Good Luck

[OldBlueLady]

If you guys set up a pay pal. Ill chuck a tenner in there for the cause! Also we are not paying £700,000 to keep Revs even if he is a legend! :D

It's coming....the paypal button I mean!

 

[chapperzUK]

If you guys set up a pay pal. Ill chuck a tenner in there for the cause! Also we are not paying £700,000 to keep Revs even if he is a legend! :D

£699,999? You also get his blogs and recipes. Thats a goalscorer (:D), hardworker, blogger and a chef in one, a REAL BARGAIN! ;)

 

[STFC_Gazza]

£699,999? You also get his blogs and recipes. Thats a goalscorer (:D), hardworker, blogger and a chef in one, a REAL BARGAIN! ;)

How about Lee Barnard for 700K and you can have Billy Paynter on loan ;)

 

[Kent Shrimper]

How about Lee Barnard for 700K and you can have Billy Paynter on loan ;)

No way i prefer the Administration option!!!

 

[OldBlueLady]

How about Lee Barnard for 700K and you can have Billy Paynter on loan ;)

Always liked Billy Paynter's eyes as it goes........

 

[canveyshrimper]

Always liked Billy Paynter's eyes as it goes........

Isn't that a song by Kim Carnes? :dim:

 

[OldBlueLady]

Isn't that a song by Kim Carnes? :dim:

Bette Davis Harry, not Billy Paynter....wrong sex and all that!

 

[canveyshrimper]

Bette Davis Harry, not Billy Paynter....wrong sex and all that!

Billy Paynter is a woman? :stunned: That'd explain an awful lot. :whistling:

 

[ms brush]

Nice to see other supporters giving some encouragement, especially seeing as a lot of them have been through it and come out ok(ish).

Someone mentioned about a possible trend of clubs going through this in the foreseeable future. I was talking with my dad the other day about our current situation and the same time I logged onto the BBC website, and it had an article about how the Premier League sponsorship deal had risen by £15m or something up to £82.25m. Even in this current climate when clubs are falling apart the Premier League seem to be able to wring companies of their sponsorship money.

Just 1% of that money would pay off our HMRC debt and give us all a club to support without the troubles of administration and the like, but no it will be shared amongst the richest clubs in the country with the highest attendances, highest TV money, highest ticket prices, just so they can pay their players £120k a week. Good old Premier League.

This is the real issue... the widening gap between the top of the Premier League and everyone else. The FA and the Football League are partly responsible for the mess we are in, because there has been nothing done by either of these organisations to help smaller and / or lower league clubs to create and build a sustainable business model. Clubs like Leeds and Southampton have not been immune from financial problems, so the fact that we are in trouble really shouldnt be a surprise. If there were better mechanisms to distribute funds to all clubs (or at least a fund that will help stave off threats like unpaid tax bills etc) less clubs would be in trouble, more 'English' clubs would have English owners, and ultimately, we might have a more successful England Team, that is capable of winning the World Cup. As it is, all our talented players and managers are up against the elete from Europe and beyond, all paid for by foreign funds that could disappear as fast as it arrived...

Which brings me back down to earth, League 1 and our plight. We are not the first, and undoubtedly wont be the last club in this predicament. Much as I would love to hope that we will have cleared the tax bill by next week and avoided administration, I fear we wont be that lucky. We are in dire straits, we have owners who I suspect are well intentioned but trading on the back of unsustainable borrowings, and either have no way of raising the money we need or have a hidden agenda (I dont want to speculate which of these it is, but plenty of others already have!). The recession has been a nail in the coffin, which I have long feared, and just like many other businesses locally and across the country, this has just served to increase our vulnerability in an increasingly unsustainable football industry.

What really needs to happen is the FA and the Football League need to start a very unpopular debate about how to rescue the entire football league from obscurity, and do something to stop this from happening time and again to all our local teams.

 

[OldBlueLady]

So, maybe in view of that, we should all be petitioning the FA and the FL?

 

[ms brush]

Absolutely. Has anyone approached the FA or the Football League and asked what they intend to do to help every club from the Championship through to non-league stay in business, and what plans they have to help clubs through a crisis? I think I know the answer already - no point, they dont actually care!

The press and broadcasters dont help either. On my drive home from work tonight I listened to 5 Live, who mentioned that we are on the brink of administration in about 10 words - showing that League 1 is an incidental and of no importance.

They then went straight into a debate about how terrible it was that a prem team has a couple of players with swine flu, so they have been forced to make some changes and how ManU are making 11 changes to the team that lost to Liverpool on Sunday... wouldnt it be nice to have a choice to make any changes...??

 

[ms brush]

Just seen this morning's Daily Mail - seems we arent alone in our crisis:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...rtsmouth-hit-Premier-League-transfer-ban.html

Difference is, or course, that Pompey owe a lot more money than us, just not to HMRC (yet). They are also in the Premiership - which shows that despite the in-flow of many millions, their club is also not sustainable in its current format. So what do the league do - help? No - make things worse by stopping clubs from bringing in players that just might help bring in some much needed revenue. This is what has happened to us, on a bigger scale, and for different reasons - but all in the pursuit of creating an environment to promote stability. That clearly does not exist in English football any more. Its sad that it has come to this, but football is no longer about the game, its about large egos and even larger cheque books!

 

[Boreham Shrimper]

I was also listening to 5Live and got really angry at the point when they started talking about Hull taking out a loan against future Premiership earnings to cover a £22 million shortfall. If that's not irresponsible I don't know what is :madman: