"The Pertinent Question" (1 Viewer)

:smug:This report is really excellent. The Dafferns are loyal supporters of the club and have paid a lot of money over the years in sponsorship. The Trust really need a professional approach such as the one shown in this report.

I think a lot people make the assumption that the Trust do not have access to appropriate legal and accountancy advice or other professionals with the relevant experience in running football clubs or fans share ownership or indeed corporate acquisitions.

Those assumptions would be wholly inaccurate

The Trust weakness is in its communications and always has been. That is not to say that they should be providing details of any plans at this stage, there is no club sale to plan for. I know others differ but in my opinion it would be wholly inadvisable to provide such information directly or indirectly to SISU. No other interested party would unless the owners were willing to sell why should the Trust? There has been no bid, and its clear the owners have rejected any approach

It is pretty clear the Trust want a stake in the club ownership from a community share issue via a separate investment vehicle to the Trust itself (it is how these things are set up see below). That does not mean the Trust will be running the club - do the SISU investors? - the relevant expertise is brought in to do that. At this stage what else needs to be disclosed? the club is not for sale. You cant set funding from fans until you know how much is required so those kind of details are useless just now and most likely would change to get to the final proposal - why confuse things?

The research done was from the starting point of having something in place should the worst happen and the owners or someone else pulled the plug, it never was a plot to force ownership change as certain uninformed parties claim. It has moved on from that in some ways in that it is now clearer to other potential investors that a fans group have real interest in taking a stake in the club and understand how to do it - there is a potential fans partner. But that's all it has moved on to. It is not for anyone interested, including the Trust, a matter of marching in slapping a bid down and saying go - the club is not for sale, and no one would show their hand in that manner.

Community share issues
Analysis: The rise and rise of community shares
http://www.supporters-direct.org/wp...-Supporter-Community-Ownership-Briefing-3.pdf
http://www.supporters-direct.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Supporter-Share-Ownership-Summary.pdf

My own view is that a community share issue alone would not be enough, it will require some high worth investors along side it. It may never happen but at least there is a potential safety net if the need arises that is understood and supported by the proper professional advice. Any new owner, when SISU decide to sell or wind up, needs to bring the club back to its fan base and community - a community share issue is a way to do it, there are others of course.

Final thoughts ...... a community share issue doesn't have to be to buy off the present owners, ........ and it is better to be prepared with options that are understood, professionally supported and ready if the need arises is it not?

this is the guy that was on CWR with Fisher (after the Talksport interview)?

tisza said:

this is the guy that was on CWR with Fisher (after the Talksport interview)?

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Yeah, he was on with Fisher and Moz from the SBT. That was the chap who got Fisher to admit his £1M profit was EBIT (although unfortunately the relevance of that admission was not explored further on air).

First off this is a step in the right direction. There needs to be dialogue on what happens if and when SISU go and what the desired end result of any campaign is.

That said, in my opinion, this piece raises more questions than it answers. Hopefully this is the start of an ongoing dialogue and the JHW will be prepared to engage, that is far preferable to the anyone who doesn't agree is wrong attitude we've seen in the past.

Few points that spring to mind:

It says JHW isn't a SISU out protest but rather they want SISU to put the club up for sale. I certainly don't think that message has been coming across and I suspect if you spoke to those who went on the pitch or staged the sit in most would be in the SISU out camp. The message needs to be clearer.

Making statements that the club is in danger of going out of business if we are relegated just takes away from the core message. It also plays into Fishers hands, he can bat comments like that away all day as there no evidence to back it up. Stick to a core message and don't bring anything that can't be backed up into it.

There's mention of the need for investment by a new owner. How are they proposing the club is run? Do they want to abandon the aim of having the club be self sustaining in favour of building up more debt? Is this new owner gifting the cost of a new stadium?

Fan ownership for CCFC is a total fantasy as far as I'm concerned. There's mention of Portsmouth 2,500 supporters donated (in any normal sense of the word they don't own a share) £1,000 each to acquire a minority interest in the club. Thats a team with well over 10K season ticket holders. They also attracted investors to assist in exchange for allowing their council to remove a planning restriction on the car park which is now a Tesco! Then add in they were still getting parachute payments and had a 7 figure loan from the local council and you can easily see the issues for us doing something similar.

I've said before the way to get rid of SISU is by giving them a viable exit strategy. I don't for a minute believe they don't want to go, especially as they were contacting potential buyers 18 months ago. Then there needs to be a viable plan to run the club when they leave. There's no reason that can't be put forward now. And of course if there are potential new owners waiting in the wings we need to hear from them. Not normally a fan of doing business in public but I feel this is an exception.

While it is a good article in the sense there's not a lot you can disagree with it the details that are lacking are key.

tisza said:

this is the guy that was on CWR with Fisher (after the Talksport interview)?

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Yes good cop, bad cop

viable for who CD? because there would seem to be a big gap between what SISU would need to realise to go and what any rational purchaser would value their purchase at. It seems to me that in every negotiation that SISU have had to date regarding CCFC starts at a point, agrees something in principle then as crunch time comes around SISU/JS come back and say yes but now we want this.

Until SISU are saying we want to sell then I am not sure why any negotiator would reveal their hand now, Trust or otherwise. To do so at this stage only sets a bar for SISU to move up from, whereas circumstances might worsen and the club be available at a cheaper deal.

It doesn't follow that fans involvement has to be as majority shareholders either. So any plans that the Trust might have now could be very dependent on the requirements, objectives and plans of others. Fans ownership is not a hard and fast concept, yes there might be thought of fans control but it doesn't follow it will be. Circumstances at the time will dictate. It might not be possible at all

Frankly until proper due diligence is done then how do you get the information to set out a plan. To get due diligence the club has to be for sale and almost certainly a NDA signed, and an end to the transparency sought. SISU will insist on three things, who, proof of funds and an Non Disclosure Agreement. Any new owner will not be doing their business in public or be revealing their funding requirement post purchase other than in the most general of terms

Final thought, Otium acquired CCFC Ltd & CCFC H in July 2013 for a cash value of £1.5m and transferred liability for some net creditors (assets 2.7m less creditors 3.4m) of a net 700k. Then immediately devalued the investment/goodwill 2.2m to £nil ie in the directors/owners eyes it is all worthless. Since then our fortunes have not really improved. Yes we are heading towards breakeven, but that is based on the disposal of players (erosion of the asset base value), we have no long term agreements etc. Now I think we can safely assume that SISU will seek a lot more than 1.5m in cash and taking over of the football liabilities for them to have a viable way out. That's before you deal with issues surrounding share, loans and security. From a rational purchasers point of view why would you pay that premium simply for them to go? Simply because SISU require a viable exit plan, and why would you put that plan out in public beforehand with such a high risk of failure

Over pay for what you are acquiring means that you are placing additional burden on the investment that can not be supported by the asset base, it increases the future financial risk of the club. But its the potential...... only if that is realised and that will only happen because of the efforts and funding of new owners, why should SISU be rewarded for something they wont be achieving?

There is no viable way out for them without a lot of pain, certainly not one that comes close to their expectations, they know it, and so does every one else. They are not ready to take that pain in my opinion

So what would be a viable exit plan for SISU? Would that be a viable entry plan for new owners? Got to look at both sides

I think they will keep the club in a form of stasis in league one, trying to move to a position where they can run the club without investment and take out up to £1M p.a. by selling players year on year. If the conveyor belt of talent is continual then the income stream is built up and persists over 3-4 years as the (more likely) sold players bonus conditions are met.

oldskyblue58 said:

viable for who CD? because there would seem to be a big gap between what SISU would need to realise to go and what any rational purchaser would value their purchase at.

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And that's the problem in a nutshell. If the campaign is for SISU to sell up and go then there needs to be an offer made to them which they deem acceptable.

oldskyblue58 said:

Until SISU are saying we want to sell then I am not sure why any negotiator would reveal their hand now, Trust or otherwise.
Frankly until proper due diligence is done then how do you get the information to set out a plan.

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I'm not talking about detail but you can surely give a vague idea of what you are after. If you're saying new owners must be acceptable to the fans then don't you have to quantify that? Does the club run at break even or does the club run at a huge loss in the hope of being completive. We all know that even if we owned the stadium those would be the two options so what is deemed acceptable. New stadium or stay at the Ricoh is a similar issue. As we are always reminded football doesn't operate like a normal business. If the Trust or one of the campaign groups have a brilliant plan for how the club can increase revenues then why not make it known, we are all supposed to be pushing in the same direction.

oldskyblue58 said:

Fans ownership is not a hard and fast concept, yes there might be thought of fans control but it doesn't follow it will be.

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I think we'd struggle with raising funds at the best of times. In a scenario where you're asking fans to put in money in return for zero control IMO it will be near impossible.

Captain Dart said:

I think they will keep the club in a form of stasis in league one, trying to move to a position where they can run the club without investment and take out up to £1M p.a. by selling players year on year. If the conveyor belt of talent is continual then the income stream is built up and persists over 3-4 years as the (more likely) sold players bonus conditions are met.

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That has to have limited possibilities. It's almost like the Crewe ALex model of previous years that proved to be unsustainable

chiefdave said:

And that's the problem in a nutshell. If the campaign is for SISU to sell up and go then there needs to be an offer made to them which they deem acceptable.


I'm not talking about detail but you can surely give a vague idea of what you are after. If you're saying new owners must be acceptable to the fans then don't you have to quantify that? Does the club run at break even or does the club run at a huge loss in the hope of being completive. We all know that even if we owned the stadium those would be the two options so what is deemed acceptable. New stadium or stay at the Ricoh is a similar issue. As we are always reminded football doesn't operate like a normal business. If the Trust or one of the campaign groups have a brilliant plan for how the club can increase revenues then why not make it known, we are all supposed to be pushing in the same direction.


I think we'd struggle with raising funds at the best of times. In a scenario where you're asking fans to put in money in return for zero control IMO it will be near impossible.

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SISU have stated that our club is not for sale. So why would they state what they want?

If you were to make an offer for our club you would want to offer what it is worth. As in not a lot. SISU won't accept that. Offer your maximum and they would want more.

What we need is someone with more money than sense. Or wait until SISU are ready to sell and the pressure is on them. So far Fisher has been able to breeze through just about everything. So we could have a very long wait.

tisza said:

That has to have limited possibilities. It's almost like the Crewe ALex model of previous years that proved to be unsustainable

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We are a much bigger club. And we have much more potential.

Astute said:

SISU have stated that our club is not for sale. So why would they state what they want?

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I haven't suggested they state what they want. I have suggested that for them to leave an offer they deem acceptable needs to be made.

Astute said:

If you were to make an offer for our club you would want to offer what it is worth. As in not a lot. SISU won't accept that.

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Exactly. So if you want SISU to sell what do you do? Sitting in after a game or running on the pitch will achieve nothing. You need to target SISU's business. If owning CCFC is having a negative impact on their ability to gain and retain clients they will look to offload it. Of course if you're going down that route you need to be sure there is someone waiting in the wings to takeover.

Didn't the Swansea model have a 25% fans interest? that started at the bottom of League 2 I believe.

Think you have to play a longer game and build up interest, pressure and momentum.

Any realistic offer is not going to be acceptable to SISU because of the realistic to expectation gap. So making a bid at this stage achieves what exactly? It wouldn't necessarily compel SISU to reveal anything. Personally I think I could put up a very good case for the Club as it stands being worth £1 - am sure the Trust could afford that but am equally sure SISU would reject it without blinking an eye

I would think that the trust will need to start putting out information on fans ownership, possible ways forward, and other questions raised etc. Isnt that what this article really is - a start to an information process to start a debate and bring forward a general outline and to get feedback.

The alternative to starting the process (and this is only a start) is to sit back do nothing and accept what is

It is interesting that the Trust or new owners must put out the details of the plan but we have had 9 years of owners who have steadfastly refused to disclose any real plan. Few football club owners or prospective ones actually put forward their plan in to the public domain to be fair though

oldskyblue58 said:

The alternative to starting the process (and this is only a start) is to sit back do nothing and accept what is

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Which is what Nick appears happy to settle for.:angelic:

Captain Dart said:

Which is what Nick appears happy to settle for.:angelic:

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Strange to try and bring me into it? Shame you never replied to my PM's even though you think of me :emoji_sweat:

Not saying your questions are wrong CD but this is not going to be a quick process. Needs momentum and part of that is asking questions

chiefdave said:

First off this is a step in the right direction. There needs to be dialogue on what happens if and when SISU go and what the desired end result of any campaign is.

That said, in my opinion, this piece raises more questions than it answers. Hopefully this is the start of an ongoing dialogue and the JHW will be prepared to engage, that is far preferable to the anyone who doesn't agree is wrong attitude we've seen in the past.

Few points that spring to mind:

It says JHW isn't a SISU out protest but rather they want SISU to put the club up for sale. I certainly don't think that message has been coming across and I suspect if you spoke to those who went on the pitch or staged the sit in most would be in the SISU out camp. The message needs to be clearer.

Making statements that the club is in danger of going out of business if we are relegated just takes away from the core message. It also plays into Fishers hands, he can bat comments like that away all day as there no evidence to back it up. Stick to a core message and don't bring anything that can't be backed up into it.

There's mention of the need for investment by a new owner. How are they proposing the club is run? Do they want to abandon the aim of having the club be self sustaining in favour of building up more debt? Is this new owner gifting the cost of a new stadium?

Fan ownership for CCFC is a total fantasy as far as I'm concerned. There's mention of Portsmouth 2,500 supporters donated (in any normal sense of the word they don't own a share) £1,000 each to acquire a minority interest in the club. Thats a team with well over 10K season ticket holders. They also attracted investors to assist in exchange for allowing their council to remove a planning restriction on the car park which is now a Tesco! Then add in they were still getting parachute payments and had a 7 figure loan from the local council and you can easily see the issues for us doing something similar.

I've said before the way to get rid of SISU is by giving them a viable exit strategy. I don't for a minute believe they don't want to go, especially as they were contacting potential buyers 18 months ago. Then there needs to be a viable plan to run the club when they leave. There's no reason that can't be put forward now. And of course if there are potential new owners waiting in the wings we need to hear from them. Not normally a fan of doing business in public but I feel this is an exception.

While it is a good article in the sense there's not a lot you can disagree with it the details that are lacking are key.

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Excuse my ignorance- but how do you know they were contacting potential buyers 18 months ago? I hope this is true as it gives me personal hope that SISU are getting realistic.

oldskyblue58 said:

Personally I think I could put up a very good case for the Club as it stands being worth £1 - am sure the Trust could afford that but am equally sure SISU would reject it without blinking an eye

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It may well end up being sold for £1 but the key will be what happens with the debt. Written off, pennies in the pound offer or carried over to the new owners.

oldskyblue58 said:

It is interesting that the Trust or new owners must put out the details of the plan but we have had 9 years of owners who have steadfastly refused to disclose any real plan. Few football club owners or prospective ones actually put forward their plan in to the public domain to be fair though

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Ranson was pretty open about his plan when he came in and people have repeatedly asked for SISU's plan. Problem is you then get Fisher on the radio saying exactly what they plan is and people either don't believe him, which is understandable, or just choose to ignore what he says.

oldskyblue58 said:

this is not going to be a quick process

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Which to me is why it needs to proceed with caution. If the campaign pushes SISU to walk, unlikely but you never know, then there needs to be someone ready to step in.

Rodders1 said:

Excuse my ignorance- but how do you know they were contacting potential buyers 18 months ago?

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Doris the tea lady told me :angelic:

From what I've been told they were looking in the region of £30m which clearly no one they approached even considered. Suspect their expectations will now be lowered but I think its a nonsense to assume any football club is not for sale.

chiefdave said:

Doris the tea lady told me :angelic:

From what I've been told they were looking in the region of £30m which clearly no one they approached even considered. Suspect their expectations will now be lowered but I think its a nonsense to assume any football club is not for sale.

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LOL, that is more like the going rate for Birmingham City, who I presume own St Andrews.

Captain Dart said:

LOL, that is more like the going rate for Birmingham City, who I presume own St Andrews.

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If what CD has heard is correct it's laughable. Wolves were only just sold for £45M and they own their own ground (something we don't), training ground (something we won't for much longer), CAT 1 status academy (something we don't have or ownthe facilities for), championship status (something we don't) and are they still receiving parachute payments? Not sure what the clubs debt is but even if it is as much or more than ours they have tangible assets to attach it to. £30M my arse.

The statement is all well and good but I would question some of the conclusions (well they are more possible scenarios than conclusions).

Fans are paramount - fans are vital but running the club successfully on and off the pitch is paramount. There needs to be a balance, we have seen too many clubs overspend which is great at the time (we remember the early 90's/00's) but unless you hit success this is a recipe for disaster. The club needs to be equally sustainable.

Keeping the pressure on Sisu is essential. While we fully support the boys in Sky Blue, the long-term existence of CCFC is even more vital than the team’s survival in League One. - but then in other conclusions it states we must have success and equally there is nothing we can do about their ownership!? My view is that we get relegated to L2 then this gets a hell of a lot worse....

Captain Dart said:

I think they will keep the club in a form of stasis in league one, trying to move to a position where they can run the club without investment and take out up to £1M p.a. by selling players year on year. If the conveyor belt of talent is continual then the income stream is built up and persists over 3-4 years as the (more likely) sold players bonus conditions are met.

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Yes that's exactly what they will do
Milk the cow and sell the milk

And they are quite happy to do just that forever

skybluetony176 said:

If what CD has heard is correct it's laughable. Wolves were only just sold for £45M and they own their own ground (something we don't), training ground (something we won't for much longer), CAT 1 status academy (something we don't have or ownthe facilities for), championship status (something we don't) and are they still receiving parachute payments? Not sure what the clubs debt is but even if it is as much or more than ours they have tangible assets to attach it to. £30M my arse.

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Wolves
Both the trading company and immediate parent company show annual profits and Net Assets on the Balance sheet (Consolidated net assets 31 May 2015 49m)

Stadium & training facilities valued at over £50m

To expect £30m for CCFC would seem on that basis hugely hopeful to the point of ridiculous

Rodders1 said:

Excuse my ignorance- but how do you know they were contacting potential buyers 18 months ago? I hope this is true as it gives me personal hope that SISU are getting realistic.

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We understand that over the last few years there have been two enquires to buy the club, both met with JS and then walked away.
(Preston Haskell was not one of these, he never got to the stage of meeting with JS)

Steve.B50 said:

We understand that over the last few years there have been two enquires to buy the club, both met with JS and then walked away.
(Preston Haskell was not one of these, he never got to the stage of meeting with JS)

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Just out of interest do you understand if these were individuals, consortiums, hedge funds etc?

skybluetony176 said:

Just out of interest do you understand if these were individuals, consortiums, hedge funds etc?

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As far as the information we were given one was a individual the other a consortium.

oldskyblue58 said:

To expect £30m for CCFC would seem on that basis hugely hopeful to the point of ridiculous

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But it probably sets a marker, assuming that is the first negotiating figure I would have thought Joyless wants to recover £15M, which pays off ARVO, the SISU funds I believe are written off and ARVO has preference over them.

Steve.B50 said:

As far as the information we were given one was a individual the other a consortium.

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So basically there is a point as fans protesting and making a noise in an effort to get the owners to put the club on the market because despite what some would have you believe there are people out there interested if a sensible price can be met.

Do you know if any of these parties are still around and interested or have they (to coin a well known phrase in CCFC circles) "moved on"?

Captain Dart said:

But it probably sets a marker, assuming that is the first negotiating figure I would have thought Joyless wants to recover £15M, which pays off ARVO, the SISU funds I believe are written off and ARVO has preference over them.

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I suspect that would only happen after the sale of Ryton and ARVO have recovered their charges that they have against it.

Astute said:

We are a much bigger club. And we have much more potential.

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point was they had a period where they were up down between League 1 & championship but always had to sell off promising young players to pay the bills and hope a new prospect would emerge through the youth ranks to repeat the cycle. talent dried up and ultimately ended up dropping into League 2.
Doesn't matter whether your crowds are 2000 or 8000 if the only way to balance the books is to sell off a player or two every season.

skybluetony176 said:

I suspect that would only happen after the sale of Ryton and ARVO have recovered their charges that they have against it.

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but the point remains can't sell Ryton until a new facility is in place - which would probably cost more than the Ryton income anyway.