Who Wants Our Club Dead?

[McNasty]

To be honest, he actually hasn't made a pigs ear of anything. Yet. Given the issues that weren't anything to do with him (credit crunch etc) I personally think it's a miracle that we're still where we actually are.

fbm, I have to disagree with your very first point. If you asked all the people who he has done business with and , allegedly, not been paid in full or on time I think you will find he has alienated people who no longer wish to invest in the club.

 

[bluebrian]

fbm, I have to disagree with your very first point. If you asked all the people who he has done business with and , allegedly, not been paid in full or on time I think you will find he has alienated people who no longer wish to invest in the club.

It is quite possible that the way he has run the club since the credit crunch is the only way he or anyone without money could realistically have got us to where we are now. Not saying its right - but we are still in existence. Some may say that is an achievement.

 

[fbm]

fbm, I have to disagree with your very first point. If you asked all the people who he has done business with and , allegedly, not been paid in full or on time I think you will find he has alienated people who no longer wish to invest in the club.

Difficult one. If he had alienated less people by paying them in full.and on time but the club had been wound up because we couldn't pay the taxman then we wouldn't be here. The primary objective surely must be to keep SUFC going and that bit he has done.

 

[mrsblue]

Mr Martin has IMO castrated the club from top to bottom ,He has spent many years steering the club into oblivion for his own means and funny thing is the club is back in div 4 exactly where it was when Ron stepped in.

 

[A Century United]

Mr Martin has IMO castrated the club from top to bottom ,He has spent many years steering the club into oblivion for his own means and funny thing is the club is back in div 4 exactly where it was when Ron stepped in.

I assume you are proposing the "Ron want's the club dead or bottom of the Conference" theory?

If so, I have to beg to differ - in fact, it seems quite clear that Ron is desperate to move the club up the divisions rather than down, and has spent too much money trying to achieve it. Just the latest appointment of Phil Brown would indicate that. PB won't be the cheapest manager to employ, and though he has rather divided opinions he wouldn't be most people's first choice to get the club relegated.

In fact, if RM wanted the club relegated he would never have employed Luggy, wouldn't have backed him with the budget (which was clearly straining our resources) that he did, and wouldn't have got rid of him now. Far better to have let him finish the season, and then quietly replace him with any of the proven-to-be deeply incompetent managers currently tramping from club to club seeking employment. Employing PB now runs/ran the risk that the New Manager impetus might actually have seen us into the play offs, surely something Ron would want to avoid if his plan is to kill us off.

Whatever Ron's failings, playing Macbeth to the Club's Duncan he isn't.

 

[fbm]

I assume you are proposing the "Ron want's the club dead or bottom of the Conference" theory?

If so, I have to beg to differ - in fact, it seems quite clear that Ron is desperate to move the club up the divisions rather than down, and has spent too much money trying to achieve it. Just the latest appointment of Phil Brown would indicate that. PB won't be the cheapest manager to employ, and though he has rather divided opinions he wouldn't be most people's first choice to get the club relegated.

In fact, if RM wanted the club relegated he would never have employed Luggy, wouldn't have backed him with the budget (which was clearly straining our resources) that he did, and wouldn't have got rid of him now. Far better to have let him finish the season, and then quietly replace him with any of the proven-to-be deeply incompetent managers currently tramping from club to club seeking employment. Employing PB now runs/ran the risk that the New Manager impetus might actually have seen us into the play offs, surely something Ron would want to avoid if his plan is to kill us off.

Whatever Ron's failings, playing Macbeth to the Club's Duncan he isn't.

Or even, if he wanted the club to fail, he could have just insisted we paid the first years rent. We couldn't have done, so administration it would have been, possibly relegation and maybe even liquidation. He may have bought the club off the administrator but if he didn't then he would still be the landlord and we would survive only as long as it took for the next rent bill to arrive. Or he could have not paid HMRC and we could have been wound up.

In fact, I'd really like to hear why mrsblue, Rayleigh Boy and anyone else who genuinely believes that Ron is trying to get us relegated, think that Ron can achieve that by taking the action that he has done.

 

[mrsblue]

I assume you are proposing the "Ron want's the club dead or bottom of the Conference" theory?

If so, I have to beg to differ - in fact, it seems quite clear that Ron is desperate to move the club up the divisions rather than down, and has spent too much money trying to achieve it. Just the latest appointment of Phil Brown would indicate that. PB won't be the cheapest manager to employ, and though he has rather divided opinions he wouldn't be most people's first choice to get the club relegated.

In fact, if RM wanted the club relegated he would never have employed Luggy, wouldn't have backed him with the budget (which was clearly straining our resources) that he did, and wouldn't have got rid of him now. Far better to have let him finish the season, and then quietly replace him with any of the proven-to-be deeply incompetent managers currently tramping from club to club seeking employment. Employing PB now runs/ran the risk that the New Manager impetus might actually have seen us into the play offs, surely something Ron would want to avoid if his plan is to kill us off.

Whatever Ron's failings, playing Macbeth to the Club's Duncan he isn't.

Rons plans depend on the club surviving until his empire has been built,Without the club the council would refuse the madness which is FF.

Building any stadium without the main stand is laughable,Oh by the way the extra revenue streams you think will go to club funds have never been agreed in writing and furthermore without the main stand there are no extra streams for the club.

Ron has burnt various bridges with many folk and he will eventually run out of people he can turn too.

 

[Kevin Hogg]

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that RM has alienated a huge % of Southed United supporters.

I believe there is huge doubt as to whether he is the main contributary factor in our club's dire financial predicement. It appears to me that the club has been in fiscal meltdown since the 1980's - I for one helped empty the fruit machines in The Shrimpers Club to pay wages in 1985 to the likes of Steve Phillips. little Richard Cadette, Bobby Moore et all.
If there was a SZ in the Vic Jobson era - the posts would have been identical. Players not paid, huge losses, overdrafts, loans, instead of Sainsbury's they would read John Laing, stadium plans that remained "pie in the sky", lowest attendances in our history etc etc.

Many clubs have been in a similar position and many more clubs face extintion.

If nobody else has stepped up to the plate and offered a solution...what in reality could RM have done? Sold to nobody?? Closed the club down.

Alternatives to RM ? As far as I see it they are all the same. No Southend United.

We need a solution for sure - but unless anybody can give even the vaguest alternative that benefits Southend United - we have to continue with the RM way!

 

[callan]

I think for me now the whole Southend utd Saga is rather akin to watching a loved relative on life support, knowing that the kindest thing would be to switch the machine off, but praying all the time for a miracle.

 

[fbm]

Rons plans depend on the club surviving until his empire has been built,Without the club the council would refuse the madness which is FF.

Building any stadium without the main stand is laughable,Oh by the way the extra revenue streams you think will go to club funds have never been agreed in writing and furthermore without the main stand there are no extra streams for the club.

Ron has burnt various bridges with many folk and he will eventually run out of people he can turn too.

So that's an acknowledgement that he's doing his best to keep the club alive then, yes?

So you think he'll get the ground built and THEN get us relegated... that makes even less sense. Having built a development centering around a football stadium, what benefit is there is having no-one visiting it? The businesses at FF will rely on footfall, so they want as many people visiting it as possible. That way they can pay their rent and stay in business. This is not going to happen if we're in the Conference, is it? We need to be in the Championship.

And as for the fourth stand, please, the plan is for the other 3 to be built first. That's all. That is also because the owners of the 4th stand aren't the same as the first 3 and either a) don't want to hold the whole project up as Sainsburys need to get on Roots Hall or maybe b) because they can't get all the finance until the other 3 stands start producing. The intention is not to have a 3 sided ground long term.

Finally, the income streams. They are not a secret. They are to us, because it's nothing to do with us. But the entire business plan will have had to have been revealed in minute detail to Banks, Financiers, Sainsburys, maybe even the Football League. If it wasn't viable, it would never have got this far. When everything on says is pulled to pieces on here, I can understand why he's not revealed this information.

 

[Smiffy]

I think for me now the whole Southend utd Saga is rather akin to watching a loved relative on life support, knowing that the kindest thing would be to switch the machine off, but praying all the time for a miracle.

My feelings as well mate.

 

[Cricko]

So that's an acknowledgement that he's doing his best to keep the club alive then, yes?

So you think he'll get the ground built and THEN get us relegated... that makes even less sense. Having built a development centering around a football stadium, what benefit is there is having no-one visiting it? The businesses at FF will rely on footfall, so they want as many people visiting it as possible. That way they can pay their rent and stay in business. This is not going to happen if we're in the Conference, is it? We need to be in the Championship.

And as for the fourth stand, please, the plan is for the other 3 to be built first. That's all. That is also because the owners of the 4th stand aren't the same as the first 3 and either a) don't want to hold the whole project up as Sainsburys need to get on Roots Hall or maybe b) because they can't get all the finance until the other 3 stands start producing. The intention is not to have a 3 sided ground long term.

Finally, the income streams. They are not a secret. They are to us, because it's nothing to do with us. But the entire business plan will have had to have been revealed in minute detail to Banks, Financiers, Sainsburys, maybe even the Football League. If it wasn't viable, it would never have got this far. When everything on says is pulled to pieces on here, I can understand why he's not revealed this information.

What Business's are these, the retail sector in Southend in half empty as it is, have you checked Southend High street lately , driven along the length of the a13 from Southend to Hadleigh and even in your area of Leigh there are empty shops galore. Anybody building a new small retail site atm in this current ecomonic climate and with the online market growing daily would need there head tested..The so called units at FF have been on the market before they have even started for over 2 years now and not one unit has been taken up or anybody shown the slightest interest in them.Who are these hoteliers that want to open in up in the 4th side of the new stadium, when we have a new one opened recently at the Airport and expansion of some other established ones..If there was that great a call for new hotels then the land on the seafront earmarked by the old gas works and owned by Robert Leonard and Regis Group would of been built by now.Where is this great call for huge conference areas in this town?

This is what frightens me:

We get a 3 sided stadium built and that is it..The council have said that the retail cannot open until the 4th side is built..So what,will RM care then as he would of got us out of RH on the cheap, develop that and walk away leaving us in the crap.

Oh and he wont have to pay the council anything at all from his original carrot to get the plans passed.The HUGE mistake they made was allowing it to be built in 2 stages, they should of insisted on a 4 sided ground being built before he could do anything at RH.

I do so hope I am wrong but as it stands FF apart from a 3 sided stadium will be a dead duck.