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Rumour Mill

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  • Out of shot there is a geezer with a massive water tanker but the friends of the down and out who sleeps there don’t like him and they have a local nob making it impossible to agree to a rescue.

  • edited May 15

    WestYorksRoyal 

    Echo IR's sentiment that basic lessons of geography put a cap on what Wycombe can achieve. Relatively small town with London and bigger clubs nearby; I don't keep who they're kidding with all this talk of shooting for the stars. A few years in the Championship is the best they can hope for.

    A few years in the Championship !

    I was hoping for those fancy pint glasses that fill from the bottom.

  • I quite enjoy that in response to the post that showed they are losing so much they now have 4 charges over Bearwood Park is 'wow we are massive. someone with tons of money is having to buy us to pay this off'. As opposed to 'Christ on a bike we are f''''d'

  • I wonder who they are borrowing from? Also do the club actually own the training ground or does the owner?

  • I think the assumption is that their owner is the one who is borrowing the money against the training ground and if he defaults he forfeits his shares so the loan party gets the club. To me the elephant in the room (and this is something I have asked Reading fans many times) if you are £88m in debt and losing what appears to be c£2m a month how are you going to trade out of that? The answer appears to be that the news owners are rich. Cool. They are rich so what? Rich people are looking to invest and get a return not just give away £88m and then £24m a year. So how does £88m in debt become zero unless their current owner takes a massive hit? Maybe. How does £2m a month loss become sustainable without increased revenue or massive cost cutting?

  • That's very simple.

    The current owner is owed about £80M of that debt, he has already put that in to the club as loans, so depending on how desperate he is to save £2M a month or walk away you might find the whole £80M wiped off.

    These are based on old accounts so the figures could be higher.

  • I appreciate that is the angle but if your company owned a £50m training ground and a stadium why would you write off the whole lot? And in the world of football crazy finance this is just financial doping again.

  • I suppose because if you don't then you will be £24M worse off in a year if you don't liquidate the club.

    By all accounts he's spent well over £200M in 7 years, not including the actual natural turnover of the club. Taking them from 3rd in the Championship to 17th in League One.

    A lesson to learn for ML.

  • and the new owner will immediately be £24m a year worse off. And that's my point, how can you trade out of that? They will see the solution as promotion but that leap is not enough to finance £24m a year, so need another promotion. Or you need to adjust your outgoings to your incomings.

  • It's amazing anyone still sees promotion as some kind of answer to financial losses when the losses in the Prem are eye-watering. All the money they rake in TV money and the rest and they're still losing multi-millions.

    You wonder what it will take to fix football finance. At the moment it's like a room full of inveterate gamblers borrowing from here, there and everywhere to feed the slot machines that might or might not pay out one day but probably won't.

  • £24M a year is not unusual in the Championship with the average Championship club losing around £18M each in 2022/23. Trouble is Reading are in League One.

    For reference Luton (promoted) lost £9M in 22/23, Bristol City at £20M, Burnley (promoted) at £28M, Sheff Utd (promoted) at £32M, Birmingham at £26M. At the other end of the scale Rotherham and Blackpool(Relegated) only lost £1M, nobody actually made a profit.

    If we are to compete in the Championship with ML then we will easily see losses of £1M a month, if not substantially more.

  • and that is why football needs a reset. There are only so many teams in each league and each of them are rolling the dice in a shit or bust business model that fails time and time again. If Leeds fail in the play offs will they look at their business model, wage structure, squad value etc and say we need to tighten our belts or will they double down, they will double down. Reading, I would suggest, does not have any modest ambitions, they will also double down.

  • Part of the problem, as our friends at Derby have taught us, the penalties for financial irregularities simply aren’t strong enough.

  • According to reports and Companies House, it is the party in exclusive talks who have loaned the club funds to keep the club going, secured against a charges Bearwood and some of the club shares. That means if the talks fail then the party who hope to take over the club will own most, if not all, of the Training Ground. and some club shares, Dai Yongge will have the amount of the loan deducted from the final payment. Hopefully, that gives Dai little room to pull the plug on the club.

  • Thanks, I must admit though, this is squeaky wotsit time. The exclusive time must be almost up, so the sooner good news comes the better, for me.


  • You APPEAR to have serious people involved in the transaction which is on the one hand a relief but on the other hand a concern they might find some skeletons.

    At least you don't have the series of chancers and fantasist that Derby had during their saga. My favourite being the guy with the fake villa they took off social media.

    Still puzzling as to what Reading 2024, a division 1 club, might look like. I know there is always a selection of goons that will not understand why you have not signed amazing talent the moment the takeover is complete (I did see someone suggest you should sign Callum O'Hare from Coventry for example), but what is realistic? I worry for our new owners that we are not the play thing of rich people who have watched a couple of series of Welcome to Wrexham and think that could be fun. Losing on a Tuesday night 200 miles from home is rarely that.

  • The only thing realistic in our recruitment of players is:- Until the summer of 2025 we can only sign out of contract players or unattached players (which amounts to the same thig) due to the EFL embargo. We also can only spend a set limit on players wages, due to the way Dai ran the club, i.e. taking advice from a "super agent" who lined his own pockets whilst doing so. Which brings me to the news breaking today, regarding another agent. It leaves me both shocked and speechless.

  • Derby have shown you can still build a very effective squad in this league within the rules set out post administration or similar. Having had a quick scan of that article though it doesn't seem like they have had too much interest in the rules recently.

    Genuinely hope you get saved but if they are then allowed to ditch a huge amount of debt and carry on as is that will catch up on you in years to come, always think a number of execs should be banned in these cases, it can't only be on the owner to follow rules and raise alarms.

  • Derby have shown that there is no point in any rules. Derby have literally no restrictions that hinder them compared to any other league one side.

  • It appears that when we signed Michael Olise or more likely extended his contract, we agreed a 10% sell on fee with his agent. Trouble was the agent benifited either in part or all, I'm not sure which, but the rules say only the club or player can do so. Result, our CEO at that time is now suspended from transfer/contract talks and in six months is suspended from all football related issues. At least it means he can continue with negotiations with the transfer of the club to the new owners. Provided of course they are completed by November! How a CEO who has worked for the EFL in the past can sign up to a clause, regardless of how much pressure the agent put on him, It seems likely the club were told by the agent he goes for nothing if you don't agree. Also the agent is suspended, but only starts in six months time, so he is likely to make quite a bit of money this summer. Also the club has been fined £200.000 where that is coming from, who knows? Two other staff members have been warned about their behaviour. What a roller coaster this season has been for us and you thought you had hills in your town, but I think our apexes are higher than your hills and our lows are lower than your Town Centre. Oh. yes, I remember those hills too many decades ago, when delivering in the town my trusting stead, sorry lorry, coming down at a lick from the station then barely making it to the top on the road to Marlow.

  • The football related issues ban is for six months as well. So a ban of sorts for a year.

  • in other news, albeit it related to Reading in a way. Comment on X by Gmac (Wycombe supporting kid sang him happy birthday - Gmac replied with:

    🤞 One more year. One more year 🤞

  • Jeeeeeez. The lunatics have most definitely been taking over the asylum.

    However the same unscrupulous/ incompetent (delete as applicable) execs will still be on the merry go round for years to come. Let’s face it the fact that Risdale is a senior administrator of our sport is laughable.

    Someone mentioned above Derby’s recovery from their woes. Something to aspire to, just a £10m loss there.

  • The last paragraph sounds like the governments of the world.

  • A friend of mine worked for one of the large banks. Being bankers for football clubs was a poison chalice, they were approached by Wycombe many years ago and a club in our league that has since gone onto the top level. They would't touch it as the governance was non-existent and they knew if they applied the normal rules of banking and pulled the plug they would be seen as the demons of the story by fans and the wider public.

  • edited May 16

    Two more rumours of players being linked with Wycombe.

    Elkan Baggott (Centre-back), 21 - under contract with Ipswich Town next season (with club option for a further season). Has just returned from a loan spell with Bristol Rovers.

    Shayne Lavery (Attacker), 25 - out of contract this summer after being released by Blackpool.

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