Question Blame ?

[Beefy]

Fair do's, but how? I doubt he was the only Chairman propping up his club/company. I dare say many chairmen went through the same thing he did, yet don't seem to have been through the same problems over the last 2-3 years as us? Are we just really really unlucky,

Ron Martin is a property developer and the way that he funds his developments is through borrowing. Probably the two sectors hardest hit by the meltdown were the property market and the banking sector. It's pretty hard to imagine how he could have been more badly effected by the recession.

He's far from blameless in all of this. No one forced him to agree long contracts with players on big money but when those contracts were signed he had the capability to cover them if and when the Club had a cashflow shortage for a month or two.

 

[Rayleigh boy]

yeah but yeah but yeah but .........
..we are sitting on the biggest retail site in Europe meaning that ....... I cannot say it - I cannot spit out the words .....

meaning we got a tiny weeny bit of a loan faclity - meaning that we are not that badly off unless someone has run off with it all ....... oh - whoops - there he goes with it all

 

[Beefy]

If he's run off with £5m (leaving aside the fact that we now know that the funds are drip-fed through) then why is he letting Martin Dawn go down?

 

[SUFCFANS]

So blame fir what? We're no worse off than we were 10 years ago... And yes we have been slapped with winding up orders before! This is football, sometimes you make money , most of the time you loose money, sometimes you go up, sometimes you go down.. Get over it.

 

[onceknownasrab]

I am fairly upbeat and confident that the outstanding bills and petitions will be satisfied very soon and we will continue, in choppy waters, and eventually come out the other side of this hardship. It just bemuses me that RM is so vilified. None of us like the situation we are in as a club but these are hard times. I very much doubt that out of all the negative posters there is not one, probably many, that have felt the pinch. Many that have prioritised bills and many that do anything and everything to get by and await an upturn in fortunes. Every day we hear about house repossessions. Are people suggesting that its their fault for not prioritising properly or that when they took the mortgage they should have foreseen the recession? These are sad, bad times and RM is not immune. At least he is trying to pull out all the stops and prevent the worst. By hook, not crook. Most of us have been there in one way or another.

 

[lombard]

In reply to SUFCFANS. We are worse off than ten years ago.The club owned Roots Hall,even though it was mortgaged quite highly.And then along came our now Chairman,under John Mains puppet regime,and bought the ground for monies input to the club,at a price substantially less than the true worth of the land.RM whisked away the most valuable asset to another of his companies,out of the reach of the football club !! The proposals for the stadium originally,were for a four sided 16,000 capacity,with the possibility to extend on one of the stands another 6-8000 seats.All this bulls*** about the downturn in the economy etc,etc.The building and application should have been in place years ago,but for the dalliance of our master hair geller and the dasterdly King ****.

 

[grassroots]

As the late one says above, and it may not be a popular theory with those who would burn RM at the nearest stake, the fact is without a totally unforeseen world-wide economic crash we would almost certainly already be playing in our new stadium and Ron would be the messiah.

The bloke was left up the creak without a paddle by the banking crisis. Thats it. Stick pins in him all you want but it won't change the fact. Of course he's made mistakes but he's also kept us afloat somehow when it would have been easier to walk away. I don't love him or hate him, he's a businessman who's tried to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse & come unstuck by circumstances beyond his control.

I'm off to put my suit of armour on..

....and still it goes on.

The old saying of 'when a company continually runs out of bog paper - sack the MD' is never more apt than when you look over the past 10 years at the Blues. There has been only ONE man in charge of both the club and the developement - both of which are in big trouble. Promises on both fronts were continually given and not kept. The club is undoubtedly in a worse position than when he took over. This very reckless man gambled with our crown jewels and didnt know when he was out of his depth!

 

[SUFCFANS]

This should be renamed the negative thread.. Whatever happened to buying your ticket, watching a game with your mates, having a crap burger which just seems to hit the spot and maybe even a beer after.. Yes we do have another tax bill to pay - but you or I don't have to pay it.. Just go and support the team and have a good night out! The more people that do that the more chance of long term future we have!!

 

[Norfolkshrimp]

This should be renamed the negative thread.. Whatever happened to buying your ticket, watching a game with your mates, having a crap burger which just seems to hit the spot and maybe even a beer after.. Yes we do have another tax bill to pay - but you or I don't have to pay it.. Just go and support the team and have a good night out! The more people that do that the more chance of long term future we have!!

What ? So head in sand will make it all ok, thanks for that, if only you'd shared your wisdom sooner.

 

[Firestorm]

In reply to SUFCFANS. We are worse off than ten years ago.The club owned Roots Hall,even though it was mortgaged quite highly.And then along came our now Chairman,under John Mains puppet regime,and bought the ground for monies input to the club,at a price substantially less than the true worth of the land.RM whisked away the most valuable asset to another of his companies,out of the reach of the football club !! The proposals for the stadium originally,were for a four sided 16,000 capacity,with the possibility to extend on one of the stands another 6-8000 seats.All this bulls*** about the downturn in the economy etc,etc.The building and application should have been in place years ago,but for the dalliance of our master hair geller and the dasterdly King ****.

This may be pedantic

But 10 years ago we did not own the ground , that transfer was done around 1998 /1999 ,

in 2001 we made a loss of 782K on the back of a loss of 1.8K in 2000, so the thing that actually makes us worse off now as opposed to 10 years on is a decade where the majority of years have resulted in a loss.

The money realised from selling the ground was used to pay off debts previously accrued which were stiffling our cash flow (sound familar) by 2001 most of it had already been used.

 

[BrettieAngell]

Southend, Leeds, Luton, Leicester, Southampton, Charlton, Plymouth, Sheffield Wednesday.....

And a bonus point for what links all those clubs I mentioned.....

In the case of Leicester, Leeds, Charlton, Southampton and Wednesday you could argue it was relegation from the Premiership!

 

[ibwiajwa]

I think herein lies the problem - equating a new stadium with RM being a messiah.

The one thing people seem to say in favour of Martin is that we are promised a new stadium, without actually thinking about whether what is being promised is a good thing - a new collection of seats devoid of history that has dragged the club to the verge of oblivion to get.

Whether malicious or accidental, RM has ruined this club and for that I will never forgive him.

And before anyone asks what Im going to do about it...the answer is **** all because there's nothing I can do, but doesn't mean i have to agree with it.

Chesterfield is a good example of a club where a new stadium has made a big difference. I don't think the vision is wrong. Everyone who needs someone else to blame (although I don't see where that gets us) should watch the film 'Inside Job'. Man, there's a whole load of people who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.....

 

[BrettieAngell]

{b]Chesterfield is a good example of a club where a new stadium has made a big difference.[/b] I don't think the vision is wrong. Everyone who needs someone else to blame (although I don't see where that gets us) should watch the film 'Inside Job'. Man, there's a whole load of people who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes.....

and Doncaster, Swansea, Reading.