@rmjlondon said:
course he did the club a good turn or we would have been starting off again in Flackwell Heaths league !
Might not have been the worst thing. We'd have flown through the leagues and had some fun on the way. I'm not sure it would be any worse than limping along for years, flogging off assets, paying off Hayes etc.
Hayes tenure was misguided but I think he was genuinely ambitious for us to progress (although to what extent that was to feed his ego as well I can only guess) and I don't think he wanted to shaft us when it all fell apart.
It was inevitable really though that since we threw money at the dream to stay in League One back in the days of John Gregory that the day of reckoning would one day come.
Personally I'm quite happy where we are as a club at the moment and don't for one minute believe that the club wouldn't want promotion and are realistically doing all they can (given the financial restraints) to achieve it. They're just trying to dampen down expectations on the basis that it's not really likely this season - although I've no wish to open up that debate about the pros and cons of that again
Croider. My sources are I used to play with a current member of staff at CU. We didnt discuss exact figures. I asked if a ball park figure would fund there U21s
@mooneyman said:
Then Hayes would have got nothing, so don't kid me he did the club a good turn by agreeing yearly payments.
Couldn't he have forced the sale of the ground to pay off his debts? Plus he did write off a fair chunk of debt and the repayment of the loans are interest free. So all in all could have been worse. Guess Hayes has put more of his own money into the club than the posters to this message board.
He may well have put more in. But he certainly wasted more too. That man and his easily pleased fans are the chief reason we have a 5 man bench and no reserve / youth set up.
I suspect the whole thing cost Steve Hayes a hell of a lot of money. In the end, he walked away with an agreement with the club that could have been a lot worse for WWFC, so he's due at least some respect for that.
The entanglement of Wycombe's finances with Wasps while he was in charge and his drive to build a new stadium were, in my uninformed opinion, bad for the club. He seemed to take over the club in a poor financial state, and leave it in a poor financial state.
If he had managed to build the new stadium I think that would have been a disaster for Wycombe Wanderers.
I don't think Hayes is the villain some would make him out to be either.
I think he believed he was helping the club, but sure, looking to make a nice little earner out of it through the stadium deal.
I think if he'd really wanted to screw us over he could have done, Kassam at the PNLs for example seems to have been a nastier piece of work, and there are plenty of other worse examples in the endlessly murky waters of sugar daddy hell.
Getting involved with Wasps was his downfall. Had the two entities remained separate but worked closely together then things may have worked out differently.
I agree with you chaps on the start of the Hayes reign, that he genuinely wanted to do good for us.
Unarguably though, a large part of it though was an absolutely disastrous period, Wasps, "don't worry about the money", seemingly running us at a stupendous loss to push us into debt, to blackmail full control!
Some fans still think Booker was a wise move, but they tend to be the naïve fans who think things like "Build it and they will come", and didn't get too bogged down in the details, like us paying rent, and not getting facilities payments like hiring rooms out.
Booker as a tenant of wasps would have been a disaster but yes if we had a "Jack Walker" who was willing to throw money at the squad and club and build the stadium with us as sole occupants and eventual owners with fan representation on the board and capped ticket prices it could have just about worked.
@PBo said:
...but he had to do that to do the stadium deal surely?
I think if he had formed a partnership with the Wasps owners over a new stadium it may have stood a better chance of success, instead he just alienated the fans of both clubs
He still left us in the shi* though. He did nothing to improve our financial position and was willing to sacrifice our ground for his stupid white elephant stadium. People have very short memories...
How on to earth did a once promising thread about the Thursday meeting get taken over by loans.bs pros and cons? Move on or move over and start another thread about SHit so I can ignore it!
I'm a bit confused now. Are the club having to play the game of just staying in this league to survive? So the optimum season on season result for us would be to get to the playoff final and lose?
It just doesn't sit right with me if that's the case and the whole principle of what a sports club in a pyramid system should be doing.
If the club is in that much of a financial mess continually working with the bare bones of a first team squad and selling any decent players off then are we still a viable sports/business concern?
Are we at that point where going bust and starting again would be a real option to consider? Would a core fanbase of 2/3k starting at the bottom of the pyramid be viable? Would we even have a ground?
@NorsQuarters said:
How on to earth did a once promising thread about the Thursday meeting get taken over by loans.bs pros and cons? Move on or move over and start another thread about SHit so I can ignore it!
I guess we can 'move on' once the debt is paid off and he's out of our hair. How on earth can you separate Hayes' impact and the existence we currently eke out?
I think i am reading quite a few revisionists here. Does no one remember the divides that he created during the votes and the propaganda surrounding that? Whatever his legacy and whatever his intentions were he just spiteful methods to try and get his way just like any bully does.
He may have had good intentions at one point but to me I wall always remember him with and his cronies at the two votes. Dark days. The closest i have come to walking away from this club in 40 years.
The day he got his cronies and outriders to remove leaflets from cars that had been placed by supporters of the black and white campaign, and then upend the same supporters to confiscate the leaflets asking for basic information re the move to Booker. Shows what kind of bullying tactics he was prepared to use.
The fact is that some of these cronies who carried out his whims that day are still quite visible around the club.
In theory Arnos no, but while people continue to post stuff like "How on earth can you separate Hayes' impact and the existence we currently eke out?" and "Under his reign we accrued a mad amount of debt. I never voted a mandate for that but it was lumbered upon us.
@ed us. Good intentions or no", it shows that far too many are still using the pat as an excuse and failing to understand the issues that face the club today.
The fact is that Hayes wrote off all the debt that was incurred on his watch. What debt there is now was incurred before his watch (although to be fair some while he was part of a group of four) or since.
Todays problem is simply that today we struggle to get enough cash through the door to pay todays bills. Apart from relatively small debt repayments, That is now nothing to do with Hayes, however unpleasant a character you think he was. But if you don't face up to todays realities, accurately diagnosing the causes of them and instead continuing to blame the Ogre from the past, then todays problems will not be solved.
Comments
Then Hayes would have got nothing, so don't kid me he did the club a good turn by agreeing yearly payments.
If we are not paying off Hayes, who are we paying off lol!!!
So we are paying back debt to Hayes then?
course he did the club a good turn or we would have been starting off again in Flackwell Heaths league !
That may be so but he still would have received nothing. So, on balance, he probably put his own interests first.
Might not have been the worst thing. We'd have flown through the leagues and had some fun on the way. I'm not sure it would be any worse than limping along for years, flogging off assets, paying off Hayes etc.
FC Hereford seem to be having a good time, maybe sometimes it is the best thing. FA Vase Semi Finalists which is a massive achievement.
Hayes tenure was misguided but I think he was genuinely ambitious for us to progress (although to what extent that was to feed his ego as well I can only guess) and I don't think he wanted to shaft us when it all fell apart.
It was inevitable really though that since we threw money at the dream to stay in League One back in the days of John Gregory that the day of reckoning would one day come.
Personally I'm quite happy where we are as a club at the moment and don't for one minute believe that the club wouldn't want promotion and are realistically doing all they can (given the financial restraints) to achieve it. They're just trying to dampen down expectations on the basis that it's not really likely this season - although I've no wish to open up that debate about the pros and cons of that again
Croider. My sources are I used to play with a current member of staff at CU. We didnt discuss exact figures. I asked if a ball park figure would fund there U21s
Couldn't he have forced the sale of the ground to pay off his debts? Plus he did write off a fair chunk of debt and the repayment of the loans are interest free. So all in all could have been worse. Guess Hayes has put more of his own money into the club than the posters to this message board.
He may well have put more in. But he certainly wasted more too. That man and his easily pleased fans are the chief reason we have a 5 man bench and no reserve / youth set up.
I suspect the whole thing cost Steve Hayes a hell of a lot of money. In the end, he walked away with an agreement with the club that could have been a lot worse for WWFC, so he's due at least some respect for that.
The entanglement of Wycombe's finances with Wasps while he was in charge and his drive to build a new stadium were, in my uninformed opinion, bad for the club. He seemed to take over the club in a poor financial state, and leave it in a poor financial state.
If he had managed to build the new stadium I think that would have been a disaster for Wycombe Wanderers.
I don't think Hayes is the villain some would make him out to be either.
I think he believed he was helping the club, but sure, looking to make a nice little earner out of it through the stadium deal.
I think if he'd really wanted to screw us over he could have done, Kassam at the PNLs for example seems to have been a nastier piece of work, and there are plenty of other worse examples in the endlessly murky waters of sugar daddy hell.
Getting involved with Wasps was his downfall. Had the two entities remained separate but worked closely together then things may have worked out differently.
...but he had to do that to do the stadium deal surely?
I agree with you chaps on the start of the Hayes reign, that he genuinely wanted to do good for us.
Unarguably though, a large part of it though was an absolutely disastrous period, Wasps, "don't worry about the money", seemingly running us at a stupendous loss to push us into debt, to blackmail full control!
Some fans still think Booker was a wise move, but they tend to be the naïve fans who think things like "Build it and they will come", and didn't get too bogged down in the details, like us paying rent, and not getting facilities payments like hiring rooms out.
I hope I don't come across as a Hayes apologist. I'll never forgive him for giving away the legacy Frank Adams gave us and Booker was always a folly.
I think my only point was that unlike a lot of other dodgy chairmen out there I don't think he was in it to rip us off
Booker as a tenant of wasps would have been a disaster but yes if we had a "Jack Walker" who was willing to throw money at the squad and club and build the stadium with us as sole occupants and eventual owners with fan representation on the board and capped ticket prices it could have just about worked.
I think if he had formed a partnership with the Wasps owners over a new stadium it may have stood a better chance of success, instead he just alienated the fans of both clubs
He still left us in the shi* though. He did nothing to improve our financial position and was willing to sacrifice our ground for his stupid white elephant stadium. People have very short memories...
How on to earth did a once promising thread about the Thursday meeting get taken over by loans.bs pros and cons? Move on or move over and start another thread about SHit so I can ignore it!
Yes, please do. I've got to move over now to a vital thread which I've only just spotted re fire and brimstone next Saturday!
I'm a bit confused now. Are the club having to play the game of just staying in this league to survive? So the optimum season on season result for us would be to get to the playoff final and lose?
It just doesn't sit right with me if that's the case and the whole principle of what a sports club in a pyramid system should be doing.
If the club is in that much of a financial mess continually working with the bare bones of a first team squad and selling any decent players off then are we still a viable sports/business concern?
Are we at that point where going bust and starting again would be a real option to consider? Would a core fanbase of 2/3k starting at the bottom of the pyramid be viable? Would we even have a ground?
I guess we can 'move on' once the debt is paid off and he's out of our hair. How on earth can you separate Hayes' impact and the existence we currently eke out?
As @Greg says - short memories.
I think i am reading quite a few revisionists here. Does no one remember the divides that he created during the votes and the propaganda surrounding that? Whatever his legacy and whatever his intentions were he just spiteful methods to try and get his way just like any bully does.
He may have had good intentions at one point but to me I wall always remember him with and his cronies at the two votes. Dark days. The closest i have come to walking away from this club in 40 years.
The day he got his cronies and outriders to remove leaflets from cars that had been placed by supporters of the black and white campaign, and then upend the same supporters to confiscate the leaflets asking for basic information re the move to Booker. Shows what kind of bullying tactics he was prepared to use.
The fact is that some of these cronies who carried out his whims that day are still quite visible around the club.
"Are we at that point where going bust and starting again would be a real option to consider?"
No far from it. But if we keep blaming all our ills on past ogres instead of facing up to and solving today's issues, one day soon we might be there.
Is there any reason at all why we can't face up to and try to solve today's issues while still remembering what an odious charlatan Steve Hayes was?
Come on @DevC you are using the argument of praising the arsonist for helping to put out the fire.
Under his reign we accrued a mad amount of debt. I never voted a mandate for that but it was lumbered upon us.
@ed us. Good intentions or no
In theory Arnos no, but while people continue to post stuff like "How on earth can you separate Hayes' impact and the existence we currently eke out?" and "Under his reign we accrued a mad amount of debt. I never voted a mandate for that but it was lumbered upon us.
@ed us. Good intentions or no", it shows that far too many are still using the pat as an excuse and failing to understand the issues that face the club today.
The fact is that Hayes wrote off all the debt that was incurred on his watch. What debt there is now was incurred before his watch (although to be fair some while he was part of a group of four) or since.
Todays problem is simply that today we struggle to get enough cash through the door to pay todays bills. Apart from relatively small debt repayments, That is now nothing to do with Hayes, however unpleasant a character you think he was. But if you don't face up to todays realities, accurately diagnosing the causes of them and instead continuing to blame the Ogre from the past, then todays problems will not be solved.