Clapham Saint

What he said. I have no idea what any of this means (and don't much care). I just know it is an issue with windows which seems pathetic for a product that is the "market leader".:mad:

I have got it to load but it keeps crashing. I'm hoping its only because of the amount of RAM that I have (2GB should be enough for any game using a decent OS. Having to order more is :-x) And before anybody starts I know that 32bit vista won't recognise 4GB. Another shocking flaw for an os that uses so f**king much!! Grrr... Roll on Windows 7 (surely it can't be any worse).

In simple terms..... Capitalism is currently the best of the poor range of options which we have. Capitalism and human short term nature together will always result in boom and bust cycle. Government involvement is therefore essential. During boom years governments should be looking to make sure things don't get out of hand. Use high tax revenue to reduce national debt etc. When everything then goes to the s**t they are then in a position to be able to step in and offer support where it is needed. The problem that we currently have is that Gordon Brown is a complete f**king moron and during the boom years anounced that he was a financial genius and that growth would never end ("No more boom and bust" etc). Instead of putting money asside he did exactly the opposite of what he should have done. Instead of the government paying off debt and saving money for the inevitable down turn he mortgaged the country up to the hilt and then when his own "golden rules" limited him from borrowing any more he started PFI in order to hide future debt off balance sheet. Now the down turn has come the cupboard is comepletely bare and he is digging the hole deeper and deeper. I doubt that even he is stupid enough to beleive that the measures he has brought in are going to work but he is ploughing on regardless. As with another delusional "leader "closer to home his "vision" has failed (as it was always going to) but he is refusing to change course regardless of the impact upon the country. I'm lucky in that I work in the insolvency industry but the vast vast majority are going to be very badly hurt by this for a LOT longer than another year (that some people have suggested).

Nail Head Hit The On

Guys, having read most of the posts on thios threat there is one thing that a few people seem to missunderstand. When an administrator is appointed he isn't "working for the Bank" as most people seem to think. This used to be the case with a Receivership however administration is actually quite different. Whe an administrator is appointed he has a responsibility to ALL creditors. One of those creditors is the bank, however he is just as accountable to the miilkman. Barclays have no say in who the administrator sells the company's assets to and so the question of who can be trusted to run the business in the future is on no relevance to him what so ever. The administrator is obliged to raise as much money as possible for the benefit of all creditors. The assets of the company (which is different fromt eh "club" are principally The "trade". i.e the club Player registrations SMS Jacksons Farm Staplewood The administrator will look to get teh most money that he can (in total) for all of these assets. In practical terms it is likely that the most money would be raised by selling the club as the club is worth more to a potential purchaser if it still has players etc. However if more money can be raised by selling off the players one by one then this is what the administrator will do. I'm not saying that sticking with Lowe is the only option however going into administration is a big BIG risk. (Yes I do do this for a living). CS

It can work either way. Usually if the bank want to appoint an administrator they will "ask" the directors to appoint one, and usually a specifuc one from one of their panel firms. As an accountant who works with "distressed" businesses I would prefer to avoid administration if at all possible. The ONLY circumstances in which I would accept administration voluntarily would be if a new owner was already lined up to invest and was prepared to buy the club out of administration. This would have the disadvantage of losing the 10 points but would give a "clean sweep" allowing the (mythical) investor to get rid of Lowe and Wilde for good. If I could be 100% certain that a new investor with money would come in and invest in the team and take us forward I personally would accept relegation in order to start again. If a new investor isn't lined up then, should we go into adminstration, the administrator will sell the club to the highest bidder regardless of who they are. He/She will also sell off any players that they can get cash for in the interim. Just becuase Lowe has been proved a failure in the past, if he stumps up the most cash (even if its just £1) then he will be able to buy the club lock, stock etc. He would then own 100% rather than the current 6%.

Only when they can use the old witholding sex routine. Not sure it would apply in the SFC boardroom.....

Possibly... 3 up front. McG, BWP, John, Connolly and Helguson rotating. Tried to get C Cole and Chopra but they turnme down every time.

My main problem at the moment is that I seem to regularly have 12-18 shots a game but only 1-2 of them on target. Is massively frustrating and I have no idea why it is happening. Any ideas?

Something like this? http://www.venganza.org/

I quite like that analogy... I might steal it for explaining things to clients in the future. For what it's worth I don't think that Barclays refusing to pay wages would be "playing dirty". Going by what is posted on this forum, we would seem to have been in breach of our overdraft for a very long time. They could have withdrawn the facility ages ago but have chosen not to. (No I don;t work for them before anyone asks).

Except that... we are currently in defualt on our overdraft. It is therefore upto the Bank if they want to let certain payments through or not. If you were the bank manager responsible for this account you would know if the company was about to enter administration, in fact as (I presume) the ranking chargeholder, you would have to give your concent. If you knew that the company was about to go into administration and it was your job to minimise the Bank's exposure, would you allow the players wages to be paid or would you block them and leave them to be (football related) debts in the administration? How much is our total wage bill per month?

As Rich has said above, if we go into administration all bets are off. In laymans terms: Entering andministration results in a moratorium over all debts (a freeze on all amounts owed to Barclays, Norwich Union and everyone down to the milkman). The directors lose control of the club and its assets to the administrator, however as BTF said above they retain a duty to the company. Any compnay or individual who thinks that they are owed money by the club may submit a claim for the amount that they are owed to the administrator. The administrator will then raise as much money as possible from the assets as he/she can. The administrator's main concern is the amount of money that can be raised and not that the football club survives. However in most scenario's the football club being sold (and surviving) is likely to also be the route that the administrator takes to raise as much money as possible. The money raised is then paid out to the various creditors. Creditors who have a charge registered against the company (Barlcays, Norwich Union and maybe a couple of others), will get paid in priority to Joe Bloggs. In a non-football company, who gets paid what would be irrelevant to the business (or club) being sold to a new company and carrying on without the previous debts. The funds are paid out in accordance with a specific legal formula and there isn't much that anyone can do about it. The issue arrises with the F.A. insisting that all football debts are paid in full regardless of everyone else. The F.A.s rules are different from the administrator's legal obligations, which is what causes the problems. In order to pay football related debts. The administrator either needs to pay all debts (and if this is possible there wouldn't have been a need for the club to go into administration in the first place) or the administrator needs to show that paying the football related debts in some way benefits the other creditors (i.e. joe bloggs and eveyone else) This could be the case if an investor made an offer for the club of (say) £5 million but the offer was conditional upon the football related debts of £3m being paid and the club not receiving a 17 point deduction. If the above deal were to go through then although the administrator would have to pay £3m to creditors that he technically shouldn't, this results in an extra £2m being available to pay to everybody else which otherwise wouldn't be available. Does the above make sense? I have tried to write in laymans terms but could well be being too techincal or equally be too patronising. It isn't my intention to do either. CS

There isn't a set bidding method. The administrator will have a statutory duty to realise as much as possible for the creditors. He/she can go about raising this however he/she thinks best. Initial enquires would be made with regard to any interested parties. In my experience. Once I have an idea who might be interested and hopefully had had some contact from them I would make a judgement on how to get the highest bids from them. This might be sealed bids or you could try to start a bidding war or any other meathod that you can dream up. I would then need to take into account how much they are offering and what it is that they are actually proposing to buy. For example if "Buyer 1" offered (numbers are obviously made up for ease) £3m for the club but didn't want to buy the stadium but "Buyer 2" wants to buy the club for £2m and is also prepared to buy the stadium for a further £3m (total £5m) then the administrator would have to decide how much he might be able to sell the stadium for sparately. If the stadium could only be sold to a developer (or whoever) for £1m then the £5m combined deal to "buyer 2" is the best deal. If the stadium could be sold to a developer for £3m then the most money is acheived from splitting up the club and the stadium and selling them separately. £3m + £3m = £6m is the better option for the creditors and so the administrator would be obligated to take this option.

As an chartered accountant working with in the business recovery (as we prefer to call it) team in a mid tier practice. This is spot on. Unless we have an investor come in very (VERY) sharpish after we go into administration it will be BIG problem.

By default an administration only lasts 12 months. However the administrator can apply to extrend it (and they frequently do). CS

Season ticket holders would be able to make a claim for for the value of the proportion of the season ticket that you could not use as a result of teh club ceasing to trade. For the sake of making the numbers easy... If your season tiket cost £380 (£20 per game) and the club didn't play it's last 2 home games you would be able to claim £40 in the administration. However as your claim would be unsecured and so you would probably only receive (say) 2p in the pound and so would only actually get a cheque for 80p.... [Edit: I've realised that we play more than 19 games a season now... damn. But can't be bothered to change my figures]

No!!!!! They used to be but they aren't anymore. The link below may be too much for some but the intro is... http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000122&propertyType=document

The exact rules I'm afraid that I would have to go away and look up but in practical terms I'm afraid that you couldn't. (Thinking off the top of my head) The only way would be if ALL other creditors were to sign away their claim then maybe but I really couldn't see that happening. As to how the revenue would act, I find that when negotiating with the revenue it really does tend to depend upon who answers the phone at their end. In my experience they are very inconsistent however if they have a specific policy on football clubs then they may be unwilling to vary from it. Also, with regard to setting aside money to pay HMRC each month - if a company goes into admin it doesn't matter what the directors had been intending to spend money on, it all goes into the "pot" and couldn't be paid to one unsecured creditor in favour of others.

This is pretty close. I hope that the below makes sense and of course that it isn’t too dull … An administrator has various statutory obligations which I won’t bother to copy out in full here. However an administrator’s first objective would be to maintain the Business (i.e. the club not the company that owns it) as a going concern. This will generally be done either by making operational changes (usually cost cutting) or by selling the business to new company. The administrator then has a duty to realise as much money as possible for the benefit of all creditors. I haven’t reviewed the balance sheet in any detail but in the case of saints I would suspect that unsecured creditors wouldn’t get anything at all (because it would all go to Barclays and whomever it is that holds the fixed charge over the stadium). In a “normal company HMRC wouldn’t be offered anything, they would simply get what they were given. I haven’t been involved with the administrations of any football clubs and so don’t know the F.A.’s rules in detail however an administrator is not allowed to pay off one unsecured creditor but not the others. If the F.A. require all football related debts to be paid in full then this would mean that you would have to have to pay ALL creditors which is evidently not possible. A CVA is a different process to an administration whereby creditors are asked to agree to accept a certain % of what they are actually owed (it is slightly more complicated than that but..) and the administrator would have to get a majority of the creditors to vote in favour of his offer. The creditors get a number votes in proportion to how much money they are owed. Because HMRC are often the biggest unsecured creditor they often have the most votes and so can block a CVA proposal. However with the number of companies struggling at the moment they are going to have to start soon or even more companies (not just football clubs) are going to end up disappearing entirely when they might otherwise have been able to trade through. (I wonder how many people read this far... not many) CS

Cheers!

Looks good. Tactics can be a nightmare in this game as one position wrong can throw off everything. Out of curiosity... did come up with this your self or did you download it? If you downloaded it any chance of letting us know where from? CS

+1 Very sad to say it but I'm now no longer trying to work out how we are going to turn the season around. I don't think it will be possible under the current leadership as L**e will not admit that he has made a mistake. I actually think that he revels in the fans (who i beleive he considers to irrelevant working class commoners) hatred and the campain to get rid of him only serves to fuel his ego. The only way that I can see him going is if we go into administration and somebody else comes in to buy the club. I have accepted that we will go down. The only question is whether L**e has (or has access to) the cash to buy the clubs after it goes into admistration. I hope to god he doesn't. CS

Animal_79 Currently wasting my life playing CoD4 but also have Proevo, GTA4, Ridgeracer, Motorstorm ad a few others.