Quote: Incredibullman "The company made a profit last year and the "old" board departed with almost £200,000 positve cash in the bank. There was NEVER any intention of going into administration. A "saviour" had contacted the club who was willing to commit £2.5 million. He was interviewed and researched. The "saviour" then turned about to be a fraud falsely representing someone elses identity, who had actuallyy been in prison for similar offences previously.'"
Think that might clarify a bit the background behind the earlier posting, and why you put the letter in the public domain?
When was this "Saviour" unmasked? Was he one of the options that the previous board was pursuing at the time of the pledge? If you are able to say? Might this have been a reason behind PH genuinely believing he DID have investors interested, and therefore for resisting the demand to step down until the truth became clear? Speculating again, of course.
It has been indicated before - maybe by you in another guise? - that the club made a profit last year. I never managed to square that statement at the time with 2011 profit + RFL cash for Odsal - repayment of RFL loan = we still had no cash for when the bank pulled the plug. The nearest I got to it was if the image rights tax and the Harris settlement final installment had all been fully provided for in the accounts up to 31/12/10, and so the company had already taken the profit hit in 2010 and before but the cash hit was in 2011 and 2012 onwards?
It would certainly have been quite a turnround from 2010, although I can speculate on the above and other facets where the cash flows did not mirror the recognition of profit. I really really would love to have someone explain, with the facts and truthfully, why we really ended up with no cash after selling the lease.
I'd expect there to be cash in the bank at the time the old BoD stood down. They resigned on 8 May, and there would need to have been cash in the bank to pay the salaries on 14th and the PAYE etc a few days later.
I am quite sure there was never any intent by the old BoD to put the club into administration. The wording of the letter seemed to me to be an attempt (and understandable, in a bitter business dispute) by the likely victor to ensure history did not record him as the bad guy. That said, given the (to me, still inexplicable) fact that we seemingly had no spare cash even after the lease sale, once the external funding was pulled then administration will have been a certainty I expect had the pledge not succeeded.
My take on it all remains that, for whatever reason, the club was solvent but with no reserves until the bank and RFL funding was pulled (again, for whatever reasons). The pledge was needed to fill that hole and make the club just about solvent again, but the ongoing income was insufficient to cover costs hence the stated need for further funds. In the absence of further funds, in the short term I presume we would have been selling players to sugar-daddied clubs to see us through this year. In the absence of enough new funding or improved income next year, we'd have been cutting the player budget and restoring membership prices, and maybe even then still coming up short.
But I continue to speculate, and really wish (but do not expect) that one day we will find out the facts behind all this.
And the disaster that was last weekend, with the contrived extra fixture quite possibly costing us the play-offs as well as losing five players and a near-fatality, has not helped the new BoD one bit either.
ps. you have answered my question about the "Saviour" while I was typing this.