A piece I never thought I’d write.

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13 Responses to A piece I never thought I’d write.

  1. Howard Davies says:

    Totally agree, also no Tan, no club and the quicker “fans” come to accept that the better.

  2. Geoff Lewis says:

    Paul,
    A well written response to yesterday’s meeting. I agree with you he cannot blame the two previous managers wholly for the transfer spend and the number of players that came into the club. This as you said would need to be authorised by the Chairman, Chief Executive, the Board etc.
    Not sure on this one. Will the transfer embargo now be lifted, once the Annual Accounts are submitted with part of the debt being converted to equity? Perhaps Keith on one of the other message boards can advise?
    Regards
    Geoff

  3. The other Bob Wilson says:

    Thanks for your replies Howard and AMO. Geoff, I raised the subject of when the embargo could be lifted on the messageboard and Keith replied – my understanding is that the Football League will accept accounts covering the period 1/6/15 to 31/3/16, rather than for the full year. Therefore, as long as they are in order, the embargo could be lifted before the transfer window opens again for the summer.

  4. Geoff Lewis says:

    Paul,
    Thanks for coming back to me. Good news all round for our Club then.
    Regards
    Geoff

  5. russell says:

    I feel the two previous managers had good experience of the market place much more knowledge of the situation than Tan. He simply naively trusted them. As for the debt thanks.
    As for Slade well done.

  6. Lisztomania says:

    Whilst not wishing to diminish the impact of the horrible mistaken rebrand and the partially justified vilification of Vincent Tan as its architect I cannot help but think that the disillusionment and subsequent disappearance of fans has so much more to do with the miserable way we have declined on the pitch and served up incessantly disappointing spectacles for the paying customers to suffer. After the inevitable bursting of the Premier League bubble the past two years on the field have driven away the supporters many of whom were only introduced to the club in the Dave Jones years and so we are left with those of us who are so dyed in the bluebird wool as to have no choice other than to continue turning up on a Saturday in the vain hope of being entertained. Conversely if we start seeing the promised 40 shots converted regularly into goals and wins the lost will return and with them a new generation of bluebirds. ‘Twas ever thus!

  7. Hi Paul. Thank you for an extremely well written, objective and informative piece. My reply to you will come from a purely personal perspective.
    Ever since I was able to lob a stuffed toy at my brother I have loved football. It was my all consuming passion. My father, a Blackpool fan, instilled this love of the game into myself and my brother. But, for the last few years I have found my love for the game diminishing to the point where I rarely watch it on tv now.
    At this point I want to state that I am no bandwagon fan. My first match was at Ninian in Feb93 against Doncaster on a freezing cold, wet Tuesday evening. Along with about 3000 others, we roared the boy’s to a 1-1 draw. I loved it and the club. So. What has changed? Well it’s not Mr Tan or Russell Slades management. It is the malaise that has spread through football in general. I am talking about the billions of pounds that are needed to compete or just survive in the game. I now feel alienated by ridiculous wages, high ticket prices etc. I am in no way jealous. I just don’t recognise the game I used to love any more.
    Unfortunately I don’t have any cure or answer for this. But I truly fear for the future, especially the time when billionaires become bored with football and look for something new to play with. So. It is with sadness and find memories that I look back to the game that I loved so much and close my eyes in fear of what may come to pass.
    Jez.

  8. Tom says:

    Great write up, sums up my feelings on the situation. I still can’t stand Tan and his arrogance, but if he delivers this promise then i’ll happily give him the credit he’s due. It’s a big commitment, and as you say there are still some practical questions to be answered but i feel a lot more optimistic about the club now than i did this time last week!

    I think there are a lot of fans who will never return to the club, but a large number who, given a decent promotion push and one or two more faces (and a manager!) they can get behind that would be willing to give things another go.

    Onwards and upwards!

  9. MIKE HOPE says:

    Paul, congratulations on a brilliant summary of the current Tan situation.
    I speak as someone who has been embarrassed and , at times, ashamed of the xenophobic attitude of many of our fans towards a person who, admittedly, not for philanthropic reasons,has firstly rescued us from administration and then gone on to invest millions in a failed attempt to establish us as a Premier League team.
    I do not claim to be an expert on FFP but my understanding is that although the maximum amount of losses that can be covered by a debt to equity conversion in any one year is currently £8million this does not prevent a much larger sum being converted.
    In other words if Mr Tan converts £68 million in the next few weeks the first £8million will help us to comply with FFP and the remainder will be part of his promise to make us debt free.
    You are right of course in saying that to be debt free in five years time we also need to at least break even in our trading during the annual £8million debt to equity conversions.
    Plenty of scope for arguments on how to achieve this!

  10. The other Bob Wilson says:

    Thanks, especially to those who have made their first contribution on here, for a set of replies overnight which cover a good range of emotions that capture well the differing views on our team currently. Russell, it may well be unfair, but I think a change of manager would stand a better chance of bringing more of the missing thousands back than debt to equity conversions. My own view is that I’d take the latter over the former because, although, I’m not convinced by Rusell Slade, I can see that he’s not done a bad job overall in testing circumstances. However, I just don’t see it working out for him at Cardiff because significant numbers didn’t accept him from day one – I’m not sure there’s much he can do to change such feelings.
    Lisztomania, I believe you have mentioned the single biggest reason for our decline in attendances. They hardly amount to scientific proof, but Wales Online have had a couple of polls early on and in the middle of this season asking what was the reason for people deciding to stop going to games – on both occasions “boring football” was a comfortable winner. Just before Christmas 2014, I made a decision to not renew my season ticket if we were still wearing red in 15/16. That decision was made a lot easier by the awful route one stuff our team, which cost an absolutely fortune in transfer fees and wages, was playing every week (they weren’t very good at it either!) – I wouldn’t blame anyone who said they’d had enough at that time because we were absolutely woeful for about two months either side of Christmas last season. The sad thing is, although I find this squad maddening at times, the football is generally a lot more watchable this season, but I suppose we need the results to go with the entertainment to tempt those who had got bored back.
    Jeremy, I can sympathise with and, to a degree, understand your feelings. It would have been unthinkable five years ago, but I often don’t bother with televised football now (particularly in the evenings). I don’t get BT Sports any more so I can no longer watch Champions League Football – I don’t miss it in the slightest because the last thing it is is a tournament for Champions (I only get vaguely interested in it is in it’s latter stages when it becomes more like the much better competition it replaced). Conversely, what I miss about BT Sports is flicking though the channels and finding a non league game to watch – I think that I have a milder version of your condition in that I find such games to be a return to my roots so to speak, far away from what modern football at the top levels has become.
    Tom, i agree with you about there being significant numbers of fans (many in the “diehard”, long established category) who we’ll very rarely, if ever, see back watching the City – I suppose what I’d like to see now is evidence of the club’s hierarchy learning from the mistakes they’ve made in the past (to be fair, I do believe they are trying hard to be more in tune with the fans these days) and a recognition of such behaviour from those supporters whose attitude towards the club now could be described as intransigent.
    Mike, you are right about the FFP regulations. I always post my pieces on a City website I use and I had a reply from Keith Morgan who, for me, is THE man to talk to about football finances – here’s what he had to say;-

    “On your FFP point , the explanation is as follows.

    In the current 2015/16 season Championship clubs are allowed to make a loss of £5m and still comply with FFP rules. This figure goes up to £13m if the £8m difference is matched by an equity injection by the owner. There is no bar on or penalty for injecting more than that figure , just no benefit for FFP purposes.

    What the extra £60m debt to equity conversion will do of course is hugely improve the club`s balance sheet position. The additional £10m write off of debt and other factors such as the profit on Joe Mason`s sale should enable the 2015/16 accounts to show a profit on top of that which is due to be published next week re the 2014/15 season. As a consequence , I would expect the balance sheet as at 31 May 2016 to show that the club has more assets than liabilities for the first time for ages.
    From season 2016/17 onwards , the FFP rules change again such that the financial performance of clubs is monitored as an average over a 3 year period rather than just season by season , with a cap on allowable average annual losses of £13m.

  11. Dai Woosnam says:

    Paul,
    I feel totally vindicated in my longstanding belief in Sir Vincent.
    The plain facts of the matter are that he is far more the “English gentleman” than any amount of Lord Lucans or Lord Archers could ever be.
    Of all the things he said – and methinks he’d been drinkly deeply at the well of the great “Sir” Charles Hughes with his de facto praise for POMO football – the comments regarding that dreadful bounder Sam Hammam most struck a chord with me.
    I urge South Wales Police to leave no stone unturned in seeing if we have a case against him.
    If you want to know a man who brought ridicule on the club, look no further than a chap who almost invades the back of the net while the game is on, has a totally unsavoury character as a personal minder, and insults other Welsh clubs by telling anyone who will listen, that Cardiff City is basically the totality of Welsh football…that club and nation are synonymous.
    Jeez…some of us have fled to Grimsby to avoid the worst excesses of nationalism. We needed this malevolent character like we needed hemlock in our mother’s milk.

    As Sir Vincent says: he’d rather not think of that dreadful man…it spoils his day.

    A final word on the magnificent Mr Tan…the plain truth is that he is far too good a man for far too many so-called Cardiff City fans. Can these louts who have held up these dreadful “Tan Out” banners – and waved these flags of surrender while the team were struggling to avoid the drop from the EPL in a season I had been waiting half a century for – now go off and form their own club, FC Manchester or AFC Wimbledon style?

    I can give them a club name.

    Try “XENOPHOBES UNITED” on for size.

    DW.

  12. jonvw says:

    Paul

    Another well considered article. Thank you and keep them coming. I think most Cardiff City fans forget too easily the mess the club was in before Vincent Tan arrived. I don’t recall that there were many options and the talent was being quickly sold on. I suspect to avoid administration, Mr Tan was the only show in town. It feels to me he was actually a little naive maybe badly advised, but the premiership rollercoaster was an expensive experience. Whist i do much appreciate the writing off of debt, he has kept his word, but it has come late after the rebrand. Hence the fans obvious disappointment. I dont think his communication has always been good around his vision or expectations. Again this has not helped build confidence with fans.
    As for Russell Slade , it feels to me he has done a good job in trying circumstances. But i agree he will likely move on. Will his successor be given more of a chance or do any better with whatever restrictions apply to him

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