Hello Bulls fans - I am really sorry to hear of your predicament.

I was one of a group of Plymouth Argyle FC fans who dealt with Brendan Guilfoyle when he was Administrator for our club over a lengthy and nerve wracking period until last August.

He will say that he was successful in getting the deal to save our club done - and that bare fact is true. But it would NOT have happened without fans groups keeping tabs on his (and his lawyer's) activities. If it was not for fans pressure, we would have failed and be in liquidation.

Remember that the job of an Administrator is to get the best deal for the creditors, not (necessarily) for the club. So it is up to you to keep your eyes on the main thing that you prize, which is your club and keep public pressure on Guilfoyle. He comes over all affable and reasonable but he is as sharp as paper cut and not as pleasant - he is not fondly remembered in the far south west - and for good reasons.

I wish you well in your struggle but do please feel free to contact us should you need any background information. If you want to get in contact, please either leave a message below or send me a PM and I can give you my phone/email details. The Argyle Fans' Trust (which was set up specifically to ensure fans had a voice in our recent Administration period) has promised whatever support you wish.

Either way, good luck from all of us down here!

Peter.

Whilst I'm not particularly a soccer fan, I did follow/continue to follow the Argyle stuff in our local press - partly because living across the Tamar I work with a number of AFC fans.

I concur that Peter's comment "[i. . . he is as sharp as paper cut and not as pleasant . . .[/i" succinctly covers BG . . . . .

Suppose he has to be.. if he doesnt do what hes paid to do he wont get paid, noone else will and we wont have a club.

All I really want to say on here is that it would have been immediately obvious to people like me which way things were likely to be heading, had the identity of the "independent reviewer" - he has a high profile in the insolvency field - been made public at the outset.

I did tell people I expected the reviewer to be an insolvency specialist, and indeed in the circumstances it would have been reasonable to look to someone in the "corporate recovery" field.

Adeybull why do you seem to have some sort of moral superiority complex. Your posts predominantly say "I told you so". Wow congratulations you narcissistic being.

He sounds like a Thomas Hardy character (Guilfoyle, not Adeybull - he's an Andy McNab character).

Lots of Wakey fans told you what was going to happen, lots of Wakey fans told you what needed to be done, Lots of wakey fans told you not to support the pledge but to set up a supporters trust with the money being pledged rather than give it to a defunct BoD.
You told all the Wakey fans that we were wrong and to top it all lots of fans from all over the RL community told you the reason for the RFL buying the Odsal lease was to help bail the bulls out of financial ruin and you disagreed with that.
When I say "You" I am actually referring to "You" Adey, you are an ostrich you come across to the fans on here as knowing what is going on but in truth you know "Jack"
I think it's about time you come clean on here it's not fair on the rest of the bulls fans for you to keep leading them down the garden path

You could have just saved me a fortune. I am working on a £25m construction project & have come up against intransigent city planners. We were going to engage expensive construction lawyers & planning consultants. Instead I will now be PMing you the details for your guidance.

Happy to help drop me a PM

Right, so remember to believe all rumours from message boards..........hang on whilst I find a pencil, then I can write all this advice down...

To be fair to BG, he is supposed to be the creditors friend not your's, he may well come across nicey nicey in the media, but his legal remit is much different.

As it has already been clearly shown that the vast majority PAID knowing Caisley had scuppered the BOD, and did so simply to resuscitate the club for a short further period of breathing space (which may, or may not have worked); and as nothing else would have kept the club alive, your continuing desire to repeat this bollox must be due to some sort of comprehension problem you have.

If the club had not been able to pay any demands, but some improbably cobbled together supporters organisation was sitting on a small amount of money, how the hell would that have done anything, at all, to help in our particular situation?

Even leaving aside the big issue of whether such an organisation could have been set up overnight, what sum could it have raised? Much less than the Pledge did, and that amount (£1/2m) was as we knew only to keep the biggest wolf from the front door, and not some panacea.

We kept the club going to give all concerned a small window of opportunity to sort it out. The fact they have not so far done so does not = that there was any sensible or even possible alternative. Which you very well know.

Well, only sort of. Under the Insolvency Act there are only 3 statutory purposes for an administrator and the top of the list is rescuing the company as a going concern. There, the interests of fans and creditors co-incide and indeed maybe the fans are in front, since the only way that ever happens is if the creditors take a big %age hit.

Who pays the administrator?

Just musing a thought, Mr. Guilfoyle will be spoilt for choice won't he, surely both Caisley and Hood are presenting their rescue packages to him as they were both cast iron to win but only depended upon a) The other not being there; and b) the level of debt being reduced. Will there be white smoke rising from the Coral Stand when the deal is done!

He is paid out of the funds available from ongoing trading and asset realisations.

BG will be very well aware there will be bugger all of either - he has already made that clear - so he won't want to be in office for any longer than he has to be.

Prior to his appointment as administrator, he will have been paid by those who retained him and his firm, and on whose instructions he and his firm were acting and were representing. Bear in mind that the pre-admin period was very different, since Caisley will have retained his firm to carry out a specific job and in such cases a predetermined objective has already been established.

Is that Chris De Burgh?

That is a funny way of e describing the two people who put you in this mess.
I would be amazed if either of these two now passed the RFL fit and proper person test, although much the RFL does comes largely as a surprise to me!!

If it is a "funded" Administration, then the lead creditor will pay, or a group of creditors. I hope it is this for your sake, as this might allow much more time to sort out a purchaser.

It it is an "unfunded" administration, then the Administrator works unfunded but takes his payment from the proceeds of whatever deal (sale or liquidation) that eventuates. This is a very high risk position for an Administrator, one that Guilfoyle vowed he would never do again - at least in the case of a football club. In the case of PAFC, Guilfoyle drove up his fees, ignoring a biddder that met all reasonable criteria (and was the eventual purchaser) in the hope of getting a bit more cash from a known local charlatan, and then bleated loudly when he had to be negotiated down at the death. If you are in the position of having an unfunded Administration then I don't think Guilfoyle will wait long - especially if there is real value in any of your assets.

All the noises we are getting from Guilfoyle, together with the very clear and short timescale, suggest it is 'unfunded'

He's made it quite clear that he's putting his reputation on the line to try and save the Bulls, hinting that his colleagues think he's taking an unnecessary risk that is doomed to failure.

That said, I doubt he'll come out of this process without getting his pound of flesh - he didn't get his reputation by being 'nice' about things.

If only.

If I had to write a fictional future history of how this might all pan out, I'd maybe pen something like the following, since it could never really work out this way, could it?

We are now late next week, hours from the payroll having to be submitted, with seemingly no realistic expressions of interest. Everyone has been whipped up to a frantic state and become increasingly desperate as the deadline has come ever closer is upon them. The hero rides in as the "rescuer" of last resort, saying that since no-one else seems prepared to save the club he feels it is his responsibility to. What a selfless public-spirited hero, indeed!

Since the situation is by then very dire the terms are necessarily not entirely to the Bulls' advantage, of course. The Bulls go to VP, cutting BCFC's costs significantly and making their board look like heroes. The RFL surrender the lease to the council, for somewhat more than they paid for it, so the RFL board (for once) look like heroes for turning in a tidy profit. A well known guy with interests in distribution etc buys the Odsal site from the council, who make a big profit on the sale and so look heroes to the council taxpayers. He in turn creates new jobs on the site as a result, so he looks a hero to the people of Bradford.

Everyone, indeed, claims to be the hero. Its win win win all round. What a result!

And the Bulls fans and staff? Those who are retained? Well we are told we too are the winners, since we should be grateful we still have a club to support, even though with lot less to spend than previous budgets.

In my fictional account, I'd probably need to indicate whether or not this was all the plan right from the start, and whether the delay in going into administration was also planned notwithstanding further tax liabilities building up in the interim, which would then be defaulted upon. I'd probably also need to indicate whether the pledge was extremely helpful in that it reduced the amounts the new owner had to shell out, so he had no reason to have wanted to see it fail. Even if he may have been pleased that any prospective alternative funders may have been frightened off at the last minute by becoming aware of all the infighting, even though most of the pledge funds had been committed by then.

But, as I said, it would be a work of fiction and doubtless events will soon show that it never actually happened anything like that way, so it would be out of date well before I finished writing it. Wouldn't it?

Like Adey had I known who was conducting the review then the position would have been much clearer sooner. I didnt believe that it was CC's plan was to go down the Admin route until we were tod about P&A. This must have been the plan from the start.

P&A are a 2nd tier IP who do not take prisoners. Do not expect any favours.

It would beggar belief that CC having instructed P&A in the first place did not have a plan in mind.


However this is Bradford Bulls!

And I totally believe that. Utterly and completely. No, really...



In one.

Anyone know how closely he and his firm have worked with Caisley and his firm in the past?

Anyone still in any doubt why the identity of the "independent reviewer" was kept secret?

Walker Morris advised P&A Partnership on the administration of Plymouth didn't they? Correct me if I'm wrong.

If this is correct, I'm sure there will no doubt have been other dealings between the two companies.

So much for BG being an 'independant' reviewer. And yet I'm not in the slightest bit surprised that he is linked to CC.

Now that's an interesting one that I hadn't considered.