I know we'll never know, I'm just suggesting on the balance of probability (to me at least) it seems extremely unlikely.

With regards to FA's point I wondered at the time what Coulby was doing waiting 2 years for a meeting. Clearly each side believed that the current problems were the making of the other and this was irreconcilable.

With regards to Harrisgate, Hood could have accepted liability for the full amount and rang the administrator that afternoon. It was only a claim until he signed his name.

I hate to say this but the whole tenor of the story in the T&A does give the impression of stage managing the 'root and branch inquiry' to suit some desired outcome. I hope I'm wrong, I [iso[/i hope I'm wrong, but it looks very like we are being prepared for the last rites.

Or alternatively, CC could have got them off the hook, they had no investment in place, yet can now blame CC for scuppering their plans.

As you said, noone knows the truth. So we can draw our own conclusions.
If someone wants to prove that it was not lies to me, then I am happy to see the proof.
Otherwise, I will keep feeling that we have been lied today.

Six points minimum.

This is the bit I don't understand, and if someone can clarify, please do. I thought Administration was to deal with liabilities/bills/winding up orders that we can't pay, we have cleared the debts and loans with sales of players, lease, soul, kitchen sink and begging for 500k I thought? The problem now as I understood it, is cash going forward to meet our upcoming "normal" liabilities such as maintenance, wages, tax etc - matching our outgoings with our incomings. How does administration help with that? We could slash the playing costs by selling players out of adminisatation.

Surely, coming out of administration we'd be in the same situation cash flow wise except being a few players lighter, which we could do today without administration. Unless there is a creditor we can't pay that we've not been told of? Am I missing something?

Of course. I always forget that there will be points deduction.

I really hope that if CC takes the club into administration that there is a 3rd party investor who is willing to gazump an attempted pre pack leaving CC, Hood et al with nothing. Schadenfreude. That'll teach them to use our club to score cheap points off each other.

Caisley . Stop trying PR smear campaigns and fix this. You wanted the chance to be the saviour- do it!

I wondering this as well

Not really, though. Had he accepted the whole lot without a fight, he would almost vertainly have been in breach of his fiduciary and other responsibilities as a director, quite apart from taking a decision that would have led to immediate insolvency and therefore loss to creditors. The liquidator, funded no doubt by the Creditors' Committee led by Council and HMRC, could have taken him and the rest of the board (remember...we had Mr Agar, Mr Bates, Mr Coulby there who collectivley owned far more shares than he did) to the cleaners. IMO.

I agree with you that we need some means of having a clear-out and starting again in terms of ownership. Preferably not involving ANY of the present lot, but no chance of that I fear.

Opinion is fine. Stating someone is lying without proof (even if maybe they were) is potentially defamatory and actionable.

Would admin mean that all current player contracts are null and void? If so, these could all be re-negotiated with more favourable terms for the club rather than the player...... You could say it is a way of dealing with the dead wood/expensive salaries that Hood endorsed – reputedily Platt/Sykes/Scruton if the rumours are correct. Of course the players don’t have to sign on but where exactly would 30 players go at short notice... a few cherries would be picked, the others its either like it and sign or no money for you..... I’m sure the same logic can be applied to all sorts of miscellaneous contracts currently in place.....

Aha!!

There you have it all.

My opinion? FWIW, and the view I formed at the time, was:

1 - £500k to replace the credit lines the club believed (whether with justification or otherwise is academic) they had in place, to save the club from immediate insolvency. That was what the Pledge was for.

2 - £500k (or whatever) shortfall PER ANNUM income vs expenditure. I took it, from everything I heard and deduced, that the avenues the club were pursuiing were to try and plug the INCOME gap EACH YEAR. Since - as you rightly observe - anything esle just did not make sense.

This of course all presupposes that the BoD knew what they were doing and understood the realities of the situation. At the time, I believed that they did. As it is, nothing would surprise me now!

As I said I expected (although could hope otherwise) right from the start.

So, number one done, fine. Number 2 going forwards from year 2 onwards involves a combination of higher season ticket prices combined with not spending anywhere near the full cap (an unpopular view I have posted elsewhere, as this is the only variable we have complete control over going forward, Ceteris paribus ), topped up with whatever investment we can drag up.

So the immediate issue is number 2 this year... I still don't think admin is the best solution to that one, but maybe I'm wrong.

Hole Theory!
You have this Hole (aka Financial loss) which just cannot be paid off or written off, but is manageable as long as you can keep forwarding on to the following years books, also hoping that some extraordinary sponsorship or White Knight appears, to fill in said Hole. The safety mechanism to cope with this is the standard business Bank overdraft, if said safety mechanism is suddenly withdrawn, that manageable Hole now becomes a fiscal nightmare leaving the Club in a quandry with a Hole that needs to be filled and quickly, Two courses of action are available go into Administration or go cap in hand to the Fans and RL Community. To go straight into administration would have killed the Club, asking for the money upfront should give them the breathing space they needed. Then the originator of said Hole comes back and behaves unprofessionally cause he wants his "toy"back. Caisley is walking a fine line now, as taking the Club into an unnecessary Administration could have repercussions down the line!

I'll wait to hear from them then. At least it would be a chance to talk to someone at the club.

But to save any issues, I withdraw my comments. The club have never, ever lied to us, not ever, not once. Not even a little bit.

Liar.

Wouldn't anyone seriously interested in buying the club need to know that a significant shareholder would be likely to accept the offer? Or could the previous Board have sold the club without the consent of the shareholders?

When Hood made his statement about only accepting the fans money if he was very confident that he could raise the extra £500k, I took that to mean that he also believed that he had the backing of the shareholders. Since it would have been a meaningless statement otherwise. That's why I pledged.

The Board could not have sold the club. That would have required the shareholders to sell their shares to the prospective buyer. The board only held c.25% of the shares, so they could not themselves sell control to another party.

Regrding having the backing of other shareholders, he only needed to know he had the backing of 50% of the shareholding. Doubtless he knew he could NOT count on Caisley's backing, but - like you -I assumed he was happy he could continue to count on the backing of other former directors sufficient to give him at least 50% support. Seeing Roland Agar change sides (Coulby had previously sold nearly all his holding to Bennett and Hood...) was therefore quite a shock. I too had already pledged by then.

Isn't any company's board in a de facto position of having the backing of the shareholders, until a shareholders' meeting decides otherwise?

I appreciate that there are circumstances where the shareholders would need to give specific permissions and indeed occasions when the shareholders feel the need to reign in the directors. Again I don't know, but suspect, any action which is likely to dilute the shareholdings would need a special meeting (EGM?) but the pledge didn't offer the pledgees (ie. us) any holding in the club at all, so I'd expect it was within their powers.

I cant really understand then why he took the fans money. If he wasnt sure that he had the backing of the shareholders to make a deal then he would have been better to have walked away at that point.

Indeed. And, surprisingly (not!) he's saying as much about it now he's out, as he was when he was in. I don't know what he'll be doing next, but I'm betting it won't be a Director of Communications anywhere



Do you suppose the T&A are even asking him for comments on all this stuff? Or even if they're not, now he is no longer in post, if something is claimed (eg the financial sit. is "believed to be" "far worse" than "was thought"icon_wink.gif wouldn't you be now shouting your case from the rooftops if you were him? I know I would be, if huge aspersions were being cast.

Some may say his silence is some form of tacit acceptance that the allegations have substance, but in reality he has a track record for hardly ever commenting on anything much at all. I suppose it's a free country, but can't understand why his PR is so bad.

If Caisley's review results in administration (as I think many of us have always asssumed it would) then the conduct of the directors will be very much under the spotlight. Indeed, the administrator is required to request information about the directors' conduct from creditors etc. I guess that may be one reason why he is saying nothing right now? Especially given his adversary is an experienced litigation lawyer not known for being gentle?

I understand that the T&A has indeed sought comments and information. For whatever reason - which may or may not include the above - he seems content to let the victors make all the PR running.

Maybe he's waiting for the review to be concluded or maybe he'll say nothing even then, who knows?

He's far from being alone in this regard though; as a supporter for over fifty years I can safely say the club has rarely made more information available than it absolutely had to. CC certainly didn't in his previous stint at the club, so unless they change the habits of a lifetime, things are unlikely to change for the better any time soon.

It may look quite strange, looking back? When they did not immediately announce the pledge results as promised, I assumed it was because they had to be very clear in their minds that by taking the money they had a realistic expectation of avoiding insolvency, and that the terms of the pledge had indeed been met. Given how close it was, and that there were bound to be some bogus pledges in there, that made sense to me.

BUT...if they HAD satisfied themselves that they should thereby avoid insolvency (even if that would mean e.g. selling players or cost-cutting), then I reasoned that as directors their responsibility was to call the pledges in to ensure they DID indeed avoid insolvency. Had they NOT done so, I reasoned they could be in breach of their fiduciary responsibilities to take all reasonable steps to avoid insolvency. So it may be that they had no choice, regardless of whether they were subsequently booted out. And to my knowledge none of the Caisley cabal ever said in public that they disagreed with the pledge and that it should not be called in? (If that is incorrect, happy to see the detail and acknowledge).

There may well have been other motives and reasons, somne of which have been speculated upon on here. And calling in the pledges certainly made it far harder for the successors to go down the administration route from day 1.

I suppose I was taking him at his word when he said we needed £1m in total and quickly. I can't see how we could possibly raise £500k in the short term from player sales and cost cutting. Hence my assumption when I pledged was that he was genuinely confident of securing additional investment. And whilst it was obvious that there were issues with CC and other shareholders, I assumed, when he called in the pledge, that some sort of agreement had been reached to allow him to do a deal.

Obviously any sale or acquisition can collapse at the last minute , but it shouldnt have been due to lack of support from major shareholders as this should already have been secured.