Chris Custodiet
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Posts posted by Chris Custodiet
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11 hours ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
An earlier, more controlled withdrawal of his subsidy would have left us in a stronger position. Maybe there are reasons why he appeared to act so abruptly that we may never know.
Iles asks a perfectly valid question, though the timing of it on the anniversary of Davies death, absolutely stinks.
RIP Eddie.
I have noted your comments and would be grateful if you would respond to the following:
- Eddie Davies retired from the board of Burnden Leisure in 2009 and the board of BWFC in 2011. Why do you believe he did that?
- At the time of his retirement from BWFC, Eddie had spent about £100m on Bolton Wanderers and went on to spend another £80m before transferring ownership to Holdsworth and Anderson in March 2016. When do you say that he advised BWFC's board that he didn't have a magic money tree and couldn't financially support BWFC forever and on what basis do you claim that he acted abruptly.
- After the transfer of ownership Eddie continued to provide financial support to BWFC to an amount believed to be £7.5m. Do you agree?
- BWFC's stadium and hotel were recently re-mortgaged to provide the money needed to fund the club for the next two years. Who paid off the debt that provided the funds to build the stadium and hotel? (If you tell me it was Gordon Hargreaves, I'll have you sectioned along with Eyewash Iles).
- How many years notice do you expect the owner of a football club to give and how much more money do you expect them to provide before they are allowed to say that enough is enough?
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11 minutes ago, Traf said:
Those words don't paint Eddie in a positive light.
Those are the words of a man with his head firmly rooted in lala land.
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5 minutes ago, Duck Egg said:
Don't they have a point here?
The guy pumped millions of his own cash in and should rightly be lauded and honoured. What he didn't do (or rather the bloke he put in charge didn't)was safeguard against the inevitable day when we got relegated.
Which relegation are you talking about? He'd already spent about £140m when we were relegated in 2012. Why don't you try going through the accounts and see how much money ED pumped in after that? Sue Davies must have had the patience of a saint.
How many years funding are you expecting FV to provide for next year in case we get relegated and then get relegated again?
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You're right. Boneheads the lot of them. Some of them were spouting their nonsense at the AGM last year whilst heaping praise on Ken Anderson for leading us out of the wilderness.
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Seems like the SupportersTrust has forgotten and so has Iles. Not suprised in the least by either of them but for those who missed my earlier posting, here's a memoriam published in IOM Today.
EDDIE DAVIES 11th September 2018 One year has sadly passed. With treasured memories of a dearly loved husband. You are in my thoughts every day and I miss the love and laughter we shared for 32 years. With all my love, Sue.
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2 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:
We know Anderson marketed it as a £25M sale. That was leaked. Quite a few people from within seem to be saying that even before that Anderson had two good offers on the table the year before but refused both because he thought he could get more. I think what is clear is that any chance of any solvent deal was scuppered by Anderson's negotiation tactics and general behavior.
We know because it was leaked is hearsay but it is possible to get down to c£25m if you exclude deferred income and the remaining £10m of Eddie's old loans. That much would be obvious to any interested party.
Whether Eddie had or had not intended to write off the £10m is a moot point but I'd always thought he would and that he had left it on the books for tactical reasons but never expected to get it back.
The rest about 'good offers' is also hearsay. There's no shortage of chancers around but when push comes to shove 'proof of funds' frequently turns out to be a bit of a stumbling block.
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3 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:
Taking into account the disputed £7.5M and hotel and club debts combined that takes you to roughly the £40M figure for a solvent sale widely reported to have put off FV who were told by Anderson it was £25M does it not?
I'm not party to what exactly Anderson told FV but I do wonder why they would sign HOT's without at least looking at the last audited balance sheet, available FOC to anyone with the vaguest interest. These btw showed liabilities of £43.7m (including deferred income) and there was every reason to expect the debt to be increasing with every month that passed.
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21 hours ago, Casino said:
Christopher, if the debt was reduced from one year to the next, does that not say that we were profitable, albeit with no cash?
Sorry, I'm only skimming your post
Not exactly. Its quite possible for debts to be reduced, for example, by sale of assets, new equity investment or debt write off as Sluffy has pointed out. The sale of Madine would have reflected positively on the profit and loss account too but as most of it was needed to meet operating costs there wouldn't have been much of it left for debt reduction.
But all that's getting away from the point I was making that FIBS, Maguire, JME and Uncle Tom Cobley and all failed to notice the true facts about how much BWFC's ongoing losses had been substantially reduced under its rogue chairman and that FV didn't pull out first time round because they'd discovered a pile of unexpected debt.
Anyway today is the first anniversary of the death of Eddie Davies and there's an 'in memoriam' in IOM Today. You'll find it here:
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/iomtoday-uk/obituary.aspx?n=eddie-davies&pid=193861199
Can anyone tell me where I can find any mention of it in the Beeno?
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Just now, bwfcfan5 said:
Both Ken and EDT claimed they were owed 7M more than the debt reported by the administrators. Is that £14.5-15M the missing amount?
Not exactly. I believe that £7m was actually £7.5m but it was the same £7.5m. It was owed to KA who owed it to EDT but the administrators left most of it out, including only £1.6m for KA.
KA was never going to stand for that and so you had the two administrator scenario which only complicated matters further. Not to mention ratcheting up the admin costs.
The deferred income figures included in the £43m are also part of the explanation but lets not get too deep into the accountancy woods or we might easily lose the light of day.
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34 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:
Were they? Could you perhaps expand on this. Which auditors and what were the two amounts. I'm genuinely asking here - out of interest.
The auditors were Cowgill Hollloway who confirmed that at 30 June 2017 the Burnden Leisure Group (BL) owed £43.7m, £38.4m due in one year and £5.3m due in more than one year. (i.e the same £43m mentioned a few months ago on Talksport by Simon Jordan)
In July 2019 the administrators of BL and BWFC reported total debts of £26.5m whilst the administrators of Bolton Whites Hotel reported total debts of £7.7m (£5.5m to PBP, £1.2m inter-company debt and £1m other creditors.)
These bald figures on their own should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing. How come the debts had gone down, if a rogue chairman supported by the EFL had been running the club into the ground? It was a hypothesis broadcast far and wide with barely any questioning as to whether the allegations were true or false.
Explanation of all the figures is somewhat involved but it essentially boils down to the fact that Ken Anderson had not succeeded in achieving the virtually impossible task of making BWFC profitable but he had succeeded in substantially reducing the losses in the hope that the club would be more saleable. In the end that proved impossible and FV subsquently took over with both secured and unsecured creditors taking a scalping. They now have assets at a massive discount and could conceivably flip it at a substantial profit should someone else turn up with deep pockets and an overwhelming desire to own a football club with a nice ground, hotel and maybe some development prospects.
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17 hours ago, Casino said:
I think most had heard of michael james
Even if most wouldn't know him if they parked on his car parks
I would. I first met him 26 years ago at Burnden Park and he looks much the same now apart from his hair being grey.
MJ has had to wear two hats through all this whilst having to put up with the snipes of the ST peabrains and the snidey observations of Iles of the Beeno. I take my hat off to him. He's handled it all exceptionally well so far as I can see
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4 minutes ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
The comparison I make is that people who own clubs aren't always people you've heard of, nothing more. So I don't see how that's naive.
Id always said I was keeping an open mind until I saw the accounts. They never came.
Also I feel you have been rather creative in accounting for my post count. Its much nearer 2 thousand than 3 thousand, across a wide range of topics over six years so hardly prolific.
Certainly much less prolific than yourself with over 750 posts, almost exclusively on threads involving club finances and ownership, in less than a year.
If you can't see how naive it is to compare a man who spent his formative years on the terraces at Burnden Park watching Nat Lofthouse, Tommy Banks and Eddie Hopkinson and later went on to spend the neck end of £200m on the club he loved to bits with the new owners of BWFC you are to be pitied.
Open mind until you saw the accounts? Yes, of course, and my other leg has bells on.
Now I have to admit that my eyesight is not what it once was and in the feint typescript of the number count I misread a 3 as a 9. Please accept my apologies.
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11 hours ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
Who had heard of Eddie Davies before he started tipping up cash?
Comparisons with Eddie Davies, Abramovich and Glazers etc are naive at best but I have a simple question for you. Since BWFC had allegedly been run into the ground by a rogue chairman, did it not ring any alarm bells with you when the debts reported by the administrators were £millions less than those reported by the auditors two years previously? You are, I understand, a qualified accountant with getting on for nearly three thousand contributions to WW, so why did you say nothing?
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2 hours ago, bwfcfan5 said:
The supporters trust trying to pretend they saved the day is the most predictable thing since Bassini's claims of exposing massive collusion and wrong doing all just ....
Its still not entirely clear that Bassini's claims have 'mysteriously vanished' but what's mysteriously appeared is ownership/control of BWFC at a massive discount by folks nobody had previously heard of with no apparent prior interest in BWFC or footie at all. Not arguing for Bassini, heaven forbid, or against FV; just drawing attention to circumstances that seem to have largely escaped comment.
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2 minutes ago, Sluffy said:
The ST's last line of their statement amused me -
“While we can look forward to the future with a well-placed and renewed sense of optimism, I sincerely believe that a Supporter’s Trust is for life and not just the next crisis.”
I must have missed the involvement of the ST in saving us from oblivion over the last few months - they obviously justified why we needed them this time then and weren't as useful as the proverbial chocolate tea pot!
They're still refusing to account for the £20k or so 'fighting fund' they got worried fans to contribute to even now!
https://www.bwfcst.co.uk/update-on-the-fighting-fund/
Anyway a nice blurry picture of them and Sharron Brittan which they tweeted (they've clear not spent the fighting fund on a phone with a decent camera!).
Get your hands out of your pockets, Rigby!
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23 hours ago, Casino said:
Doubt it, if I'm honest
I doubt it too but here's a quote from today's Beeno;
'' The trust often found itself at loggerheads with Anderson – but Rigby believes there is scope for better communication with the Football Ventures consortium. ''
More spin than Lock and Laker has young Mr Iles.
The ST was ALWAYS at loggerheads with Anderson not least because the ST was in cahoots with Holdsworth. Thankfully it doesn't look like FV's funding will be repayable in full in a fortnight like Holdsworth's was.
It'll take Sharon five minutes to figure out for herself what a useless waste of space the ST is but I expect she might be a bit more restrained in spelling it out.
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On 06/09/2019 at 17:15, Carlos said:
Every fucker thinks they are a forensic accountant just because they can google Companies House. Basically.
It needed a piece of paper no bigger than a fag packet to conclude that there was no evidence whatsoever of any concealed increase in the club's debt that allegedly caused FV to withdraw their bid in February or whenever it was. And it doesn't take forensic accounting either to figure out that BWFC has new owners who have raised virtually all of their money on the security of assets bought, paid for and bequeathed by the late Eddie Davies.
Can anyone tell me which newspaper has ever explained any of this?
And is there someone somewhere capable of explaining the basics of business finance to Terence Rigby and his gang?
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9 minutes ago, Sluffy said:
Fwiw, what I've been talking about on this thread is all about the new start and what amount has been put into the company in order to short term fund it in order that we could even appoint a manager and bring players in!!!
Without it the club would not be able to trade!!!
I might be a shit fan but at least I know what needs to happens first in order to be able to appoint a manager and sign the players.
Clearly you don't.
You've more patience than me Sluffy. My God there are some dopes support BWFC. Not lived in Bolton for more than half my life and only missed a handful of home games in the last 25 years but I get increasingly depressed at the tripe I hear and read. And I can't see that there's the slightest indication of it getting better.
Eddie Davies was no better than he ought to be and Ken Anderson was the messiah was the general view expressed at what was probably the last ever AGM of Burnden Leisure. KA had made a lot of correct and essential decisions and got us through two critical years but ...
Smart people generally keep their thoughts to themselves which, I'm afraid, makes you and I a bit daft even bothering to try to explain anything rationally.
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35 minutes ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
Nobody thinks Ken should be on the hook for £35m and nobody is advocating the reintroduction of grotesque, medieval punishments conducted in the public domain.
For a self proclaimed independent voice of reason, you don't half exaggerate.
I know your an accountant but accountants are occasionally allowed time off to engage in a bit of parody, caricature or lampooning. You know it makes sense, leastways I hope you do.
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55 minutes ago, bwfcfan5 said:
Thankfully the court case has now become an irrelevance to us.
I expect there'll be more than a few hoping KA gets his comeuppance.
Bassini's an odd geezer for sure but he did come out with some interesting titbits in his garbled presentation at the Unibol the other week.
Paul Appleton seems to have taken it all a bit too personally imo. Couldn't help thinking that he might have had a cunning plan that didn't go acccording to plan.
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28 minutes ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
Don't know, if he is he's up against Inner Circle Investments. At the risk of being called an ostrich, I'll only be paying attention if its going to impact on BWFC.
Do you mean to say that you are not one of those who think that Ken Anderson should be hung drawn and quartered for his contemptible selfishness in failing to pay off BWFC's £35m debt and his utter incompetence in his failure to get someone else to do it?
P.S. Sorry, I meant Rod Liddle.
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57 minutes ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
Infamous press conference at Leicester where Pearson called a journalist an ostrich. Was quite high profile news at the time.
Your talk of people burying heads in the sand and your generalised hostility towards football journalists led me to think you may feel a sense of kinship towards him.
To be honest Chris it's disappointing having to explain the reference, since anyone with a rudimentary awareness of the football zeitgeist in recent times wouldn' t have required such basic guidance.
Called a journalist an ostrich? I'm sure they've been called worse.
I can't say I'm keen on journalists who write fake news, especially those intent on stirring up trouble. I sometimes read Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times; he can be quite entertaining. Last week he was telling his readers that BWFC was about to bought by Parminder Basran. Nowt prejudiced about it, he just wasn't up to speed and isn't employed full-time to write about BWFC.
Anyroad, isn't Bassini due back in court tomorrow? Be interesting to see what the legal eagles and the judge make of the latest developments
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14 hours ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
Take it you are in the Pearson for manager camp then?
Not sure I entirely understand your question. It seems to me that there's a certain amount of luck in appointing football managers. How long is the list of managers who've had success at one club only, in next to no time, been driven out of another?
Equally as important as team and player management is the ability to recognise talent especially when you are shopping in the bargain basement.
I hope our new owners get lucky because I think they deserve it but I can't see that they have a lot of personal experience to draw on.
Isn't Bassini due back in court tomorrow? Be interesting to see what the judge makes of it all now.
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12 minutes ago, RoadRunnerFan said:
We all reckon there should be. And we all reckon you're the man to do it. After all you are the totally unpretentiously named Man Who Watches The Watchman.
You are the only man with the intellect, knowledge, skill, experience, impartiallity, humilty, humanity, self awareness and tact to pull it off.
I'll write to Debbie Jevans and Nick Craig and recommend you immediately.
Can you do Bolton and Burys investigations or are you limited to one?
Kind of you to say so but its not for me. I still know what tripe looks like but I'm past my best before date.
Tact? Not enough really. Sometimes I lose patience with the excessively slow-witted and head-in-the-sand types.
Not forgetting Eddie ...
in Terrace Talk
Posted · Edited by Chris Custodiet
Yours is the typical response of the terminally evasive and isn't everything simple for the simple-minded?Just answer the first point first will you?