Bethnal

A fair point!

Many ways to skin a cat and lots of willing bladesmen that would take the task on here, but a plan is essential. Either you’re identifying someone short term or long term and recalibrating the plan under a director of football or you’re allowing a penny-pitching CEO and a former fruit juice distributor to pick someone. I know which I prefer.

I would argue that Broughton is the only one with something resembling a plan, at the club. Is it still “not a huge loss” when you consider that without him, our next managerial appointment would be made by Waggott and Suhail? Broughton has to stay, for me. Whether he wants to after the bullshit that’s been pulled in the past week or so remains to be seen.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the club and that is the owners, we’re all onside there, I think. I just cannot handle the Mowbray love-in, when it pops up.

Labouring the Mowbray point is laughable. The training ground stuff. Reece James’ dad’s interview about nearly coming on loan to Blackburn and how Mowbray put him off. Death spirals. “It’s not the 90s anymore.” Telling key players to look elsewhere for bigger deals at the end of theirs. Telling staff members that “big ships like Sunderland don’t come along very often” (League One Sunderland, at the time) and encouraging them to leave. A complete free pass in the Covid season. Bradley Johnson as a false 9. “It’s a long commute.” Do me a favour.

I’m aware of that, the point I was making was it overlaps with the period where the Club were aware of the proceedings against the owners and the filings and there was the HMRC issue in that time frame. Combined with what’s going on at present, there has to be a declaration in the filings that we are a going concern. If someone’s being asked to put their name to that without agreeing to it, what might happen at that point?

Well, the two bits in bold might go some way to explaining what’s just happened (if it has, indeed, just happened). There’s every chance they’re getting towards the end of preparing annual accounts… someone not happy with what they see?

Sure, that’s an obvious issue. Can you borrow against the fee? (I don’t know, at all, but I’m thinking what I would do with my business if I had the misfortune of not being able to run it without £15-20m in losses being underwritten by owners) Clearly - pitch matters aside - the next big obvious milestone for this saga is the meeting on 12th March, where one of three things happens and we still don’t really know what’s happening as a result of it.

Well, quite. “What happens if it’s delayed again” is an even trickier question. I think if the former happens, the writing is on the wall.

Combined with the cash that was previously sent to cover costs, £18m would cover the season’s losses, based on previous years and the budget cut in summer. I suppose we have to see how it shakes out. Is the fee spread out over a timeframe that means we aren’t liquid enough to meet obligations without the owners’ input? Is there less optimism around the owners’ chances of shaking off the investigation? Have the finance dept been asked to sign off on something they disagree with? There’s a logic to that flow of events, but I’m cautious because I am aware I’m seeing what I “want” to see. I don’t actively want to see us in administration, but I’m struggling to think of a way to get rid of the owners that doesn’t involve that.

I’ve been thinking about this since I heard the rumour. There’s either financial impropriety at play or reputational preservation, just as you said. It’s a strange occurrence otherwise. Administration makes little sense with the Wharton money on the books (depending how it’s accounted, I’m not familiar with how receivables work in football accounting terms) and an upcoming court case to determine whether more funds are sent, the last of which allowed funds to be sent. It’s a going concern, purely on the basis of those two points and - I assume - no radical cost increases across the business. From what we know, I can’t see administration. The other option - that something “serious” has happened in finance or they’ve been asked to do something “serious” - well, I can make more sense of that.

LET printing this story shows that there’s serious discontent within the club, you would have to think the recruitment dept or GB himself. You would have to be extremely sure of this being the case to print it. Waggott is a lame duck/puppet/stooge and although not very good at anything a CEO would normally be expected to be good at, very good at the one thing the owners care about: deflecting attention from them. Suhail is the main antagonist. No chance he leaves without Venky’s selling. The Rao’s are the problem, they have been for 13 years, they will be until they sell. Heat needs to be turned up on them for the rest of the season, they have to feel the pressure.

Something has told me - for a long time - that they’d rather see it burn than admit they got it wrong. That’s the issue for me. If they go unchecked, they will let it die.

Any truth in the various bids we were lodging for players, before the “no permanent fees” edict was issued?

Implication (subtle as it is) might be that he hasn’t left yet, but he will if this deal doesn’t go through. Either falling on his sword or saying, “nobody can do a job here while Suhail and Waggott are operating in the way they are.”

Still getting ‘page not found.’ Can you briefly summarise?

What was this? I’m getting a 404 error

Yeah, agreed, we maybe need to be direct with the three siblings. "Venkys" is a one-word term you can say to most football fans to trigger the embarrassing memories of the Raos' ownership. Again, this is just a starting point.

The briefest design brief I would give for this is "what would Gary Aspden do?"

I know what you mean and we've seen it before from the previous rounds of protests. There're chickens and everything else that you can incorporate. This is purely a starting point, an easy thing for stickers, badges, flyers, whatever materials. edit: Also, the Venky's logo is gross, I've seen it enough for one lifetime.

I'm designing while a couple of drinks in here, but I think a big part of protest is iconography. Symbols, flags, etc. People like things that resonate, so here's a starting point from me. edit: "LRVH" is an easy acronym and potential hashtag, along the lines of "COYB," "RTID" etc. It's positive about the thing we want to be positive about.

It’s a good idea and especially if you actively leak it so that BBC are well aware of the plans to do it. It can’t be stopped, I don’t think. It’s disruptive, it stops the game, nobody encroaches on the pitch or throws missiles, players aren’t endangered and it’s actually just very funny.

You should add “optimistic” to your moniker on here, because while you’re right, if the above were the case, we’re actually in a grey area, where we’re nowhere near trading insolvently, frustratingly enough. We sold one of our most valuable assets this week, which was Adam Wharton’s registration. We have quite a few of those left, as it happens. Adam Wharton’s is the kind of money that can cover a year-and-more’s forecasted losses. We can further cut costs than we have done, we could really drive everything down, long before you’d describe us as trading insolvently. Now, when you add common sense in, you realise and say, “but that’s no way to run a football club,” and you’d be right! The thing is, there isn’t really anything written down anywhere that prevents a football club in relative distress from selling its playing staff’s registrations. Except fan outrage, usually, but ours are seemingly not that fussed, for the moment.

“gEt BeHiNd ThE mAnAgEr AnD tHe LaDs, FfS!” They’ll still be bleating on Twitter.

You’ve saved yourself by being clear-eyed about it. No longer a fucking moron (in my eyes, at least!)