CONFRIMED: Latest rumours Confrimed as Unconfrimed

[Snowflake Royal]

Can you imagine how unbearable this last year would have been under another Ince or Gomes in the Championship with a load of shit over the hill journeymen like Hendrick stinking the place out with losses week after week, instead of a decent side full of exciting young talent doing ok in L1?

The few left in the stadium of a game would be throwing themselves down the steps to meet their end in mini droves.

[ILoveMoonPig]

Can you imagine how unbearable this last year would have been under another Ince or Gomes in the Championship with a load of shit over the hill journeymen like Hendrick stinking the place out with losses week after week, instead of a decent side full of exciting young talent doing ok in L1?

The few left in the stadium of a game would be throwing themselves down the steps to meet their end in mini droves.

Following on from this, I am so glad we never built the stadium extension. Can you imagine how embarrasing that would be now?

[Elm Park Kid]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

[WestYorksRoyal]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

Yes, definitely. But how would it ever have been viable? Elm Park couldn't have been expanded to that size. What other prime real estate site in the town centre was available? And from a funding point, surely it would have cost substantially more?

[Stranded]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

Correct, we should never have left Elm Park.

If we had stayed at Elm Park, we would very likely be in a similar league position to Torquay United now - we may end up even lower than that by the time the process is finished but at Elm Park we would likely to be bouncing in out of non-league by now.

[Forbury Lion]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

Didcot town centre?

[Forbury Lion]

I'm no lawyer and Couhig is, so what I'm suggesting presumably isn't a goer but I'll type it out anyway.

Football company signs a binding 1,000 year 365 days a year lease on the stadium from Stadium company for the price of £1 a year (less hassle than finding peppercorns), They make this fully water tight and can not be broken.

Chinese bank company seizes the shares or deeds to the property from Stadium Company, They are now the landlords/owners but have an existing 1,000 year lease to honour, Their asset is effectively going to return them £1,000 over a 1,000 year period. Due to inflation, this will effectively be worth less than £1,000 when repaid in full. Additionally, their asset will need maintaining and guess what, the contract says the landlord is liable for this,.... so instead of seizing an asset to make money from, they've seized something which is going to cost them alot of money. They may therefore jump at the chance to cut their losses and sell it for £1m (or even £1) to the Football company, which by now owned by the next new owners.
Could do the same trick with the Training Ground.

[Crusader Royal]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

If you can come up with a viable site and a traffic plan then maybe. Although we’ve had crowds in excess of 18k often enough to suggest we can support a bigger ground.

[Snowflake Royal]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

No.

[Hound]

Discuss: Overall, we'd have been better off building an 18k seater stadium in the town centre?

Where though? Town centre is rammed

Possibly could have got a bit nearer on the A33, maybe kennet island area or built up those flood planes but guessing both would have been prohibitively expensive

[Sutekh]

Chronicle summary of it all

[katweslowski]

Issue with town centre is it is so heavy penned in. If you look at the IDR, it basically creates a wall/border around a densely populated area. Even just outside this and you are met with residential/office areas or road networks which can't be moved.

[blythspartan]

Hopefully, I have copied the link ok. This fella on x seems to know what he’s talking about.
https://x.com/b_c411

[Extended-Phenotype]

I mean, if a borrower puts an asset up for collateral against a loan, and the loan defaulted, isn’t the whole point that the asset now belongs to the loaner?

In which case I don’t see Dai being in limbo, here. Surely the bank owns the stadium and will just want to sell it, at cost, to a potential buyer. In which case, why would they scupper the deal? Dai wants £x for what he owns (which would exclude the stadium) and the bank wants £y for the stadium, so the total cost for a buyer is £x+y.

So surely the problem is either Dai or the bank asking for more than Couhig wanted to pay for it, not that the bank stepped in and blocked the sale from happening. So my money is on Dai’s valuation including a stadium he doesn’t actually own anymore, and Couhig finding out last minute.

[Brogue]

Just do a compulsory purchase order and buy up some of the slum that is the oxford road. It’s just a load of HMO’s full of grotty one bedroom bedsits for junkies and prostitutes. No one would miss it.

We could have bought the old battle hospital site and put it there instead of the Tesco and mosque

[blythspartan]

Just do a compulsory purchase order and buy up some of the slum that is the oxford road. It’s just a load of HMO’s full of grotty one bedroom bedsits for junkies and prostitutes. No one would miss it.

We could have bought the old battle hospital site and put it there instead of the Tesco and mosque

Not sure the old battle hospital site would have been good for Portman Road or the Oxford Road. However, it’s close to Reading West train station and we coped with the traffic when we were at EP.

[Snowflake Royal]

Hopefully, I have copied the link ok. This fella on x seems to know what he’s talking about.
https://x.com/b_c411

[Crusader Royal]

Issue with town centre is it is so heavy penned in. If you look at the IDR, it basically creates a wall/border around a densely populated area. Even just outside this and you are met with residential/office areas or road networks which can't be moved.

On top of the Broad Street Mall car park would be cool.
Two years of construction chaos might be an issue.
You’ve already got Blue Collar set up close by for food.

[Hound]

Just do a compulsory purchase order and buy up some of the slum that is the oxford road. It’s just a load of HMO’s full of grotty one bedroom bedsits for junkies and prostitutes. No one would miss it.

We could have bought the old battle hospital site and put it there instead of the Tesco and mosque

Wiki tells me Battle was still open in 2005, so about 10 years after the land for the Madejski was purchased

[Elm Park Kid]

I think I got us off topic . . .

So, with regards to the Chinese bank thing - James Earnshaw says that it's not a concern, and that's good enough for me.

My thoughts though are that the bank might be using the asset to basically blackmail Dai into paying back as much of the £55m as possible. I don't think any buyer is going to sign a deal that doesn't have ownership (or at least continued use) of the stadium guaranteed at a set price. The bank (from the sounds of it) has the ability to deny that. So, they can say to Dai "We're not going to allow any deal to go through unless the vast majority of proceeds come back to us. Not just the stadium value, pretty much everything you get." What would Dai then be able to do?

Maybe the bank doesn't have that control though if we're saying their no longer a barrier to the deal going through.