50 pages in, I wonder if a summary might be in order. If any of these points are contested, please let me know as it is beginning to be hard to see the substance in a sea of bickering and personal abuse. perhaps a step by step approach may help to narrow down the issues.
I believe all accept that everyone involved on this forum and on the football club and trust board is doing what they believe to be in the best interests of the football club.
All Wycombe supporters who chose to be part of the trust elect around a dozen people to serve on the Trust Board protecting the interests of the shareholders.
My perception at least is that the people we have elected have been generally high calibre individuals with an impressive range of business experience.
The trust board have it would appear unanimously came to the opinion that the current model for WWFC is not sustainable.
My understanding is that they believe that if we do not seek external investment, we will not be able to maintain league football and with Conference national finances worse than Lg2, Conference national is also unlikely to be sustained. It may be possible to settle at a lower level. There seems to be some question whether that is what they are saying so this could usefully be clarified.
The Trust board members opinion is just an opinion. They may be wrong. Many seeking to be objective would perhaps conclude however that given that they have more information than we do and have it would appear unanimously formed their opinion, that opinion should be given some weight in the deliberations of those who will vote.
The published accounts, which have long been available to all, all tend to support the view that the current situation is unsustainable.
Many supporters have a deep emotional attachment to fan ownership, including Marlowchair and nicecarrots. Most (all?) supporters, all other things being equal, prefer that model.
Marlowchair and Nicecarrots have sort of appointed themselves as leaders of the "no" lobby. They seek to persuade us that the trust boards opinion is wrong and that we can be sustainable. Many would argue that they have presented their arguments in an unfortunate and counter-productive way in pursuit of what appears to be a longstanding personal grudge. That does not necessarily mean that they are wrong in their opinion re sustainability.
In 50 pages of this thread though, no substantive evidence has been provided as to why or how sustainability can be achieved however.
The do nothing option, perhaps preferred emotionally by all of us, remains difficult to see clearly, unless the judgement is that fan ownership is so important that it would be worth dropping down the leagues to achieve.
The trust board as is their job have investigated alternatives and identified a preferred bidder which they recommend to us. That appears to be precisely the job we elected them to.
The trust board have not confirmed whether other interested parties made firm offers and if so on what grounds this bidder was chosen as preferred. That seems to me a question that should be answered at the next meeting.
The preferred bidder does seem to have a good record in the US. It is nonetheless hard to understand what interest WWFC is to him. that seems another question that should be answered.
Many see risk in external ownership. they are right that those risks exist. 45 of the 48 Lg1 and Lg2 clubs use this model. Perhaps 2 maybe 3 currently have clearly bad owners. The rest seem to be doing OK. Nonetheless there is undoubtedly some risk.
bad owners can seriously damage clubs. Coventry and Leyton Orient are perhaps the best recent example.
history seems to show that asset strippers do exist and target clubs outside the league, especially those coping with relegation from the FL. Hereford and Torquay perhaps being the best examples. those clubs though had stadiums with strong residential development potential. It is hard to see the similarities to WWFC current position which doesn't.
fan owned models though are not without risk either. A club without sufficient cash and in decline can very rapidly collapse into crisis and possible extinction. There is no guarantee that WWFC would successfully manage the transition to Level 6 or below in the pyramid, even if that and fan ownership was preferred to investment and league status.
Nobody can accurately predict the future, but those who will vote will have to do their best to and determine the best interests of WWFC. I hope they do so based on an objective analysis of the facts as they are rather than the facts as they would wish them to be.
It is very unclear what happens next if the proposition is rejected and especially if for example the proposition is accepted by say 80% of voters but in a 90% turnout, the magic 75% of all eligible is not reached. Another question I think should be answered.
@OX66 who gets bullied rather than disagreed with? Sometimes if you keep saying things people disagree with they will keep disagreeing with you. And I would imagine all of us at some point have been bullied socially or professionally...
@bookertease said: @marlowchair Apologies for that final sentence. It was meant as a joke but i’m really not good at that at all.
I’ll stand by all the stuff I said beforehand.
And for info @glasshalffull it is an exact question I have used to someone in an investigatory interview, to attempt to understand somebody’s inexplicable antipathy to a colleague, so it’s not just social media’s fault.
I can accept your apology. Not normally something I would get overly sensitive about however serious illness in relevant family members gives cause for it.
Thanks for the feedback Marlow. As ever you state opinion as fact and fail to provide any substance. Can't be too long now before you start commenting on the car I drive......
The trust board members do not strike me as shrinking violets and presumably demand whatever information they feel they need to perform their roles.
If I have understood your earlier post correctly, my sympathies to you and your wife in respect of her serious illness.
@DevC - Are the Trust Board members asking the right questions though? Do they have the necessary experience, financial and organisation skills to carry out a full investigation and assessment of all the bidders. In my view such a task should be undertaken by EXPERTS in the profession, not unpaid amateurs. The potential of us getting this seriously wrong is not worth the risk of doing it on the cheap.
I for one would not vote in favour of any disposal without seeing an independent view.
In my experience of acquisitions and disposals, I wouldn't expect to bring in outside experts on a deal of this size apart from a lawyer to write up the contract once agreed. Certainly not on the sellers side. Possible the buyers may get a firm of accountants to do a bit of due diligence on the accounts, but probably more likely to use their own team. We may already have suitable legal expertise not to need that either.
@DevC said:
50 pages in, I wonder if a summary might be in order. If any of these points are contested, please let me know as it is beginning to be hard to see the substance in a sea of bickering and personal abuse. perhaps a step by step approach may help to narrow down the issues.
I believe all accept that everyone involved on this forum and on the football club and trust board is doing what they believe to be in the best interests of the football club.
All Wycombe supporters who chose to be part of the trust elect around a dozen people to serve on the Trust Board protecting the interests of the shareholders.
My perception at least is that the people we have elected have been generally high calibre individuals with an impressive range of business experience.
The trust board have it would appear unanimously came to the opinion that the current model for WWFC is not sustainable.
My understanding is that they believe that if we do not seek external investment, we will not be able to maintain league football and with Conference national finances worse than Lg2, Conference national is also unlikely to be sustained. It may be possible to settle at a lower level. There seems to be some question whether that is what they are saying so this could usefully be clarified.
The Trust board members opinion is just an opinion. They may be wrong. Many seeking to be objective would perhaps conclude however that given that they have more information than we do and have it would appear unanimously formed their opinion, that opinion should be given some weight in the deliberations of those who will vote.
The published accounts, which have long been available to all, all tend to support the view that the current situation is unsustainable.
Many supporters have a deep emotional attachment to fan ownership, including Marlowchair and nicecarrots. Most (all?) supporters, all other things being equal, prefer that model.
Marlowchair and Nicecarrots have sort of appointed themselves as leaders of the "no" lobby. They seek to persuade us that the trust boards opinion is wrong and that we can be sustainable. Many would argue that they have presented their arguments in an unfortunate and counter-productive way in pursuit of what appears to be a longstanding personal grudge. That does not necessarily mean that they are wrong in their opinion re sustainability.
In 50 pages of this thread though, no substantive evidence has been provided as to why or how sustainability can be achieved however.
The do nothing option, perhaps preferred emotionally by all of us, remains difficult to see clearly, unless the judgement is that fan ownership is so important that it would be worth dropping down the leagues to achieve.
The trust board as is their job have investigated alternatives and identified a preferred bidder which they recommend to us. That appears to be precisely the job we elected them to.
The trust board have not confirmed whether other interested parties made firm offers and if so on what grounds this bidder was chosen as preferred. That seems to me a question that should be answered at the next meeting.
The preferred bidder does seem to have a good record in the US. It is nonetheless hard to understand what interest WWFC is to him. that seems another question that should be answered.
Many see risk in external ownership. they are right that those risks exist. 45 of the 48 Lg1 and Lg2 clubs use this model. Perhaps 2 maybe 3 currently have clearly bad owners. The rest seem to be doing OK. Nonetheless there is undoubtedly some risk.
bad owners can seriously damage clubs. Coventry and Leyton Orient are perhaps the best recent example.
history seems to show that asset strippers do exist and target clubs outside the league, especially those coping with relegation from the FL. Hereford and Torquay perhaps being the best examples. those clubs though had stadiums with strong residential development potential. It is hard to see the similarities to WWFC current position which doesn't.
fan owned models though are not without risk either. A club without sufficient cash and in decline can very rapidly collapse into crisis and possible extinction. There is no guarantee that WWFC would successfully manage the transition to Level 6 or below in the pyramid, even if that and fan ownership was preferred to investment and league status.
Nobody can accurately predict the future, but those who will vote will have to do their best to and determine the best interests of WWFC. I hope they do so based on an objective analysis of the facts as they are rather than the facts as they would wish them to be.
It is very unclear what happens next if the proposition is rejected and especially if for example the proposition is accepted by say 80% of voters but in a 90% turnout, the magic 75% of all eligible is not reached. Another question I think should be answered.
Of course these points are going to be bloody contested!
3 and 5 are, by your own admission, your personal opinion and speculation (as are almost all the rest of the points).
Having had a poke about on the internet , seaports page, items like this https://www.revolvy.com/page/Yidio and a question someone posted on a Derby forum I'd say these guys are only medium term, cut costs (tricky here), improve management (I'm assured by some on here much easier) , improve growth aread ( yup food again) wait for the next buyer and scoop the profit. I struggle with how realistic this is and would ask for clear ideas on the losses they are prepared to fund and what happens regarding who they sell to, wether we can buy back and a few other points .
Don't have tine to disect the above summary , i thought they were supposed to be brief, point 1 has been argued widely and it seems to get worse from there.
3) I stated as my opinion. Do you disagree?
5) is my understanding of what the trust board are saying. I ended by saying that as others seem t understand something else (but never specified), this should be clarified. Indeed arguably it is THE salient question. What is your understanding of what the Trust board were saying about sustainability?
To clarify, see point 8 above, I don't have a deep emotional attachment to fan ownership and, as per point 9, as to the "no" lobby, what precisely am I saying "no" to?
Yep @DevC is right...no residential development gets the thumbs up in Bucks...or we 'd have huge housing estates of huge unsellable houses popping up everyw.....oh.
But then of course Wendover, that is not what I said. When you have to invent stuff in order to knock it back down, it is usually a good indicator that you do not have an argument at all.
I have asked you several times before but each time you ignored the factual question and just made more stuff up. If asset stripping is your major concern, would it help you if a independent planning expert valued the site as a development site?
Development land is usually most valuable for residential. But it is very hard to get planning permission for residential development on many sites. that's exactly why residential land development sites are so valuable.
What have I asked you several times before? "If asset stripping is your major concern, would it help you if a independent planning expert valued the site as a development site?"
What have you made up? that |i said "no residential development gets the thumbs up in Bucks ..." I said no such thing.
But if residential planning permission is really so easy to obtain at AP, we don't need to worry about investment or sustainability. Simply sell off the land to the right as you enter currently used for parking. 4 acres maybe, maybe more, say £1m an acre for resi, £4m receipt. Now why do you think we haven't done that already?
@DevC said:
In my experience of acquisitions and disposals, I wouldn't expect to bring in outside experts on a deal of this size apart from a lawyer to write up the contract once agreed. Certainly not on the sellers side. Possible the buyers may get a firm of accountants to do a bit of due diligence on the accounts, but probably more likely to use their own team. We may already have suitable legal expertise not to need that either.
Whilst I bow to your extensive experience of the acquisitions and disposals of football clubs, for my own peace of mind I would prefer experts in the field to deal with this, rather than the project led by a former fruit and nut salesman.
You need to bear in mind that perhaps the long term future of the club means more to those supporters that actually attend games than to a closet Watford fan!
Businessman and local government trustworthy and have only good intentions.
Not trusting businessmen and good intentions of local government is deserving of ridicule.
Serious question, why would the board consider a investor who is likely to be medium term and then sell it on? How is that positive for WWFC? They could sell their majority share to anyone and we have no say? Surely we want a long term owner if we are going down this route? Andy Harman, I would have thought would be that long term investor?
There's a really well off retired pompous patronising bloke I know who likes to bark at people about how they don;t seem to be able to grasp the vast advantages of Brexit with a big smug grin on his face. Any relation @DevC ?
it would seem to me a perfectly valid question to ask whether any other potential investors have made a firm tangible proposal and if so why the Luby proposal was preferred over it. Point 13 above I believe.
@DevC said:
it would seem to me a perfectly valid question to ask whether any other potential investors have made a firm tangible proposal and if so why the Luby proposal was preferred over it. Point 13 above I believe.
Indeed you have, in my opinion we should not even consider a medium term investor who will sell their shares on. We are carrying out due diligence on Luby, we wont be able to do that when he sells it on will we? This is taking a leap of faith that he will only then sell to a responsible owner, we will not have control over that process in the future.
The car parking on the right is on land that the Club rent from a third party, so I doubt if they could sell it to raise funds.
That's interesting @wformation (well moderately anyway). I always thought that land was owned by the club - initially intended as a training ground. I stand corrected.
The Adams Park site is obviously smaller than I realised. Who is the owner of that land - is that Dashwood land?
I wonder why he chooses to rent it out as a once a fortnight car park rather than realise the massive residential land value.....
@HG1 said:
Serious question, why would the board consider a investor who is likely to be medium term and then sell it on? How is that positive for WWFC? They could sell their majority share to anyone and we have no say? Surely we want a long term owner if we are going down this route? Andy Harman, I would have thought would be that long term investor?
Massive question, I just don't see how we could make enough profit for them to take a decent percentage from that. Other than selling on for a profit how else do they get any return on their investment.
Comments
50 pages in, I wonder if a summary might be in order. If any of these points are contested, please let me know as it is beginning to be hard to see the substance in a sea of bickering and personal abuse. perhaps a step by step approach may help to narrow down the issues.
I believe all accept that everyone involved on this forum and on the football club and trust board is doing what they believe to be in the best interests of the football club.
All Wycombe supporters who chose to be part of the trust elect around a dozen people to serve on the Trust Board protecting the interests of the shareholders.
My perception at least is that the people we have elected have been generally high calibre individuals with an impressive range of business experience.
The trust board have it would appear unanimously came to the opinion that the current model for WWFC is not sustainable.
My understanding is that they believe that if we do not seek external investment, we will not be able to maintain league football and with Conference national finances worse than Lg2, Conference national is also unlikely to be sustained. It may be possible to settle at a lower level. There seems to be some question whether that is what they are saying so this could usefully be clarified.
The Trust board members opinion is just an opinion. They may be wrong. Many seeking to be objective would perhaps conclude however that given that they have more information than we do and have it would appear unanimously formed their opinion, that opinion should be given some weight in the deliberations of those who will vote.
The published accounts, which have long been available to all, all tend to support the view that the current situation is unsustainable.
Many supporters have a deep emotional attachment to fan ownership, including Marlowchair and nicecarrots. Most (all?) supporters, all other things being equal, prefer that model.
Marlowchair and Nicecarrots have sort of appointed themselves as leaders of the "no" lobby. They seek to persuade us that the trust boards opinion is wrong and that we can be sustainable. Many would argue that they have presented their arguments in an unfortunate and counter-productive way in pursuit of what appears to be a longstanding personal grudge. That does not necessarily mean that they are wrong in their opinion re sustainability.
In 50 pages of this thread though, no substantive evidence has been provided as to why or how sustainability can be achieved however.
The do nothing option, perhaps preferred emotionally by all of us, remains difficult to see clearly, unless the judgement is that fan ownership is so important that it would be worth dropping down the leagues to achieve.
The trust board as is their job have investigated alternatives and identified a preferred bidder which they recommend to us. That appears to be precisely the job we elected them to.
The trust board have not confirmed whether other interested parties made firm offers and if so on what grounds this bidder was chosen as preferred. That seems to me a question that should be answered at the next meeting.
The preferred bidder does seem to have a good record in the US. It is nonetheless hard to understand what interest WWFC is to him. that seems another question that should be answered.
Many see risk in external ownership. they are right that those risks exist. 45 of the 48 Lg1 and Lg2 clubs use this model. Perhaps 2 maybe 3 currently have clearly bad owners. The rest seem to be doing OK. Nonetheless there is undoubtedly some risk.
bad owners can seriously damage clubs. Coventry and Leyton Orient are perhaps the best recent example.
history seems to show that asset strippers do exist and target clubs outside the league, especially those coping with relegation from the FL. Hereford and Torquay perhaps being the best examples. those clubs though had stadiums with strong residential development potential. It is hard to see the similarities to WWFC current position which doesn't.
fan owned models though are not without risk either. A club without sufficient cash and in decline can very rapidly collapse into crisis and possible extinction. There is no guarantee that WWFC would successfully manage the transition to Level 6 or below in the pyramid, even if that and fan ownership was preferred to investment and league status.
Nobody can accurately predict the future, but those who will vote will have to do their best to and determine the best interests of WWFC. I hope they do so based on an objective analysis of the facts as they are rather than the facts as they would wish them to be.
It is very unclear what happens next if the proposition is rejected and especially if for example the proposition is accepted by say 80% of voters but in a 90% turnout, the magic 75% of all eligible is not reached. Another question I think should be answered.
@OX66 who gets bullied rather than disagreed with? Sometimes if you keep saying things people disagree with they will keep disagreeing with you. And I would imagine all of us at some point have been bullied socially or professionally...
I can accept your apology. Not normally something I would get overly sensitive about however serious illness in relevant family members gives cause for it.
Dev your summary is flawed , subjective , and not very good .
For one , the good men on the trust board only can act and know about what the football club board tell them .
Thanks for the feedback Marlow. As ever you state opinion as fact and fail to provide any substance. Can't be too long now before you start commenting on the car I drive......
The trust board members do not strike me as shrinking violets and presumably demand whatever information they feel they need to perform their roles.
If I have understood your earlier post correctly, my sympathies to you and your wife in respect of her serious illness.
Final score: Irony 7 - self-awareness 0
@DevC - Are the Trust Board members asking the right questions though? Do they have the necessary experience, financial and organisation skills to carry out a full investigation and assessment of all the bidders. In my view such a task should be undertaken by EXPERTS in the profession, not unpaid amateurs. The potential of us getting this seriously wrong is not worth the risk of doing it on the cheap.
I for one would not vote in favour of any disposal without seeing an independent view.
It's relatively common btw for interested parties to foot the bill for independent adjudication in a process like this.
In my experience of acquisitions and disposals, I wouldn't expect to bring in outside experts on a deal of this size apart from a lawyer to write up the contract once agreed. Certainly not on the sellers side. Possible the buyers may get a firm of accountants to do a bit of due diligence on the accounts, but probably more likely to use their own team. We may already have suitable legal expertise not to need that either.
Of course these points are going to be bloody contested!
3 and 5 are, by your own admission, your personal opinion and speculation (as are almost all the rest of the points).
Having had a poke about on the internet , seaports page, items like this https://www.revolvy.com/page/Yidio and a question someone posted on a Derby forum I'd say these guys are only medium term, cut costs (tricky here), improve management (I'm assured by some on here much easier) , improve growth aread ( yup food again) wait for the next buyer and scoop the profit. I struggle with how realistic this is and would ask for clear ideas on the losses they are prepared to fund and what happens regarding who they sell to, wether we can buy back and a few other points .
Don't have tine to disect the above summary , i thought they were supposed to be brief, point 1 has been argued widely and it seems to get worse from there.
Well contest them then!
3) I stated as my opinion. Do you disagree?
5) is my understanding of what the trust board are saying. I ended by saying that as others seem t understand something else (but never specified), this should be clarified. Indeed arguably it is THE salient question. What is your understanding of what the Trust board were saying about sustainability?
To clarify, see point 8 above, I don't have a deep emotional attachment to fan ownership and, as per point 9, as to the "no" lobby, what precisely am I saying "no" to?
Yep @DevC is right...no residential development gets the thumbs up in Bucks...or we 'd have huge housing estates of huge unsellable houses popping up everyw.....oh.
Actually, I thought that was a pretty reasonable summing up by DevC that contained more facts and less opinions than I see from some other posters.
But then of course Wendover, that is not what I said. When you have to invent stuff in order to knock it back down, it is usually a good indicator that you do not have an argument at all.
I have asked you several times before but each time you ignored the factual question and just made more stuff up. If asset stripping is your major concern, would it help you if a independent planning expert valued the site as a development site?
Development land is usually most valuable for residential. But it is very hard to get planning permission for residential development on many sites. that's exactly why residential land development sites are so valuable.
What have you asked me several times before and what have I made up?
What have I asked you several times before? "If asset stripping is your major concern, would it help you if a independent planning expert valued the site as a development site?"
What have you made up? that |i said "no residential development gets the thumbs up in Bucks ..." I said no such thing.
But if residential planning permission is really so easy to obtain at AP, we don't need to worry about investment or sustainability. Simply sell off the land to the right as you enter currently used for parking. 4 acres maybe, maybe more, say £1m an acre for resi, £4m receipt. Now why do you think we haven't done that already?
Whilst I bow to your extensive experience of the acquisitions and disposals of football clubs, for my own peace of mind I would prefer experts in the field to deal with this, rather than the project led by a former fruit and nut salesman.
You need to bear in mind that perhaps the long term future of the club means more to those supporters that actually attend games than to a closet Watford fan!
Businessman and local government trustworthy and have only good intentions.
Not trusting businessmen and good intentions of local government is deserving of ridicule.
More straw men. Are you related to Wendover?
Serious question, why would the board consider a investor who is likely to be medium term and then sell it on? How is that positive for WWFC? They could sell their majority share to anyone and we have no say? Surely we want a long term owner if we are going down this route? Andy Harman, I would have thought would be that long term investor?
There's a really well off retired pompous patronising bloke I know who likes to bark at people about how they don;t seem to be able to grasp the vast advantages of Brexit with a big smug grin on his face. Any relation @DevC ?
@DevC The car parking on the right is on land that the Club rent from a third party, so I doubt if they could sell it to raise funds.
If it was a straight question to the members, who would your preferred investor be ?
A, An ex player who still lives local, is incredibly wealthy and a former sponsor of the club.
B, or American medium term investors who buy and sell companies at quite a fast rate in an attempt to make a profit.
But that's not the way the powers that be are steering the ship is it ??
That is the big question though, why assuming A is correct. Why would the trust directors feel this is appropriate investment.
it would seem to me a perfectly valid question to ask whether any other potential investors have made a firm tangible proposal and if so why the Luby proposal was preferred over it. Point 13 above I believe.
Indeed you have, in my opinion we should not even consider a medium term investor who will sell their shares on. We are carrying out due diligence on Luby, we wont be able to do that when he sells it on will we? This is taking a leap of faith that he will only then sell to a responsible owner, we will not have control over that process in the future.
The car parking on the right is on land that the Club rent from a third party, so I doubt if they could sell it to raise funds.
That's interesting @wformation (well moderately anyway). I always thought that land was owned by the club - initially intended as a training ground. I stand corrected.
The Adams Park site is obviously smaller than I realised. Who is the owner of that land - is that Dashwood land?
I wonder why he chooses to rent it out as a once a fortnight car park rather than realise the massive residential land value.....
Massive question, I just don't see how we could make enough profit for them to take a decent percentage from that. Other than selling on for a profit how else do they get any return on their investment.