Confimred new owners of Raeding Footbal Club

[Ian Royal]

Any time you agree with RB on anything Madejski or finance related you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Most of the information available is speculation and opinion, be it from Joe Schmoe or a 'journalist'.

The only mistake Madejski seems to have made is in falling for the hype of a knowledgeable and ambitious guy with a super rich father, who it turns out had deep pockets without very much in them because daddy wasn't playing and nor were his trust fund buddies.

We've been hearing for months about how we're doomed and about to go into administration. We certainly seem to have some financial problems. But it's far from clear how bad and how urgent they are. They're probably worse than last time we got relegated, but there's no way of knowing how much worse for the time being.

[MmmMonsterMunch]

Quite a large mistake though wouldn't you agree Ian?! This could set the club back for years....

[Wycombe Royal]

I've avoided HNA for weeks now. Should have stayed away for longer.......how utterly depressing this all is.



Echo RB's sentiments - major major fcuk up by JM here.

The only mistake that you could lay at Madejski's door is selling to the Russians, and hindsight is a wonderful thing. The current situation is not of his making.

[Ian Royal]

Quite a large mistake though wouldn't you agree Ian?! This could set the club back for years....

It could have been a whole lot worse. And it might not set us back at all. We could even end up better off.

No deal is guaranteed. No one is fool proof.

The real mistakes seem to have all been after the sale, firmly in AZ's hands. But he's not around so he makes a pretty poor target. And lets face it, RB would blame SJM if a meteor hit the mad stad leaving us with no where to play.

[MmmMonsterMunch]

I do think JM has fcuked up big time but not going to give him a load of sh1t about it. It is what it is. I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

He should never have given him a controlling interest or the final say on transfers etc without the full deal being done properly & funds provided.

[RG7Fan]

As nobody has got anything right so far can everyone just stop guessing?

That's a good shout. I think we all like to speculate / contribute / worry / etc. but realistically none of us on here knows anything.

3Points outlined what the process is likely to be like and it seems like we are at step #2. We could well be there for a few weeks - whoever buys the club needs to cough up £50m (at least). You really think they're going to do that and announce it after 24 hours of talks??? There will be talks, due diligence, more talks, football league involvement, etc. I think the best we can expect is some kind of 'agreement in principle' in the next couple of weeks.

Re-tweeting all of Johnny Fordham and Charles Watts tweets over and over just sends everyone in to a vortex of panic. I watched them today and mailed a friend and said this place would be in meltdown tonight and I wasn't far wrong. If you listened to the CS interview you'd have heard him say they haven't spoken to Burman since January, yet if you read GetReading you'd have thought he had the pen on the cheque ...

[loyalroyaldaz]

Its clear that old JM has been wanting shot of the club for years.
Imho it served its purpose, namely raise his profile, get his knighthood etc, and i origionally think he also did it as a kind of "Trust Fund". Loaning money to the club albeit with a very low interest rate, aquiring the hotel and getting his Fizzog in the papers and on TV.
He started churning out the old "buyer with deep pockets" stuff a few years ago now and by all accounts damn near snapped AZ's hand off !
Cant be blamed alone of course but i have to agree that he hasnt covered himself in the glory his own Ego may think he has!

[paddy20]

As i understand it we couldn't possibly have lost all that money just on wages alone. Even the high earners would have seen their salaries cut by a third after relegation. That black hole has emerged through more sinister going ons. Why are the loan company calling in their loan? There are many other clubs in much more debt than us. How can we be in this mess when we have been prudent? It does not make sense.

Argument from personal incredulity. Means nothing. Even if the wage budget was cut by a third that goes from £46m to £30m. Our income in the Championship is about £15m not including parachute payments. So call it £31m total. We made a loss last year of £2m despite income of about £50+ last year. Showing that the wages are a huge slice, but not the whole pie. Quite easy for us to make a loss this season with wages having been cut by a third given other normal operating costs.

And if wages haven't gone down by that much, it explains a lot more.

There was a bit more to it than my own personal view. It was someone else with more knowledge. I don't buy this idea that its all down to wages - we had an owner albeit one with shrinking pockets. Not enough for loans to be called in. SJM has bailed out - why??

[Ian Royal]

I do think JM has fcuked up big time but not going to give him a load of sh1t about it. It is what it is. I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

He should never have given him a controlling interest or the final say on transfers etc without the full deal being done properly & funds provided.

Yeah, but funds were provided initially. Like £19m worth, not including the £12m for buying the 51% of shares.

The deal looked good, it looked genuine. Further backers AZ was obviously banking on failed to materialise. He ran out of money. His dad bailed him out short term. At least that seems far more likely to be true than any of the ridiculous conspiracy theories. Lesson learnt. It's not like we're much worse off than we were without him. We've got a bigger chunk of debt but remember we were having to sell £5m of players every year to avoid increasing the debt anyway and running out of saleable players to do it with. And looking at mid-table / edge of the play offs without AZ. Probably the same or worse the next season. We won the league, we got promoted.

[Ian Royal]

As i understand it we couldn't possibly have lost all that money just on wages alone. Even the high earners would have seen their salaries cut by a third after relegation. That black hole has emerged through more sinister going ons. Why are the loan company calling in their loan? There are many other clubs in much more debt than us. How can we be in this mess when we have been prudent? It does not make sense.

Argument from personal incredulity. Means nothing. Even if the wage budget was cut by a third that goes from £46m to £30m. Our income in the Championship is about £15m not including parachute payments. So call it £31m total. We made a loss last year of £2m despite income of about £50+ last year. Showing that the wages are a huge slice, but not the whole pie. Quite easy for us to make a loss this season with wages having been cut by a third given other normal operating costs.

And if wages haven't gone down by that much, it explains a lot more.

There was a bit more to it than my own personal view. It was someone else with more knowledge. I don't buy this idea that its all down to wages - we had an owner albeit one with shrinking pockets. Not enough for loans to be called in. SJM has bailed out - why??

It's there in the accounts, black and white. SJM has wanted out for about a decade., with increasing urgency. He was worth about £400m before the recession. He's now worth abut £100m and lots of that is tied up in RFC or property. He's likely to lose more money before he starts increasing his wealth again, which I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't manage ever now.

We had loans called in long before AZ came along.

[PieEater]

If you believe CS, the loans were arranged by Oblensky but carry on blaming SJM.

[Royal Rother]

Any time you agree with RB on anything Madejski or finance related you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Most of the information available is speculation and opinion, be it from Joe Schmoe or a 'journalist'.

The only mistake Madejski seems to have made is in falling for the hype of a knowledgeable and ambitious guy with a super rich father, who it turns out had deep pockets without very much in them because daddy wasn't playing and nor were his trust fund buddies.

We've been hearing for months about how we're doomed and about to go into administration. We certainly seem to have some financial problems. But it's far from clear how bad and how urgent they are. They're probably worse than last time we got relegated, but there's no way of knowing how much worse for the time being.

They tested out his wealth.

They got Daddy's backing.

They got F&PP testing sorted.

All looked fine and dandy.

SJM got paid full whack for his 51%.

SJM got paid £5m bonus for promotion.

AZ injected funds into the club.

All still looked fine and dandy.

Then AZ had to back out. Easy to speculate that Daddy decided his son's toy might end up being too expensive but I suspect we may never know the truth of why that happened.

I really don't know at what point SJM could have backed out, and at what point he made a mistake.

He will be devastated by what has happened but that is business, and I really don't think he could have foreseen any of this happening.

Interesting point Mmm makes re allowing AZ to bring in vanity players on daft wages before he had 100%, but he HAD funded everything to that point and after all, if SJM had tried to stipulate in the sales agreement that AZ had no input into tfr strategy or wages until he'd paid for all 100% and that had been a deal breaker for AZ... just imagine the flak SJM would have had from Royal Blue!

[Uke]

I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

The thing about conmen is they are convincing and they pick on the vulnerable

Print business screwed, property portfolio collapsing, bit of an ego, etc...

The checkboxes were all ticked

[Ian Royal]

I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

The thing about conmen is they are convincing and they pick on the vulnerable

Print business screwed, property portfolio collapsing, bit of an ego, etc...

The checkboxes were all ticked

There's no real evidence AZ was even a conman either. More likely to have been naive and over-enthusiastic.

[Uke]

I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

The thing about conmen is they are convincing and they pick on the vulnerable

Print business screwed, property portfolio collapsing, bit of an ego, etc...

The checkboxes were all ticked

There's no real evidence AZ was even a conman either. More likely to have been naive and over-enthusiastic.

And used by CS and Oboe to line their pockets


The problem with very deep pockets is that you can't see what's at the bottom

[leon]

And you struggle to get your balls out

['lista]

The problem with very deep pockets is that you can't see what's at the bottom

A fluff covered Werther's Original.

[Platypuss]

The problem with very deep pockets is that you can't see what's at the bottom

A fluff covered Werther's Original.

Likely to be the top bid for the club received so far.

[RoyalBlue]

I'm stunned he could be hoodwinked in such a way.

The thing about conmen is they are convincing and they pick on the vulnerable

Print business screwed, property portfolio collapsing, bit of an ego, etc...

The checkboxes were all ticked

There's no real evidence AZ was even a conman either. More likely to have been naive and over-enthusiastic.

In which case it should have been a lot easier to have spotted the holes in his plans/ambitions.

But the worst thing about this whole dreadful mess now is that it appears that Vibrac are in a position where they are calling all of the shots and, in doing so, are turning off/away potential white knights.

[Terminal Boardom]

Any time you agree with RB on anything Madejski or finance related you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Most of the information available is speculation and opinion, be it from Joe Schmoe or a 'journalist'.

The only mistake Madejski seems to have made is in falling for the hype of a knowledgeable and ambitious guy with a super rich father, who it turns out had deep pockets without very much in them because daddy wasn't playing and nor were his trust fund buddies.

We've been hearing for months about how we're doomed and about to go into administration. We certainly seem to have some financial problems. But it's far from clear how bad and how urgent they are. They're probably worse than last time we got relegated, but there's no way of knowing how much worse for the time being.

They tested out his wealth.

They got Daddy's backing.

They got F&PP testing sorted.

All looked fine and dandy.

SJM got paid full whack for his 51%.

SJM got paid £5m bonus for promotion.

AZ injected funds into the club.

All still looked fine and dandy.

Then AZ had to back out. Easy to speculate that Daddy decided his son's toy might end up being too expensive but I suspect we may never know the truth of why that happened.

I really don't know at what point SJM could have backed out, and at what point he made a mistake.

He will be devastated by what has happened but that is business, and I really don't think he could have foreseen any of this happening.

Interesting point Mmm makes re allowing AZ to bring in vanity players on daft wages before he had 100%, but he HAD funded everything to that point and after all, if SJM had tried to stipulate in the sales agreement that AZ had no input into tfr strategy or wages until he'd paid for all 100% and that had been a deal breaker for AZ... just imagine the flak SJM would have had from Royal Blue!

This is the key moment in my opinion. It is all well and good weeping and wailing now and picking holes in the fraction of the truth that has actually been communicated but it solves nothing. General Hindsight never lost a battle. How could anyone realistically forecast that AZ would pull out when he did? Shit happens in life and this is one of those moments.