The debt is a red herring

[33]

IMHO, Owls fans should endeavour to do business with Coop as they've been a flexible PARTNER with the club and shouldn't be viewed as the bad guy. Can't say more but just my opinion.

Joe

Joke

Please, please just flip off and take your silver lining-less Cloud9 mates with you, seriously...!

Thanks

Mick

33

[capetownowl]

IMHO, Owls fans should endeavour to do business with Coop as they've been a flexible PARTNER with the club and shouldn't be viewed as the bad guy. Can't say more but just my opinion.

Joe

Cloud 9 been blown away by the Volcanic ash then?

I thought it was a done deal according to you on the Norwich FB.

[edinburghowl]

It's a joke how badly this club has dealt with its situation since our relegation from the Premier League. Not one SINGLE other club of similar stature has struggled the same way we have since we went down. We are about to go down for our second spell in the third division and it is simply not acceptable. We've been treading water in this division nearly every season we have been in it. Why?

[Guest OwlertonG]

Unfortunately football is all about money these days and nothing else.

can we not do a Newton Heath style protest to raise a bit of awareness of our club, and see if we cant the attention of someone who is willing to buy our historic club.

No idea what or how.. but maybe something as simple as the scalf thing employed by MUFC and the Red Devil style people might work for us at Wednesday and show the players, staff and potential investors not only do we care but we also want to make SWFC a club the fans can be proud in, rather than a club the chairman is demanding fans to turn up and watch unwilling players wear a shirt they are not worthy of

[theowlsman]

Yet when we desperately needed a new influx of a few loan players prior to the closing of the T/W we were told there was no funds available.

A dire mistake that could be responsible for taking the club down imho.

We should have invested in a goalscorer in January.

We should also have said goodbye to Mr Laws earlier, and appointed the type of manager the fans were looking for. After all, it's OUR club isn't it?

[shez owl]

Other clubs are still paying wages they cannot afford.

There are many, many Coke clubs running up large debts with large wage bills

Preston £11m, Bristol £10m as prime examples.

I believe our wage bill is in the region of £6m??

I would hazard a guess that we are in the bottom 5 of playing budgets.

that is because the debt has strangled our credit facilities and we have no benefactor pumping millions in like Blackpool.

we can only spend what we can afford. Other clubs are still living well beyond their means.

spot on

including that shower of poo from s2

[shez owl]

A dire mistake that could be responsible for taking the club down imho.

We should have invested in a goalscorer in January.

We should also have said goodbye to Mr Laws earlier, and appointed the type of manager the fans were looking for. After all, it's OUR club isn't it?

invest with what, beres pies?

[essexowl2]

Im sick of seeing our debt used as a reason for us being poo poo.

Its not.

We are told that our debt costs us around £0.5million a season now that its been restructured. Take that off our turnover and it puts us way in front of around 50% of the clubs in the division.

We need to make our money work much better for us on the pitch next season - AND STOP USING THE DEBT AS AN EXCUSE. Cos its not anymore.

[RUMBELOWS91]

We can't compete at Championship level because we have noone propping up the clubs finances like many other clubs do. Spending within our means is not going to push us to the top of the league.

Compare us to Utd and it illustrates where we are...similar gates, similar commercial activities - McCabe pumps money in and United succeeed on the pitch. McCabe pulls the plug and they begin to sink closer to our level on the pitch. This scenario is replicated right through the division. You can even throw in Doncaster, who would have no chance of even being in the Championship if they weren't propped up by John Ryan.

[p.c guru]

Im sick of seeing our debt used as a reason for us being poo poo.

Its not.

We are told that our debt costs us around £0.5million a season now that its been restructured. Take that off our turnover and it puts us way in front of around 50% of the clubs in the division.

We need to make our money work much better for us on the pitch next season - AND STOP USING THE DEBT AS AN EXCUSE. Cos its not anymore.

The debt is a problem. It's not what it costs us, it's what we can't do because of it. We can't use the overdraft facility to finance transfer fees. We have to trade with a neutral cash flow. Once we've spent the budget, it also means there's nothing for loan signings When you've got nothing coming the the academy and injuries mounting up. That has left us with problems in the past, the former chairman having to dip into his own pocket.

If we trade with a negative cash flow, we would be in breach of the bank agreement. The debt is stopping from trading properly as a football club.

[ReadingOwl]

We can't compete at Championship level because we have noone propping up the clubs finances like many other clubs do. Spending within our means is not going to push us to the top of the league.

Compare us to Utd and it illustrates where we are...similar gates, similar commercial activities - McCabe pumps money in and United succeeed on the pitch. McCabe pulls the plug and they begin to sink closer to our level on the pitch. This scenario is replicated right through the division. You can even throw in Doncaster, who would have no chance of even being in the Championship if they weren't propped up by John Ryan.

That's not strictly fair though is it? We have spent money, but, it would seem, not very wisely.

Look at Hooper at Sflaphorpe & look at Blackpool. They both have limited budgets too, I think.

[essexowl2]

I don't think many clubs are going to get out of the Championship (the right way) with a player budget of £6m pa (I'm sure at this point someone will remind me that Chiping Ongar FC have won the Champions League for the last 3 years paying their players with washers and empty crisp packets). Our problem isn't that we can't finance our debt (although that may change if our revenue falls and interest rates go up) - its that we can't attract new investment because no one is going to put £25m into a team that has no prospect of Premiership football. Without investment we won't be able to get a squad capable of challenging for promotion - its a circular argument

[Mike Hunt]

World Cup Bid

To Many Staff

6th Highest support in the Championship

6Th Lowest Payers .

Simples .

[damianb1]

The debt is a problem. It's not what it costs us, it's what we can't do because of it. We can't use the overdraft facility to finance transfer fees. We have to trade with a neutral cash flow. Once we've spent the budget, it also means there's nothing for loan signings When you've got nothing coming the the academy and injuries mounting up. That has left us with problems in the past, the former chairman having to dip into his own pocket.

If we trade with a negative cash flow, we would be in breach of the bank agreement. The debt is stopping from trading properly as a football club.

Absolutely spo on, beat me to it. The debt per se is not a massive problem as it's fairly easily serviceable with our current financial structure but its what it prevents us from doing that causes our problems.

UTO & WTID

[Guest Deleted member]

So what you guys are saying is that the debt is a problem because in order to make it serviceable we can't go into more debt.

[damianb1]

So what you guys are saying is that the debt is a problem because in order to make it serviceable we can't go into more debt.

No not at all, my perspective is that if we had no or a significantly lower level of debt we could take a position (considered gamble) if the situation warrented it to go beyond our current budget and spend more on either transfer fees or wages than the initial budget at the start of the season had allowed for. I

[damianb1]

No not at all, my perspective is that if we had no or a significantly lower level of debt we could take a position (considered gamble) if the situation warrented it to go beyond our current budget and spend more on either transfer fees or wages than the initial budget at the start of the season had allowed for. I

Bugger posted half way through post. I wouldn't want to go into anymore debt than we already are as we can see that without entering administration (which I am totally against) but without a significant change in our financial plight this current scenario will continue for the foreseeable future. The problem the debt has given us is we can't cant the odd gamble to sort out short term problems (such as strikers that couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo)

UTO & WTID

[Freshfish]

What I still don't understand is, those responsible for the debt still want to see a return on there shares, and yet should be operating in the best interests of the club.

Isn't it time that those people accepted responsibility? That would put the club in a much better position to bring in new board members and enable the cub to operate on a realistic and sustainable financial structure?

Everything else is pie-in-the-sky speculation. The real answer to the finance problems still lie very firmly within the boardroom.

And yet they still remain largely invisibile....saying nothing...sat pretty in the knowledge that actually they are much more self interested and they can't be shidfted even if the club plummet even futhur...or am I missing something?

[Arthur Bach]

What I still don't understand is, those responsible for the debt still want to see a return on there shares, and yet should be operating in the best interests of the club.

Isn't it time that those people accepted responsibility? That would put the club in a much better position to bring in new board members and enable the cub to operate on a realistic and sustainable financial structure?

Everything else is pie-in-the-sky speculation. The real answer to the finance problems still lie very firmly within the boardroom.

And yet they still remain largely invisibile....saying nothing...sat pretty in the knowledge that actually they are much more self interested and they can't be shidfted even if the club plummet even futhur...or am I missing something?

The longer this goes on the more...liberating...the whole experience will be. We have made so much of the debt but some things are more important in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not belittling our circumstances but a lot of debates, repercussions and outcomes will be ever so much more trite and insignificant than they would have done two, five or ten years ago.

There will be a boiling point, a release of pressure - a point where it would be madness to not give up the shares or whatever.

[dorian gray]

I think there's a combination of factors working against us.

1 - what money we have had to spend on fees, has been spent badly. How much did we pay for Jeffers, Potter, Clarke, Esajas, Johnson? From memory I seem to think about £1.8 - £2M? IMO only Johnson (so far) has been a good buy.

2 - other clubs are willing and able to spend money they don't have, running up debts, to try and climb the table. If clubs only spent what they earned then I guess even with our debt we could be one of the big spenders.

3 - We've not sold players at the right time to generate cash, which other teams have done such as Preston, Cardiff and dare I say Sheff Utd.

you could have gone in the pub and got a drunk to handle our sales better, every time a player leaves the club you have to wince, as you know we'll be getting under half of his real valuation....been true for...???...15+ years ?...we haven't just been a soft touch on the field.

Edited April 19, 2010 by dnhc