Don't get me wrong, I'm no sycophantic fan boy for Steve Hayes - his merging of staff with Wasps was naive, the Booker stadium was a vanity project far too far. And yes, he clearly placed his financial interests above those of the club, he was no philanthropist chairman. But let's not forget what his loan notes gave us - a youth set-up with quality facilities, excellent scouting network and top-rate coaches, allowing us to attract, nurture and hone players like Ibe, Ingram, Hause, Harris, Phillips and Dunne. Who, combined, have almost certain brought back enough income from transfer fees and sell-on clauses to cancel out all the loan notes in the first place, not to mention given us six or seven seasons of talented players to watch fulfill their potential while wearing the quarters. Let's just remember that when we berate Hayes for his failings. If he were still around, we'd be in the market for players like Matt Tubbs rather than Akinfenwa. There were some positives to his loan notes.
So to get into your thinking, we should thank him that he helped us bring through a cracking set of youngsters, so that we could sell them to repay the debt to him.
It would seem highly relevant to me to note at this time where we are in line for a massive windfall from a sell-on clause, that the last time that situation occurred, a catastrophic financial decision was made (surely the worst single decision ever made) under Woodward's leadership (and hence for which he must be held responsible). Had that disastrous decision not been made, the club would in fourteen days time be completely debt free and have £1.3m more in its bank account than it will now have. Perhaps then it could have relaunched its youth scheme or invested in its first team, or a whole range of other options for the benefit of the club. Whatever it would have decided to do, it has been prevented from doing by a baffling decision as illogical in hindsight as it was at the time.
But given that the gasroom is only able to deal in black or white without shades of grey and given that the gasroom thought police have seemingly decided that Woodward is a revolutionary hero and hence immune from criticism, then this terrible appalling decision must be expunged from the record and never mentioned again.
I have been critical of Woodward in the past but he was one of the few who were willing to save the club from the mess Hayes left behind.
In light of that, the fact that he was commercially naive in football matters should not be held against him. We need to move on and be thankful that we currently have a commercially competent chairman in place.
Is endangering the future of the WWFC to try and push through the construction of a stadium for the benefit of the owner not the club such a strange concept?
@DevC , the club have explained it. He was injured, no guarantee of a big fee, out of contract etc, so it'd have been a tribunal job.
In hindsight, a massive mistake, and I wouldn't have taken it.
I'm not sure it was ever confirmed who offered who the deal, but it's 99.9% likely they came to us, which should have got even the greenest person's "this is dodgy" alarms going.
But Hayes' impact has clearly been more damaging than that decision. For one thing, without Hayes, we wouldn't have racked up such a bloody debt to have to clear in the first place!
"we're building the staff cover for operating in the championship". Paraphrased, but I still remember thinking what on earth, when that came out.
That I am afraid is simply revising history. He had a short term hand injury. If it had have gone out of contract, it only needed a fee of £1.1m to leave us better off than the deal we accepted, he went for six million, a figure widely trailed in the press before we took the deal. Utterly inexplicable at the time, not just in hindsight. By far the worst SINGLE financial decision in the clubs history.
For all Hayes faults, and there were many, as a matter of fact it is not fair to say without Hayes we wouldn't have racked up such a big debt. The reality is that the entire debt incurred during Hayes watch were written off. The debts the club faced were incurred before and after Hayes ownership not during.
DevC: "By far the worst SINGLE financial decision in the clubs history."
Thus ignoring the fact that WWFC required an immediate slug of funds to ward off HMRC or risk going under. We may have held out for more and found that, by the time we got it (if we got it), it was too late; and there was an entire Trust Board who were party to the decision - so "blaming" only one man is, in any event, a misrepresentation.
@Malone given we're just due to a make a reported £2.25m from a player developed under Hayes and thanks to a contract signed by Hayes, and given there was absolutely no indication that the youth system would have been closed if Hayes had remained the owner, I'm not sure how you can claim it was "unsustainable" unless you doubt we would ever have produced a talented crop of young players again. Those who argue that the changes to youth contracts would prevent us from cashing in on future prospects, I'd counter with the fact that a far bigger proportion of proceeds come from sell-on clauses than direct sales, which haven't been affected. As @DevC gently points out, there are shades of grey that many on here refuse to acknowledge.
In general it was a diabolical decision, even without hindsight. Everyone remotely interested in football knew that the Phillips deal was going to happen. One major clue was Oyston approaching us when we were absolutely on our financial knees with an offer of a buy out of the clause. Why didn't the board go to a lender and offer a % of our windfall, for a short term loan? Lets say for example we asked for a £200K loan for a fortnight so that we could have bridged the gap, (isn't that what roughly what we accepted from Oyston?), in return, when we got the full payment of our cut of the sell on fee, we pay back the £200K plus pay a £50K profit to the lender. A massive win for the lender and the club. It really isn't rocket science.
@EwanHoosaami Do you know that the Board did not try that option ? The decision was made for the right reasons......we were desperate for an immediate cash injection and Oyston offered one that met what was needed. With hindsight (such a great thing) it may not have been the right decision in the long run, but in the short term it got us out of a hole. I am sure that you would not have been content if the Board had turned down the offer and WWFC had gone into administration.
Afraid this excuse doesn't work either. Funds from the sell-on were used to repay Hayes under the contract with him. Remember the FA disciplinary hearing and Bristol Rovers complaint made the arrangement here very clear. HMRC (and Liverpool?) are a red herring here.
@Cyclops said:
eric_plant Absolutely agree! How many times do we have to keep going over this?
It was a decision made by the whole of the Trust Board (possibly on a majority vote, etc) and NOT by just one person.
Amazing how many people (like DevC) manage to be so wise after the event - and yet never bother to push themselves forward to volunteer to do anything positive for our club.
My understanding of this is that we were on the brink of going bust had we not sold the rights to the sell on clause.
I think a lot of people fail to recognise what that really means.
It doesn't really matter if the sell on had been 50% of a £100m transfer. If you can't stay afloat long enough to benefit from that future windfall, then the possibility of receiving it is irrelevant.
You could argue that Blackpool made the wrong choice paying us off. They could have kept the sell on in place, knowing there would be no club to owe the money to had we gone under before the summer.
@EwanHoosaami said ...
Why didn't the board go to a lender and offer a % of our windfall, for a short term loan? Lets say for example we asked for a £200K loan for a fortnight so that we could have bridged the gap, (isn't that what roughly what we accepted from Oyston?), in return, when we got the full payment of our cut of the sell on fee, we pay back the £200K plus pay a £50K profit to the lender. A massive win for the lender and the club. It really isn't rocket science.
Lovely idea. However I'm not too sure that there would have been many (if any) reputable lenders prepared to advance £200k secured upon a piece of pie in the sky. Not rocket science, more wishful thinking.
@Glenactico With regard to your last paragraph, it is arguable that any sell on fee would have gone to the Administrator/Receiver of the club and Blackpool would thus not have avoided making the payment.
Once again gents, you have to follow the cash. The payment from Blackpool flowed straight through WWFC and was paid on to Hayes as a loan repayment. That was confirmed by the FA investigation. it only became payable at that time to Hayes as a result of the sell-on.
Given it made no difference to WWFC cash flow, it could have made no difference to any debts owed to HMRC, threat of insolvency etc. This is just an urban myth.
Or are you suggesting that the evidence given to the FA inquiry was wrong and the cash was not paid to Hayes as a loan repayment.
1) I think it is unlikely there will be a first instalment - I think it will all come in one lump (apart from any conditional amounts - after x first team appearances, if BOH stay up, if Ibe plays for England etc)
2) depends whether the clause in the contract with Ibe is the same as the clause in respect of Philips which was outlined in the FA investigation. I expect it will be
3) If it is yes, but obviously only up to the amount now outstanding to Hayes which appears likely to be lower than the money from Liverpool.
i.e. if IBE sells for £12m with £8m due now £4m due in 12 months, £3m conditional on BOH staying up in 2016/7. I think we will get 15% of £12m less £500k now - £1.725m plus potentially £450k in June 2017 if BOH stay up.
If Hayes is owed £1.2m now, he gets the first £1.2m, we keep £525k (plus obviously don't have to make the next £100k repayment this season) plus potentially the £450k.
Comments
Posts to games attended now that's a subject that would wreck havoc in the gasroom. I'll lift the rug .
no one quite matches Dev's "authority" on all things Wycombe, when he watches about 3 games a season though
so are you saying we shouldn't get our youth setup back?
Not until we're back on an even keel no.
so never then
Don't get me wrong, I'm no sycophantic fan boy for Steve Hayes - his merging of staff with Wasps was naive, the Booker stadium was a vanity project far too far. And yes, he clearly placed his financial interests above those of the club, he was no philanthropist chairman. But let's not forget what his loan notes gave us - a youth set-up with quality facilities, excellent scouting network and top-rate coaches, allowing us to attract, nurture and hone players like Ibe, Ingram, Hause, Harris, Phillips and Dunne. Who, combined, have almost certain brought back enough income from transfer fees and sell-on clauses to cancel out all the loan notes in the first place, not to mention given us six or seven seasons of talented players to watch fulfill their potential while wearing the quarters. Let's just remember that when we berate Hayes for his failings. If he were still around, we'd be in the market for players like Matt Tubbs rather than Akinfenwa. There were some positives to his loan notes.
So to get into your thinking, we should thank him that he helped us bring through a cracking set of youngsters, so that we could sell them to repay the debt to him.
Got it.
@aloysius This must be a spoof post?
Now there's an extreme reaction............
It would seem highly relevant to me to note at this time where we are in line for a massive windfall from a sell-on clause, that the last time that situation occurred, a catastrophic financial decision was made (surely the worst single decision ever made) under Woodward's leadership (and hence for which he must be held responsible). Had that disastrous decision not been made, the club would in fourteen days time be completely debt free and have £1.3m more in its bank account than it will now have. Perhaps then it could have relaunched its youth scheme or invested in its first team, or a whole range of other options for the benefit of the club. Whatever it would have decided to do, it has been prevented from doing by a baffling decision as illogical in hindsight as it was at the time.
But given that the gasroom is only able to deal in black or white without shades of grey and given that the gasroom thought police have seemingly decided that Woodward is a revolutionary hero and hence immune from criticism, then this terrible appalling decision must be expunged from the record and never mentioned again.
Beginning to understand how Snowball felt!
Actually it was pretty well reasoned, and made me challenge my assumptions about Sharkt. Good post imho.
Sharky
I have been critical of Woodward in the past but he was one of the few who were willing to save the club from the mess Hayes left behind.
In light of that, the fact that he was commercially naive in football matters should not be held against him. We need to move on and be thankful that we currently have a commercially competent chairman in place.
@Malone yes, that's exactly right. Is borrowing to invest really such a strange concept to you?
If it is unsustainable, then it's a pretty rubbish concept yes.
"don't worry about the money"
Is endangering the future of the WWFC to try and push through the construction of a stadium for the benefit of the owner not the club such a strange concept?
@DevC , the club have explained it. He was injured, no guarantee of a big fee, out of contract etc, so it'd have been a tribunal job.
In hindsight, a massive mistake, and I wouldn't have taken it.
I'm not sure it was ever confirmed who offered who the deal, but it's 99.9% likely they came to us, which should have got even the greenest person's "this is dodgy" alarms going.
But Hayes' impact has clearly been more damaging than that decision. For one thing, without Hayes, we wouldn't have racked up such a bloody debt to have to clear in the first place!
"we're building the staff cover for operating in the championship". Paraphrased, but I still remember thinking what on earth, when that came out.
That I am afraid is simply revising history. He had a short term hand injury. If it had have gone out of contract, it only needed a fee of £1.1m to leave us better off than the deal we accepted, he went for six million, a figure widely trailed in the press before we took the deal. Utterly inexplicable at the time, not just in hindsight. By far the worst SINGLE financial decision in the clubs history.
For all Hayes faults, and there were many, as a matter of fact it is not fair to say without Hayes we wouldn't have racked up such a big debt. The reality is that the entire debt incurred during Hayes watch were written off. The debts the club faced were incurred before and after Hayes ownership not during.
He broke his arm didn't he?
DevC: "By far the worst SINGLE financial decision in the clubs history."
Thus ignoring the fact that WWFC required an immediate slug of funds to ward off HMRC or risk going under. We may have held out for more and found that, by the time we got it (if we got it), it was too late; and there was an entire Trust Board who were party to the decision - so "blaming" only one man is, in any event, a misrepresentation.
But hindsight is a wonderful thing.
@Malone given we're just due to a make a reported £2.25m from a player developed under Hayes and thanks to a contract signed by Hayes, and given there was absolutely no indication that the youth system would have been closed if Hayes had remained the owner, I'm not sure how you can claim it was "unsustainable" unless you doubt we would ever have produced a talented crop of young players again. Those who argue that the changes to youth contracts would prevent us from cashing in on future prospects, I'd counter with the fact that a far bigger proportion of proceeds come from sell-on clauses than direct sales, which haven't been affected. As @DevC gently points out, there are shades of grey that many on here refuse to acknowledge.
In general it was a diabolical decision, even without hindsight. Everyone remotely interested in football knew that the Phillips deal was going to happen. One major clue was Oyston approaching us when we were absolutely on our financial knees with an offer of a buy out of the clause. Why didn't the board go to a lender and offer a % of our windfall, for a short term loan? Lets say for example we asked for a £200K loan for a fortnight so that we could have bridged the gap, (isn't that what roughly what we accepted from Oyston?), in return, when we got the full payment of our cut of the sell on fee, we pay back the £200K plus pay a £50K profit to the lender. A massive win for the lender and the club. It really isn't rocket science.
@EwanHoosaami Do you know that the Board did not try that option ? The decision was made for the right reasons......we were desperate for an immediate cash injection and Oyston offered one that met what was needed. With hindsight (such a great thing) it may not have been the right decision in the long run, but in the short term it got us out of a hole. I am sure that you would not have been content if the Board had turned down the offer and WWFC had gone into administration.
Afraid this excuse doesn't work either. Funds from the sell-on were used to repay Hayes under the contract with him. Remember the FA disciplinary hearing and Bristol Rovers complaint made the arrangement here very clear. HMRC (and Liverpool?) are a red herring here.
My understanding of this is that we were on the brink of going bust had we not sold the rights to the sell on clause.
I think a lot of people fail to recognise what that really means.
It doesn't really matter if the sell on had been 50% of a £100m transfer. If you can't stay afloat long enough to benefit from that future windfall, then the possibility of receiving it is irrelevant.
You could argue that Blackpool made the wrong choice paying us off. They could have kept the sell on in place, knowing there would be no club to owe the money to had we gone under before the summer.
@EwanHoosaami said ...
Why didn't the board go to a lender and offer a % of our windfall, for a short term loan? Lets say for example we asked for a £200K loan for a fortnight so that we could have bridged the gap, (isn't that what roughly what we accepted from Oyston?), in return, when we got the full payment of our cut of the sell on fee, we pay back the £200K plus pay a £50K profit to the lender. A massive win for the lender and the club. It really isn't rocket science.
Lovely idea. However I'm not too sure that there would have been many (if any) reputable lenders prepared to advance £200k secured upon a piece of pie in the sky. Not rocket science, more wishful thinking.
@Glenactico With regard to your last paragraph, it is arguable that any sell on fee would have gone to the Administrator/Receiver of the club and Blackpool would thus not have avoided making the payment.
Once again gents, you have to follow the cash. The payment from Blackpool flowed straight through WWFC and was paid on to Hayes as a loan repayment. That was confirmed by the FA investigation. it only became payable at that time to Hayes as a result of the sell-on.
Given it made no difference to WWFC cash flow, it could have made no difference to any debts owed to HMRC, threat of insolvency etc. This is just an urban myth.
Or are you suggesting that the evidence given to the FA inquiry was wrong and the cash was not paid to Hayes as a loan repayment.
So Dev are you saying that ALL the first instalment of the Ibe money will be going straight into Hayes' pocket?
1) I think it is unlikely there will be a first instalment - I think it will all come in one lump (apart from any conditional amounts - after x first team appearances, if BOH stay up, if Ibe plays for England etc)
2) depends whether the clause in the contract with Ibe is the same as the clause in respect of Philips which was outlined in the FA investigation. I expect it will be
3) If it is yes, but obviously only up to the amount now outstanding to Hayes which appears likely to be lower than the money from Liverpool.
i.e. if IBE sells for £12m with £8m due now £4m due in 12 months, £3m conditional on BOH staying up in 2016/7. I think we will get 15% of £12m less £500k now - £1.725m plus potentially £450k in June 2017 if BOH stay up.
If Hayes is owed £1.2m now, he gets the first £1.2m, we keep £525k (plus obviously don't have to make the next £100k repayment this season) plus potentially the £450k.
What's BOH?