Ellis Short - the worst thing to happen to SAFC in a near 140 year history


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Wait till he starts selling our assets. Stadium, hotel, aquatics centre, academy, ticket office.... we aint seen nothing yet.

If he was going to do that, he would have done it already. The talk is that the offer over the summer fell through because buyers were planning such a sale and leaseback, and he wasn't having it. It would seem he wants out at his price, but he wants to leave something workable.
 
When will you know more about the current state of clubs finances then? April?
A set of abbreviated accounts which I’m expecting will show

1) the wage bill never got smaller
2) the debt never got smaller
3) we’ve paid another 10m on someone else we’ve never heard of who never actually made it to the club

I’m then expecting the usual suspects to blame Roy Keane whilst at the same time telling us to take our medicine, stating that if the fans shouted louder the debt would go down faster.
 
I’ve read about half of this thread and can’t be bothered to read the rest.

I can’t see anyone having mentioned the actual worst event in our history (to date) - the 1950s illegal payments scandal which resulted in our first ever relegation from the top flight and loss of status from “Bank of England” club/“Arsenal of the North” to the yo yo club we’ve been since.

Bank Of England Club: The Perils Of Big Spending

That was the only other milestone in our history that came to my mind when posing the question in the title. However, although we never fully recovered as a top team, it was only a 6 year stint out of the top division.

The way ES is running the club, I'd suggest it would be highly optimistic to see us return to the PL in the next 5-6 years. The impact of his catastrophic regime has some way to go yet.
 
A set of abbreviated accounts which I’m expecting will show

1) the wage bill never got smaller
2) the debt never got smaller
3) we’ve paid another 10m on someone else we’ve never heard of who never actually made it to the club

I’m then expecting the usual suspects to blame Roy Keane whilst at the same time telling us to take our medicine, stating that if the fans shouted louder the debt would go down faster.

Given that the accounts cover 2016/17, you're probably right, as the wage bill will be a PL one. I said months ago that the debt may have gone up because of the timing of transfer instalments. And, yes, the Alvarez situation may have been resolved during that time. What the accounts won't be are abbreviated - SAFC are required to file full statutory accounts.
 
Given that the accounts cover 2016/17, you're probably right, as the wage bill will be a PL one. I said months ago that the debt may have gone up because of the timing of transfer instalments. And, yes, the Alvarez situation may have been resolved during that time. What the accounts won't be are abbreviated - SAFC are required to file full statutory accounts.
Ah well that’s good then, the accounts not the situation.
 
If he has made money out of the club, it's not gone through the books... Even if he had done that, anything he could have got from that is dwarfed by the £100m or so he's put in. No, he's well out of pocket from meeting the Big Man at the races that day.

I may have missed this in previous threads. Are you stating that he gave us £100m as a gift? Or are we talking about a loan (interest free, or otherwise)?
 
I may have missed this in previous threads. Are you stating that he gave us £100m as a gift? Or are we talking about a loan (interest free, or otherwise)?

When he bought Drumaville, the club owed it £96m. He turned half of that into shares the day he bought the club. Since then he's turned another £53m into shares. He can only get that £101m back if he sells the shares for at least that. On top of that, the club still owes Drumaville £69m. Theoretically, he could have that repaid. In practice, as the club is technically insolvent, he can't, as this would constitute something called fraudulent preference. What the means, is that where there are limited funds, you can't favour one class of creditor over any other (and especially not if the creditor is a shareholder/owner). If he did, if the event of an insolvency event, he would be liable to (a) having to put the money back into the club and (b)criminal prosecution. Under the circumstances, the loan might as well be a gift.
 
When he bought Drumaville, the club owed it £96m. He turned half of that into shares the day he bought the club. Since then he's turned another £53m into shares. He can only get that £101m back if he sells the shares for at least that. On top of that, the club still owes Drumaville £69m. Theoretically, he could have that repaid. In practice, as the club is technically insolvent, he can't, as this would constitute something called fraudulent preference. What the means, is that where there are limited funds, you can't favour one class of creditor over any other (and especially not if the creditor is a shareholder/owner). If he did, if the event of an insolvency event, he would be liable to (a) having to put the money back into the club and (b)criminal prosecution. Under the circumstances, the loan might as well be a gift.

Ok... (And please excuse my stupidity).. But he HASN'T, as yet, gifted the football club £110m? He purchased shares for the equivalent of £101m; and there's a debt, owned by the club, of £69m. At this moment in time, he still owns the club and only loses the money if he sells for less than £101m? Sorry if I've misunderstood.

not even close

Care to elaborate?
 
@Grumpy Old Man you may be able to shed some light on this?

We were in the Premier League for a decade so probably averaged around £70m TV money per season? So, we made £700m give or take, without any commercial revenue.
Of that, our wage bill was generally around the 80% our income so, say £56m per year and £560m over the course of our stay.
Our average net spend (I know) was around £20-30m so, let's say £250m

We have borrowed £70m externally and owe Short £100m.

Therefore, how, as he claims, has he been putting £30m of his own money into the club to keep us afloat?

By my very amateur calculations, we have brought in not much short of £900m (including borrowing) with an outlay of £810m. Where has that additional £300, he claims to have pumped in gone? I'm fairly sure the gas, leccy and copper bills won't amount to that.

As I say, I have no idea with regards to finances but it just doesn't seem to add up.
 
Ok... (And please excuse my stupidity).. But he HASN'T, as yet, gifted the football club £110m? He purchased shares for the equivalent of £101m; and there's a debt, owned by the club, of £69m. At this moment in time, he still owns the club and only loses the money if he sells for less than £101m? Sorry if I've misunderstood.



Care to elaborate?

Ok, it's complicated, but I'll try and keep it simple. Most opinion reckons that he bought Drumaville for around £30m. So, and this is the complicated part, he effectively got £96m worth of debt owed to Drumaville for £30m (what's known as discounted debt in the trade. That £96m and another £5m since has been turned into shares, and another £69m has been put in by way of loan. What this means is that Short's financial commitment is £105m. When it comes to selling up, he has two choices. He can sell either Drumaville, or he can sell Sunderland Limited (the holding company for the club). To break even, he needs to recoup £105m from the sale. He could do that by selling Drumaville for £105m, or, he could sell Sunderland Limited for £35m, but the new owners would then owe Drumaville £69m. The second has all kinds of nasty in it for fans, and new owners might only need to raise £35m, and then load more external debt into the club to repay Drumaville. Either way, if the sale price is anything less than £105m, he's making a loss. I think he knows some loss in inevitable; it's now a matter of hanging on for a better value down the line than he can get now. No, the loan is not a gift, although, in practical terms, it might as well be.
 
We were a financial time bomb for at least the last 4 premier league seasons and possibly from the very start.
 
@Grumpy Old Man you may be able to shed some light on this?

We were in the Premier League for a decade so probably averaged around £70m TV money per season? So, we made £700m give or take, without any commercial revenue.
Of that, our wage bill was generally around the 80% our income so, say £56m per year and £560m over the course of our stay.
Our average net spend (I know) was around £20-30m so, let's say £250m

We have borrowed £70m externally and owe Short £100m.

Therefore, how, as he claims, has he been putting £30m of his own money into the club to keep us afloat?

By my very amateur calculations, we have brought in not much short of £900m (including borrowing) with an outlay of £810m. Where has that additional £300, he claims to have pumped in gone? I'm fairly sure the gas, leccy and copper bills won't amount to that.

As I say, I have no idea with regards to finances but it just doesn't seem to add up.

I posted this summary on another thread earlier today: Once the transfer window closes could the chairman

The numbers sadly, do add up. The Drumaville debt is £69m, not £100m, by the way. He hasn't been putting in £30m a year because profit/loss and cash flow are two different things. It's more accurate to say that he's been putting cash in as and when needed to shore up the cash flow.

We were a financial time bomb for at least the last 4 premier league seasons and possibly from the very start.

Ever since Murray sold, to be honest. What was done under the Irish was just as unsustainable as under Short.
 
I posted this summary on another thread earlier today: Once the transfer window closes could the chairman

The numbers sadly, do add up. The Drumaville debt is £69m, not £100m, by the way. He hasn't been putting in £30m a year because profit/loss and cash flow are two different things. It's more accurate to say that he's been putting cash in as and when needed to shore up the cash flow.



Ever since Murray sold, to be honest. What was done under the Irish was just as unsustainable as under Short.

Any idea what the debt figure is today?
 
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