TF - his email to them to begin with was a bit shitty though (see underneath)

Not verified or fact checked but interesting/hilarious: [Link]

Agreed Laurence, we need to keep people with experience of running businesses on the Board, not letting them get frustrated or frozen out. Has anyone heard about either the governance review or the election review (I would have hoped Shane would have been kept up to date on the latter but that is probably silly of me)?

Alan I very much doubt we’ll get the money back. But to have no communication out to members about the situation or how it’s been resolved or measures taken to prevent it recurring - just absolute silence not even an official “due to x, y and z we will not be commenting” is just absurd but unfortunately not surprising from the current leadership. Honestly the decision making and leadership we’ve seen since just before Erik left has been of such low calibre it really concerns me that anyone seeking to put money in may be put off completely when they get into discussions with the likes of.*

Is the annual interest on bond payments something like £400K? Presumably that'd mainly go into our playig budget once bonds are paid off, along with some / most of the 'working capital' being provided by investors, so hopefully we can dream of having a playing budget that is actually vaguely competitive in L1.

I fear the missing £400,000 is gone for good, let's face it, if the recipient of that money had it, wanted to or had the good grace to admit they were in the wrong, they'd have returned it by now. My guess, and it can only be that, is they feel in the right to keep it, legal bills aren't cheap and anybody who believes they have a right to keep it will. The opaqueness surrounding this is worrying.

REPD suggested: A good start would be the next elections, where people with actual business backgrounds get to stand, and get elected. Erm , we had three on the DT Board, but they got chased away.

ok pay bond holders off , maybe get our missing 400k back, get relegated , a possibilty of forced administration, How our Trust has failed over the years! A bit of a conundrum.

If the financial strategy is to redeem all/most debts, then we save £400k (or just under) pa. Add ticket price increases to that and the DTb and we will be close to breakeven on a CASH basis (eg exc depreciation) which will resolve the cash bleeding away. Other initiatives will be needed and don't expect a competitive L1 playing budget

Keefy, then how do we pay off £2.5m+ bond redemption next year?

If I were a potential investor I’d want 100% say on where that money is spent. Sadly I don’t feel this is something to which the club is going to be willing to concede. I’d therefore want to know how the club could guarantee that half a million wouldn’t go missing never to be discussed again.

RK potential investors will not will not continual to fund us if we drop out of the league. We could not fund Plough Lane if we did. A competitive squad will give us the chance to survive and keep supporters onside.

Keefy, no I hope not, money from one-off items like share purchases MUST go to one-off expenditure items, the obvious one being debt/bond repayment. That's one of the basic rules of financial management. If you use one-off income to fund ongoing operational costs, it will run out and quickly, you're back where you are

Trigger, very confusing got the email conveying the results of the first . No link for a second vote. We go on as usual . Glad 50+1 went through but will we get any money quickly to maybe strengthen squad for 1st or 2nd division.

Given the lack of proof reading, can you be sure it was the right return address...my views nobody else's.

Thanks Trig. Oh well. Hope for the best, I 'spose.

Pads I think it comes down to the crapness of the voting link that the trust put out. Not sure if you remember but it was badly worded, badly structured and GCSE fail level of communication. As usual. But within that I think you could essentially vote for each round on the same link. So I suspect (but can’t be certain) that if you voted via that link then you voted twice already.

Great piece Rob, particularly liked this passage, A good start would be the next elections, where people with actual business backgrounds get to stand, and get elected. Perhaps some of its current semi-irrelevance is because it’s seen as a cross between the Department of Administrative Affairs and a local branch of the Green Party. It needs to up its game, and if it drives away the wannabe politicians and Gender Studies students then even better.

So just us and Keefy who didn't get a second vote?

Agreed OI and as I’ve stated a few times I have zero faith in the people who are supposed to be leading these negotiations to get it right. Something so crucial to the survival of the club let alone the ongoing performance capability shouldn’t be entrusted to people who have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they are not up to the task and are not to be trusted to bring information faithfully to members.

Good article Rob. What still seems very unclear to me is the 'working capital' situation aka covering our ongoing losses. How keen is someone buying in going to be in covering losses if we can use our 50%+1 to force through a policy they hate? OK, they can threaten to withdraw but that would probably just cause administration and value their investment at zilch. So the key thing for me when/if we do have a beauty parade is what are the arrangements on working capital and how firmly tied in are our investors?

That’s an excellent write up Rob and you have articulated well some things I have felt for a while.

Good piece, Rob

Is the Sunday sport still going ?

Could someone less senile explain this DT vote thingy to us? The last email we got, on 27th March, said that we would get a survey re the second vote in due course. We didn't. Now everyone seems to think it's all gone through. Did they have so many proxy votes that they didn't need ours to meet the criteria?