The modern day Grand Old Duke of York.

Posted on February 25, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

The first thing to do here is to record my thanks to Dave Sugarman for providing the means by which Cardiff City supporters who were unable to attend yesterday’s Extraordinary General Meeting were able to get an idea of what was said. Dave posted a very detailed report of the meeting on the Cardiff City.com messageboard and I would recommend that anyone who hasn’t read it already do so now because it is the best insight into Boardroom thinking at the club we have had in ages.

Before commenting on what I think all of this says about the people supporters are going to have to rely on to deliver us from the financial mess we are in, just a few brief thoughts on individual items that were discussed;-

1. Although it may just have been press speculation, I am sure I read that the House of Sport was going to provide an income stream for the club, but, leaving that aside, the explanations given make the land deal (which was the only formal item on the agenda yesterday) sound like something that is beneficial to Cardiff City at this time.

2. Peter Ridsdale says that we are only one of six Championship clubs that are attempting to be self sufficient. I can’t help thinking that we compare very poorly with the other five given that we have the highest average gate out of the six, three of these clubs have also moved into new grounds in the fairly recent past and the other two have had major ground reconstruction in the last decade. Okay, Plymouth have had their financial problems this year and we are higher in the table than most of them, but I am virtually certain that our wage bill is, comfortably, the highest of those six clubs – I would be very interested in an accountant’s view as to which is the least financially efficient club in that group of six.

3. Although, having worked in the place, the excuse that Companies House would not accept the form sent to them by the club confirming Dato Chan Tien Ghee’s (TG) appointment as a Director sounded pretty implausible to me, the news that TG has, almost certainly, invested more than double the reported £200,000 into the club is at least good news and seems to indicate that he is still involved in some way with the club.

4. On the face of it, Peter Ridsdale’s contention that “neither he nor the club’s other representatives have had any meaningful meetings with potential investors without revealing the club’s full financial liabilities” contradicts what he said at the meeting at the Municipal club on 30 November.

5. I take it that the £100,000 bonus mentioned as being paid to Peter Ridsdale is in addition to the one he got before the new ground scheme formally went unconditional in 2007? With additional bonuses going to two other directors as well for completion of the stadium only for us to be later told of unpaid bills for “fitting out” costs, it makes it very hard for this supporter to put the image of pigs at a trough out of his mind.

I could go on much longer about individual points from yesterday’s meeting, but I’ll leave it at that and now ask what do yesterday’s proceedings tell us about the people running Cardiff City? Well, my parents brought me up believing that you don’t buy things that you can’t really afford and that is a philosophy that, with a few exceptions, I have stuck to throughout my life with the result that I do not believe I suffered as much in the credit crunch as others did. Now, whilst I accept that it is stretching a point to make a comparison between an individual and the business that is a modern day football club, I can’t help thinking that a bit more of my parent’s type of thinking has been required at Cardiff City for the best part of a decade. Of course, it would be naive to think that any individual or business should never take the financial plunge so to speak, but isn’t the point that those in charge at Cardiff City have been doing that far more than, say, the people in charge of those five Championship clubs that Peter Ridsdale matched us with appear to have done?

I’ve always believed that the best way to win an argument is to use the other parties own words or actions against them and, with that in mind you only have to read that report of the meeting yesterday to see that Ridsdale and co are hanging themselves with their own rope. For a start, you have Peter Ridsdale admitting that the plan had been to sell two players in the summer (he’d obviously forgotten that we sold Paul Parry as well as Roger Johnson) and yet we started buying when we sold the first of those players (worse than that, we had committed ourselves to paying for Michael Chopra before we had sold anyone). When we were unable to sell Ledley or McCormack last summer we had lumbered ourselves with more debt and, whilst I appreciate that supporters like myself would have moaned like anything at the time, wouldn’t the more prudent course of action have been to hang fire on signings like Hudson, Quinn and Gerrard and look to use the loan market more like teams such as Stoke have done in the past?

On a similar theme, both Peter Ridsdale and Alan Flitcroft made reference to a written agreement for anything between £2 and £6 million to have been received from new investors which had not been honoured, but, once again, the club have been budgeting for, or, even worse, spending money that it didn’t have. With particular reference to the now notorious golden ticket scheme, and given that we have now had it confirmed that the club have been the subject of a transfer embargo since the Autumn, weren’t the Board being either naively incompetent or dishonest in “guaranteeing” what they did based on a promise of investment which had first surfaced in August but had still not arrived yet in December and January?

However, the most telling thing for me is that, as Peter Ridsdale pointed out himself yesterday, we were waiting for incoming transfer fees and investment “against a backdrop of the club having to find money to build and fit out the stadium, meet repayments on loans to former directors, make repayments on the debt owed to PMG and make repayments to the Langston Corporation”! Now, I am an emotional football fan and so am not financially au fait enough to earn £300,000+ pa (after tax), but doesn’t all of that make the decision to spend £2 million (at the very least) in the transfer market last summer a ridiculously poor business decision? Against the “backdrop” that Peter Ridsdale talks about, isn’t the decision to hire, another, stadium manager and a press officer another example of poor decision making in financial and business terms?

Those charged with running the finances of our club are paid more than most of us because, we are told, they possess a knowledge of the relevant subject matter that we do not and yet, since at least last summer, they have been making decisions in their alleged field of expertise that even a financial novice like me can see are deeply flawed. The consequences of these blunders are there for all to see – a transfer embargo and a third winding up order of the season confirmed yesterday and all the while all they can offer is the hope that the major new investors that they have failed to attract in the past three and more years will turn up in the next few weeks.

We are being led by the modern day equivalent of the Grand Old Duke of York who has marched the club to the top of the hill which was the Cup Final and work starting on the new ground only for him now, just as he did at Leeds, to be marching us all the way back down again – trouble is I get the feeling that the return journey is going to take far longer and be much more dangerous than the way up was!

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Mama told me there’d be days like these.

Posted on February 21, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

Well I woke yesterday, turned on my computer in the morning, went straight to my favourite Cardiff City messageboard and one of the first messages I read was from a respected poster who tends to be right about these sort of things saying that, even if we overcome the current winding up order from HMRC next month, Cardiff City Stadium (which, as far as I can gather is effectively Cardiff City FC when it comes to this sort of thing) are going to face another one in April from a company claiming that we owe them several hundreds of thousands of pounds for unpaid bills relating to the catering equipment used in the stadium. I take it that this is separate to the mysterious “fitting out” costs of anything up to £7 million for the new stadium claimed to be owed by the football club?

Still, it was a match day and at least there would be some football to take my mind of our financial woes. In fact, there were two City games to watch. At midday (actually a bit later than that because the game didn’t kick off until about 12.15 for some reason) the Academy team took on Aston Villa at Leckwith and, following their dismal 5-1 trouncing by Spurs a fortnight ago, turned in a far better showing against another Premiership side’s Under 18s only to end up losing again.

This time though the margin of defeat was only 1-0 and, over the ninety minutes, the City youngsters could count themselves unfortunate not to have ended up with a draw. After an ominous first ten minutes which saw a lot of Villa possession and pressure, City went on to dominate the rest of the first half with only a quick break down the City’s left by the visitors which led to their left winger meeting the cross with an angled shot which hit the outside of the upright representing a threat to their goal during this period. By comparison, City forced plenty of corners and from one of them Ibby Farah had a fine volley turned aside by the Villa keeper, from another Nat Jarvis was foiled by some last ditch defending and there were also a couple of clearances off the line by the hard pressed Villa defence during this time.

For a while, it looked as if the second half would see more of the same as Jarvis’ well struck effort from outside the penalty area was deflected just over the bar, but Villa then began to turn the tide as they started to retain the ball better and they scored the only goal around the hour mark when their tiny, but skillful, number ten found the centre forward who made a bit of room for himself being firing past Reece Ottley from about ten yards. After that, City were never able to raise their game to first half levels and it was all quite comfortable for Villa. There was a free kick from captain Jon Meades which drew a save from the Villa keeper and a header just wide from a corner, but it wasn’t to be for the City and it needed a great tackle by Meades and a fine save from Ottley from the follow up to keep the losing margin down to one (although, truth be told, Villa never offered too much of a goal threat throughout a game in which Meades, Jarvis and right back Luke Cummings were the stand out City players for me).

Still, the Academy game was just the starter, there was still the main course against a Barnsley team that had lost it’s last three matches to come, but after about twelve minutes it had become obvious that the fare being provided was going to be flat, stodgy and bland. Twelve minutes was all it took for Michael Chopra to first almost knock the ball out of the ground from about four yards out as City started brightly and then be given a lesson in the art of finishing by Barnsley’s Maltese International striker Daniel Bogdanovic with the second of his goals especially being beautifully tucked away.

In saying that though, Bogdanovic was certainly helped along the way by some awful defending by our centrebacks as two very ordinary looking high balls through the middle left him clear on goal both times. After the West Brom match I argued that our current lack of inventiveness in central midfield might make a long ball approach our best attacking option, well having seen those two goals yesterday and Drogba’s goal last week, it seems that Gabor Gypes in particular is struggling to cope with straightforward looking long high balls down the centre of the pitch, but, then again, I suppose most Championship central defences are better organised than ours has been lately.

City never really suggested they could come back in the rest of the first half as Chopra’s shocking early miss remained the closest we came to a goal in the opening forty five minutes, but it was typical of the way the game was going that on a couple of occasions when City were showing some promise going forward, the ref got in the way to slow things down.

After the break though, the team at least showed some attacking urgency for a while with the woodwork being hit twice and visiting keeper Steele being forced into some good saves, but after Gavin Rae’s effort stayed out after hitting the underside of the crossbar, it was if both fans and players realised it was going to be one of those days – I’m still trying to work out quite how I didn’t see either of the two City teams I watched yesterday find the net!

That said, although you got the feeling that if they could have scored during that five minutes when they really had Barnsley under the cosh in the second half City would have got something out of the game, they didn’t deserve anything from it really as they gave a tired and lacklustre performance which strongly suggested that playing the same players (some of whom’s fitness was at least questionable) game in, game out had finally caught up with them. It can only be hoped that having just the one match in the next two weeks will enable a few players to get fit and for some batteries to be recharged for a March programme which, frankly, looks too much for our overstretched resources to cope with.

I think the normal “we were shit” comments that we see after every defeat are particularly harsh in this case. Since the turn of the year, the players have done supporters proud with the effort and commitment they have shown in the face of injury, illness and off field distractions and perhaps those so quick to have a go at Dave Jones and his players should consider the following before being too critical of what happened yesterday.

In the four matches we have played in the Championship since the January transfer window closed, the opposing teams have had a total of NINETEEN players they recruited last month in their squads and, as Peterborough have brought another one in since they played us, we are on average facing sides who have five new players available whereas we have to continue on with an already far too small squad which is missing three first choice players with medium to long term injuries.

That is what we are having to compete against week after week and that is why it was particularly galling to hear our Chairman telling the nation what a fantastic job he is doing in his interview on Five Live yesterday. I’m sure that if it is true that there is another winding up order to come in April, Mr Ridsdale will already have worked out what sort of spin to put on that story and, if the questioning is as bland as it has been from different BBC employees in the past week, I am sure outsiders will be convinced by what he says. However, if you are unfortunate enough to be a supporter of one of the three clubs he has been associated with, you will know that they are just mere words – the reality is quite, quite different.

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