Dirk Gently May I personally apologise to Chalks for not actually living my life on Hobnob - I apologise for the extreme inconvenience this seems to have caused you.
What I actually said wasI also have some very juicy rumours about why West Ham are happy to operate the way they do, financially, but I can't say!
So I don't "know anything about your club" - I have been told some things which may or may not be true - hence the use of the word "rumours". I see no reason to PM them - as I say, they are rumours and as I'm not saying whether I believe them or not then all I'm going to do is pass them on without comment. My reticence is to make sure that I (and Graham!) don't get sued.
It was simply pointed out to me by someone with better links than me that if anyone wanted to run an operation designed to launder large quantities of dirty money, then purchasing a Premier League Football Club and running it with a negative cashflow would be the perfect way to do that. Pay players and bills with illicit money and keep the legitimate TV and ticket income.
Any sensible person looking to legitimise any dirty money in this way would also do best to have any takeover fronted by someone who seems reputable, and, of course, it would make most sense for this to be performed by a consortium outside of the UK, as the whole aim of the exercise would be to bring external money into the UK financial system.
thats actually quite brilliant