What a brilliant game 🤪 [Link]

This is all so predictable and you could see coming as soon a NPL was built. The way the club voting is set up the vocal minority were always going to win and we were always only ever going to tailspin into administration and have no control over who the club was sold to because that was the only way any decision was going to be made. The decision was going to have to be taken out of the enshriners hands because they have crippled the decision making process. The naivety will eventually kill the club because "we are never selling out" but "I don't have a way forward" just doesn't cut it

TF - I think we'll see a little bit of brinkmanship with any potential new investor (if the Bertrand Boys can't find anyone else), with some "unpopular" choices needing to be made in terms of the non-football side of things. The thing is, I'm sure when the first public meeting was made, one of the SSF people said that AFCW had potential for growth that many other clubs didn't...

I hope you're right. Fascinating to see how this all plays out.

TF - any enshriner who gets on the DTB will suddenly stop being an enshriner when the club's actual position is laid out in front of them

To misquote Oscar Wilde - "The only thing worse than a £3m unsecured loan is no £3m unsecured loan".

Still getting that damn "[Link] error message on my pc.

Yeah the bit I struggle with is the path from minority investor to full owner. Especially if some enshriners stand for election this year and our constitutional rules which might make full sale nigh on impossible without the pain of administration.

Trigger - minority investors, at least in name.

New owners or new minority investors?

Morning all. TBH I expect we'd have gone into admin long before National League South ever appeared on the horizon. Though of course it's anyone's guess who would buy us then, and in what shape the club will be in...

Agreed Nick. Seems like last chance saloon for us as a club. £3 million probably buys us another 12 months to finalise an investment. If we are unable to do so its options 2 or 3 of your 8.32 post.

Boing

My guess is that that agreeing £3m facility referred to in the AGM papers is what we have had to do in order to prepare the accounts on a going concern basis (ie without that the directors would have to say that we wouldn't have funding at all to continue in business for a year from the date of approval of the accounts). It is definitely not going to be a stable source of funding for anything other than the very short term and I would expect (noting this is not disclosed) that the interest rate would be extremely high (well into double figures), as we don't have any option and are a very high risk borrower, so the lender can charge as much as they like.

Seems that today is one of those days where my dinosaur like qualities come to the rescue!

Also OTD today looks a little X-rated...

Be good if the DTB came out today with a nice update telling fans what is happening and contingency plans. There's been near silence from the DTB, they've held meetings but no recent updates.

Those accounts are pretty terrible and do support the assertion at the meeting that we are very close to no longer being viable (ie that wasn't just scaremongering). I think that the choices are really (1) find another investor very quickly (2) drop back to non league - NL South or below (and give up the stadium as we couldn't cover its costs at that level) or (3) administration and hope that we get bought out of that rather than being liquidated. The latest deal falling through can't be blamed on the DT but the fact that we left it way too late to start looking for outside investment definitely can.

Microsoft down. Know nothing about tech but I run a Chrome laptop and can use gmail Although i do know we are sliding into a mire.

Dorking Don, when was it ever any different ? It’s like watching paint dry. I think you have to go back to Euro 96 for the last time we were out of our seats……until Handbrake let the country down with his spot kick.

Getting embarrassing now

I’m at Optus Stadium, a fucking horrendous start to the ODI by England to put it mildly!!!

No such thing as an unsecured loan when you have assets, is there? And who has offered it? I assume it’s not Barclays or Natwest.

We don’t even know how much Dave Boyle was paid to write the new constitution but we do know that he was paid.

A £3m unsecured loan is rolling the dice on getting external investment. Because it is unsecured doesn't mean the lender can't sue for recovering it, especially as there are assets to sell to raise the repayment. i.e. the stadium, which our constitution will not allow so we will be screwed.