever in hiding this or just plain bad at keeping the accounts or those going through the books deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered.

I do feel for the new board though, whatever way we swing it they're going to have deal with this mess and likely stick their hands in the pockets.






certainly not what I recall reading in the press.

I see someone stated on twitter they would shoot McCrory this morning.

Then tried to cover it by saying it was a joke from the american office.

Tut tut

Thats a bit pathetic.

Can genuinly see them fucking off soon

The amount of abuse the new board get is totally unjustified.

Jed would be doing himself a massive favour by closing his account on Twitter.

And who could blame them?  The abuse they have received on this forum and others has been nothing short of scandalous, have your say, don't agree with what they are doing or saying is the right of any forum user, but some people just take delight on raising the same issues etc. all the time and the constant moaning is crazy, as if just to prove a point that actually hasn't happened yet.  The real abuse should be aimed at the previous board for the mess they left the club in - it was great while they were here mind!!  If the board said that's enough and pulled out on Monday morning would we be off to Posh on Saturday?  I somehow doubt it.

There has to be a point where they at least ask the question whether any potential ROI is worth the aggregation.

That's not to say we shouldn't debate what's going on with the club . But personal attacks via social media, really?

True - But it would be a shame if he did.

Is Commazzi was banned from 'all footballing activities' he couldn't be a football consultant could he?

Bollocks. They take a bit of flack on here, very little of it actual abuse, although there's a fair bit of moaning. Some of the stuff on the Adver forum and twitter (although that's mainly self-inflicted) is slightly more foamy-mouthed, but really? Running a football club is always going to open you up to public scrutiny, especially when you occasionally look a bit accident prone, and sometimes the public ain't too discerning about mincing their words. (That's with the proviso obviously that genuine threats etc are clearly way OTT)

I agree. The idiots on Twitter are normally skinny teenagers who have a bit of bravado typing abuse from behind a computer. I'm sure Jed isn't stupid enough to take these sort of things seriously.

However, it can't be nice to read that someone is going to shoot you, however serious or 'jokey' that may be.

That thing about shooting him is a very old, famous joke used to infer that you don't like someone, not a serious threat

Don't you fucking well swear at me you cunt!!!

Bollocks. I was swearing at your post :)

aah but anything that is said on Twitter has to be taken literally or else the general populas couldn't fake mass outrage at it.

I'm going to call that moutrage, if only to see if I can appear in the 'things that annoy you' thread.

Twitter should be taken lightly 99% of the time and Jed knows he leaves himself open by being on it..

...having said that, the guy having a 'joke' with him looks like a total cunt (based on a small percentage of his tweets).

Whereas Jed comes across as a statesmanlike intellectual and business dynamo (based on a small percentage of his tweets). ROOOOAAARRRRR!