Everybody set for the eclipse later? I got my certified eclipse viewing glasses through in the post last week before the rush but I will also be taking a colander with me because I still don’t want to be spending that long looking at The Sun. Camping chairs - check. Farmhouse cider - check. Viewing spot identified - check nice west-facing slope backed by woodland so I can witness the effect on wildlife.

There is very little, if any, correlation between 'making sense' and things the EFL do

Would have made more sense to move Burton match to 25/26 Aug and played Fulham on 2 Sep, leaving Wigan unchanged.

Whose safer ? A bank or go for the riskier 11.50 nore a year option:-)

Dazzer- B-rated bonds are yielding about 9.5%, we are not rated but if we were then there is absolutely no way we would be anywhere close to B-rated, so our market yield would be well over 10%. In reality there probably aren’t many bonds on offer from companies with financials like us, as if there were nobody who did any sort of credit analysis would buy them.

Brad Galinson is an American investor who owns Gillingham. He has provided a £7m interest free loan to help cover Gillingham's £13m losses since he bought the club in 2022.

Why guilt trip fans into pumping more money in if there are plenty of investors knocking on the door?

Well we could of sold the club 17 months ago and there is plenty of interest in investors and buyers. Having watched the club podcast earlier

DD. Ta

Many FTSE-100 companies yield over 5% - highest is Legal & General at about 7.25% (and they have a good record of increasing the payment each year). PLB is an investment, but, purely as an investment, not a very good one.

OI - I am getting 7 and 8% through Zopa and my bank presently, so a bond at 5% is not that attractive to me to generate extra cash. Eeven had Natioanwide offer me 6.5% today.

5 year gilts are about 4.5% so you add your risk premium onto that. I'd price our current risk premium somewhere between 6 and 8% so I'd see a fair rate at 10.5 to 12.5. An external investment that included guaranteed 'working capital' for several years would reduce that considerably so let us hope that is what will be announced before long.

Nick - where are you seeing 10%+ bond interest rates !

On a separate but related point, iirc the same survey suggested bond repayments in 2027 would be £1.7m, and I suspect actual number will be closer to £2.5m

DD- we shall see, perhaps I will be proved wrong and there will be a late rush of donations. I am definitely in the “no way” category now, as this makes no sense as a rational investment and I no longer feel motivated to donate to support fan ownership, which is now transparently a sham given the flaws in the election process. Fair play, though, to those who are still believers and willing to put up their money to support this.

Nick: hard to know, really, although maybe there is expertise out there on how people actually behave relative to pledges. Airsy, if an investor thinks we lack liquidity to meet our obligations, and that all their money will be consumed by debt repayment (and may still not be enough), then that will discourage them from investing.

DD- fair enough, though I think that assuming that we would get over 50% of what people said they would give in a casual survey was still highly imprudent, given that at thus point this is somewhere between a donation (the market rate for debt of this kind would be well over 10% not the 5% on offer) and a gamble on us being taken over. In fairness you might reasonably hope to raise 20% of what people “pledged” (£600k) and we will probably get to that, but 50%+ was never going to happen.

Ryan McLean has just been signed by Worcester City- quite a drop in standard for him.

I may be missing something, or be a bit dim, but how does the show of how well our fans raise money make us look stronger to potential investors?

There is about $257,000,000,000 available to invest in Liverpool FC: [Link]

To be fair, Nick, they (not quite) halved the amounts people indicated in the survey. One thing the DT could usefully do (if the data captured from the survey can be used in this form) is remind people how much they individually indicated they would subscribe for. I think I've subscribed for what I indicated, but it's not like I took a record of how I filled in the survey.

I said no chance in the survey so have not 'misled' anyone. I'm too old, not sure I'll be there to collect in 5 years but more I don't trust our leadership to keep us out of administration and the point they steer very clear of making is that administration means your investment is gone.

If we really budgeted the new PLB purely based on replies to a survey saying “ would you invest in a new PLB?” that is incredibly negligent- there is always going to be a massive shortfall between people casually saying that they will do something in a survey and actually paying the cash over. To some extent the PLB now is a gamble on the club being taken over - if this happens then bond holders will be repaid, if it doesn’t then I think that any money put into the PLB will be at least partly lost, as without investment we will be very unlikely to avoid administration. The point about “we have always paid our debts on time up to now” could have been said by most bust companies, right up until the day that they defaulted and is absolutely no indication of what will happen in the future.

Keefy, there's loads of money around but we live in a "have & have nots" world. Take a wander or drive round here! But it's one thing people responding to an online survey and another thing parting with the readies ...

That bond email I just got through is a bit worrying! Hopefully they people who said they would reinvest will do so!