[Archived] Rovers Trust/Action Group/Ians

[Ste B]

as with most threads on this website people pick up parts of a reply from somebody they don't like and run with that, conveniently ignoring the rest.

Somebody referred to the money paid to the Rovers Trust "as a right con", but lets not pick that up eh!

I would hope people have just decided not to feed the troll.

[T J Hooker]

I don't think he meant it literally, i think he just meant it was like money for old rope(or something)

[Ribble Rover]

I would hope people have just decided not to feed the troll.

I ain't a troll mate. I've been a part of this site since early 2000's in one form or another. It's my opinion that any group taking a 10.00 per year subscription should be doing something at least.....

[yoda]

I ain't a troll mate. I've been a part of this site since early 2000's in one form or another. It's my opinion that any group taking a 10.00 per year subscription should be doing something at least.....

I wouldn't take it to heart RR, there seems to be a bit of tetchyness around the MB today, is that even a word before the grammar police start

[Mike E]

I wouldn't take it to heart RR, there seems to be a bit of tetchyness around the MB today, is that even a word before the grammar police start

'Tetchiness' maybe, I'm not sure

[Ste B]

I ain't a troll mate. I've been a part of this site since early 2000's in one form or another. It's my opinion that any group taking a 10.00 per year subscription should be doing something at least.....

New account ? Last few been banned by any chance ?

[ABBEY]

I wouldn't take it to heart RR, there seems to be a bit of tetchyness around the MB today, is that even a word before the grammar police start

aint dat da troof

[TBTF]

Well Seneca claimed they had a "well funded" bid on the table. Pretty certain Battersby, Wild, etc have nothing financially significant (talking 7 figures and NOT asset wealth but cash wealth) to invest by their own means. The question is who are the investors (which apparently is still on the table if Venkys were to listen) and that's exactly what they would be. Can't say "well funded" appears to apply to Sports Shield and would it be a similar investment model with Seneca? Probably.

Dean Holdsworth and a football agent versus an outfit like Seneca ???? I think you are talking chalk and cheese Vinjay to be perfectly honest from all I have read and heard about both of them.

The only thing that worries me is that its 5 years since that well funded bid and all that stuff .The decline of the club since then has been pretty horrific and we have lost a vast amount of our fan base. I would be amazed if those investors behind the Seneca bid are just sat there 5 years down the line waiting for the loons to respond which last time battersby was on the radio he said there had been no contact at all.

That's the big worry as I see it but might be completely wrong of course

[Ribble Rover]

New account ? Last few been banned by any chance ?

Forgot passwords, changed devices etc....no bans.

[Blackburn Ender]

I'm glad Stuart reactivated this thread, and thanks to the other posters for their input, as it mirrors a discussion we have been having internally at the Rovers Trust.

There's nothing sinister, just a need - as we do each year - to look at where we have got to and where we go next.

Although it might look like not a lot's going on at the moment, especially when compared to other supporters trusts' recent activity like at Bolton Wanderers, there is a basic need and value to Blackburn Rovers having its own well set up, well supported Supporters Trust.

I'll leave it at that for now as we'll be able to feed back in more detail on our current status and activity shortly.

Suffice to say, we respect every supporter who decides. at this moment, not to continue with their subscription, knowing they will probably rejoin when the time comes, but the more fans who continue to be members the better.

Not least because it's one way of showing the club's owners we are still here, not going anywhere, still checking up on their financial management of Rovers, looking at who they appoint to run the club, talking regularly to other supporters trusts and Supporters Direct on Rovers fans' behalf, talking to other wealthy and/or well-connected Rovers fans about the future.

Most of which isn't easily communicable via newsletters, etc, but when it is we do.

[VinjayV4]

Dean Holdsworth and a football agent versus an outfit like Seneca ???? I think you are talking chalk and cheese Vinjay to be perfectly honest from all I have read and heard about both of them.

The only thing that worries me is that its 5 years since that well funded bid and all that stuff .The decline of the club since then has been pretty horrific and we have lost a vast amount of our fan base. I would be amazed if those investors behind the Seneca bid are just sat there 5 years down the line waiting for the loons to respond which last time battersby was on the radio he said there had been no contact at all.

That's the big worry as I see it but might be completely wrong of course

Well looked at the site and the professionalism seems light years ahead of Sports Shield (we make money, make money was an actual tagline on Holdsworth's site) and apart from Richard Matthewman good people seem involved. I asked Glen Mullan about contact not long ago and he said there has been contact this year (whether he meant THIS year or past 12 months not sure and Seneca, Rovers Trust, etc have all tried) but they were ignored again. I would certainly have more faith in Seneca building a reputable team of investors than Sports Shield. Ian C has been involved with groups like Apax Partners and Ian B extensive experience with corporate banking.

http://senecapartners.co.uk/meet-team/

[TBTF]

Well looked at the site and the professionalism seems light years ahead of Sports Shield (we make money, make money was an actual tagline on Holdsworth's site) and apart from Richard Matthewman good people seem involved. I asked Glen Mullan about contact not long ago and he said there has been contact this year (whether he meant THIS year or past 12 months not sure and Seneca, Rovers Trust, etc have all tried) but they were ignored again. I would certainly have more faith in Seneca building a reputable team of investors than Sports Shield. Ian C has been involved with groups like Apax Partners and Ian B extensive experience with corporate banking.

http://senecapartners.co.uk/meet-team/

Yes agree Vinjay. Currie in particular looks like a player and in fact clicking on all of them pretty much tells me this lot know what they are doing .Put it this way if these lot came up and said they had a well funded project then I would be confident it was. They obviously deal with some serious organisations , banks etc etc

problem is the more I see this the more I angry I get that Venkys haven't at least used their talents .They are here in the locality as fans not some London mob looking for a quick kill a la Bolton.

Just makes me angry when I look at where we have ended up after 5 years of these lunatics in charge.

Our FD said the 2 ian's were at Ewood today ........at a KPMG Budget Seminar .....more's the bloody pity!!!

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

Hi every one, just wanted to update you all properly on the current statis of Rovers Trust, hope a longer read doesn't put any of you off:

Four years ago, two sets of Blackburn Rovers fans set up supporters’ groups in reaction to the takeover of our club by the Venky’s.

What began as an investment vehicle set up to raise funds to buy Blackburn Rovers should an opportunity arise, and a second group of equally concerned fans, quickly fused into the official supporters trust for the Ewood Park club.

As long-standing Rovers Trust members will recall, repeated efforts to engage with the club, its directors and owners have fallen on deaf ears.

Many of the administrators brought in to run the club, while the hands-off owners oversaw its downfall from India, have now left, including Paul Agnew, Shebby Singh, Derek Shaw and a few others.

Managers have come and gone and we find ourselves in 2016 with the same owners, but new administrators – including former Sky Sports News employee Alan Myers as commercial and communications director and Mike Cheston, a Chorley accountant, as finance director, who gained his football experience at Everton.

The club’s directors are Robert Coar, a relic of bygone days and the man who as club chairman saw Kenny Dalglish out of the door in August 1996 and Gandhi Babu, a Venky’s representative who’s been in the boardroom since January 2011.

The club secretary is Ian Silvester, who joined Rovers in June 2012 having performed similar roles at Leicester City, Leeds United and Liverpool.

So day-to-day, Blackburn Rovers has become a second division club run by a mixed group of employees who, after all the turmoil of the near six year Venky’s reign, are probably grateful simply to do their day jobs without controversy.

However, the elephant in the room is the £100 million-plus debt the Venky’s have managed to rack up and this remains the biggest single worry for Rovers fans.

And it’s also the reason why the Rovers Trust is as relevant today as it was four years ago.

From the start we concentrated on ensuring we were in a position to scrutinise the club and the owners as closely as possible. Early successes included being gifted shares in Blackburn Rovers enabling us to attend the club’s agm.

We also successfully worked to have Ewood Park registered as an asset of community value. The owners simply cannot close down or sell off Ewood Park in secret, without consultation and without overcoming some reasonably onerous barriers. It is one of Rovers Trust's greatest triumphs, and started a series of similar applications after we were successful.

Rovers Trust also is an active presence at the Club's Fans Forum meetings.

We have approximately 800 paying members and a part of their subscriptions are used for operations paying for IT costs, website, email and newsletter hosting, as well as professional fees for accountancy services such as preparation of annual accounts and submission to relevant authorities.

There are annual membership fees to be paid to Supporters Direct and the Football Supporters Federation, the FCA, return filing fees, etc.

In the absence of dialogue with the owners or their representatives at Ewood Park, we have gotten involved helping local grass roots football, awarding local amateur youth football clubs Grass Roots Grants on approved projects.

We have worked with Blackburn Rovers on sending clothing to Kenya as part of a charitable project with a local military officer stationed there.

We are working with the East Lancashire Football Development Association (ELFDA), alongside Blackburn with Darwen Council, to help find funding for a large public football pitch redevelopment plan, as well as various other minor community projects.

But, as much money as possible has been saved in the Rovers Trust accounts and the main goal continues to be the preparation for the day the owners say they have had enough and decide to abandon our club.

With a shareholders’ equity deficit of more than £100 million, finding a buyer will be nearly impossible and the Rovers Trust committee believes that unless Premier League football is achieved next season, which we are all crossing our fingers for, but realise that realistically is almost impossible, the current ownership will seek to offload the club one way or another.

Another reminder of why Rovers Trust is important is what recently happened with Bolton Wanderers. The takeover there highlights the importance of having all the structures in place ready to move when the opportunity comes. The Wanderers’ fans supporters trust was not set up in time to make a credible bid when offers were being invited to buy out the club from its previous owners.

Media reports suggest the new owners, fronted by ex-player Dean Holdsworth did not include the supporters trust in their successful bid.

By contrast, Blackburn Rovers has a group of committed supporters who are keeping a constant watch on the owners and their hirelings.

The more fans who continue to be members of the Rovers Trust the better, not least because it's one way of showing the club's owners we are still here, not going anywhere, still checking up on their financial management of Rovers, looking at who they appoint to run the club, talking regularly to other supporters trusts and Supporters Direct on Rovers fans' behalf, talking to other wealthy and/or well-connected Rovers fans about the future.

Like all Rovers fans, we will be here long after the Venky’s have departed and, for the good of the club, it is vital the next owners of Blackburn Rovers, if it’s not the supporters themselves, involve the Rovers Trust in the new ownership structure. That way we stand a chance of preventing another Venky’s from ever again stepping foot in Ewood Park.

The Rovers Trust has always chosen not to voice our opinion on the team or happenings on the pitch as there are other public groups and forums for that and we have never wanted to get involved in the ebbs and flows of the football.

However, we always welcome any input from loyal members for ideas on how to better engage our membership in a positive way.

And we are continually looking for members to join us in running the Rovers Trust. Just get in touch and let us know how you’d like to help.

To become a member or to reactivate your membership, please go to http://www.roverstrust.com/registration-page/

[bazza]

Thanks, Dan. I expect every member of this website will appreciate this well laid out and informative post.

[Stuart]

Thanks Dan. A welcome reminder.

[VinjayV4]

Speaking of Bolton Wanderers something posted by Nixon on twitter...

Burnden Leisure (holding company) and Blumarble Capital providing a loan that basically uses the clubs remaining assets as collateral.

[Exiled in Toronto]

Dan, may I ask what specifically leads the Trust to believe the owners will seek to unload the club this close season, other than the oft-repeated and never materialised, "They can't keep putting money in at the current rate"?

[tomphil]

Maybe that thinking is because the parachute money has finally finished and a couple of big assets have been cashed and there is only one or two worth anything to sell left ?

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

Yes, Exiled in Toronto, tomphil pretty much summed it up correctly. Although, I apologise for the clumsy wording in my post. Rovers Trust is speculating the end of next season, not this upcoming close season.

Reasoning being this (my personal thoughts):

This season was the last with the PL parachute payment money. The P&L account has been heavily burdened this past year to clear it out in preparation for exiting the FFP transfer embargo, mostly by writing down and clearing out overvalued booked player assets, which has had an obvious negative effect on the balance sheet, namely the shareholders funds deficit (i.e. net book value of the club) which will easily be in the 9 figures range once those accounts come out in a few weeks, unless Venkys have converted another huge chunk of owner-owned debt into equity (which to their own credit, they have done in the past). The club has sold it only player asset with any meaningful transfer value in Rhodes.

Murmurs within the club are that next year will be a big one for the club. It is assumed this means one final push for promotion next season, and if it doesn't pan out the owners will have to seriously review their position. The timing of bringing in Paul Lambert goes along with that. He was brought in with proper time to assess the squad and make his transfer targets for the summer - probably why we saw virtually no action during January and saw the sale of Rhodes.

Obviously that old adage you refer to is a factor, but given the above it appears more applicable to next season than to any prior.

Speaking of Bolton Wanderers something posted by Nixon on twitter...

Burnden Leisure (holding company) and Blumarble Capital providing a loan that basically uses the clubs remaining assets as collateral.

Yeah, too bad the Reebok (or is it something else now, the Macro or something) Stadium isn't registered as an Asset of Community Value...

[Stuart]

Yeah, too bad the Reebok (or is it something else now, the Macro or something) Stadium isn't registered as an Asset of Community Value...

Does that specifically prevent Ewood suffering a similar fate? Or just make it a bit harder?

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

It makes it significantly harder for the asset to change hands, and since there is an approved bidding process that must take place, it would be very hard to make it collateral on a loan because an automatic transfer of ownership couldn't be stipulated or guaranteed in the event of default.

[VinjayV4]

It makes it significantly harder for the asset to change hands, and since there is an approved bidding process that must take place, it would be very hard to make it collateral on a loan because an automatic transfer of ownership couldn't be stipulated or guaranteed in the event of default.

What about Brockhall can that be registered as an asset of community value also? Falls under the jurisdiction of a different council as well...Ribble Valley. Though perhaps they would be more helpful to the club than Blackburn council have ever been.

[Daniel Louis Grabko (Dan)]

Brockhall may prove more difficult, actually, and if I am not mistaken, Rovers Trust looked into the possibility at the time we did Ewood Park. I think Paul could provide more accurate detail than I here, as he was the one that championed this for us and was wholly responsible for its success. I think the main reason was landowner registries being much more complicated with Brockhall, in addition to the actual community benefit of that asset being less "obvious" than Ewood's. The ACV movement actually had its birth as a movement to save public houses from being closed down and either being redeveloped for other uses or demolished completely for other use of the land, so most of the registries as of now are pubs. Here's he wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_of_community_value

[Paul]

I will dig out the actual document for the ACV submission and post it here tomorrow. The link below is the official documentatio:

https://www.blackburn.gov.uk/Lists/DownloadableDocuments/Ewood-park-community-right-to-bid-report-BL2013ENQ05352.pdf

Studying the map closely people familiar with the area will see the boundary of the ACV is the footprint of Ewood prior to development. This is because Roverstore, as an example, is outside the Ordnance Survey mapped boundary and while it is now within in the boundary it's questionable if the store is a community asset. Defining the asset precisely was crucial and a search of the land registry suggested to use anything other than the mapped area was difficult to prove as being Ewood Park. Keep in mind I had no experience of this at all!

Just to correct Dan, hundreds of pubs are protected as ACVs but this is not the birthplace of the ACV, its only that pubs fit very well in to the legislation.

[Paul]

What about Brockhall can that be registered as an asset of community value also? Falls under the jurisdiction of a different council as well...Ribble Valley. Though perhaps they would be more helpful to the club than Blackburn council have ever been.

Brockhall's current use is modern. It was originally a place to reform inebriated women (love it) and while that may make it an ACV I couldn't find an argument to justify this!! Tongue in cheek here guys.

When making the application for ACV status I knew failing to achieve the status would lose the opportunity for many years. The driving argument behind ignoring Brockhall was it really doesn't qualify in the strict definition of the Act and I was very concerned to avoid being seen as simply obstructive by making a potentially spurious application.