The benefits of hindsight are many. And reviewing the fretful close season that Port Vale fans
have just endured, I am glad that I "knew the result" of the negotiations on Lancashire businessman
Keith Ryder's putative club takeover. Otherwise I would have feared for them mightily. Vale ended
last season in administration with "preferred bidder" Ryder having agreed a deal with creditors to
take the club out of administration.
The benefits of hindsight are many. And reviewing the fretful close season that Port Vale fans
have just endured, I am glad that I "knew the result" of the negotiations on Lancashire businessman
Keith Ryder's putative club takeover. Otherwise I would have feared for them mightily. Vale ended
last season in administration with "preferred bidder" Ryder having agreed a deal with creditors to
take the club out of administration.
After everything, it was a simple tweet from BBC Cornwall that confirmed the end of Kevin
Heaneys ownership of Truro City FC, but even this grand finale wasn't what many people had
expected. After all the talk of winding up orders from creditors, investment groups that didn't
wish their identity to be made public, threats from unpaid players to walk away from the Blue
Square Bet South club and talk regarding Heaneys health, this morning the owner of the club and
former suitor of Plymouth Argyle was declared bankrupt.
After everything, it was a simple tweet from BBC Cornwall that confirmed the end of Kevin
Heaneys ownership of Truro City FC, but even this grand finale wasn't what many people had
expected. After all the talk of winding up orders from creditors, investment groups that didn't
wish their identity to be made public, threats from unpaid players to walk away from the Blue
Square Bet South club and talk regarding Heaneys health, this morning the owner of the club and
former suitor of Plymouth Argyle was declared bankrupt.
200% has observed events at Burslem from a distance over the summer, as Port Vale appeared
to be slowly edging towards an exit from administration. In recent weeks, Vale have begun to slowly
edge nowhere. In the first of a two-part piece, Mark Murphy summarises what has happened, and what
hasn't happened at the club since April.
Greg Clarke is a defender of your football club. No really. Stop snorting with derision in
Pompey, Plymouth, Leeds, Wrexham, Coventry (supporters of other clubs are also available in
snort-mode) ... He says so himself. So it must be true.
In a telling exchange with MP Damien Collins at the DCMS enquiry (from 12.
The end of last summer didn't work out too well for Kevin Heaney, the property-developing owner
of Blue Square Bet South side Truro City, when his attempts to by Plymouth Argyle out of
administration failed after repeated promises to come good with the money for the purchase never
came to fruition.
The rural west of Ireland is quiet at its noisiest. And two weeks away from the noise of the
Rangers saga was blissfully quiet. I knew I was returning to something major, however, as I was
aware that the BBC's Mark Daly had fronted another Ibrox insolvency-related documentary and that
administrators Duff and Phelps had finally published their "best-and-final" CVA.
There is always something faintly pathetic about the list of creditors for a football club's
proposed CVA. It's not so much the big creditors that sink the heart after all, those that pour
money into the black hole of a football club, for example, have paid their money and taken their
choice but the smaller creditors that tug at the heart-strings.
"It will be the perfect administration, if true," wrote the BBC's Matt Slater on March 19th, in
response to Port Vale joint administrator Gerald Krasner's prediction of getting a deal with
creditors signed off by the end of April. Krasner, to the surprise of no-one with experience of the
self-confident Leeds United ex-chairman, was being somewhat bullish.
How on earth did it come to this again? Two years ago, Portsmouth Football Club became the
poster boys for football's wretched current condition when they became the first Premier League
club to be nudged into administration. For all the heartache that this caused, the club was due to
be getting a clean start with this move a move which, it should be remembered, sealed the club's
fate with regard to relegation from the Premier League in the first place but it has only taken two
years to get back to administration again, and this time the feeling in the air around Fratton Park
has a distinctly fatalistic mood about it.
Shortly before 12.30pm today @TruroCityTweet declared 'ALL CLEAR FOR CITY -TAX BILL PAID IN
FULL' (their capitals not mine but worthy of shouting nonetheless) and it seemed in light of the
current cloud of doom hanging over parts of non-league that the sun has broken through over
Cornwall at least.
Over the last few years it has become one of English footballs most instantly recognisable
totems of the folly of ego, and now it seems as if The Reynolds Arena currently known as The
Northern Echo Arena which has been an albatross around the neck of the club since it moved into it
in 2003, may finally be play a significant role in the end of Darlington Football Club.
Yesterday in Plymouth, some people with lots of money demanded more money, some people with much
less money were told they were getting no more money, until the people with lots of money got more
money. This was morally indefensible. Doubtless, there will be people on hand to claim "it isn't as
simple as that.
There was always something faintly ridiculous about the decision of Rushden & Diamonds FC try
and appeal against their expulsion from the Football Conference. Leagues have their rules and, if
clubs don't abide by them, they are likely to run into problems and, whilst the Conference has got
many things wrong in recent years, one thing that they have managed to get a proper hold of has
been the seemingly perpetual financial shenanigans going on at several of their clubs.
It is the Annual General Meeting of the Southern Football League today, at which the
ratification of the constitution of the league for next season will take place. One of the teams
that is supposed to be starting the new season, however, Rushden & Diamonds, is now almost
certainly not going be starting the new season at the end of a week that seems likely to change the
face of football in Northamptonshire forever.
The non-league football AGM cup had been eagerly awaited, but the early results have still come
as a bit of a shock. Rushden & Diamonds were expelled from the Football Conference this morning, a
decision that will have ramifications throughout the non-league game. Southport, who finished in
fourth from bottom place in the league and were to be relegated into the Blue Square North for next
season, will be reprieved and Hertfordshire club Bishops Stortford, in one of those quirks that is
always possible in a regional system, seem likely to be shifted into the Blue Square North.
English Premier League side Stoke City have announced they have agreed to a transfer fee and
personal terms with Rangers midfielder Maurice Edu.
Edu has been linked with various clubs as he's express an interest to move out of Scotland.
Rangers were relegated to the Scottish Third Division after going into administration and failing
to deal with their creditors.
Chelsea FCÂ directors say their club needs more season tickets as the ground isn't big enough.
There is a suspicion that their Russian Oligarch wants away from financing them and it's time for
them to stand on their own feet as Financial Fair Play looms large. Player's wages versus gate
receipts cannot be justified if they stay where they are.
With the club season completed with Swansea City's victory in the Championship Play-Off final,
and only a handful of European Championship qualifiers to go on the continent this evening, the
focus for football over the next few weeks will be off the pitch. And, while the majority of news
may come from the fallout of the FA v FIFA crisis, as well as the comings and goings of the
transfer market, the most important fixtures of the next month will not be anything to do with Sepp
Blatter, nor will they be the European Under 21 Championships or any of the opening games in the
Women's World Cup – in fact, these fixtures may not get any sort of coverage whatsoever, and
certainly will not be televised.
But that's all it took for creditors to reject a CVA proposal and condemn Rangers to
liquidation.
Before those nine minutes: months of uncertainty and years of greed, lies, broken promises and
charlatans running a historic football club into the ground.
The Old Firm is infirm. At least one of them is. That would be Rangers who are on the precipice
of bankruptcy and face administration as the only viable option. They are said to owe a whopping
£75m in taxes which owner Craig Whyte is unable to pay off. In the next 10 days the club will
appoint an administrator, a CVA will be drawn up if the tax authorities (HMRC) can be persuaded to
issue a moratorium on the taxes owed, to pay off the first line of creditors with a reduced
sum.
Racing Santander's administrators have announced that the club has a total debt of almost
€48m, a figure over €10m in excess of the one presented when the Cantabrians applied to enter
bankruptcy in July.
The difference was explained by the fact that investment company Western Gulf Advisory (WGA),
owned by Indian businessman Ahsan Ali Syed who purchased the club in January, 2011, is shown
amongst the list of creditors as being owed €8.
Real Zaragoza have applied to the courts to go into voluntary administration in a bid to sort
out their finances.
Zaragoza avoided relegation on the final day of the season last month and have sought protection
from creditors while they put together a new plan to deal with a net debt of 110 million euros
($161 million).
Portsmouth Football Club 5 April 1898 10 August 2012.
R.I.P.
Yet nothing is ever as it seems at Pompey. Beneath the choppy waters a constant storm wages on
the ocean bed. Whilst Pompey Supporters Trust holds itself ready to do a deal with players, charge
holders and creditors, the strange PR spin emanating from Fratton Park seems to be creating a web
of misconception and deception.
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All signs point to another American joining the fold at Rangers, only this one won't be playing
on the field. He'll be sitting in the owner's box.
After a drawn out process that has seen the legendary Scottish club go into administration and
reach the brink of liquidation, the club's administrators have approved the sale of the team to
American Bill Miller, a Tennessee-based businessman.
Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre admits the failure of former owners Tom Hicks and George
Gillett to build a new stadium "set the club back several years".
And Ayre, promoted from commercial director late last season by new owners Fenway Sports Group,
said had it not been for huge strides made in off-field business during that time the finances
would have been in a bigger mess than they were just before FSG assumed control.
Is Peter Risdale the man to bring Plymouth Argyle out of their slump?
For all you Birmingham and West Ham fans who are finding the thought of playing at a lower level
deplorable, that your finances will be stretched and your stature to lower, consider this – at
least you're not a Plymouth Argyle fan.