Franchise FCYorkshire RoyalHoop Blah How are they finding the money?
The Coates family are worth 300 million quid and their main current business makes an awful lot of money. If you do some research into how the club is setup and who owns what you will find some interesting stuff out. So although the chairman is helping bankroll the club, it is his money (or his company's money), not loans. They sell an awful lot more merchandise, season tickets etc than Reading do.
Would you like to take a few minutes to explain exactly how this is a different setup to RFC - excpet of course that Mad John hasn't 'bankrolled' massive spending. If Mad John backs away now and takes his last remaining loan, the Club is still stable financially. If the Coates do the same, are Stoke similarly stable ?
If Madejski was to walk away today and call in his outstanding loans the club would need to find something like £25m. I'm not sure how the club could do that and remain financially stable.
Stoke's loans as expressed in the 2007 books are 'only' £8.5m. Stoke have reported operating loses of about £4m for 2007 and 2006 and less than £1m for the 3 years previous to those. On the face of it they look to be pretty well run. I can only guess that they've funded all this summers spending on the Premiership money they're going to receive this season. How they cope with the future after that all depends on their success on the pitch and how they've tied down all their contracts.