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Post by newmarketgas on Mar 15, 2016 16:15:13 GMT
I am happy that we stayed alive as a club, I am very easily pleased mind you, I even like boiled spuds !
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Post by Topper Gas on Mar 15, 2016 16:23:17 GMT
......or did NH just get v. lucky at the 11th hour when MSP put Hamer/Wael in touch with the club, what would have happened if Scully had decided to sell Gillingham to the Al-Q's? So now its MSP who oversaw the buy out,who is the next one to get credit ?Father Christmas I think you need to check your facts before trying to point score, as Steve Hammer's confirmed recently that MSP suggested Rovers were ripe for a takeover when Paul Scully declined any offers to sell Gillingham to Wael. Whilst they didn't over see the buy out I doubt Wael would have ever contacted NH w/o them pointing him in our direction.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2016 16:25:24 GMT
I am happy that we stayed alive as a club, I am very easily pleased mind you, I even like boiled spuds ! Married eh?
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Post by Topper Gas on Mar 15, 2016 16:26:32 GMT
"He closed down the OF because of the slanderous comments being made on there by some of the members. The accusations towards a number of players in particular led to the OF being closed. If he had been seen to condone those comments by allowing the OF to continue then the club could have been joined in the actions."
It was one player not players and given he was dismissed by the club it could well be the comments weren't even liabellous, but how hard would it have been for the club to delete the thread and warn, or ban, the posters involved?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2016 16:32:52 GMT
The result of the appeal is why we were sold. Are you absolutely certain of this or is it just your opinion Just my opinion.
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Post by grayraydon on Mar 15, 2016 16:33:29 GMT
I am happy that we stayed alive as a club, I am very easily pleased mind you, I even like boiled spuds ! Sounds painful!
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Post by newmarketgas on Mar 15, 2016 16:38:45 GMT
Indeed.
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Post by oldgas on Mar 15, 2016 17:06:43 GMT
So now its MSP who oversaw the buy out,who is the next one to get credit ?Father Christmas I think you need to check your facts before trying to point score, as Steve Hammer's confirmed recently that MSP suggested Rovers were ripe for a takeover when Paul Scully declined any offers to sell Gillingham to Wael. Whilst they didn't over see the buy out I doubt Wael would have ever contacted NH w/o them pointing him in our direction. I rather suspect MSP were delighted to introduce the Al-Quadi family to the Rovers BOD. They probably knew Higgs was p!ssing into the wind with his Sainsburys appeal and desperately wanted to avoid being known as the b@stards who put Rovers into administration. Whilst they probably wouldn't want to do it they are a financial institution, dedicated to making money. Sharks, crocodiles and other carnivores ruthlessly kill to eat, it's just what they do, and MSP are no different when it comes to making money and recovering debt. Barclays Bank didn't want to touch us, and that speaks volumes to me. Just my opinion you understand.
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Post by amgas on Mar 15, 2016 17:22:35 GMT
Of course NH could have just paid MSP off himself with a loan from the £20 Million or so he banked from the sale of Cowlin. Not saying he would have but would have been a far more likely scenario than Administration, particularly as he was sat on an asset in the Mem that could have repaid himself and all the clubs debts if sold. In reality administration never likely while we owned a stadium worth £15-20 Million. Add to this the fact we are told there was at least one more credible buyer after the club, I don't think it is true to say that Higgs needed MSP to introduce him to buyers to avoid administration. As it turned out perhaps borrowing the money from MSP did work out for the best in terms of them seeing our potential and pointing a buyer towards us - well done Higgs for taking out a Wonga loan :-) I also firmly believe there would have not been the interest in us without the UWE stadium being as far advanced as it was - assuming it does get built Higgs should at least get credit for getting the project through the planning stages etc, even if does take someone with more cash to turn it into a reality.
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Post by phillistine on Mar 15, 2016 18:01:58 GMT
"He closed down the OF because of the slanderous comments being made on there by some of the members. The accusations towards a number of players in particular led to the OF being closed. If he had been seen to condone those comments by allowing the OF to continue then the club could have been joined in the actions." It was one player not players and given he was dismissed by the club it could well be the comments weren't even liabellous, but how hard would it have been for the club to delete the thread and warn, or ban, the posters involved? That would be great defence in court - "sorry your honour but our comments may well have been true". It wasnt just one player though was it - people were out of control and winding each other up to say all sorts of things. It wasnt just Rovers though and virtually every club stopped running Forums on their websites.
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Post by phillistine on Mar 15, 2016 18:09:44 GMT
Our League position nosedived but in the last 18 months has started to climb. But we are still a division lower than where we were when he took over We did not get a new ground under NH but everyone knows that Rome didnt get built in a day. or indeed 10yrs We did get the foundations on which the new owners will hopefully build a new stadium. Which our new owners are renegotiating because it wasn't a great deal for the club He didnt negotiate the Contract - his solicitors did Who was lauded as having a fantastic background in construction and who appointed them? Legally it would have been suicide to admit that he believed Sainsbury were trying to pull out. So say nothing, its better than lying to us You could argue that he gave established and succesful managers their chance until it became evident that they were taking us backwards. Hindsight is a great thing. So is an ability to learn from your past mistakes The new owner has said that he would have pulled out had the matter got into the public arena. Did he actually say that he knew nothing about a consortium or did he say that there were no serious buyers for the club. The fact that the consortium never went public seems to back up this. He asked if someone could tell him who it was that was trying to buy us because it was a the first he'd heard of it. Another lie when saying nothing would have been preferable He closed down the OF because of the slanderous comments being made on there by some of the members. The accusations towards a number of players in particular led to the OF being closed. If he had been seen to condone those comments by allowing the OF to continue then the club could have been joined in the actions. Lucky no one was slagging off his running of the club and asking for the review he promised then otherwise people might start to get cynical I cant comment on the last point as I dont know. His only success according to you was getting bought out. Yes. That was unfair of me, I should have mentioned Santa's grotto too. I suggest that you go back and read the new owners interviews about why they purchased the Rovers. It was because of the potential with a new ground in the pipeline. Isnt making the club a good proposition to a dynamic prosepctive purchaser who is more equiped than yourself to take it forward - a success? Yes, that's a success. Which was what I said. Selling up was his biggest success. Apologies if I seem flippant, but I can't really agree with much you raise, even if you have taken the time to raise a good argument. I'm not sure really that you've said much to actually put forward NH as a success other than to nearly get the UWE and to have sold up. I'm not sure if we are even in disagreement. Edit, forgot to mention the debt. Mustn't forget that! I wasnt trying to say he was a success . I do however believe that your initial comment that he was a proven failure was over the top.
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Post by Topper Gas on Mar 15, 2016 18:15:12 GMT
Of course NH could have just paid MSP off himself with a loan from the £20 Million or so he banked from the sale of Cowlin. Not saying he would have but would have been a far more likely scenario than Administration, particularly as he was sat on an asset in the Mem that could have repaid himself and all the clubs debts if sold. In reality administration never likely while we owned a stadium worth £15-20 Million. Add to this the fact we are told there was at least one more credible buyer after the club, I don't think it is true to say that Higgs needed MSP to introduce him to buyers to avoid administration. As it turned out perhaps borrowing the money from MSP did work out for the best in terms of them seeing our potential and pointing a buyer towards us - well done Higgs for taking out a Wonga loan :-) I also firmly believe there would have not been the interest in us without the UWE stadium being as far advanced as it was - assuming it does get built Higgs should at least get credit for getting the project through the planning stages etc, even if does take someone with more cash to turn it into a reality. As of course that money was just sat in NH's bank account untouched after a decade or so of selling his business and not investing elsewhere!!
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Post by oldgas on Mar 15, 2016 18:33:15 GMT
Of course NH could have just paid MSP off himself with a loan from the £20 Million or so he banked from the sale of Cowlin. Not saying he would have but would have been a far more likely scenario than Administration, particularly as he was sat on an asset in the Mem that could have repaid himself and all the clubs debts if sold. In reality administration never likely while we owned a stadium worth £15-20 Million. Add to this the fact we are told there was at least one more credible buyer after the club, I don't think it is true to say that Higgs needed MSP to introduce him to buyers to avoid administration. As it turned out perhaps borrowing the money from MSP did work out for the best in terms of them seeing our potential and pointing a buyer towards us - well done Higgs for taking out a Wonga loan :-) I also firmly believe there would have not been the interest in us without the UWE stadium being as far advanced as it was - assuming it does get built Higgs should at least get credit for getting the project through the planning stages etc, even if does take someone with more cash to turn it into a reality. I think you're being very generous with someone else's (Higgs) money. I understand that at one point during negotiations with Sh!tsburys he threatened to put the club into administration. There aren't many business men who will contemplate spending millions of their own money on a failing business, and Higgs is first and foremost a business man. Indeed, if he was prepared to bail the club out at the last minute, why did he incur unnecessary, massive interest charges by going to Wonga. Logic dictates he would have funded the legal case from the start. Therefore I feel that administration was a very real possibility if the appeal failed, because there would have been a queue of creditors at the door, and for all we know, Higgs liquidity may have not been sufficient to service the demands. What else would he be able to do? Borrow more from MSP and hope, ala Uriah Heap that "something would turn up"?
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Post by Topper Gas on Mar 15, 2016 18:46:29 GMT
"He closed down the OF because of the slanderous comments being made on there by some of the members. The accusations towards a number of players in particular led to the OF being closed. If he had been seen to condone those comments by allowing the OF to continue then the club could have been joined in the actions." It was one player not players and given he was dismissed by the club it could well be the comments weren't even liabellous, but how hard would it have been for the club to delete the thread and warn, or ban, the posters involved? That would be great defence in court - "sorry your honour but our comments may well have been true". It wasnt just one player though was it - people were out of control and winding each other up to say all sorts of things. It wasnt just Rovers though and virtually every club stopped running Forums on their websites. Never let a good story get in the way of the facts, there were no real problems with the forum apart from comments made by 1 or 2 posters about the reason one player left the club under a cloud. The forum was needlessly just shut overnight without any prior warnings it might be closed.
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Post by Topper Gas on Mar 15, 2016 18:51:07 GMT
Of course NH could have just paid MSP off himself with a loan from the £20 Million or so he banked from the sale of Cowlin. Not saying he would have but would have been a far more likely scenario than Administration, particularly as he was sat on an asset in the Mem that could have repaid himself and all the clubs debts if sold. In reality administration never likely while we owned a stadium worth £15-20 Million. Add to this the fact we are told there was at least one more credible buyer after the club, I don't think it is true to say that Higgs needed MSP to introduce him to buyers to avoid administration. As it turned out perhaps borrowing the money from MSP did work out for the best in terms of them seeing our potential and pointing a buyer towards us - well done Higgs for taking out a Wonga loan :-) I also firmly believe there would have not been the interest in us without the UWE stadium being as far advanced as it was - assuming it does get built Higgs should at least get credit for getting the project through the planning stages etc, even if does take someone with more cash to turn it into a reality. I think you're being very generous with someone else's (Higgs) money. I understand that at one point during negotiations with Sh!tsburys he threatened to put the club into administration. There aren't many business men who will contemplate spending millions of their own money on a failing business, and Higgs is first and foremost a business man. Indeed, if he was prepared to bail the club out at the last minute, why did he incur unnecessary, massive interest charges by going to Wonga. Logic dictates he would have funded the legal case from the start. Therefore I feel that administration was a very real possibility if the appeal failed, because there would have been a queue of creditors at the door, and for all we know, Higgs liquidity may have not been sufficient to service the demands. What else would he be able to do? Borrow more from MSP and hope, ala Uriah Heap that "something would turn up"? Worse still he could have sold the Mem for redevelopment and forced Rovers into ground sharing at Bath again.
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Post by phillistine on Mar 15, 2016 19:03:15 GMT
That would be great defence in court - "sorry your honour but our comments may well have been true". It wasnt just one player though was it - people were out of control and winding each other up to say all sorts of things. It wasnt just Rovers though and virtually every club stopped running Forums on their websites. Never let a good story get in the way of the facts, there were no real problems with the forum apart from comments made by 1 or 2 posters about the reason one player left the club under a cloud. The forum was needlessly just shut overnight without any prior warnings it might be closed. Never let the truth get in the way of an inaccurate statement. That is just simply not true. You could argue that I am naieve but until i read the forum I had no knowledge of the drug ketamine and specifically remember a discussion on who was taking the drug, who was supplying it and at least 3 names were mentioned. I couldnt believe the discussion that was going on in a public forum. I remember an article personally slagging off a player for reasons i will not raise again but which were libellous and Higgs himself was accused of various things.
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Post by gastropod on Mar 15, 2016 19:38:54 GMT
Of course NH could have just paid MSP off himself with a loan from the £20 Million or so he banked from the sale of Cowlin. Not saying he would have but would have been a far more likely scenario than Administration, particularly as he was sat on an asset in the Mem that could have repaid himself and all the clubs debts if sold. In reality administration never likely while we owned a stadium worth £15-20 Million. Add to this the fact we are told there was at least one more credible buyer after the club, I don't think it is true to say that Higgs needed MSP to introduce him to buyers to avoid administration. As it turned out perhaps borrowing the money from MSP did work out for the best in terms of them seeing our potential and pointing a buyer towards us - well done Higgs for taking out a Wonga loan :-) I also firmly believe there would have not been the interest in us without the UWE stadium being as far advanced as it was - assuming it does get built Higgs should at least get credit for getting the project through the planning stages etc, even if does take someone with more cash to turn it into a reality. I think you're being very generous with someone else's (Higgs) money. I understand that at one point during negotiations with Sh!tsburys he threatened to put the club into administration. There aren't many business men who will contemplate spending millions of their own money on a failing business, and Higgs is first and foremost a business man. Indeed, if he was prepared to bail the club out at the last minute, why did he incur unnecessary, massive interest charges by going to Wonga. Logic dictates he would have funded the legal case from the start. Therefore I feel that administration was a very real possibility if the appeal failed, because there would have been a queue of creditors at the door, and for all we know, Higgs liquidity may have not been sufficient to service the demands. What else would he be able to do? Borrow more from MSP and hope, ala Uriah Heap that "something would turn up"? We will never know what would have happened if the appeal is lost and the takeover had not happened. However football isn't a normal business, it rarely returns a profit so running such a business doesn't follow the normal financial motivations. Nick Higgs is a fan so I'd like to think that going into administration would have been an absolute last resort and other schemes for UWE and the Mem would have been found. Your Dickens reference is wrong as well. It was Mr Micawber who always believed that "something will turn up".
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Post by madgas on Mar 15, 2016 20:24:59 GMT
Its odd that were all fighting over Mr Higgs for two reasons:
1) Firstly, HE'S gone. Let's move on.
To the higgs-haters- what good does it do bringing back old issues. He's gone, the clubs moving on. Let's see what happens.
To the pro-Higgs camp- I'm afraid there will never be a statue built of your glorious messiah. If Rovers were ever to immortalise anyone in life-size-sculpture they would choose Sammy Igoe, to save money on Bronze.
2) We need to let time roll on a little before deciding the legacy of Mr Higgs. Yes, he got us relegated, employed many numpty managers, lost a watertight case, Wonga-ed, board splits, and debt increased. But he's also found Wael, led the way on the stadium, and employed Darrell. That legacy may prove enough to forgive him on the risks he's taken.
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Post by BishopstonBRFC on Mar 15, 2016 20:44:20 GMT
Wasn't the "consortium" just fragment of somebody's imagination anyway? Perhaps we should all just pause for breath on this thread and see what Thursday brings as I assume win or lose the new owners will have to make some announcement about building the new stadium. If you mean the consortium referred to by JTS etc, probably not. When Ali Durden reported on Points West about the Al Qadi buy out, he said there was another consortium interested. As to their identities, I imagine only a few people know for sure. If I had to guess, the registration of a company involving the name Bristol Rovers might point to Mike Turl being the ex Bristol Rovers connection and Swissgas has experience of arranging contacts etc in the states. All speculation on my part and history now anyway. I do wonder if Wael will settle for 21,700 or go straight for the second tier taking it up to 26,000. Can it literally be increased in capacity without extra PP as others have eluded to?
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Post by womble on Mar 15, 2016 21:12:39 GMT
If you mean the consortium referred to by JTS etc, probably not. When Ali Durden reported on Points West about the Al Qadi buy out, he said there was another consortium interested. As to their identities, I imagine only a few people know for sure. If I had to guess, the registration of a company involving the name Bristol Rovers might point to Mike Turl being the ex Bristol Rovers connection and Swissgas has experience of arranging contacts etc in the states. All speculation on my part and history now anyway. I do wonder if Wael will settle for 21,700 or go straight for the second tier taking it up to 26,000. Can it literally be increased in capacity without extra PP as others have eluded to? Well it wouldn't alter the external appearance, but it would probably depend on whether the South Glos planners considered it a 'non-material amendment' or not. I suspect they would want another application. Nothing to stop us starting on the stadium using the original permission though.
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