Bury
It seems like the end could be near. Their fans seem to have lost any last shred of hope. What an utterly sad state of affairs.
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It seems like the end could be near. Their fans seem to have lost any last shred of hope. What an utterly sad state of affairs.
Comments
I'm not sure why Sky have chosen to televise Bolton v Bury on 8th September, unless someone was looking for a way to get the weekend off?
Probably looking to go down the 'crisis club story' route.
Tragic for their fans. Hope they can survive or work to restart the club from scratch.
What a shocking state of affairs the FA and EFL have let the game get into. Too busy going after Wimbledon for being rude to the Franchise.
It is situations such as that which is ongoing at Bury (and Bolton, Notts County and others) that mean Mr. Couhig will have a lot of convincing to do if he wants me to vote to allow him majority ownership of our club at some point in future. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say this evening.
Terrible stuff, and a stark indicator of the way the lower leagues are going. It's a pity the EFL care so little about the club's under their own care.
the main issue for WWFC is that the Stadium MUST remain in the hands of the Trust, without any debts or mortgages on the premises. If the Club folds in the long term then at least the Fans will have a Stadium to restart a team. I agree @Shev, the EFL and the FA are not protecting our national game.
"Newly appointed manager Paul Wilkinson now faces a serious headache, as it looks unlikely that he’ll be able to field a full side against MK Dons on 03 August. The minimum number of players required to play a league fixture is seven."
This just isn't something you should be reading about a professional football club. It's absolutely awful. http://d3d4football.com/burys-remaining-players-told-they-are-free-to-leave/
The next two big tests are whether they can field a team of over 18s against Nantwich at the weekend and whether they're able to host their scheduled friendly with Blackburn next week. A terrible shame.
Debts of £16 million - that's insane!
https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2019/jul/11/bury-takeover-without-full-football-league-approval-transfer-embargo-efl?__twitter_impression=true "The December takeover of Bury, who are in extreme financial distress under the owner Steve Dale, was completed without being approved by the EFL under its regulations, the league has said."
Bloody hell. Not really sure what to say.
And then this later in the related article
“This is a cautionary tale, for Bury and other smaller clubs,” he said. “We can’t live beyond our means and rely on some benefactor to fund it; we are seeing the risks again now.”
The rules and structure are bs and have been for ages. The EFL (apparently a governing body not a grubby pr agency) can't stop people selling private assets but it can stop clubs playing, bar owners, directors etc, there needs to be concrete rules and standards that your league membership depends on and a process that must be obeyed at takeover time. I think there are some but they are poorly enforced. They don't want to be seen to be making situations worse so if a club is in trouble and someone is waving money about they are in. Later we tend to find out the money was borrowed or lent or never actually existed. Some kind of lodged bond money, or requirement to tackle debt going forward would be great but would also put some investors off as the whole thing got more expensive. Inevitably if they were stricter a club may be unable to comply but maybe the league could appoint specialist help.
I think the league should also have a role in making the whole structure more self sufficient for smaller clubs, they are allover the websites and iPlayer market as they can take an easy cut but maybe they should be facilitating stadium improvements, youth setups, supplier discounts, ensuring kit gets passed down from bigger clubs when say a tannoy or stand is replaced.
It's difficult not to be concerned about our future when this happens so regularly now.
Whilst surprised that the current Bury owner was not subjected to review by the EFL prior to taking ownership and acknowledging that he seems to be acting in a way that is highly detrimental to the survival of Bury FC, it is the previous owner, Stewart Day, who got them into an extremely precarious state in the first place. Presumably, Mr Day did get vetted by the EFL, or did they neglect to review his fitness to be an owner too?
Among a large set of questionable transactions, the one that stands out for me is that at one point Mr Day took out loans in the name of the football club for around £2.5million. OK, so I acknowledge sometimes football clubs need to borrow money, but in these cases payments of 40% of the received loan (i.e. approximately £1million) were made immediately to an unnamed third-party as "introduction fees". Bury FC are now having to pay interest on the full amount of the loans, including interest on £1million that the club never actually received and had instead been siphoned off to a person or persons unknown. Dodgy AF.
There is a petition open to get Stewart Day investigated for fraud. I signed this a couple of weeks ago. For anyone else who may be interested, here is the link:
https://www.change.org/p/serious-fraud-office-investigate-stewart-day-ex-bury-fc-owner-failed-property-development-empire-collapse
What kind of world has a petition for something like that? Cloud based vigilantism
You hear a lot about entry qualifications ie the"fit and proper" business but once you are in you can Oyston a club to death all you like.
It's like a lot of things though Isn't it.
You can run people's names through all sorts of police checks, but if it's the first time they do whatever crime, it's in effect a pointless check.
Maybe the opportunity to market it as El Brassico?
Nantwich may have started as favourites, which is a whole new kind of bizarre.
Just “Wow”
Interesting...
Has no one told them you're only allowed five loanees in your matchday 18?
There is no 18, they need an 11 first, 5 of which (presumably for free) is a sizable chunk.
Were hardly that well off for players ourselves and have loads of injuries aswell !!!
If ever a sentence did not deserve three exclamation marks, that’s it.
Richie is excited for the new season.
Even you.must see we are slighy better off than bury player wise. Who is injured Richie?
Whilst no defender of Richie, we have yet to see JJ, Adam, Thomo or Sidio play any minutes. Granted JJ and Skipper did the warm up and Sido was in a trackie but, given Blooms and the new number 8’s showing vs the Bees, boy do we need a match fit Thomo back for the start of the season.
You and Richie could be right @perfidious_albion i just assumed they were being kept under wraps while the triallists were being checked out! ?
Curtis won't be back for at least 5 weeks as he's still recovering from a shoulder operation, having played through the injury for most of last season.