unfortunatley its time for Bradford to realise that overspending and lying about your finances to just about everyone catches up with you eventually.

Feel sorry for the true Northern fans, as their club has been destroyed by miss management.

Admin is the only way forward - more lies about a rich investor help noone.

bite the bullet and try to start again from scratch.

i hope you get the boot out of SL league and have your licence removed - but it will not happen.

What bates has done at leeds
is far more dodgier than just buy the club for a quid, he elegedly owns 3 offshore companies that owned different parts of the club, these companies apparently had 7 million invested in lufc, these companies wavered this money only if master bates became chairmen! He did then mysteriously that 7 million has been syphoned away, far more sinister, elegedly!!!

You do know it's illegal to troll now?

Is this the image rights thing coming back to bite or is it similar to Wakefield where we mised/delayed a payment to HMRC and they took us on in the wake of other sporting clubs not paying HMRC.

If you have missed an instalment payment HMRC are likely to be coming for the lot and will not negotiate. Not sure if this is the case but a skeleton seems to have jumped out of the closet if not or you afe being strung along being drip fed bad news. The club will fold and someone will get it for a song, the issue is who will that person be someone linked now or a rtotal fresh person.

At the start of the season someone I know who is close to the club (has worked for them on a freelance basis for many years) gave me his understanding of various issues including the ground sale. This bloke is very genuine, I'm 100% sure he was telling me what he believed to be the truth. Turned out to be complete rubbish. Bumped into him recently, he was very sheepish and decidedly miffed at being misled.

Coulbys comments last week, usually tacked onto the end of another TnA article, started to look as if they were struggling, so no real surprise that they continue to fight not to go into administration by getting two weeks more time.

Another observation: there are no comments about the strategic review itself, PnA simply make the statement that it is a loss making business. And they have to be Harvard business school graduates to have profound insights like that???!!! Any idiot knew that, what a throw-away comment. So, PnA what is the answer to the important question, how does it get turned into a profit making business? and is administration a step on the way? And does this threat of Admin help us along the way to that longer term solution, eg a reduction in overheads or ridding us of a substantial contingent liability?

As I understand it P&A are insolvency practitioners. As such they're qualified to review our cashflows, look at whether we have assets that we can sell, identify obvious cost savings, consider how the company could be re-structured etc, etc

If you were to ask them the question "If we double or treble season ticket prices how many fans will we lose?" don't expect an answer. They could only ever aid the new Board in carrying out a Strategic Review. The Directors have to make the hard decisions themselves.

Another spin on this, Could it be possible that the new BoD are using the threat of admin as a way of getting hold of Hoods remaining shares ? Surely he would realise that getting a minimal return for selling to Caisley and Co would be better than getting nothing which would happen if a newco bought it back !
Maybe one of our better informed posters can clear this up


At least it would sort the ownership issue out.

This is the same HRMC that won’t negotiate with the Bulls but will negotiate with big companies as to how much tax they can pay!!!

Administration
Players sold
SL licence removed
Start again in a lower league next year.
Less than 1,000 fans with season tickets
10 years to get back into SL
Way to go Bradford BoD



I am so £%$^&&% with this childish immature in house bickering and tall tale telling within the BoD with total disregard to the loyal fans who have supported this great club in the past years. The players must be thinking “why me “and my heart felt sorrow goes out to them. Why has the review taken so long! Maybe they hoped the HMRC would issue a windup order so they look as if they have done everything they can and have been forced into this predicament . CC investors !!! so where are they!!!



I am now off to get a season ticket for the Bradford tiddlywinks team.

Very badly Hurting

It's clear that many fans have no clue what administration is, and that (like I xpect most sports fans) very many think that administration is a scam of some sort that enables you to swerve your debts and just carry on as before.

If anyone wants to actually know the basics of how it would work in our case or what it would entail, just read some of Adeybull's explanations in the main thread. It's been done to death. The sort of totally uninformed nonsense that infests this thread isn't helpful, and people needn't advertise their ignorance, a few minutes back reading prior to posting and some people would save themselves posting total rubbish.

I thought the reason Caisley and co replaced Hood and co was on the principle that they had all these "potential investors" queueing up once Hood was removed?

Then when they get their feet back under the table a review is carried out with the findings that the debts are "much worse than originally anticipated"

Then they announce they have 1 investor who is willing to put up £500,000 but they are £750,000 short!?? (never named)

And low and behold a week later we face a winding up order and have 2 weeks because of unpaid tax!!!

Who the hell do are we supposed to believe?

The problem as i see it.
1.We will have to sell assets to try and pay the tax man. This will be done by the administrator and we won't have any say in the matter.
2. No cash rich multimillionaire is going to invest and take on the past debt (they have not made a lot of cash by investing in loss loosing business) they will want it debt free, which can only happen after the administrator has done his job for the tax man.
3. So if we are lucky and say in Super league we will be a club with a decimated team of players who will be desperate to jump ship, a fan base who now has to start paying full up(£20+) a game to see us get whipped every week. Less fans every week, no investment advertisement revenue falls, less money to pay wage contracts etc.
It will be pain full to see a club die like this.
I say lets go into Division one. ( i would bet if you offered say Featherstone or Halifax the chance to go up they would think long and hard, they seem to run ok with 2500 through the gates and the rugby is at lest competitive).

Super League is on its backside. The Bulls will not be the last club to fall. The Chmapionship offers more competitive and entertaining fixtures than SL every week. I'll bet Mr C didn't have this in his mind with his big time charlie ideas for RL back in 95.

makes you laugh that sky have paid another record fee to screen football that is in essence a league where only 4 teams can win and more often than not it is over before the end of the season. We get peanuts and it always goes down to sudden death the last 4 weeks of the season.

It's aboit time (although it will obviously never happen) that the present and previous management stopped issuing these partial briefings, glossed with spin, and just told us the bare facts.

For example, "we need £1m to finish the season". WTF does that mean though? For example, and using hypothetical figures and a simple example, if our total wages bill was £2.5m then we would need about £1m to finish the season. It wouldn't exactly be a shock.

On the same figure, using home games as a yardstick, you'd need income which was the equivalent of about £200K a home game, over the season. (of course you don't get your income in nice weekly chunks, for example you get a large slice one-off in season ticket sales; but still, on average).

In this simple example, yes you would "need £1m" but it would just be stating a fact and no surprise; and equally you should be able to cover it from your regular average income as well.

Of course I understand that there are any number of factors, debts, bank overdraft issues, image rights tax bills etc etc etc., all I am saying is that it is totally disingenuous to use the phrase "we need £1m to finish the season" to imply that there is something surprising, wrong or not above board about that. OBVIOUSLY any SL club needs a large sum of money to finish a season.

I mean, how much do Wigan need "to finish the season", if you added it up? Or Wakefield? Do they all actually have all those funds NOW, up front, in credit, in their bank?

I am totally sick of this doublespeak and name calling. It does sadly look as if the "investors/benefactors waiting in the wings" hinted at by both factions were just wishful thinking. I continue to hope that we won't go into administration, but my remaining hopes wouldn't be high enough to clear your average ant, and if we do then that will be in my terms a total disaster for the club.

And no doubt whichever way it goes, we can confidently expect the continued yah-boo he-said she-said blame game to continue through the local press.

The bit in bold no longer exists since the RFL changed the rules last year after Crusaders and Wakey went bust. You won't lose your SL licence.

is it "we need £1m to finish the season" in excess of the projected income already calculated....so week on week the shortfall is growing and the finances getting worse and worse.......

As people have already said, all this talk of investors in the wings to save us from Admin is uncannily like what we heard when Wakey were in the mire. Even if your heart hopes for some other scenario, surely all our heads know its probably all over for the club in its present guise.

I just hope there is a genuine investor interested in taking us forward post-Admin.

RFL need tennants in their ground so the Bulls will stay in SL no matter what happens

In reality - yes. Welcome to life in the lower echelon of SL. My team has been in this for 17 years. You are lucky to have seen something that I never have. More success in 17 years than I have supporting Cas Tigers in 40 odd years !

Stay strong.

Agreed. Bulls going nowhere and to stay at the top table.

Yeah you'd never get a close finish to a football season.

1. Manchester City P38 W28 D5 L5 PD64 - 89
2. Manchester Utd P38 W28 D5 L5 PD59 - 89

Problem with that is our 'better informed' posters, with exception of adeybull, seem to have gone missing now the craps hit the fan. Strange that as they seemed very pro caisley/admin.

I was thinking that too, Some on here seem more interested in ridiculing peoples knowledge or business acumen, rather than answering a simple (to them) question.