Bury's game on Saturday called off



It's pretty horrendous just watching a club die in slow motion, knowing its entirely preventable.
Especially Bury. I remember in the great promotion campaign we hammered them 4-1 I think at their place to go up and put them down live on TV. Next night Giggs scored a goal against Arsenal that was nearly as good as Phillips's that people still rave about.

It transpired that Bury were in a crisis, so Sunderland fans dug deep. When I left IBM four years ago I didn't find the letter in the drawer from Neville Neville (Gary's dad), Finance Director. Sad.

I seem to remember a number of RTGers used to go to Bury games to bolster crowds and income.

The crowd used to get on manager Neil Warnock's back. While Bury fans were shouting obscenities at him, one of ours was shouting, "Oy, Warnock, what's the square root of pi?"
 
Especially Bury. I remember in the great promotion campaign we hammered them 4-1 I think at their place to go up and put them down live on TV. Next night Giggs scored a goal against Arsenal that was nearly as good as Phillips's that people still rave about.

It transpired that Bury were in a crisis, so Sunderland fans dug deep. When I left IBM four years ago I didn't find the letter in the drawer from Neville Neville (Gary's dad), Finance Director. Sad.

I seem to remember a number of RTGers used to go to Bury games to bolster crowds and income.

The crowd used to get on manager Neil Warnock's back. While Bury fans were shouting obscenities at him, one of ours was shouting, "Oy, Warnock, what's the square root of pi?"
:lol:

Was 5-2, Phillips got four including a first half hat trick, but what a great night. I was on the pitch a few times, pure jubilation.

What great times.
 
Surely The FA should look at this and learn from this for the future.

When a club is sold The FA should have a contract stating that if this type of situation arises again that the owner can be stripped of assests such as the ground and training ground. Then they can facilitate with a fans group/new owners and get the club running again
.
Obviously this is easier said than done!
I was thinking along similar lines, almost like administration from the footballing side. Allow a team from the FA to step in to take control of all the footballing side and pay players a reasonable wage and get them out on the pitch. The owners would not be able to make profit from this in terms of gate receipts, TV money, advertising etc.

When it gets difficult is when grounds are either owned by the club owner or worse when it is another company who the owner has a link to. In that scenario you could move the club to another ground, but then it is shit for the fans and atmosphere.

I was talking yesterday about how so many postponements last season put a lot of pressure on us. What was an average game initially suddenly became a high pressure on the rearranged fixture because if we won our games in hand we would have been in automatic promotion. I'm not bothered about what impact this has on the club causing it, more concerned about the impact on clubs now a game behind everyone else.
 
I do feel for the fans, but it's beyond a joke. It's like having a pet who's riddled with illness and although you want to keep it, you know it's best to have it put down.
The thing with a pet is that you know it is never going to get better. Bury is over 130 years old and have been part of the football league since the early days, almost as long as us. While never one of the greats, they have passionate fans brought up on generations of following their club.

Allowing a club like Bury to go out of existence because of a few years of bad management would be a travesty for the football league. There is something unique and special about a football club. The name, the history, the passion and the connection with the local area is perhaps the most important thing for a club, but it is not an asset, you can't buy it or wrap it in a box. It literally is the life of a club and fans of that club should not be turned into football zombies because one nutter saw a chance for a few quid and spent a few years f***ing up a club.

They are going through a bad time now, but have the capacity to fall back and regroup. What is Bury FC and what it means to the fans can be kept going.
 
He's bought the club for a quid and not provided proof of funds to the EFL after 6 months of ownership. He was in the radio last week and namechecked the club Secretary as being able to provide proof of funds and wages. The Secretary resigned the next day.
He's a charlatan, he will probably claim the secretary buggered off and didn't tell him the password to the computer or summat just watch! Should be given his pound back booted out by the EFL as an improper owner and the club put up for auction and see who is actually interested.
 
The thing with a pet is that you know it is never going to get better. Bury is over 130 years old and have been part of the football league since the early days, almost as long as us. While never one of the greats, they have passionate fans brought up on generations of following their club.

Allowing a club like Bury to go out of existence because of a few years of bad management would be a travesty for the football league. There is something unique and special about a football club. The name, the history, the passion and the connection with the local area is perhaps the most important thing for a club, but it is not an asset, you can't buy it or wrap it in a box. It literally is the life of a club and fans of that club should not be turned into football zombies because one nutter saw a chance for a few quid and spent a few years f***ing up a club.

They are going through a bad time now, but have the capacity to fall back and regroup. What is Bury FC and what it means to the fans can be kept going.
I agree with that and I've said previously it's not just a football club, but a whole community. The thing now though, is how much longer can this go on? It's making a mockery of the league. Something has to be done one way or another.
 
Rochdale are an example of how you can do it properly with a small club at this level. Local businessmen running their club the old-fashioned way, and all the better for it.
At that level yes.

If they were promoted any higher than League 1, they'd need more finance to survive.

Burnley are a better example.

Both sets of fans have limited expectations, and take don't take anything for granted which must make it a lot easier on the club and their owners. It's easy to say 'every club should aim to be ran like Burnley', but most fans would want more investment and more ambition.

I'm sure the Dale fan who RR interviewed last season told them that Rochdale fans are more than happy just to avoid relegation, anything more than that is just a bonus, and that is just the way their mindset is. They know they can't spend money, but aslong as they have a group of players who play for the badge it's happy days.

Burnley stayed with Sean Dyche when they were relegated and had the attitude of "well we'll just go again, see if we can do better next time". They managed to make it to Europe, but knew it would likely not happen again and accepted it when they had a scrappy season last season.

An example where this doesn't work is Newcastle: Mike Ashley has the attitude of trying to be financially stable, yet the fans demand more as they want ambition from the club, so it just doesn't work.
 
I agree with that and I've said previously it's not just a football club, but a whole community. The thing now though, is how much longer can this go on? It's making a mockery of the league. Something has to be done one way or another.
It is difficult. I like what @Fulwell Mackem said earlier in the thread about finding ways of taking ownership off someone. But, it is not like taking someones car. There are many components and liabilities that make up a football club. What about the ground, what about the staff, what about the responsibility for paying them etc? There is something to be learned from this as I can't recall this ever happening at such high level clubs, so certainly not two at the same time. If the owners could be frozen out of the picture for a while and the players paid an average or at least basic wage for the league for a period of 3 months, then that would hopefully get the team playing again, keep the league operating and give the FA time to assess if the club can be kept running. That might be a new owner or a fan consortium.
 
Interesting comment in the EFL statement yesterday. It mentioned them being expelled on Friday if they can’t prove funds then having to rejoin ‘lower down the pyramid’. I’d have expected them say start again at the bottom of the pyramid.

Might just be poor choice of words but I wonder if they are leaving the door open for them to rejoin at conference or even L2 level if they get sorted after being expelled?
 
Interesting comment in the EFL statement yesterday. It mentioned them being expelled on Friday if they can’t prove funds then having to rejoin ‘lower down the pyramid’. I’d have expected them say start again at the bottom of the pyramid.

Might just be poor choice of words but I wonder if they are leaving the door open for them to rejoin at conference or even L2 level if they get sorted after being expelled?

It would be at the discretion of those Leagues. However, given that those leagues have already begun, they'd be in limbo till next August with no potential income. Liquidation would be pretty inevitable. That would probably mean a fan-owned phoenix club starting at the bottom (much the same as FCUM)
 
sad victims of the way the game is today, and had things stayed the same for us who knows what might have happened with the level of debt we were carrying, but no fans deserve to see their club die
 

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