Chris Custodiet

He was interested alright . Pricked his ears up no end when I pointed out to Paul Holliday, stood with Iles, that nobody had asked about the £525K or the cost to the club of Dean Holdsworth's involvement. 'About a million then' he said after I reeled off all the numbers I knew about. I simply raised my eyebrows. I didn't have the whole story but I had enough of it for an impartial journalist to follow it up. No I don't think he feared a libel suit.

Long-shot speculative effort, MK, but you will have heard of someone called Skripal? If there was Russian interest, it wasn't likely to progress far in the wake of inter-government hostilities after the Salisbury incident. Btw none of KA's £525K ever reached ICSM. Looks like £60K was not paid at all and the rest went to Holdsworth, Holdsworth's lawyers and Quantuma to prevent Blumarble foreclosing on BWFC. I pointed this out to Marc Iles at the 2018 AGM but it evidently didn't fit in with his agenda. I know the usual suspects don't want to know but if they think they are entitled to decide what's posted and what isn't they really should think again.

I suppose that, in our youth, many of us might have been guilty of musical snobbery but in my playlist for tonight I'd like to offer a bit of Huey Piano Smith in honour of the Embankment lads of the 1950s Chuck Berry in recognition of the poor WW contributors left Home Alone at Christmas (and the rest of the year) And a bit of Gerry Rafferty in recognition of the amount still owed to the widow of Eddie Davies

ED was a minority shareholder in 2000 whilst the club needed to sell to survive. If you want to find all the facts and figures you can get them from Companies House but it will take time to work it all out.

What has interested me for quite a long time is how newspapers and websites stir up passions by spreading falsehoods and distortions. The Bolton News has been the worst perpetrator for the last four years but before that it was David Conn, firstly writing in the Independent claiming falsely that Eddie Davies was a tax exile. aka tax dodger. After his move to the Guardian, Conn claimed that ED was exploiting BWFC by making loans at high interest rates when the truth was that ED was relieving the club of paying interest to banks whilst, barring a miracle, was never likely to see either interest or the capital ever again. All this was followed by LOV claiming that ED was profiting to the tune of about £20m from player sales, a total fabrication. Later we had Sam Allardyce claiming, after ED had been largely responsible for making him a multi-millionaire, that ED was a ruthless business man. I haven't finished yet but have to go.

I think that following the papertrail of the £60K will lead us to a £6m discrepancy between the amount KA said was owed to him (that he owed to the EDTrust), the length of the negotiations with KA and FV and the club starting this season with academy players and presently still under threat of further punishment for non-fulfillment of a fixture. Burnden Leisure, of course, is simply a holding company with no known expenses save for audit fees, company secretarial services and management services (KA). Has the £60k been paid? I doubt it.

As I said, its a long story that has to be taken step by step. I am also afraid that there are some comments that are so puerile that its virtually impossible to answer them without some element of condescension. But lets give you a starter for10. If you take a look at page 24 of Appleton's statement it describes the £60K as 'Ken Anderson - Inner Circle'. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00335699/filing-history Page 26 describes it as 'Inner Circle Sports & Media' (ICSM) That tells us, or I think it tells us, that the £60K dates back to the time that KA owned ICSM. i.e January 2018 or earlier. So there's £60K standing in the books that he hasn't drawn seemingly. So what's that £60K all about? Wait for the next instalment. I'm off to make the missus a coffee.

Its a long story. I might save it for another day. But I'll give you a clue, leastways I think its a clue and possibly a clue to solving much if not all of the riddle. KA called a shareholders AGM in May 2018 for no obvious reason and at a not insubstantial cost to a company that was broke. Note the amount owed to Neville Registrars who provided the notices to over 6,000 shareholders. Was that the act of someone who wanted to hide something or the act of someone who wanted to put something on the table and open to question? I suspect it was the latter.

Has it ever occurred to you that someone might have more than one reason for doing or not doing something? Use your loaf, man

That's an interesting one isn't it, MK? Not suggesting anything untoward but I'm not sure I'd be sleeping too easily if Vlad's pal remained on the unpaid creditor list. And no I don't think RRF's suggestions are very likely for a whole variety of reasons.

Thanks for the trouble you have taken in making a detailed response. You are, of course, correct that the debt position could have improved if debts had been written off but, if you compare the detail of the before and after position, its clear that that did not happen. The debt position could also improve if a player sale exceeded the losses on running the club. That happened with three clubs in 2017/18; Hull City, Burton Albion and BWFC. Every other club in the Championship lost money, the average being £15m, with aggregate losses growing for the third year running. Burton's resultant profit was small. KA said BWFC's was too and plainly would have been insufficient to make any inroads into debt reduction. It was clear that there was no realistic prospect of BWFC surviving through 2018/19 without a significant injection of cash and that my estimate of expected losses in the region of £3m to £5m was probable with something approaching the latter figure being the more likely. That is exactly in line with the £4.2m shown by the management accounts, as reported by Paul Appleton. So we are back to square one except that, according to media reports, there were a lot more debts than KA had told interested parties there were, effectively an accusation of KA attempting to pull a fast one. You also may remember that you were present at the mock Trial of the Unibol Four conducted by the ST chairman in April 2019 when Mr Rigby said, "due diligence found that the club was significantly more indebted than they were led to believe". I'm going to leave it there for the moment but I am going to suggest to you that concerned supporters of BWFC weren't getting true and fair reports and hadn't been for a very long time and that , whatever other faults or failings there may have been, it does not seem to be KA that was guilty of any inaccuracy in this instance. As for your question, I'm no expert on natation but I did play football in the same team as Hamilton Bland when I was at school.

Don't be a dope. EB could have been pinned down all evening on unexplained financial issues. But she wasn't there for that reason and Lancaster Whites members hadn't turned up for that reason either.

Ask your dog whether Eddie Davies sold Burnden Leisure to Dean Holdsworth for a pound (chairman Rigby's version of events) or whether he sold it to the two quid's worth 'Sports Shield consortium'. And ask your dog whose million quid Dean Holdsworth spent on fees and who he paid it to. Another improbable Rigbyism.

Your 'slightly wrong' is like a shot at goal that hits the corner flag, but at least its an attempt on goal.

I thought it was The Scarecrow that didn't have a brain.

Aren't you interested in knowing why Burnden Leisure still owed Inner Circle Sport and Media £60k in May 2019 when KA sold that company to Vasily Anisimov, President of the Russian Judo Federation, in January 2018? I'd like to have asked Emma on Monday but I don't think she'd really know and I'm not sure she'd have welcomed being asked.

I'll put you down for next year's panto, the Wizard of Oz. The part of the Scarecrow might have been written for you.

We'll save that for a while. Lets give RRF a chance. Anyway I'm busy at the moment trying to get the cast together for the Christmas Panto - Alice in Wonderland. The lovely Sharon has got to be Alice with Emma as the White Queen. One or two candidates for Humpty Dumpty but one favourite. "When I use a word (like funded for example) it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." The parts of the Hatter, March Hare and Tweedle dee and Tweedle dum have also to be filled but I don't think I'd have to look much further than the ST board to fill these roles.

I thought you were on ignore. If you don't like the light being switched on, just stick your head under the blankets until its switched off again.

Have you ever thought of using your undoubted professional skills to help your fellow WW fans find their way through the financial maze of BWFC? You could for example try explaining why, with Championship clubs losing an average of £15m p.a., BWFC owed less in May 2019 (according to the Administrators) than it did in June 2017. And when you've got your head round that you could also try to figure out why, in May 2019, Burnden Leisure owed £60k to a company that seems to be owned by a Russian billionaire with close connections to Vladimir Putin. I refer of course to Inner Circle Sport and Media.

It was the BEN before it became the Beeno if you remember. Eddie knew what it was like as long ago as 2005. Some might have noticed that, when Sue Davies did her memoriam on the anniversary of Eddie's death, there was no sign of it in the Beeno.

Thanks for the correction. Want to know more? Take a look at the 1998 balance sheet. You'll find it here: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00043026/filing-history Why did Iles come up with his terminological inexactitude? Possibly because hogwash had been circulating round the corridors of the BEN for years

Victim card? Out else you can come up wi'?

Partly right. £9m came from Mosaic. Cost of the Reebok at 30 June 1998 was £30m

Its open alright but one has to accept that are some folk who quite like being in the dark.