#SellBeforeWeDai Action/Inaction Group

[Brogue]

protest march confimred before pompey game https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/spor ... uth-clash/

[Snowflake Royal]

STAR

Wow ok.

I obviously wouldn't ever suggest the funds have a high chance of being misappropriated but others might.

If you're going to risk jail and ruining your life by committing fraud, it's not worth it when the pot is only £3k or so. That will barely get you a decent holiday to the Med these days.

Fraud is famously commited by people who consider the comsequences of getting caught.

And there aren't at all cases of people doing it for paltry sums.

[Brogue]

whilst im not the biggest fan of STAR i don't believe they are corrupt fraudsters about to steal everyone's money

[Orion1871]

whilst im not the biggest fan of STAR i don't believe they are corrupt fraudsters about to steal everyone's money

Neither does Nath, he's just being an edgelord as usual.

[leon]

whilst im not the biggest fan of STAR i don't believe they are corrupt fraudsters about to steal everyone's money

Neither does Nath, he's just being an edgelord as usual.

Yeah inferring STAR are trying to commit fraud is just standard operating procedure.

[NathStPaul]

whilst im not the biggest fan of STAR i don't believe they are corrupt fraudsters about to steal everyone's money

Neither does Nath, he's just being an edgelord as usual.

Not at all, I said I wouldn't suggest that. Some might though, they need to be very transparent.

[WestYorksRoyal]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

[Brogue]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

[WestYorksRoyal]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

I think people overstate how achievable this is, especially now we're in L1. Let's say it costs £5m per year, we'd have to sell 2 or 3 of our best this year to break even.

Looking backwards, we lost Richards and Loader on a free, and Forest were rumoured to be interested in Holmes before he lost his form. But these are not big amounts. To bring in big money that covers several years and / or reinvestment in the 1st team, you need a genuine superstar.

Obviously the name here is Olise. All I'll say is that his agent negotiated hard with that release clause and then pulled the same trick at Palace. Perhaps we could have got the £20m+ that the likes of Eze, Scott and Bowen commanded, but it's not a given and even then talents of that magnitude are rare. There was about a decade between Sigurdsson and Olise, and we're a club with a good record of development.

Not rubbishing it as a strategy, but I would say that any owner following it would need to be willing to take the hit in years it doesn't come off.

[Brogue]

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

I think people overstate how achievable this is, especially now we're in L1. Let's say it costs £5m per year, we'd have to sell 2 or 3 of our best this year to break even.

Looking backwards, we lost Richards and Loader on a free, and Forest were rumoured to be interested in Holmes before he lost his form. But these are not big amounts. To bring in big money that covers several years and / or reinvestment in the 1st team, you need a genuine superstar.

Obviously the name here is Olise. All I'll say is that his agent negotiated hard with that release clause and then pulled the same trick at Palace. Perhaps we could have got the £20m+ that the likes of Eze, Scott and Bowen commanded, but it's not a given and even then talents of that magnitude are rare. There was about a decade between Sigurdsson and Olise, and we're a club with a good record of development.

Not rubbishing it as a strategy, but I would say that any owner following it would need to be willing to take the hit in years it doesn't come off.

it's not just the selling of players though, any academy player that makes the first team means a player we don't have to pay money for. (obviously not something we've done for a few years now), and invariably their wages will be far lower than having to sign someone. Imagine where we would be this season if we didn't have a decent academy. 3 places lower in the table would be my guess! and probably only 14 players on the books.

[WestYorksRoyal]

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

I think people overstate how achievable this is, especially now we're in L1. Let's say it costs £5m per year, we'd have to sell 2 or 3 of our best this year to break even.

Looking backwards, we lost Richards and Loader on a free, and Forest were rumoured to be interested in Holmes before he lost his form. But these are not big amounts. To bring in big money that covers several years and / or reinvestment in the 1st team, you need a genuine superstar.

Obviously the name here is Olise. All I'll say is that his agent negotiated hard with that release clause and then pulled the same trick at Palace. Perhaps we could have got the £20m+ that the likes of Eze, Scott and Bowen commanded, but it's not a given and even then talents of that magnitude are rare. There was about a decade between Sigurdsson and Olise, and we're a club with a good record of development.

Not rubbishing it as a strategy, but I would say that any owner following it would need to be willing to take the hit in years it doesn't come off.

it's not just the selling of players though, any academy player that makes the first team means a player we don't have to pay money for. (obviously not something we've done for a few years now), and invariably their wages will be far lower than having to sign someone. Imagine where we would be this season if we didn't have a decent academy. 3 places lower in the table would be my guess! and probably only 14 players on the books.

Can't disagree with this. Yes, we're fcuked this season anyway but we'd be at least ten times as fcuked without our academy.

[Sutekh]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

He did want to be promoted asap and spent shedloads everywhere EXCEPT the investment never went into the one area top level experience and expertise was always going to be needed to succeed, which was (and still is) the management of the club. No guarantees there of course but you should give yourself the very best of chances but instead all Reading employed was a succession of cheapo "nomarks" and thus all that was managed was to commit professional suicide.

[Snowflake Royal]

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

I think people overstate how achievable this is, especially now we're in L1. Let's say it costs £5m per year, we'd have to sell 2 or 3 of our best this year to break even.

Looking backwards, we lost Richards and Loader on a free, and Forest were rumoured to be interested in Holmes before he lost his form. But these are not big amounts. To bring in big money that covers several years and / or reinvestment in the 1st team, you need a genuine superstar.

Obviously the name here is Olise. All I'll say is that his agent negotiated hard with that release clause and then pulled the same trick at Palace. Perhaps we could have got the £20m+ that the likes of Eze, Scott and Bowen commanded, but it's not a given and even then talents of that magnitude are rare. There was about a decade between Sigurdsson and Olise, and we're a club with a good record of development.

Not rubbishing it as a strategy, but I would say that any owner following it would need to be willing to take the hit in years it doesn't come off.

When we first went into Cat 1 a few years back the cost was £1m - £1.5m. We might be up to £3m ish now, but £5m seems crazy high.

Olise went for £8m. We got a million and change from a couple of other youth players moving.

We got sell ons from a few like Dickie and Stacey. We refused to sell Loader and let him go for free.

It's not hard to see the Academy pay for itself when half our first team is made up of graduates from it.

It's a cost worth keeping, as one of the only successful parts of the club. As is Bearwood for now. Though if we stay down for long It's not very feasible.

God knows where the rest of the money goes. Some on stadium rent, thanks Dai you pcunt.

We can’t be spending much on fitness or scouting the opposition. Or if we are we might as well cut that to the bone for all the good it is doing. Catering can’t cost much given the quality. We seem to have cut back on transport.

[WestYorksRoyal]

I wonder if we could lease part of Bearwood to another team if it's unsustainable? Can't think of a suitable team. Perhaps create a high end health club with part of it, which if the glory days ever return we can bring back for footballing purposes?

I expect it's also things like media/community liaisons, marketing teams etc., where we're probably spending beyond our L1 reality. Not a nice thought as we're talking about people's jobs.

[Clyde1998]

I wonder if we could lease part of Bearwood to another team if it's unsustainable? Can't think of a suitable team. Perhaps create a high end health club with part of it, which if the glory days ever return we can bring back for footballing purposes?

I expect it's also things like media/community liaisons, marketing teams etc., where we're probably spending beyond our L1 reality. Not a nice thought as we're talking about people's jobs.

I can't think of a suitable club who could afford to (or would want to) lease part of Bearwood. Until fairly recently, London Irish would've been an option assuming changes could be made for rugby.

[YorkshireRoyal99]

A rep from SBWD appeared on the "Where's the money gone?" podcast yesterday featuring Charlie Methven - he of the "Sunderland 'Til I Die" David Brent tribute act and student of house music.

Very little you won't have heard already if honest, but Methven did comment that beyond player wages, our off pitch cost base is comparable with a top end Championship club and restructuring should have happened long ago when the parachute payments stopped. No doubt our Cat 1 academy is part of this. Also said administration could help a new owner restructure this more rapidly as you can basically tear up contracts, but that a potential owner may still not view it as worthwhile as footballing rules mean it would barely reduce debt. He was generally very pessimistic and sad for our plight (even as an Oxford fan), and thought we may need a wealthy fan to knowingly pay over the odds to rescue us, as happened at Derby.

Yeah we have been losing a lot of money and not all of it is down to the players' wages, there have been a lot of costs that I've never known where it has gone and what we were spending it on. If it is true that we were spending like a top end Championship club it only goes further to prove that Dai wanted us in the PL as quickly as possible as well, we just got it wrong. It's certainly a long road to fix the financial issues, whether we go into administration or not.

the thing is the academy should be self-sufficient it should fund itself, by producing players some who make the first team, and some sold on. The problem has been, that Dai doesn't seem to want to sell players for some strange reason.

Agree - I've said that the club should be centred around our academy because we must be one of the best clubs in the country at churning out talent good enough for our first team squad, irrespective of the division we are in.

Not every player has to go for £20m+, many players can go for solid fees and, from an accounting perspective, it goes as straight profit on our books. That's where Dai went very wrong, the sales of the likes of Richards, Loader etc for fees could have continued to fund his pursuit of the PL. Ultimately, that's only what Brentford did. They spent massively to get up, but funded this through player sales, arguably ours would be a better strategy though because it would all be seen as profit, whereas Brentford were making profit on players they had purchased.

It's obviously not that simple by any means, you do need good people within the club to nurture talent as well. To be fair, this is where I thought Paunovic might have been a good option because he seemed to trust the youth and obviously we saw the likes of Olise, Richards, Holmes etc probably peak under him, it just seemed very strange to appoint a manager like that, with maybe long-term thinking in mind, during the season where it was our last roll of the dice for promotion. Not saying Pauno was good by any means, but maybe could have been worth it under different circumstances.

[Elm Park Kid]

We should remember that up until this season there wasn't an issue with spending freely on things like the academy and other non-FFP items. Apparently it's common that lots of non-academy costs get shifted into the academy's balance sheet in order to keep them out of FFP calculations. And had Dai been willing to continue funding the club we would currently have no financial problems or transfer embargoes. We'd actually be a lot better off because League One rules are much laxer. In a timeline where Dai was still committed we could have very well been in the situation that some of the 'relegation is a good thing' people expected. Wilder as manager, our better players held on to and a few decent additions made. The EFL wouldn't have been able to stop any of it and the funding required from Dai would still be significantly less than what he put in back in the 2017-2021 days.

Obviously I don't think it's a good thing in general that a football club runs at an continuous loss, without reasonable cost control in areas. But they bring in some real controls than that's modern football people.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Agreed that if Dai was still committed we'd be fine in L1, but that just shows why clubs need to be more sustainable so that they're not dependent on their owner. As it is we're now without a stadium and a new owner will have to cover short term losses, making our way out of this sorry mess much harder.

FFP is too backwards looking and fundamentally unfit for purpose. It punished us after our costs became unsustainable. Leeds, Leicester and Southampton have all written to 777 partners warning of legal action if Everton are found to have broken FFP last year. What would happen if City are found guilty? No team will celebrate being awarded a title 5 years later in the same way as if they won it on the pitch. It's all a big mess.

We need to be more like Spain, where your transfer spend and wages are capped as a percentage of forecast income, making it much much harder for such messy situations to arise. Obviously Barcelona made some questionable financial decisions last year to get around the rules, but I think they have now been adapted to stop that in the future. It's a model that all countries should be following.

One notable debate on the podcast yesterday was the WBA fan saying a wages to income cap helps the big clubs and makes the PL more of a closed shop, but Methven rightfully pushed back and said getting sustainability in place must take precedent. Once you have that, then debate how to level the playing field. The WBA fan on the pod was a bit dramatic and self indulgent really - their issues pale in comparison to ours.

[Orion1871]

Agreed that if Dai was still committed we'd be fine in L1, but that just shows why clubs need to be more sustainable so that they're not dependent on their owner. As it is we're now without a stadium and a new owner will have to cover short term losses, making our way out of this sorry mess much harder.

FFP is too backwards looking and fundamentally unfit for purpose. It punished us after our costs became unsustainable. Leeds, Leicester and Southampton have all written to 777 partners warning of legal action if Everton are found to have broken FFP last year. What would happen if City are found guilty? No team will celebrate being awarded a title 5 years later in the same way as if they won it on the pitch. It's all a big mess.

We need to be more like Spain, where your transfer spend and wages are capped as a percentage of forecast income, making it much much harder for such messy situations to arise. Obviously Barcelona made some questionable financial decisions last year to get around the rules, but I think they have now been adapted to stop that in the future. It's a model that all countries should be following.

One notable debate on the podcast yesterday was the WBA fan saying a wages to income cap helps the big clubs and makes the PL more of a closed shop, but Methven rightfully pushed back and said getting sustainability in place must take precedent. Once you have that, then debate how to level the playing field. The WBA fan on the pod was a bit dramatic and self indulgent really - their issues pale in comparison to ours.

Which is all well and good, but why would the big boys have an incentive to level the playing field and reopen the closed shop? They wouldn't, they'd use their votes to veto any attempt to do so.