What I don’t understand is what is Pozzo’s end game? If no one is prepared to meet his asking price then he must either reduce his price or continue to support the club. If he does neither and the club becomes insolvent then the directors have a legal responsibility to place the club in administration. Instantly devaluing the club further. Assuming Pozzo is the first ranking secured creditor (though Macquarie is more likely), he could then appoint a Receiver. But whether it’s a receiver or an administrator, both are independent and will likely seek a buyer for the club, rather than a wholesale liquidation of the club assets, the biggest of which is the ground. But no one’s buying that if they can’t be confident they get planning permission to use the site for anything other than a football stadium. Therefore the likely scenario is the club is sold at price lower than Pozzo’s investment and he loses money. Surely it gets to a point where he just needs to recover what he’s owed (£50m?), and walks away, rather than holding out for an unrealistic £170m? It’s obvious he wants out and interested buyers will know this, further reducing any offer they make. It doesn’t make sense or am I missing something?
I think it's somewhat grasping, somewhat pragmatic short-term thinking, isn't it? In which he takes steps to claw back as much of his investment outside of a sale, with at least some awareness that the policies he has pursued have made said sale at any value acceptable to him/close to his investment far less likely. So, instead, he bites on to the neck of the club and slowly leeches it out through its veins/the natural processes of a club; player trading. Like a vampire.
I really don’t feel I can add much to the many many good words already written here since yesterday’s latest disappointments. Incompetence is quite obviously not a good trait, being crooked or dodgy is even worse, but personally I find indifference to be just as bad sometimes. So many many good people care about our football club. It’s so awful that the one person who can really make positive decisions that will brighten up all our lives seems so indifferent to it all. In the past we’ve had incompetent owners, rank bad owners, allegedly crooked owners but in a funny way at least we all usually knew where we were with them, even if it wasn’t necessarily a good place to be. Now it just seems to be decay and silence, suspended in a kind of limbo where we know our owner is capable of better because we’ve had good years under him and the nagging hope that it could be better in the future if only he’d manage to sell up and leave, but right now neither is happening and we are stuck in a malaise that benefits nobody. So sad.
My mum has been going to games before ET bought the club and GT was in charge. She has never felt so disconnected and apathetic to the club that she is seriously considering not renewing this year, especially if / when Cleverley is sacked as it's clear they're setting him up as a fall guy.
And me…as you might be able to tell, my first game was towards the end of the 1962/3 season and I’ve been going ever since. Not always all games as I couldn’t afford it when younger and work/family stopped me going to every home game for a while. When possible, I bought a ST and even during the Kirby Relegation & dropping to Div4 ‘not being bothered to go’ never happened. If I could get there, I always got there. I’ve had my current ST since 2001 and I will not renew for next season. It’s affected me to the extent I’ve missed more games than I’ve been to this season simply because I couldn’t be bothered to go. The creeping disconnect has now become a chasm that only Pozzo getting out could fill in. After our relegation in 2020 (which was clearly down to Pozzo buying Sarr rather than 2 more CBs), whilst furious at how he’d farked up, I decided he deserved a chance to prove ‘lessons had been learned’. Fluke of flukes, we went up again so I parked my disenchantment for a while. However the state of the next Prem squad that Duxbury claimed he thought was ‘competitive’ rang alarm bells again. Signing Bayo for what Pozzo would not pay for Toney was the beginning of the severing of the final strands of belief for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if the signature on a certain Harvard Business Degree Certificate were not identical to that on an infamous HSBC letter.
Adeyemo finally fit again and playing for the U21s today, that'll be Tom's backup striker sorted. In Pozzo's eyes at least.
Louza put up a picture on Instagram near the deadline with his head tucked into his shirt, looking exasperated. Think we all echo that sentiment.
That asking price of £170m is just a decoy. His goal is to try and bleed out as much as possible of the the £52m + interest that he has invested in the club. Baah, Chakvetadze, Louza, Vata are all sellable assets, maybe even Porteous if he has a good loan spell. There's also been whispering about Gino being annoyed that Tom hasn't played Doumbia enough, which makes sense because he's potentially another sellable asset. Dele-Bashiru, Andrews, Pollock and even Kayembe might raise a bit of cash as well. All in all, he can probably get around £35-40m back and then threaten to drive the club out of business. There will be a huge uproar and someone will come in and rescue the club by coughing up the last £15m to take it off Gino's hands while we drift into League One and League Two. Looking forward to next season with a core squad of Ngakia, Morris, Sissoko, Ince and a dozen academy kids.
So what you’re saying to me is that Gino was in cahoots with the ref on Saturday to get Bayo sent off?
Have often wondered that if by some miracle a buyer was found in the not too distant future, it would be at a time when the transfer window was open (most likely the summer) so any rough diamonds inexplicably still on the books (such as Baah) could be transferred over to Udinese, leaving the new owners with the absolute bare bones of a squad.
When you put it like that £52mil sounds a lot better and more do-able than £170mil. I would even predict our current players are worth more than your £40mil Really depends on how realistic Gino is or should I say stubborn!
I’ll probably get stick, but I wouldn’t mind. Start again, provided the new owners are not crooks, start again, big recruitment drive, new blood. We might get relegated, I’d be disappointed sure but IF we had owners who communicated and didn’t bare-face lie, didn’t do dodgy ****, then I’d have faith we’d eventually climb back up again. And we’d be better for it. That would feel 100x better than promotion to the Prem under these lot.
I'd definitely take the new owner option, no question. It was more about how that particular action, should it ever occur, being Pozzo's final eff you to the club/supporters etc and leaving us well and truly worse off than when he arrived.
Who would buy the club if the Pozzos asset stripped all the decent players? That logic doesn't make any sense
Yeah footballers are not assets. You cannot get a more depreciating "asset" than a footballer. What else on Earth would you buy for £50,000,000 that is guaranteed to be worth £0 five years from purchase.
