SUFC: The Future SUFC up for sale

[Liam AAS]

Whatever happens, the aim has to be to get Fossetts Farm under the ownership of the club as soon as possible.

Where have I heard that before?

 

[danbowen]

And what about the new Macclesfield owner or the new Scunthorpe owner? Or perhaps the Wrexham owners? Walsall, Gillingham, Blackpool, Coventry owners?

For every bad owner there are plenty more successful ones.

The point people are making is it is not always greener on the other side. In rons case it is highly likely we will get a better owner but you need to remember we are a NL league team and there is no guarantee we will get a multimillionaire owner who will be here long term. As far as we see too there isn’t a massive long list of celebrities lining up for clubs like us. For the record I think Ron is much deeper into discussions with a/some party/ies than has been let on and I think there is a good chance we could have a sale much sooner than expected. The list of bad owners is much longer than you think. Also re other clubs - charlton seem to be going backwards, derby were closer to oblivion than what we were, same with Bolton, Coventry have had issues for years, sheff Utd are in huge trouble and can’t afford to do much, WBA could be ****ed shortly with their loans against the club, Scunthorpe owner supports the club and isn’t mega wealthy from what I understand (highly likely who we sell to won’t be a fan), Macclesfield are about 5 leagues below us so is a bit irrelevant. Crawley have **** owners too. There are so many of them that the good owners ie Wrexham, Accrington, Peterborough and a handful of others stand out so much.

 

[Kat_r]

I think the plan was to sell later. But as Rigsby says there appears to be serious interest now which has encouraged him to bring plans forward. I’m sure the rate of the losses and his struggles to fund the money has combined with this to get things moving.

He will of course say it might take months (code for not fire sell I can wait) but if he has a potential bidder now then he needs to open up a competitive process to max the sale price.

Thins is this agency already has buyers looking for clubs. The fact the club would be up for sale is no secret. And Ron and Stan independently have know these guys for ages. Put all that together then things may move surprisingly quickly

Hmmm
He’s selling now he has has the panning permission but needs to raise funds for the flats

 

[Kat_r]

Ron has struggled to find the money and the club has sustained loses for years. It makes no difference to him, he doesn’t give a **** about that. There’s been serious interest before, Ron’s never been interested before.

It’s not the combination of this that has had an effect, something else has changed: there’s significant external pressure for him to sell the club coming from the increasing national awareness of his poor and negligent stewardship. Anything else and it’d remain as it has for the majority of his tenure.

I just think he needs money to build the flats. So selling the club is the perfect t way to get this money. He no longer needs to care about the club

 

[fredheim_holm]

Why would any bidders be so secretive? When Chelsea was up for sale the bidders came out about it as they wanted to get the fans on board, same with Man United, and I would expect the same here.

Only bidders who think they’ll get a frosty reaction would stay silent, unless it’s a term of engagement from Ron?

I’ve probably answered my own question.

 

[danbowen]

Why would any bidders be so secretive? When Chelsea was up for sale the bidders came out about it as they wanted to get the fans on board, same with Man United, and I would expect the same here.

Only bidders who think they’ll get a frosty reaction would stay silent, unless it’s a term of engagement from Ron?

I’ve probably answered my own question.

Most business deals are done in private. Premier league has so much emphasis on it that rumours easily get out as the press are all over every little thing. For example, straight after the Saudi bloke met the Glazers the other day there were reports he was willing to pay around £6bn for United. We may get lucky and get an understanding of interested parties before a sale but it’s highly likely we will know any of the details unless PG services get some inside info and post it on Twitter

Plus public knowledge can then drive the price up easier.

 

[ColinMorrisWalksOnWater]

Why would any bidders be so secretive? When Chelsea was up for sale the bidders came out about it as they wanted to get the fans on board, same with Man United, and I would expect the same here.

Only bidders who think they’ll get a frosty reaction would stay silent, unless it’s a term of engagement from Ron?

I’ve probably answered my own question.

Maybe Ron will want them to keep quiet, after telling us for so long he was the only option to keep the football club alive and without him it was a lost cause.

Would this prove to be yet another lie from his lips, if all of a sudden he announces a few interested parties?

Of course it would.

 

[C'mon you Shrimpers]

Some posters need to step back, read some if not all of the books written about the club, look at the records of all the chairmen in charge and analyse them. Some of my best times have been in Ron Martin's time. That is a fact. Doesn't mean I like some of his methods, I think I've used the term disgusting a few times, or am blind to the last few years although I've enjoyed Stan's involvement and the new management team. In fact read Fever Pitch. It might give a bit of perspective. Being a football fan is taking the good times as well as the bad.

 

[fbm]

How can you compare the two? Ron Martin has been the worst chairman this club has ever had, despite the few successes the guy has had. He’s put the club on the brink of extinction for his own personal fortune.

He hasn’t got a pot to **** it and constantly lies to employees, suppliers and fans.

Anything would be better than this crook and liar of a man.

Comparing him to Liz Truss is laughable.

I'm not comparing Ron to Liz Truss. Come on, you're better than that. Did you not read the rest of the post? I'm showing that your comment that anybody would be better than Ron is not true. Simply changing something doesn't always make it better.

 

[fbm]

He said himself that the agency, tasked with finding the new buyer was only taken on yesterday, and why was a press conference only called at last minute with hardly any press there? Like **** has he been considering this since the pandemic.

Can I just check, you're happy to believe Ron when he said he only got the agency involved on Thursday, but you don't believe him when he says he has been considering this since the pandemic?

Personally I think the agency may gave been "involved" for a lot longer and it was them who called the press conference and wrote the statement.

 

[Tommy2holes]

Firstly. It's pointless debating whether the protests did or didn't have an effect.

The combined efforts of raising the plight of the club nationally, the protests, talk of not renewing season cards, Ron's age and health, family putting pressure on him to walk away and of course the fact that he literally has no money to continue have all contributed. We wanted Ron to sell and he is. All of the above have contributed. So let's not fire shots at each other. That's just pointless

I have a feeling that there must be something happening behind the scenes and I'm sure we will all find out in due course.

I'm sure there are those in the know on here who might be able to at least give an indication of whether things are afoot?

 

[Tommy2holes]

Can I just check, you're happy to believe Ron when he said he only got the agency involved on Thursday, but you don't believe him when he says he has been considering this since the pandemic?

Personally I think the agency may gave been "involved" for a lot longer and it was them who called the press conference and wrote the statement.

It's a good theory. I'd have liked the press to have asked Ron what he meant when he said its been an eventful day. Especially, as has he already intimated that he had been thinking about selling for several seasons.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

My thoughts on the subject are changing by the day.

On the one hand, I think there is a preferred buyer already. The activity on Companies House for Martin Dawn/SEL would suggest so and isn't the sort of activity I'd expect to see if an agent has only just been employed to "explore" a potential sale. That activity and some of RM's words in the presser suggest something might already be happening. He answered that he's not currently in negotiations with anybody because it's already under an NDA, and the "strategic review" is actually the DD process. The agent has been appointed for optics so that people can see that it's being done the right way, and to handle granular negotiations/get the best terms for him.

The next day I'll change my mind and think that nobody is lined up. There have been around 6 or 7 interested parties put in contact with him over the last 18 months or so. I understand that there are always negotiations to be had in these situations but I suspect that possibly ridiculous terms from RM for an assetless and worthless club with debt owed to him might not make the club an attractive proposition right now. He's struggled to move any outside interest further along due to his terms, so much so that he has now had to appoint a world-renowned sports sales agent to search for a buyer crazy enough. He's made the move now because something has happened and/or the pressure from those around him has grown in the last week or two to make him see that he has reached the end of the road with the football club - perhaps a June start date for the stadium build has become unlikely, the bridging money won't last much beyond the summer and he is neither willing nor able to access other lines of credit to fund it. If he hasn't sold by July/August then the threat of WUPs and administration returns and this time there will be no way out for him or the club, so he has to sell now.

I'm very up and down about it. Pessimistic one minute, cautiously optimistic the next. Collymore's relationship with Moxey might work in our favour, though.

Whatever happens, the aim has to be to get Fossetts Farm under the ownership of the club as soon as possible.

The activity on Companies House is exactly the type of activity I’d expect to see in anticipation of putting it on the market.

I think he knows he’s run out of both working capital and credit. It was all he could do to raise it to pay off the HMRC petition. He knows next petition (and the next petition is sooner than people think given what he was saying about Tom Lawrence being in discussions with HMRC) he won’t have the means to find any more. Remember he’s already had one company wound up since 1st March. The embargo being ongoing tells us he wasn’t able to raise the working capital. The next winding up order is around the corner. He’ll then seek an extension because the club is up for sale. That’s his only card left. Season card renewals maybe buy Tom a couple of months (unless everyone boycotts) if he can juggle.

If no buyer emerges then it’s administration.

 

[southend_aussies]

Who would buy derby county who was millons in debt Someone did .Who would buy scunthorpe united millons of pounds in debt someone did .So who is to say there is someone out there who would ibuy Southend united millons in debt .Iam sure someone will .

They have assets and one club has a bigger fan base.

 

[Blue43]

I find that incredibly insulting, and a mindset of many younger fans. This isn’t about age, we all aren’t able to attend protests, some can not walk that far, others have commitments before games, have families to attend to. Stop trying to talk for me and other older fans. Please also remember that the majority of fans old and young are not on shrimperzone, many aren’t on social media.

A mindset of many younger fans. I’m nearly 50 years old, have a wife and 2 kids, so hardly fall into that category,

I’m sorry, that’s bollocks. We have almost 6,000 fans every other Saturday and sometimes upwards of a 1,000 fans travelling all over the country on the alternative Saturdays, so you’re telling me all them fans, apart from 100-200 can’t turn up an extra hour or stay an extra hour after the game to support a protest against the worst chairman in English football? Ok then.

Whichever way you look at it, Ron Martin has had the easiest of rides from our fan base. There’s not another club in this country that would have stood back and done nothing like the majority of our fans have when their club is falling apart in front of their eyes.

Those fans need to take some responsibility for the mess we’re in for letting that man get away with running the club into the ground for this amount of time, without doing anything about it.

 

[number11]

Those fans need to take some responsibility for the mess we’re in for letting that man get away with running the club into the ground for this amount of time, without doing anything about it.

Take responsibility? what do you want ‘these fans’ to do? Resign? Say sorry?!

 

[danbowen]

A mindset of many younger fans. I’m nearly 50 years old, have a wife and 2 kids, so hardly fall into that category,

I’m sorry, that’s bollocks. We have almost 6,000 fans every other Saturday and sometimes upwards of a 1,000 fans travelling all over the country on the alternative Saturdays, so you’re telling me all them fans, apart from 100-200 can’t turn up an extra hour or stay an extra hour after the game to support a protest against the worst chairman in English football? Ok then.

Whichever way you look at it, Ron Martin has had the easiest of rides from our fan base. There’s not another club in this country that would have stood back and done nothing like the majority of our fans have when their club is falling apart in front of their eyes.

Those fans need to take some responsibility for the mess we’re in for letting that man get away with running the club into the ground for this amount of time, without doing anything about it.

Sorry blue43 you are always right. Carry on pointing the finger at all of us. You fail to see anything from any other point of view except your own. You are offending a huge part of the fan base with your posts.

With regular rumours that the protestors were going to cause trouble this puts people off joining. Add to that it wasn’t well publicised and the fact no one knows who the leader of the protest group is you can understand why some don’t want to be part of it. Then add to that a large number of people in the protest felt the need to cover their faces and that shows that there is clearly intention for things to potentially get out of hand. That is what football hooligans do.

I think you need to drop your agenda against the fans. Ron has run out of money and has put the club up for sale so hopefully we all get what we want shortly and that is a good new owner. If we get a **** one this will only continue even once Ron has gone. I think it’s good Ron isn’t looking to sell the whole project as we will have a better chance of getting someone who wants the club for the love of the football and not for the housing etc.

 

[Kat_r]

Sorry blue43 you are always right. Carry on pointing the finger at all of us. You fail to see anything from any other point of view except your own. You are offending a huge part of the fan base with your posts.

With regular rumours that the protestors were going to cause trouble this puts people off joining. Add to that it wasn’t well publicised and the fact no one knows who the leader of the protest group is you can understand why some don’t want to be part of it. Then add to that a large number of people in the protest felt the need to cover their faces and that shows that there is clearly intention for things to potentially get out of hand. That is what football hooligans do.

I think you need to drop your agenda against the fans. Ron has run out of money and has put the club up for sale so hopefully we all get what we want shortly and that is a good new owner. If we get a **** one this will only continue even once Ron has gone. I think it’s good Ron isn’t looking to sell the whole project as we will have a better chance of getting someone who wants the club for the love of the football and not for the housing etc.

Imo the plan was always put the club up for sale when planning p was granted. Why fund the flats yourself if somebody else will
Adds Wright to the argument it was always about the flats

 

[Kat_r]

The activity on Companies House is exactly the type of activity I’d expect to see in anticipation of putting it on the market.

I think he knows he’s run out of both working capital and credit. It was all he could do to raise it to pay off the HMRC petition. He knows next petition (and the next petition is sooner than people think given what he was saying about Tom Lawrence being in discussions with HMRC) he won’t have the means to find any more. Remember he’s already had one company wound up since 1st March. The embargo being ongoing tells us he wasn’t able to raise the working capital. The next winding up order is around the corner. He’ll then seek an extension because the club is up for sale. That’s his only card left. Season card renewals maybe buy Tom a couple of months (unless everyone boycotts) if he can juggle.

If no buyer emerges then it’s administration.

I still think we will always pay hmrc. It’s a power game imo I think he gets a kick out of not paying others unless forced

Yet first to demand charity payments for his family...

 

[danbowen]

Imo the plan was always put the club up for sale when planning p was granted. Why fund the flats yourself if somebody else will
Adds Wright to the argument it was always about the flats

If that was the case he would have sold when he previously had planning permission. There have only been a few changes this time with removing the hotel and having housing in their place. It’s clear the reason was the sale is because he has no money to fund the club anymore and no where else he can borrow from.