Venkys - Welcome or Not?

[JBiz]

1 hour ago, lraC said:

The sums have been done before and when you look at the money brought in on big player sales, premier league money and parachute money for 4 years, there is a big hole somewhere.

What sums?

9 hours ago, JHRover said:

People seem to be inclined to credit Venkys for continuing to pay the bills as though they are happily doing this because they are kind and benevolent people. They are meeting their responsibilities as majority shareholders for meeting running costs, the vast majority of which they have increased through their decision making and ineptitude over several years.

The alternative to putting that money in is clear. Option one is that they put the club into administration, option two is that they liquidate the club. Either of those means that they lose control of it and either way they will never get remotely close to recouping the money they've lost to date.

Its like me buying a house, leaving the property to go to rack and ruin for 5 years, but meeting the mortgage payments, and then going back after 5 years and coughing up some more money to repair it and make it habitable. I'd have little to no choice but to do it and shoulder the cost of doing it. The alternative would be handing the keys back to the bank or being left with a house that was worthless and uninhabitable. What Venkys are doing is basically that but on a much larger scale. Meeting the bills and mortgage costs (which they've little choice about) and then allowing a bit more in when persuaded to do so to try and build up some more value in the club and improve its condition moving forward.

I accept that they are putting their money in and it is a substantial amount each month, but I'm not grateful to them for doing it as I don't think they've much choice and I also think the majority of losses even now could be reduced if they had put a more competent structure in place some time ago. For example our revenues are relatively small yet the commercial side of the club has been woefully short of the level required for some time. I'm also not particularly worried about the debt situation that people at other clubs seem to obsess about as they've no chance of getting that money back.

Firstly, I don’t credit them for their personality JHR ala kindness, benevolence, and I doubt anybody else who has been thankful for the constant funding thinks like that either. It’s almost certainly down to keeping the facilities, the grade one academy and for last years expenditure to give us a way to immediately return.

Secondly - if they don’t have much choice, and you say they have no chance of getting the money back, why on Earth are they still allowing the debt to build? Even if they use it to lower cost of tax in India, they still “have a choice” to how they fund the club.

Nobody likes Venkys. They screwed us royally. The fact haunts us, we are bankrolled by them for some reason, if only they’d spent some of that Best/Murphy/Etuhu 30m the way GB spent 3m. If only they’d spent another 15m less paying off managers. You equate it to a house in disrepair, Id compare it to rebuilding your house with broken bricks that cost £3000 each. Eventually you’ve got to change builder. The first did so much damage we’ve only just got our roof back on after finding a nice dependable North Eastern firm...

Why we need to be reminded of this frustration through share price stats, is something I bet we’d agree on. I find it embarassing to think any Burnley fan @sympatheticclaret would feel inclined to talk on a Rovers forum, especially when the point seems the average view from a dingle; “Rovers have had constant investment that Burnley have had to earn”.. Surely there is a message board for you to discuss which 30+ year old British ex premier league club free signings you’ll be looking at this summer? Gaz Baz is on a free...

The problem with this issue, they’d be quite happy to see their club invested in with plans to move forward (just read Mr Garlick back in April), and they’d be walking away in droves, protesting and sailing down the league if it went tits up like ours did. Most dingles wouldn’t admit it, but if they started signing players for daft fees, making big statements - they’d not value the achievements any less. Their dream is our nightmare; costs>turnover. The question I’d be asking if I was unfortunate enough to be from Bunla; “Is our board ever going to invest, namely some of the 27m profit posted this past year?”

11 minutes ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

But agents were/are partners in running the club. Also a large slice of player wages, signing on fees-and indeed managerial pay offs-went to said partners.

To think I once wondered why there were so many strange signings

 Shhh don’t mention the “bad advice”...

Edited May 16, 2018 by Biz

[Leonard Venkhater]

15 hours ago, Biz said:

 

 Shhh don’t mention the “bad advice”...

I guess that is my point.

Bad advice implies something too external.

I find myself wondering if much of the so called outgoings/expenses etc ( percentage of transfer fees, signing on fees, salary from lengthy contracts, pay offs )are in fact payments to the "ownership" and not loss, as conveniently depicted.

I may have watched too many westerns, but I have a picture of the robbers meeting up in the hills and divvying up the proceeds!

Edited May 17, 2018 by Leonard Venkhater

[Leonard Venkhater]

15 hours ago, JacknOry said:

For the unsympathetic sympathetic Claret.

These were just some of the players brought in on impressive agents advice to get us back to the PL....look how their careers have turned out. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinho_Júnior

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogo_Rosado

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Jorge_Gomes_Pereira

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuno_Henrique_Gonçalves_Nogueira

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fábio_Alexandre_Silva_Nunes

This is without including Jerome Andersons own son who now plays for some pub team.

I am sure a large rake off went to partners(joint owners?)...Do we think other partners merely allow their accomplices to keep all of this...or would there be some kind of split..?

[tomphil]

2 minutes ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

I guess that is my point.

Bad advice implies something too external.

I find myself wondering if much of the so called outgoings/expenses etc ( percentage of transfer fees, signing on fees, salary from lengthy contracts, pay offs )are in fact payments to the "ownership" and not loss, as conveniently depicted.

I may have watched too many westerns, but I have a picture of the robbers meeting up in the hills and divvying up the proceeds!

Brunei would be a handy place to pipe the partners %, you could even have a guy there overseeing it and maybe reinvesting in starting something like a large global soccer agency or something ? All hypothetical of course but stranger things happen and they do say everything for a reason, no way are these losses ALL just a 200 million hole in the Venky pocket no way on gods green earth are they.

Now back to those westerns and why would the cowboys rob themselves ?

[JHRover]

Brunei a notorious tax haven. Certainly seems a good place to relocate to if you have a lot of money to squirrel away with minimal intervention from authorities. Hmmm.

http://investvine.com/brunei-eu-blacklist-global-tax-havens/

[lraC]

17 hours ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

But agents were/are partners in running the club. Also a large slice of player wages, signing on fees-and indeed managerial pay offs-went to said partners.

To think I once wondered why there were so many strange signings

The big hole is there for us all to see. None stranger than those signed by us and nearly all had the same agent, who of course worked for free, slept at the training ground and had the place rocking so much, it nearly fell over!!!

[speeeeeeedie]

I looked at JacknOry's Wikipedia links of the Portuguese signings. I'm no Sherlock Holmes but it looks well dodgy. All signed for undisclosed fees, all got 3 year contracts. All were crap. Only Henrique seems to have played more than a handful of games since he left Rovers. It's interesting that 3 of them ended up at some Romanian team. Also one went to Whitehawk FC. I am pretty sure that they were charged with some football related crime or other a few years back.

Hopefully hose days at Ewood are over and Venkys have entrusted Waggott to run a football club.

Edit; Whitehawk details;

Former Whitehawk president with previous convictions jailed

2 Whitehawk players charged for match fixing

Stinks to high heaven.

Edited May 17, 2018 by speeeeeeedie
more info

[JHRover]

Just now, speeeeeeedie said:

I looked at JacknOry's Wikipedia links of the Portuguese signings. I'm no Sherlock Holmes but it looks well dodgy. All signed for undisclosed fees, all got 3 year contracts. All were crap. Only Henrique seems to have played more than a handful of games since he left Rovers. It's interesting that 3 of them ended up at some Romanian team. Also one went to Whitehawk FC. I am pretty sure that they were charged with some football related crime or other a few years back.

Hopefully hose days at Ewood are over and Venkys have entrusted Waggott to run a football club.

The sort of thing that any fit and proper governing body should be going through with a fine toothcomb. There almost certainly won't be a papertrail of evidence as those responsible for it weren't born yesterday but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be investigated.

Lots of people saying that there's no evidence of direct wrongdoing on Venkys part, that there was no way of stopping them buying the club, that their money is legitimate and that the 'fit and proper' test cannot prevent them buying a club just because something might not smell right. That is probably all true. Venkys are here, they own the club and I don't think there's much anyone can do about that.

But then there's a side issue of those deals taking place and who was responsible for it.

The part where the authorities should be concerned is who was behind these deals and how much influence that person or persons exerted over transfers at the club.

Edited May 17, 2018 by JHRover

[lraC]

At the risk of going over old ground, given the last few posts, you have to wonder, where the £200 million plus went for starters. This was Premier league money for 2010/11 premier league money for 2011/12 parachute money for the following 4 years and then the players that were sold for big money, Phil Jones and Chris Samba, just being two examples. I am not having a go, because he is a Claret, but Sympathetic Claret, naively states it went on, manager pay offs, agents, players wages ETC. Yes of course it did, but the big question is, who really benefited from most of this?

We have never got to the bottom of it and never will, as there have been some fantastic efforts to bring some of this skulduggery out into the open. Despite last years success, I cannot accept and never will accept that Venkys, were not complicit in at least some of this. I love Blackburn Rovers as much as anyone, but I will NEVER feel comfortable under the current ownership.

[lraC]

2 hours ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

I am sure a large rake off went to partners(joint owners?)...Do we think other partners merely allow their accomplices to keep all of this...or would there be some kind of split..?

Great post and of course these players were collectively known, as the five musca Eusebios, as the motto on signing them was all for one and one for all.

[tomphil]

55 minutes ago, JHRover said:

The sort of thing that any fit and proper governing body should be going through with a fine toothcomb. There almost certainly won't be a papertrail of evidence as those responsible for it weren't born yesterday but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be investigated.

Lots of people saying that there's no evidence of direct wrongdoing on Venkys part, that there was no way of stopping them buying the club, that their money is legitimate and that the 'fit and proper' test cannot prevent them buying a club just because something might not smell right. That is probably all true. Venkys are here, they own the club and I don't think there's much anyone can do about that.

But then there's a side issue of those deals taking place and who was responsible for it.

The part where the authorities should be concerned is who was behind these deals and how much influence that person or persons exerted over transfers at the club.

A lot of money went Portugal way for some strange reason and all this was under a family trusted friend of a global nature so you have to wonder who signed it al off and why.

Did someone owe someone else a lot of money and had to find an indirect way of paying it or was another arm of the business being set up and funded over there by indirect means ?

End of the day as long as the bills get paid and the money is clean a lot will say 'who cares' and that's fair enough but it grates that people think they've just poured a few hundred million into a hole and continue to do so for no good reason in the long term.

Then again if a few million sticks to the sides again this summer for TM.... who cares ?

Edited May 17, 2018 by tomphil

[lraC]

8 minutes ago, tomphil said:

A lot of money went Portugal way for some strange reason and all this was under a family trusted friend of a global nature so you have to wonder who signed it al off and why.

Did someone owe someone else a lot of money and had to find an indirect way of paying it or was another arm of the business being set up and funded over there by indirect means ?

End of the day as long as the bills get paid and the money is clean a lot will say 'who cares' and that's fair enough but it grates that people think they've just poured a few hundred million into a hole and continue to do so for no good reason in the long term.

Then again if a few million sticks to the sides again this summer for TM.... who cares ?

He was certainly on good money for being a Billy smart type of Character, you know what I mean Robbie?  ;-)

[Herbie6590]

On 15/05/2018 at 23:28, Raya4espania said:

Its also questionable as to whether Venkys put anything in. Why does the debt keep going up? Is it their money, or just borrowed cash from the bank of India? In all the years they've owned Rovers, very little put in has come from their own fortune.

Not so...the latest accounts as linked elsewhere in this & other threads show increased share capital and a move from borrowing from bank to borrowing from parent company.

[Herbie6590]

On 15/05/2018 at 23:46, sympatheticclaret said:

 The debt is going up because Venkys are issuing more shares in Venkys London Limited , and buying them through their associated Indian Registered Company, Venkateshwera Hatcheries Pvt Ltd . The money raised from share issues is going to support the everyday running of the Football Club, and shows in the accounts as " Called up Share Capital ". It's highly improbable that the Bank of India would invest in Venkys London Ltd on their own account...

I suspect Venkys have invested somewhere north of £130m in Blackburn Rovers, in the years since they took control .... 

It’s a lot more than that - as at June 17 a/cs nearer £250m.

[Crimpshrine]

7 hours ago, Herbie6590 said:

It’s a lot more than that - as at June 17 a/cs nearer £250m.

I know that you have studied the accounts and often quote the £250m figure but I just find it all very suspect. Is it £120m worth of shares (which they can sell ) and £130 debt (which they have borrowed).

In the last set of accounts turnover is £16m and wages £22.6m so the recent  issuing of shares probably covers the difference.

On top of that there is a declared loss of £17.9m for the year but this does not seem to be itemised anywhere - where is this explained in the accounts?

Cash in the bank is only £223,806 and the overdraft is nearly £14m! with £109m owed elsewhere that seems incredible to me.

How do these figures compare to other clubs ? creative accounting maybe.

[JacknOry]

10 hours ago, speeeeeeedie said:

I looked at JacknOry's Wikipedia links of the Portuguese signings. I'm no Sherlock Holmes but it looks well dodgy. All signed for undisclosed fees, all got 3 year contracts. All were crap. Only Henrique seems to have played more than a handful of games since he left Rovers. It's interesting that 3 of them ended up at some Romanian team. Also one went to Whitehawk FC. I am pretty sure that they were charged with some football related crime or other a few years back.

Hopefully hose days at Ewood are over and Venkys have entrusted Waggott to run a football club.

Edit; Whitehawk details;

Former Whitehawk president with previous convictions jailed

2 Whitehawk players charged for match fixing

Stinks to high heaven.

Did bring it up in another thread a while back, three or four of them representing the same random Romanian team? There is no coincidence lets be honest. 

[sympatheticclaret]

10 hours ago, Herbie6590 said:

It’s a lot more than that - as at June 17 a/cs nearer £250m.

I suspect you're correct , Ian

My view is that the Venkys were right royally taken advantage of, by unscrupulous parties, in the early days of their ownership of BRUFC....

I've been slated on here lately for glorying in Rover's decline, whereas that is untrue. From my very first post, I expressed a desire that Rovers should be back in the hands of local owners, much as Burnley have been, who have a handle on public opinion and can build the Club up. Ideally, Venkys should have left these matters to a trusted local management team and written the cheques accordingly. Nothing would please me more than to see BFC, BRFC & PNE all in the Premier League together,  with Brighton and Bournmouth back in the lower leagues....

Unfortunately, some on here are about as conversant with a set of accounts as I am with the intricacies of Ball Room dancing ! The truth is that the Venkys have funded the Club to the tune of over £20m over the last 14 months, which has allowed them to regain their Championship status !

[Stuart]

?

Sympathetic towards Venkys, eh?

Regain our Championship status? They didn’t buy a Championship club you oaf.

[Mattyblue]

All hail the benevolent Venky's!

Can you imagine in our heyday going on to their boards and pontificating on how their tinpot organisation was run, how greatful they should be to Ingleby or whoever for keeping the lights on and what response we'd have got?

Edited May 18, 2018 by Mattyblue

[DE.]

6 hours ago, sympatheticclaret said:

The truth is that the Venkys have funded the Club to the tune of over £20m over the last 14 months, which has allowed them to regain their Championship status !

No, the truth is that Venky's have built up a debt of £250m over the last 7 years and helped relegate us to a league we hadn't been in since 1980. We're now at a point where the manager has to go with a begging bowl to India every summer, hoping to get a budget to compete with bottom end Championship clubs. 

They took us over as a stable, mid-table PL club with only £20m debt. We had an experienced, respected manager and board room. The squad needed a little work but there wasn't that much to do. To suggest we should in any way be grateful to Venky's for paying for this mess they themselves have caused is frankly insulting, although coming from a Burnley fan it doesn't really mean that much. Unfortunately there are Rovers fans with your abhorrent viewpoint too, and that hurts more.

[JHRover]

6 hours ago, sympatheticclaret said:

 

My view is that the Venkys were right royally taken advantage of, by unscrupulous parties, in the early days of their ownership of BRUFC....

 

So when they fired Gary Bowyer, let Paul Lambert walk away, inexplicably appointed Owen Coyle as manager, sold all our best players and sent us on the way to relegation to the 3rd division, that was 'early days' of their ownership?

No, it was between 2015 and 2017, so only last year, and only seems to have ended when they got lucky with the Mowbray appointment.

Venkys aren't the victims and lets stop with this belief that all their mistakes were limited to the first couple of years after takeover and were all the result of bad advice. Some of their most disastrous and damaging decisions were made in 2016 which put this club in its worst position in 4 decades.

[arbitro]

6 hours ago, sympatheticclaret said:

I suspect you're correct , Ian

My view is that the Venkys were right royally taken advantage of, by unscrupulous parties, in the early days of their ownership of BRUFC....

I've been slated on here lately for glorying in Rover's decline, whereas that is untrue. From my very first post, I expressed a desire that Rovers should be back in the hands of local owners, much as Burnley have been, who have a handle on public opinion and can build the Club up. Ideally, Venkys should have left these matters to a trusted local management team and written the cheques accordingly. Nothing would please me more than to see BFC, BRFC & PNE all in the Premier League together,  with Brighton and Bournmouth back in the lower leagues....

Unfortunately, some on here are about as conversant with a set of accounts as I am with the intricacies of Ball Room dancing ! The truth is that the Venkys have funded the Club to the tune of over £20m over the last 14 months, which has allowed them to regain their Championship status !

And this is coming from a fan of a club where the fans sing about Blackburn born Jack Walker being dead and wanting Venkys to live long. 

I am not conversant with accounting but I can smell a bullshitter at 13 miles.

[tomphil]

6 hours ago, sympatheticclaret said:

I suspect you're correct , Ian

My view is that the Venkys were right royally taken advantage of, by unscrupulous parties, in the early days of their ownership of BRUFC....

I've been slated on here lately for glorying in Rover's decline, whereas that is untrue. From my very first post, I expressed a desire that Rovers should be back in the hands of local owners, much as Burnley have been, who have a handle on public opinion and can build the Club up. Ideally, Venkys should have left these matters to a trusted local management team and written the cheques accordingly. Nothing would please me more than to see BFC, BRFC & PNE all in the Premier League together,  with Brighton and Bournmouth back in the lower leagues....

Unfortunately, some on here are about as conversant with a set of accounts as I am with the intricacies of Ball Room dancing ! The truth is that the Venkys have funded the Club to the tune of over £20m over the last 14 months, which has allowed them to regain their Championship status !

Yet again you leave out the chronic lack of funding and reinvestment out of 30 million in player sales which led us to relegation in the first place on the back of doing things on the cheap again.'

They bought an established Premier league team with the promise of investment then set about making cuts and selling players virtually straight away and that is also the truth.

Take your pro venky sly digs back to the LT boards or wherever.

Never trust a dingle.

[Silas]

7 hours ago, sympatheticclaret said:

Unfortunately, some on here are about as conversant with a set of accounts as I am with the intricacies of Ball Room dancing ! 

Come on a rival clubs messageboard,  patronise the members by making sweeping statements about their level of business acumen, all whilst also lauding their much maligned owners as some bastions of high level investment that the fans should be eternally grateful for. 

Somehow managing to ignore the gross mismanagement and decade of decline that has occurred, the total lack of communication and disdain shown to the long serving fanbase. A tale of such rank bad ownership that even hacks in the most southern based media organisations - (who generally have their heads so far up their own arses they barely mention clubs outside of the Top 6 or London) - use it as a moniker to describe potential disasters and warnings for other clubs. "Careful what you wish for, let's hope they don't do a Venky's".

Yep, seems like a hotpot of ingredients, well mixed together and served up that is guaranteed to ensure you are met with a warm reception. ?

But perhaps you are the only one that can see the true picture. It must be us Rovers fans and every semi-intelligent neutral in the footballing world that has got things backwards. Hey ho, if only we could all be as "conversant" with things as you. 

[RoverCanada]

21 hours ago, lraC said:

At the risk of going over old ground, given the last few posts, you have to wonder, where the £200 million plus went for starters. This was Premier league money for 2010/11 premier league money for 2011/12 parachute money for the following 4 years and then the players that were sold for big money, Phil Jones and Chris Samba, just being two examples. I am not having a go, because he is a Claret, but Sympathetic Claret, naively states it went on, manager pay offs, agents, players wages ETC. Yes of course it did, but the big question is, who really benefited from most of this?

We have never got to the bottom of it and never will, as there have been some fantastic efforts to bring some of this skulduggery out into the open. Despite last years success, I cannot accept and never will accept that Venkys, were not complicit in at least some of this. I love Blackburn Rovers as much as anyone, but I will NEVER feel comfortable under the current ownership.

You mentioned in a previous that the sums had been done before and there's ultimately some unexplained hole somewhere in the accounts. Could you point me to the analysis you're referring to?