Venky’s, HMRC…The Plot Thickens ?

[Eddie]

1 hour ago, SBlue said:

The "It's their money they can do what they want" attitude doesn't sit well with me.

I think if you asked many Wednesday fans, they'd take admin/Lg2/whatever to get rid of the narcissistic embarrassment of an owner. There is huge potential there with that fanbase to aim towards some kind of relative sustainability.

How is that entitled?

If you don't want to have to cover some losses, don't buy (or create in our case) a Championship football club. Sort out the business model, respect the supporters, or hand the keys over to someone that will. At the very least expect some criticism when you fuck it up.

 

I'll take your points one at a time.

1 - Ultimately, if they're paying the bills, then I think it's hard to say that they owe more than that.

2 - I think a lot of fans say this, but when the reality of administration or multiple relegations hit they would change their tune. Yes, some will point to clubs that have managed to handle the situation relatively well (Bolton), but they are the exception.

3 - It is entitled because it assumes that every owner not only has to run a sensible business, but also operate at a huge personal loss. 

4 - That is an issue that can't really be dressed at the individual club level. The business model for football is broken. Instead of supporters protesting that, we pick on individual owners who decide that they don't want to lose tens of millions (or more) owning a club.

Every supporter on here is calling for more summer signings and asking why we aren't spending more money. We also operate at a huge loss in a way that virtually no other business would. It seems odd to me that supporters would be 'so happy' to go through the relegation route through some sort of nuclear implosion, yet are incredibly upset when the same results occur as a result of financial limitations when it comes to signings and wages.

There's a degree of inconsistency and hypocrisy there. 

I don't really want to get into a debate where we single out individual clubs or examples, because there will always be bad owners. But many clubs complain about owners who do nothing worse than keep a business running.

[Brainfreeze]

53 minutes ago, simongarnerisgod said:

i reckon venkys problems in india are more serious than they appear and they`ll be offloading the club soon🙂

wherever we end up i will be thankful if we  finally see the last of them,the last 13 years have been an unmitigated disaster,for me,we can end up in the north west counties league one as long as we rid of the indians,can you imagine how epic coppull utd vs rovers would be,hoardes of rovers fans rampaging through the backward streets of coppull😂

Oi! I'm from Coppull!! 😆

I used to play for Coppull united as a youngster. A famous 24-0 defeat against Lostock Hall sticks in my mind...and not just for the scoreline. I also had a fight with my own goalkeeper that day (somewhere around the 19th or 20th goal flying in)!

[K-Hod]

3 hours ago, Eddie said:

Disagree. 

There's an entitled mentality creeping (or even sprinting) into football fan mentality when it comes to what they can demand from owners.

At the absolute worst end of the scale you see things like Ajax last weekend and just the general behaviour of Manchester United fans over the last decade - but it is permeating most clubs.

Many of our complaints about Venkys are fully justified, but even here we see fans expressing some expectation that an owner should be writing blank cheques to fund their own footballing wet dream.

Is it entitlement though?

Or is it just fans expecting higher standards from the owners of their clubs?

I think this is an awful take from you Eddie, I’ll be honest.

 

[Upside Down]

4 hours ago, Eddie said:

Disagree. 

There's an entitled mentality creeping (or even sprinting) into football fan mentality when it comes to what they can demand from owners.

At the absolute worst end of the scale you see things like Ajax last weekend and just the general behaviour of Manchester United fans over the last decade - but it is permeating most clubs.

Many of our complaints about Venkys are fully justified, but even here we see fans expressing some expectation that an owner should be writing blank cheques to fund their own footballing wet dream.

Absolutely no one has expected that here. You are talking complete bollocks. 

We demand just basic levels of competence. 

Venkys have yet to ever deliver that, our plight is entirely down to them. 

If they had anything about them they would sell up and fuck off. Until that day comes nothing will change.

[roversfan99]

5 hours ago, Eddie said:

Disagree. 

There's an entitled mentality creeping (or even sprinting) into football fan mentality when it comes to what they can demand from owners.

At the absolute worst end of the scale you see things like Ajax last weekend and just the general behaviour of Manchester United fans over the last decade - but it is permeating most clubs.

Many of our complaints about Venkys are fully justified, but even here we see fans expressing some expectation that an owner should be writing blank cheques to fund their own footballing wet dream.

It makes sense that your argument is based on the myth that our fanbase demands that the owners "write blank cheques."

Thats not the issue. We would have money to re circulate if they run the club properly. Dont stubbornly refuse to sell players running down their deals which could allow both relatively speaking considerable sums to both reinvest and slightly stem losses. Dont slash budgets randomly mid summer affecting plans. Dont continue to employ an incompetent CEO who affects revenue streams.

[1864roverite]

3 hours ago, Brainfreeze said:

Oi! I'm from Coppull!! 😆

I used to play for Coppull united as a youngster. A famous 24-0 defeat against Lostock Hall sticks in my mind...and not just for the scoreline. I also had a fight with my own goalkeeper that day (somewhere around the 19th or 20th goal flying in)!

I recall Wheelton v coppull in the 80’s we gave them a kicking😂

[Bethnal]

It’s a narcissistic character trait to wade into subjects outside of your own expertise (irony alert on this post) and there’s a clear case for business leaders who take a shining to the limelight to be narcissists, whether natural-born or acquired.

The reason we see so much failure of football club ownership, I believe, is because the people who decide that owning a football club is something they’d like to do - usually despite not really being deep-pocketed enough, being savvy enough or even being fans of the club - aren’t up to it and are too stubborn to recognise their shortcomings, as is the case with a lot of narcissists.

Whether you deserve the praise or not (and I firmly believe our current owners don’t, for example), when running a business that is successful, you’re liable to develop an inflated sense of self.

What we’re seeing with a lot of the incompetent owners in the football system is the perfect storm of people who believe they cannot fail and market conditions that they simple cannot contend with.

It’s not unique to football (see technology companies that fail after raising eye-watering sums and squandering it all), but it seems that football has unique outcomes.

When a football club fails, a town and a community suffers. The very football pyramid itself suffers. When a startup that caters to a ridiculous niche serving little to no purpose fails, it affects the employees and investors’ portfolios but nothing much wider.

There simply needs to be an evaluation of what a football club is, above and beyond its fundamental status as a vehicle for capital/limited company/“business.”

I think I’d hoped the independent regulator/governing body/whatever that’s been mooted/proposed would be in effect and beginning to challenge the existing system.

As it is, the body that governs the top level of our domestic game has fostered, promoted and sustained the existing paradigm, which is inherently unsustainable and very possibly a poster child for the question, “what happens when the worst people you can imagine chase the most amount of money, with the least amount of forward planning and oversight?”

I think we’re all at least loosely aware of the “50+1” model in Germany, but even that is a one-club top league, basically, so there’s clearly no silver bullet.

I believe football clubs are assets of community value and should have safeguards around them. Part of that should be community ownership and I think only when feckless owners can be challenged and punished for mismanagement (the owners, not the football club) will you see fewer chancers riding roughshod over the clubs, as we see currently.

I’ll admit that it could be confirmation bias, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Tony Bloom’s measured and sustainable approach at Brighton came from an owner who is a lifelong fan. Same goes for Matthew Benham.

Of course, they’re very likely to be exceptionally capable (I know some that work for Tony Bloom’s firm and attest to that) but they are examples of what happens when owners think not what their purchase of a football club can do for them, but what they can do for their (in the sense that Rovers are “ours” as fans) football club.

[47er]

7 hours ago, Eddie said:

Disagree. 

There's an entitled mentality creeping (or even sprinting) into football fan mentality when it comes to what they can demand from owners.

At the absolute worst end of the scale you see things like Ajax last weekend and just the general behaviour of Manchester United fans over the last decade - but it is permeating most clubs.

Many of our complaints about Venkys are fully justified, but even here we see fans expressing some expectation that an owner should be writing blank cheques to fund their own footballing wet dream.

There's another kind of entitlement where  owners of a football club, thousands of miles away and apparently disinterested,  feel entitled to do whatever they like, without any sense of responsibility to the generations who have loved the club for nearly 2 centuries.

Then there's the fans who think that's alright. Strange.

[tomphil]

1 hour ago, 47er said:

There's another kind of entitlement where  owners of a football club, thousands of miles away and apparently disinterested,  feel entitled to do whatever they like, without any sense of responsibility to the generations who have loved the club for nearly 2 centuries.

Then there's the fans who think that's alright. Strange.

I do think they feel a sense of responsibility to pay the bills - because they can and it suits them - trouble is that's all they think they need to do.

Typical uber wealthy behaviour.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Bethnal said:

It’s a narcissistic character trait to wade into subjects outside of your own expertise (irony alert on this post) and there’s a clear case for business leaders who take a shining to the limelight to be narcissists, whether natural-born or acquired.

The reason we see so much failure of football club ownership, I believe, is because the people who decide that owning a football club is something they’d like to do - usually despite not really being deep-pocketed enough, being savvy enough or even being fans of the club - aren’t up to it and are too stubborn to recognise their shortcomings, as is the case with a lot of narcissists.

Whether you deserve the praise or not (and I firmly believe our current owners don’t, for example), when running a business that is successful, you’re liable to develop an inflated sense of self.

What we’re seeing with a lot of the incompetent owners in the football system is the perfect storm of people who believe they cannot fail and market conditions that they simple cannot contend with.

It’s not unique to football (see technology companies that fail after raising eye-watering sums and squandering it all), but it seems that football has unique outcomes.

When a football club fails, a town and a community suffers. The very football pyramid itself suffers. When a startup that caters to a ridiculous niche serving little to no purpose fails, it affects the employees and investors’ portfolios but nothing much wider.

There simply needs to be an evaluation of what a football club is, above and beyond its fundamental status as a vehicle for capital/limited company/“business.”

I think I’d hoped the independent regulator/governing body/whatever that’s been mooted/proposed would be in effect and beginning to challenge the existing system.

As it is, the body that governs the top level of our domestic game has fostered, promoted and sustained the existing paradigm, which is inherently unsustainable and very possibly a poster child for the question, “what happens when the worst people you can imagine chase the most amount of money, with the least amount of forward planning and oversight?”

I think we’re all at least loosely aware of the “50+1” model in Germany, but even that is a one-club top league, basically, so there’s clearly no silver bullet.

I believe football clubs are assets of community value and should have safeguards around them. Part of that should be community ownership and I think only when feckless owners can be challenged and punished for mismanagement (the owners, not the football club) will you see fewer chancers riding roughshod over the clubs, as we see currently.

I’ll admit that it could be confirmation bias, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Tony Bloom’s measured and sustainable approach at Brighton came from an owner who is a lifelong fan. Same goes for Matthew Benham.

Of course, they’re very likely to be exceptionally capable (I know some that work for Tony Bloom’s firm and attest to that) but they are examples of what happens when owners think not what their purchase of a football club can do for them, but what they can do for their (in the sense that Rovers are “ours” as fans) football club.

Wow! Now THAT is a measured and logical assessment of the state of the sandpit, if I ever read one.

Respect to you, Bethnal, for setting out a logical argument that should be at the heart of the Fit and Proper test for anyone seeking to take on a Football Club in this country. Perhaps if it was a requirement that a business plan for running a club should address not just the operational necessities of fielding a team and paying players, but also the maintenance and enrichment of the social context within which the club exists (including specific approaches for preserving the fabric and legacy that is the tangible outcome of the club's history and traditions), maybe then we might see some change in the game.

But of course, money talks, from the filthy / built on the backs of slave labour shekels underpinning the Toon Army, to the asset-stripping leveraged buy outs powering Man You and Arsenal, to the bonkers oligarchic thievery that pays the bills at 'The Bridge' there is just too much of a stink around the once beautiful game these days.

You used to be able to watch Rovers 1st team training down at Pleasington. I'd wager not a single member of the current squad could tell you where Pleasington playing fields are - but yet that is where the actual beautiful game still can be found on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. Not, of course, that I'd advocate several thousand trogging down there to watch, but if we are really in love with football, why are we so shocked when the malaise that has infected the game spoils our enjoyment at Ewood through it's ongoing stench?

Can anyone come up with a solution (for Rovers OR for the wider professional game)? If so, please step forward soon, before it is altogether too late 😉

COYB!

[Eddie]

7 hours ago, 47er said:

There's another kind of entitlement where  owners of a football club, thousands of miles away and apparently disinterested,  feel entitled to do whatever they like, without any sense of responsibility to the generations who have loved the club for nearly 2 centuries.

Then there's the fans who think that's alright. Strange.

Yet they are paying some pretty big bills. How entitled is that?

[Eddie]

8 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

It makes sense that your argument is based on the myth that our fanbase demands that the owners "write blank cheques."

Thats not the issue. We would have money to re circulate if they run the club properly. Dont stubbornly refuse to sell players running down their deals which could allow both relatively speaking considerable sums to both reinvest and slightly stem losses. Dont slash budgets randomly mid summer affecting plans. Dont continue to employ an incompetent CEO who affects revenue streams.

We've never had money to recirculate. On what planet do you live? Even in the Walker Trust era when we managed to sell players for high fees we were still operating at a loss.

Think about how much money we are losing enough and then try to put together a slate of transactions that balances the books.

[Eddie]

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

Absolutely no one has expected that here. You are talking complete bollocks. 

We demand just basic levels of competence. 

Venkys have yet to ever deliver that, our plight is entirely down to them. 

If they had anything about them they would sell up and fuck off. Until that day comes nothing will change.

They pay the bills. Isn't that the basic level of competence?

I'm not defending them, they've made a huge mess of owning us and continue to make the simple things hard, but they also haven't been quite as disastrous as some would like to make out.

[Mattyblue]

The way they have run this club has been a disaster from where they inherited it, on and off the pitch.

But yes, the club hasn’t gone bust and they still (just about these days by the sounds of it) pay the bills. So yes, not an absolute, complete disaster, yet.

But it’s been a pretty grim decade and it looks as if it’s going to get much grimmer very soon.

[Upside Down]

10 hours ago, Bethnal said:

It’s a narcissistic character trait to wade into subjects outside of your own expertise (irony alert on this post) and there’s a clear case for business leaders who take a shining to the limelight to be narcissists, whether natural-born or acquired.

The reason we see so much failure of football club ownership, I believe, is because the people who decide that owning a football club is something they’d like to do - usually despite not really being deep-pocketed enough, being savvy enough or even being fans of the club - aren’t up to it and are too stubborn to recognise their shortcomings, as is the case with a lot of narcissists.

Whether you deserve the praise or not (and I firmly believe our current owners don’t, for example), when running a business that is successful, you’re liable to develop an inflated sense of self.

What we’re seeing with a lot of the incompetent owners in the football system is the perfect storm of people who believe they cannot fail and market conditions that they simple cannot contend with.

It’s not unique to football (see technology companies that fail after raising eye-watering sums and squandering it all), but it seems that football has unique outcomes.

When a football club fails, a town and a community suffers. The very football pyramid itself suffers. When a startup that caters to a ridiculous niche serving little to no purpose fails, it affects the employees and investors’ portfolios but nothing much wider.

There simply needs to be an evaluation of what a football club is, above and beyond its fundamental status as a vehicle for capital/limited company/“business.”

I think I’d hoped the independent regulator/governing body/whatever that’s been mooted/proposed would be in effect and beginning to challenge the existing system.

As it is, the body that governs the top level of our domestic game has fostered, promoted and sustained the existing paradigm, which is inherently unsustainable and very possibly a poster child for the question, “what happens when the worst people you can imagine chase the most amount of money, with the least amount of forward planning and oversight?”

I think we’re all at least loosely aware of the “50+1” model in Germany, but even that is a one-club top league, basically, so there’s clearly no silver bullet.

I believe football clubs are assets of community value and should have safeguards around them. Part of that should be community ownership and I think only when feckless owners can be challenged and punished for mismanagement (the owners, not the football club) will you see fewer chancers riding roughshod over the clubs, as we see currently.

I’ll admit that it could be confirmation bias, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Tony Bloom’s measured and sustainable approach at Brighton came from an owner who is a lifelong fan. Same goes for Matthew Benham.

Of course, they’re very likely to be exceptionally capable (I know some that work for Tony Bloom’s firm and attest to that) but they are examples of what happens when owners think not what their purchase of a football club can do for them, but what they can do for their (in the sense that Rovers are “ours” as fans) football club.

100% Spot on. 

The solution I would propose is there is heavy regulation on clubs' spending. The 70% of revenue for wages is a good idea. 

The revenue needs to be distributed evenly through the divisions and get rid of that parachute payments shyte.

50+1 is also essential. The reason Bayern dominate the Bundesliga is because the TV deal is negotiated individually by each club as opposed to collectively a la the Premier League. If it was a collective deal the Bundesliga would most likely be far more competitive. 

Funnily enough Bayern Munchen are trying to get rid of 50+1 rule.

The whole structure needs to change. Football clubs should be community owned. Without the community there is no football. 

[Upside Down]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

They pay the bills. Isn't that the basic level of competence?

I'm not defending them, they've made a huge mess of owning us and continue to make the simple things hard, but they also haven't been quite as disastrous as some would like to make out.

Well fuck me. They pay the bills that they are responsible for. 

 

All I can say is that you have incredibly low standards. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Upside Down said:

The whole structure needs to change. Football clubs should be community owned. Without the community there is no football. 

You are certainly on to something in this, though there is lots of football in many communities that flourishes without there being much 'community' around the clubs, certainly at grassroots level. What I think we have seen in recent years is a dissociation between the people with money buying up clubs (including Venkys) and the communities in which the clubs they acquire actually exist. What is left if you persist with this dissociation is simply a brand, a badge a marketing concept, which on its own is a pretty soulless thing. It feels like that is what Blackburn Rovers is being reduced to though, due to the sustained downward pressure on any connection between those who 'own' the brand, and those who 'live' the brand. We, who live and love Blackburn Rovers, don't appear to be part of the 'marketing plan' (if any) for what remains of our club's brand, which is a disgusting and unwelcome situation to find ourselves in.

VENKYS OUT!

WAGGOTT OUT!

 

[47er]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

Yet they are paying some pretty big bills. How entitled is that?

Same old from you Eddie. They are paying for the mess they created. Said a thousand times.

Sure they could bankrupt us anytime they chose.

But we would rise again I've no doubt about that and no fear. It may or may not take years to get back to todays mediocre position but there's an upside---we'd be free of those dopey bastards forever

I don't understand why some think that Rovers would almost uniquely fail to survive.

[roverblue]

5 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

100% Spot on. 

The solution I would propose is there is heavy regulation on clubs' spending. The 70% of revenue for wages is a good idea. 

The revenue needs to be distributed evenly through the divisions and get rid of that parachute payments shyte.

50+1 is also essential. The reason Bayern dominate the Bundesliga is because the TV deal is negotiated individually by each club as opposed to collectively a la the Premier League. If it was a collective deal the Bundesliga would most likely be far more competitive. 

Funnily enough Bayern Munchen are trying to get rid of 50+1 rule.

The whole structure needs to change. Football clubs should be community owned. Without the community there is no football. 

Great post, only issue I have with the 70% wage cap is that it doesn't go far enough. It favours big city clubs with large fan bases. In an ideal world I would go even further and put a wage cap in for the EFL to stop the loss making madness.

You would think most EFL clubs would want this but there doesn’t seem to be any real push for reform from clubs. Even though owners like Venkys and the Hemmings family down the road chuck £20m down the toilet every season just to keep players and agents in the latest Ferrari and designer threads.

[47er]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

but they also haven't been quite as disastrous as some would like to make out.

What's that mean? By what criteria have they not been as disastrous as "some like to make out."? Not in the Conference maybe? They've fucked the club up good and proper. And the recent transfer window shows they have learned nothing.

People don't like to make this out, its simply a fact. They've been a disaster, they continue to be a disaster and will always be a disaster. Most recent example---"should we buy a £7M house in the area and take it out of Rovers transfer budget?

Really, you should be ashamed to keep coming up with this crap.

[roverblue]

4 minutes ago, 47er said:

Same old from you Eddie. They are paying for the mess they created. Said a thousand times.

Sure they could bankrupt us anytime they chose.

But we would rise again I've no doubt about that and no fear. It may or may not take years to get back to todays mediocre position but there's an upside---we'd be free of those dopey bastards forever

I don't understand why some think that Rovers would almost uniquely fail to survive.

I don’t get the attitude of I’d rather see us burn down the leagues or go bust just to get rid of the Venkys attitude. It’s far too extreme and illogical.

Until a credible party comes forward with finance and is happy to lose £20m a year I’d much rather stick with Venkys and continue to fight against the odds of getting into the playoffs each season. 

[47er]

 

2 minutes ago, roverblue said:

I don’t get the attitude of I’d rather see us burn down the leagues or go bust just to get rid of the Venkys attitude.

No-ones looking forward to that process. Well maybe one or two. It won't be of our choosing anyway.

If Venkys pull out, we start again. That's when the credible party (or parties) comes forward.

I'm confident that there will be enough interest in this historic Club not to let it die.

If you don't feel that way I feel sorry for you---you will suffer more than me.

Stockholm Syndrome.

[K-Hod]

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

They pay the bills. Isn't that the basic level of competence?

I'm not defending them, they've made a huge mess of owning us and continue to make the simple things hard, but they also haven't been quite as disastrous as some would like to make out.

Under their ownership we have:

Been in more debt than any time I can remember, been under transfer embargoes, been down to the third division for the first time in years, gone from the model of good ownership to the model for bad and many more besides.

But yeah, it’s not quite as disastrous as some are suggesting 🥴.

[roverblue]

31 minutes ago, 47er said:

 

No-ones looking forward to that process. Well maybe one or two. It won't be of our choosing anyway.

If Venkys pull out, we start again. That's when the credible party (or parties) comes forward.

I'm confident that there will be enough interest in this historic Club not to let it die.

If you don't feel that way I feel sorry for you---you will suffer more than me.

Stockholm Syndrome.

It’s just too much of a gamblers attitude for me to get behind. Why risk it all and for what benefit?

Yes the Venkys are idiots but the fact is they keep the club going at the moment. The point at which that stops (which might be soon based on the tax/fraud stuff) I’ll revisit my position. Or if a credible alternative comes forward. 

[Upside Down]

1 hour ago, roverblue said:

Great post, only issue I have with the 70% wage cap is that it doesn't go far enough. It favours big city clubs with large fan bases. In an ideal world I would go even further and put a wage cap in for the EFL to stop the loss making madness.

You would think most EFL clubs would want this but there doesn’t seem to be any real push for reform from clubs. Even though owners like Venkys and the Hemmings family down the road chuck £20m down the toilet every season just to keep players and agents in the latest Ferrari and designer threads.

I would say the best solution would be to have FFP style restriction on wages and transfers etc but make the limit the mean average for whatever division it is.