I was there. I also raised the issue prior to that. I thought the initial deal meant we got f'ed, when I discovered the other parts of the deal involving our loss of right to buy back I was gob smacked. But the people involved are still lauded by many as philanthropic saviours.
From what we understand of Couhig's wealth, Feliciana couldn't afford either Reading FC or their Training Ground, but Lomtadze could.
To me the big question here is around his motivation, as it's clearly his money doing this deal. There has to be a chance he's realised Reading are a much better prospect for investment and he's therefore setting himself up on that path by purchasing their Training Ground. We'll know more when we know whether he is the buyer, or Feliciana (on behalf of WW).
As Wycombe fans we should all be scared of how little we know about Lomtadze and his motivations. He's operating in a different financial universe to Rob Couhig.
Hold on a second - I think everyone here might have got the wrong end of the stick.
This line in The Athletic is key: "Reading now face the prospect of renting their own training ground, too, with their landlords being near-neighbours Wycombe."
So according to The Athletic, we won't necessarily be moving to Bearwood, merely being the landlords of Reading.
This throws up many other questions:
Will EFL approve a deal which would potentially (and this is entirely hypothetical) see one club either have a friendly arrangement with another in the same league "we'll save you from bankruptcy, you play a weakened team against us", or alternatively have an unfriendly arrangement "as your landlord we're going to stop maintenance on your training pitch so your players all get injured". Can this be right?
The other scenarios are that we co-share the training ground as per the Man U/Man City arrangement; or Lomtadze buys Bearwood under a new holding company and then transfers his financial support from Wycombe to Reading... maybe this is why it's taken so long to get him on the board of directors, even though the Couhigs must've thought it would've happened already to have resigned their directorships last month.
Anyway one thing's for certain - it's all a bit of a mess.
Tbh, and I am guilty of the speculation above - butt his could just be investors doing what investors do. Find something to buy at a lower than market price, buy it improve it, profit from it.
This is an awful look, if we were partly responsible for putting a club out of business I'm not sure how I'd feel about things going forward. Rob Couhig has certainly turned us into a club not liked by many opposition fans, and I don't like that one bit.
Bit of a myth. Bandied around in times of need by supporters who'd normally rip the piss out of you (and the seats out of your away stand). Sometimes used by middle class hand-wringers who don't understand the tribal nature of the game.
Anyone would think Rob Couhig was creating RG Dons to get a spicy MK Derby going on.
Do fans of football clubs generally like other football clubs? Have I been getting it wrong for 40 years?
Opposition fans like you when they think you're a kindly old bunch they can get three points off without any hassle. As we've seen in recent years, our ability to punch above our weight has upset a few people. Good.
I've just heard a rumour from a pretty reliable source that it's a done deal. But we're not going to be moving there, we are just going to rent it back to Reading. Plus we're going to restart an academy and they will be based there as well
Doesn't it seem more logical that the mysterious investor wants to fund the buying of the training-ground (at a discount), in order to make Reading's purchase price less?
I would suspect in that instance the owners of Wycombe would be acting as an agent of sorts for the purchase and may be in line for 'Commission' from the real backer (as it has been purchased at a cut price)
This is the crux of it. Lomtadze has no links to us at all, he's still not even confirmed as a board member yet. Absolutely nothing stopping him completely shafting us in future.
Not long ago, we had a Q&A session with Rob Couhig before a Tuesday night game. There were many people in the room, including myself, but none of us had the courage to ask anything worthwhile about the mysterious new board member who happens to be a Georgian billionaire with no connection or background in football. It's true that Rob probably has a few million, but he couldn't finance a new road, a new stadium, let alone 20 odd million. Then, he introduced the idea of a new board member who has a lot more money than he could dream of. People in the room asked dumb questions like when we're signing young players, the Rotary Club, kids' tickets, etc., while the pressing issue of our club's future was at stake. Why has Feliciana Ltd, which owns 90% of WWFC along with the Trust, taken a mortgage from the Georgian board member? Is he buying his way onto the board?
If you read this, here are some questions for you, Mikeal/Rob:
- What's your interest in Wycombe?
- When did you first hear or watch Wycombe?
- How did you actually meet Rob? It's not like you just bump into a lawyer from New Orleans every day.
- What's the model moving forward?
- Why do you wish to buy Reading's training ground, which is not as close as Marlow Road? What will happen with Marlow Road?
- Is the Georgian man going to buy Wycombe as the owner? Rob has said for a few years about "exit strategy" due to his age.
- Was the loan to Feliciana Ltd to fund player transfers in Jan to keep us up? Before that, the accounts show a steady losses, given that we saw significant players come in who were of decent League One caliber making the squad. Were the funds in the mortgage also or bridging loans? Were they put aside for the purchase of the training ground? These transactions take time, and why were we not given the top-level detail drip-fed at the minimum? Don't go on stage talking football when the business is significantly changing. Why now, when the Trust is reduced, are we the last to know?
- What's being done about the huge drop-off in home fans? Wembley is papering over the cracks.
This is the description of Bearwood from official Reading club site:
The natural evolution of Reading FC has seen it outgrow its Hogwood Park home and with the club’s ongoing investment in the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) structure for elite Academies, new training facilities are necessary to sustain Category One Academy status and meet the growing everyday demands of a progressive football club.
The Bearwood facility became the new home to our first team during the 2019-20 season, while young professionals, Academy players from the ages of 8 to 18, our coaching staff and management team as well as a large proportion of the club’s permanent staff transitioned to the new site during the course of 2020.
The site at Bearwood Estate was identified and contracts were initially exchanged with the Royal Merchant Navy School Foundation for the purchase of nearly 120 acres of land on Friday 11th October 2013.
Plans were drawn up and openly exhibited to supporters and local residents in the Mosaic Room at Bearwood College in December 2013, at which point the public were able to view the plans for the first time, discuss aspects of the scheme with members of the Club's appointed development team and provide valuable feedback.
Permission to develop was then formally requested and in April 2015, the club confirmed that Wokingham Borough Council had resolved to grant planning permission for the development of the new facility.
The new site hosts three full size first team pitches which will be designed to mirror the exact dimensions of the Select Car Leasing Stadium, a floodlit all-weather surface and a goalkeeping practice area.
It is also home to a purpose-built first team building and a separate Academy facility as well as a number of various other ancillary buildings. Ongoing development of the site will also involve extensive landscaping of the park and the refurbishment of a number of existing buildings.
I do hope The Couhigs and/or Mr Lomtadze aren't thinking of doing this again;
In November 1997, Rob Couhig bought the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers football (soccer) team from Donnie Pate.
Mr Couhig renamed the team the New Orleans Storm and relocated them from Tad Gormley stadium to Zephyr Field. In 2000, he suspended operations of the Storm, pending a move to another stadium.
The more you look at that Athletic article, the more it makes little to no sense that WWFC have bought any real estate. Was the reporter just lazy lumping WWFC in with ML, or is this part of a smokescreen for something else afoot at Reading?
@ShitcagoWWFC from memory a woman near the back of room asked a question and then another as the write up on the club site suggests. She didn't seem to lack courage to me.
I regret not inquiring about the mortgage. Details matter. Hopefully, ML has good intentions, and Couhig's exit plan will ensure long-term viability for WWFC. If not we should be worried, we all want an Adams Park, and many more trips over the decades of Wycombe at Wembley.
Comments
Yeah, I think they even have actual rules on that.
I was there. I also raised the issue prior to that. I thought the initial deal meant we got f'ed, when I discovered the other parts of the deal involving our loss of right to buy back I was gob smacked. But the people involved are still lauded by many as philanthropic saviours.
Then again, I'm sure there are loopholes.
From what we understand of Couhig's wealth, Feliciana couldn't afford either Reading FC or their Training Ground, but Lomtadze could.
To me the big question here is around his motivation, as it's clearly his money doing this deal. There has to be a chance he's realised Reading are a much better prospect for investment and he's therefore setting himself up on that path by purchasing their Training Ground. We'll know more when we know whether he is the buyer, or Feliciana (on behalf of WW).
As Wycombe fans we should all be scared of how little we know about Lomtadze and his motivations. He's operating in a different financial universe to Rob Couhig.
*Moronic
Hold on a second - I think everyone here might have got the wrong end of the stick.
This line in The Athletic is key: "Reading now face the prospect of renting their own training ground, too, with their landlords being near-neighbours Wycombe."
So according to The Athletic, we won't necessarily be moving to Bearwood, merely being the landlords of Reading.
This throws up many other questions:
Will EFL approve a deal which would potentially (and this is entirely hypothetical) see one club either have a friendly arrangement with another in the same league "we'll save you from bankruptcy, you play a weakened team against us", or alternatively have an unfriendly arrangement "as your landlord we're going to stop maintenance on your training pitch so your players all get injured". Can this be right?
The other scenarios are that we co-share the training ground as per the Man U/Man City arrangement; or Lomtadze buys Bearwood under a new holding company and then transfers his financial support from Wycombe to Reading... maybe this is why it's taken so long to get him on the board of directors, even though the Couhigs must've thought it would've happened already to have resigned their directorships last month.
Anyway one thing's for certain - it's all a bit of a mess.
Tbh, and I am guilty of the speculation above - butt his could just be investors doing what investors do. Find something to buy at a lower than market price, buy it improve it, profit from it.
This is an awful look, if we were partly responsible for putting a club out of business I'm not sure how I'd feel about things going forward. Rob Couhig has certainly turned us into a club not liked by many opposition fans, and I don't like that one bit.
But do they follow all of there rules all of the time?
and are there any rules (or cool down periods) between selling one club and buying another?
The football community / football family.
Bit of a myth. Bandied around in times of need by supporters who'd normally rip the piss out of you (and the seats out of your away stand). Sometimes used by middle class hand-wringers who don't understand the tribal nature of the game.
Anyone would think Rob Couhig was creating RG Dons to get a spicy MK Derby going on.
Do fans of football clubs generally like other football clubs? Have I been getting it wrong for 40 years?
Opposition fans like you when they think you're a kindly old bunch they can get three points off without any hassle. As we've seen in recent years, our ability to punch above our weight has upset a few people. Good.
I've just heard a rumour from a pretty reliable source that it's a done deal. But we're not going to be moving there, we are just going to rent it back to Reading. Plus we're going to restart an academy and they will be based there as well
Doesn't it seem more logical that the mysterious investor wants to fund the buying of the training-ground (at a discount), in order to make Reading's purchase price less?
I would suspect in that instance the owners of Wycombe would be acting as an agent of sorts for the purchase and may be in line for 'Commission' from the real backer (as it has been purchased at a cut price)
"Do fans of football clubs generally like other football clubs? Have I been getting it wrong for 40 years?"
Looks like it
That's not so bad. But I still worry about what ML's intentions ultimately are and where it'll leave us financially. We're talking £25m ffs.
This is the crux of it. Lomtadze has no links to us at all, he's still not even confirmed as a board member yet. Absolutely nothing stopping him completely shafting us in future.
Isn't it? Unless it's a peppercorn rent we know Reading can't afford it, and we've removed their key asset and collapsed takeover talks in one swoop.
I'm trying hard to stay open-minded on this one and wait for the facts, but it looks pretty awful from us and hugely damaging to our reputation.
On one hand, we might be a club with two training grounds - one worth at least £25m. That we rent out as an additional revenue stream.
Or we might be exactly the same as we are today and ML/RC owns Readings training ground.
Not long ago, we had a Q&A session with Rob Couhig before a Tuesday night game. There were many people in the room, including myself, but none of us had the courage to ask anything worthwhile about the mysterious new board member who happens to be a Georgian billionaire with no connection or background in football. It's true that Rob probably has a few million, but he couldn't finance a new road, a new stadium, let alone 20 odd million. Then, he introduced the idea of a new board member who has a lot more money than he could dream of. People in the room asked dumb questions like when we're signing young players, the Rotary Club, kids' tickets, etc., while the pressing issue of our club's future was at stake. Why has Feliciana Ltd, which owns 90% of WWFC along with the Trust, taken a mortgage from the Georgian board member? Is he buying his way onto the board?
If you read this, here are some questions for you, Mikeal/Rob:
- What's your interest in Wycombe?
- When did you first hear or watch Wycombe?
- How did you actually meet Rob? It's not like you just bump into a lawyer from New Orleans every day.
- What's the model moving forward?
- Why do you wish to buy Reading's training ground, which is not as close as Marlow Road? What will happen with Marlow Road?
- Is the Georgian man going to buy Wycombe as the owner? Rob has said for a few years about "exit strategy" due to his age.
- Was the loan to Feliciana Ltd to fund player transfers in Jan to keep us up? Before that, the accounts show a steady losses, given that we saw significant players come in who were of decent League One caliber making the squad. Were the funds in the mortgage also or bridging loans? Were they put aside for the purchase of the training ground? These transactions take time, and why were we not given the top-level detail drip-fed at the minimum? Don't go on stage talking football when the business is significantly changing. Why now, when the Trust is reduced, are we the last to know?
- What's being done about the huge drop-off in home fans? Wembley is papering over the cracks.
Slanders those afraid to ask a question in public, then shouts into thin air on the Gasroom. Brilliant.
He's not going to read this mate.
This is the description of Bearwood from official Reading club site:
The natural evolution of Reading FC has seen it outgrow its Hogwood Park home and with the club’s ongoing investment in the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) structure for elite Academies, new training facilities are necessary to sustain Category One Academy status and meet the growing everyday demands of a progressive football club.
The Bearwood facility became the new home to our first team during the 2019-20 season, while young professionals, Academy players from the ages of 8 to 18, our coaching staff and management team as well as a large proportion of the club’s permanent staff transitioned to the new site during the course of 2020.
The site at Bearwood Estate was identified and contracts were initially exchanged with the Royal Merchant Navy School Foundation for the purchase of nearly 120 acres of land on Friday 11th October 2013.
Plans were drawn up and openly exhibited to supporters and local residents in the Mosaic Room at Bearwood College in December 2013, at which point the public were able to view the plans for the first time, discuss aspects of the scheme with members of the Club's appointed development team and provide valuable feedback.
Permission to develop was then formally requested and in April 2015, the club confirmed that Wokingham Borough Council had resolved to grant planning permission for the development of the new facility.
The new site hosts three full size first team pitches which will be designed to mirror the exact dimensions of the Select Car Leasing Stadium, a floodlit all-weather surface and a goalkeeping practice area.
It is also home to a purpose-built first team building and a separate Academy facility as well as a number of various other ancillary buildings. Ongoing development of the site will also involve extensive landscaping of the park and the refurbishment of a number of existing buildings.
I do hope The Couhigs and/or Mr Lomtadze aren't thinking of doing this again;
In November 1997, Rob Couhig bought the New Orleans Riverboat Gamblers football (soccer) team from Donnie Pate.
Mr Couhig renamed the team the New Orleans Storm and relocated them from Tad Gormley stadium to Zephyr Field. In 2000, he suspended operations of the Storm, pending a move to another stadium.
None of us, including me. We all missed an opportunity to extract any info.
drone footage of the facility here Training Ground Guru | Reading release aerial footage of new training ground if anyone is interested.
Really hard to get head around what could be going on here. BFP seems to think statement will be made later today.
The more you look at that Athletic article, the more it makes little to no sense that WWFC have bought any real estate. Was the reporter just lazy lumping WWFC in with ML, or is this part of a smokescreen for something else afoot at Reading?
@ShitcagoWWFC from memory a woman near the back of room asked a question and then another as the write up on the club site suggests. She didn't seem to lack courage to me.
https://www.wwfc.com/news/2024/february/27/matchday-wycombe-vs-cheltenham/
Nigel Vickery asks why Missy and Pete Couhig have been removed as directors, and if Rob's exit from the club is imminent.
A question for more detail on new people joining the board.
A question on Mikhail's love for Wycombe.
The answer ""The EFL has regulations about what we can say at the moment" probably led most people to think there's not much more than can be said?
I regret not inquiring about the mortgage. Details matter. Hopefully, ML has good intentions, and Couhig's exit plan will ensure long-term viability for WWFC. If not we should be worried, we all want an Adams Park, and many more trips over the decades of Wycombe at Wembley.
Fair enough mate, we'll see what happens