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I reckon Fordy has caught more in his nets today than a French fishermen in English waters!!!

Great stuff @Fordy117

 

Jeez, what a shitshow Fordy has created in here. Regarding the interview, I thought Adams came across very well. He's just as frustrated as us at the players not taking their chances on the pitch. Sparks was just Sparks, didn't say much more than he hasn't said before.

 

Facts:

11th in Div 2
Don’t own anything
Now don’t sign decent signings as we have no money.
An owner based in Germany that doesn’t go to games. Not bothered.
A novice CEO that take ballocks. More interested in his CV.

The club is going nowhere fast! These are facts.

 

Apart from the ones who deal drugs on the side. Now I'm sure our good friend doesn't fall into that category.

 

Using 6%, which is about right for a 75% loan to value commercial mortgage and a loan of £3,750,000 on a 25 year term, the payments would be £18,000 per month on interest only (so still need to find £3,750,000 in 25 years to pay off the loan - effectively meaning another £5,000 per month needs to be put away for a "repayment vehicle") or £24,200 per month on a repayment mortgage.

Still cheaper than the rent @Fordy117 ? And this does not allow for the requirement for a deposit.

Or alternatively on what planet do you seriously expect that Rupp would/ should stump up £5,000,000 to buy the ground out of the goodness of his own heart to save a self sustainable club £350,000 a year in rent ?

Football might not be a profitable business but it's also not altruism. Get real.

 

Forgot to add that Commercial mortgages also usually have an "arrangement fee" of up to 3% of the loan size. In our case this could be as much as £120,000 wasted just to get a mortgage.

If Herr Rupp is in the market though, I am more than happy to broker a deal for him and pocket my share of the commission !!!

 

Honestly! clueless!


OK. The club let’s say is worth 2m to buy the ground 5m. The club is now worth 7m.

The club is now more attractive to other buyers as it has a key asset.

Look, you can list a load of clubs and Bradford currently would sit near the bottom to buy. Its unattractive because we own nothing and train at a bloody school.

We haven’t kicked on as a club or a business- it’s a joke! Sorry state of affairs.

 

West Ham don't own their ground, not stopped them progressing.

Do not see the obsession with owning the ground and training facilities

 

You are the one who is clueless if you think spending £5million on a piece of land worth next to nothing (other than as a football ground) will increase the value of said club by £5 million. Even more so if you think Rupp would then be able to sell for £5 million more.

Bradford City FC only survived the Edin Rahic debacle due to a loan of £1,8 million from Rupp to cover the losses it made in 2019, a loan that is interest free (unlike the near 10% interest Lawn charged) and of which there are no plans to repay the loan. Effectively that means Rupp has already put £5million of his own money into the club. Without Rupp we would still have Captain Clueless as at least joint owner.

No-one wants to buy this football club, no-one is going to buy the ground, no-one is going to lend us the money for an expensive training ground, no-one is going to fund one when we have a perfectly good one.

Watch the program on Macclesfield. Rob Smethurst bought Moss Rose for £500,000, presumably it was so cheap because the cost of dismantling the ground would exceed it's value as it was being sold as a football ground with no planning permission.

If you think that anyone out there, with clean money at least, is going to ride in on white horse and throw money at the club (the way Hoyle did at Huddersfield before he saw sense) then you are going to be banging your drum longer than Owain Wynn Evans.

 

Wonder if anyone told the Saudi's that Newcastle not owning St James' park meant that it was impossible for the club to progress ?

I bet Old Trafford is also owned personally by the yanks and rented to Man Utd at a massive rent.

The obsession with owning our ground is up their with Maggie's obsession in people buying their own council houses and look what that has done to our housing stock !

 

The issue of ownership or lease is mute - Unless you plan to sell the ground, which is pointless in our case given its value is pretty much nil after dilapidations and dismantling costs.

The real issue is the cost of playing at a football ground. If you own a ground and training ground, you have no rent to pay. That would save City well over £500k per season which is ever increasing.

Clubs like West Ham pay around £2m a year to lease, but against the cost of the build and the revenue they make on matchday, it's an incredible deal.

If our leases to rent the ground/training ground were £200k or less, that would be perfect. The fact we rent is an issue because it eats up around 30% of our season ticket money and we don't have an owner willing to fund annual losses.

So the options are;
1) We renegotiate the lease to more favourable terms. The Flamingo Land trustees will not agree to that unless they have no option. Currently, they hold all the cards
2) The council funds a new Bradford Ground with cheap government loans at 2% interest rates and then wraps that in a lease to us/Bulls on similar terms. But if it cost £25m, 2% interest is £500k! We're back to square one, albeit in a better stadium. So I can't see that getting off the ground
3) We take the option to buy Odsal for £500k of the Rugby RFL which is a liability to them. We now have a poker hand. We offer Flamingo Trustees a bit more for Valley Parade. They have a choice - Say £1m, or the same thing that the RFL has with the Bulls. A ground that has a rates liability to pay every year and nobody to occupy it. Alternatively, we could agree to reduced rental terms of say £100k, or even a lease purchase. We pay £150k for 10 years and the ground is ours. There are plenty of ways to do a deal but only if we have a viable alternative to doing nothing.

As it stands, we are sleepwalking into a new 25 year upwards only renewal which will kill the club by a thousand cuts. We need a poker player to lead on this and take ownership back of the ground or move to Odsal.

 

To move to Odsal would require a large investment I would think, to bring the ground up to football league standards, I doubt they would allow football to be played up there in its present state, would that be a positive for Herr Rupp ?.

 

You don't need a 1000 line project plan to play poker Bronco. Just some viable options and a bit of balls to front up and see the whites of the others eyes and a willingness to show the intention to walk away if you're not being dealt with seriously.

We don't need to explain how we'll upgrade Odsal or move to wherever, we just need to be convincing enough to make the other side believe we're serious.

 

The comment was with regards Gordon Gibb not taking the bait if we can't agree the cost going forward Gordon Gibb knows the situation at Odsal that's if we could the councils support would they lets us have it free of charge then we have to agree a deal with the RFL.
I'm sure Gordon Gibb has played poker before and has dealt with tougher opposition than Ryan or will Rupp come over and show he's a serious owner.

 

Greta thunburg would even beat sparks at poker

 

Blah, blah, blah

 

I think its really important we some how buy back/get a new deal on the ground. Sparks said unequivocally in the interview that we pay the most of anyone in out league for the place we play our football, in fact it costs us a quarter of our ST revenue that has to change or we will never be able to fully invest our earnings from ST sales into the playing squad.

 

Our revenue is higher than the rest of the league too. The ground situation needs to be resolved, but its not the reason we don't progress. Incompetence is the reason why we don't progress.