The Club has released the following statement regarding the financial situation.

The current financial position of the Club is challenging, and we whole-heartedly appreciate the way not only our own fans but fans from other clubs have rallied together to help Hartlepool United Football Club at this time.

Everyone at the Club has worked tirelessly to find a new owner in recent months and this hard work will continue. The current owner has provided significant funding to the Club but unfortunately a change of ownership is required. We need as many genuine people as possible to join together to buy the Club but if a consortium or a buyer cannot be found in the near future, administration is a very real prospect.

In the meantime, thank you once again to all of you who have shown your true heart, your efforts have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated by the Club.

All sale enquiries are to be directed to Geoff Cunningham at Walker Morris.

Nothing to state what money raised will be covering.

"We need as many genuine people as possible to join together to buy the Club"

This suggests to me that the buyers have backed down so they're trying to encourage people join as a consortium.

Just a hunch.

If only there was some kind of trust .. the Trust should be putting their message on Pools’ post on Facebook and Twitter help spread the word a bit

So they are encouraging fan ownership without allowing them to see the books?

I asked yesterday and I think a statement is coming tonight

It’s an awfully depressing statement but it’s probably deliberate so people keep fundraising for the people who have continued in the appalling mismanagement (at best) of our club. Conner Simpson gone for a fee now. I make that Carson, Amond, Alessandra , Thomas (which was £350,000) and now Simpson that have left for fees since Sage took control yet we are still £1.8 million in debt, that’s after several players were sold for fees last January. Oh and we still cost £200,000 a month to run!? Where the fuck has all of this money gone, given at the same time we have average gates of about 3,500??

Yeah but let’s hand them over our money.

I think it was predicted on here last night. Feel awful saying it but it is playing into fans hands/hearts.

I keep feeling a little guilty about not contributing, but keep reminding myself that I am thinking with my head and not my heart on this one

I forgot to add that the club was handed over for nothing completely debt free in the Summer of 2015, a lot of money has been screwed out of our club in the time since.

The statement reads like we have no one set up to buy us and they are begging for a consortium.


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Yup they are almost pleading now.

Looking forward to the Trusts statement tbh.

PJ don't forget the half a million parachute payment from the football league on top of that. I'd love to see evidence of Sage putting a single penny in since the season started.

The size of this debt is hard to believe (ghost debt).
The size of the debt is the same as what Blackledge claims he has put into Pools out of his own money. (last nites Gazette article 1.8 million quid).

Jeff Stelling went on record a day or two ago saying mud slinging at Blackledge and co. was a mistake as it was a situation not of their making.

Jeff may be right, the mudslingers may be right - but if Sage really want to get all of the fans back onside they should stop pissing about and allow the accountant retained by the Trust to examine the books. Even Eddie Kyle, who says he's a neutral in all the fan group squabbling, admits that the money being raised at present could disappear into a "black hole" if it's handed over to Sage without any conditions attached.

What a terrible statement. What’s happened to the two remaining potential investors? You’d think they’d have been mentioned if they were still interested rather than a desperate appeal for a consortium. I have no hope left for anything other than administration, sad times.


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You are confusing Sage ( Blackledge ) with the people currently running the club ( Duxbury and Partner ) .

One seems to have been conned by the other into investing. The other pair have run the club into the ground in a similar manner to Coxall. I saw Stelling defending one, but not the other.

Full forensic accounts will never be produced.

It is my opinion - and simply only that - that the current owners want SOME recompense for their investment before they leave with a significant loss. Not only that, but they are aware of “legacy” debts that would enrage various fans. Previously involved people like Coxall may well still be receiving payments or may well have created such a black hole of cash that we are spending around 40% of our money on things that are simply unnecessary but cannot be easily pushed aside.

We are haemorrhaging cash to somewhere as various people have done the maths and realised that there’s a significant discrepancy in our outgoings.

Transparency is key. No wonder any potential owners have gagging orders as it must be an absolute car crash to look at our books...


This is all supposition and theory on my part. Obviously.

That 'statement' is just vague.

I worry that some people are deludedly believing that £200,000 will seal the deal, too. As though all problems will evaporate if we reach that magic figure.

If these are monthly payments then it’ll be an issue again in February, March, April, etc. And there’s certainly not that much cash sloshing around in the pockets of your average Pools fan to sustain that. Probably much past the end of this month - if even then.

It a vague, desperate begging letter. Does anyone think they want to avoid administration for the sake of the club and fans? If so you're daft.

As I understand it, Blackledge is still the legal owner of the club but isn't prepared to put any (more) of his money in. If 'Duxbury and Partner' don't represent Mr. Blackledge, on what basis are they representing themselves as speaking for HUFC?

Genuine question - I'm wondering what I have missed in recent developments?

Sage went into business with Coxhall with their greedy eyes wide open.

How is this situation not of their making?

From what I have been told Duxbury is Chairman and her sidekick is Head of Recruitment, between them they run the club on a daily basis, and anyone who crosses their path gets the chop. Not only are they now disliked by the backroom staff who work for them they have presided over what can only be described as an unholy disaster of a season. Blackledge for his part may be guilty of trusting this pair of incompetents to run his business. Likewise the Trust seem to have been hoodwinked by the pair of them.
One is an accountant but cannot do basic maths and has run out of money halfway through a season despite knowing in advance exactly how much money she had to play with.
The other is a recruitment specialist but has hired a constant stream of people not fit to do their jobs on contracts that the club is clearly having to honour even after they have gone.
Between them they have interviewed a whole host of people for the managers job and have come up with a man out of his depth who they cant even fire.
I would be interested to know how much the combined salaries of Duxbury Watson and Harrison amount to. but that we will never know.

So who runs the DIY shop? Duxbury Ward DIY.

Well this statement has gone down well, got to wonder how much they are paying this PR firm they've been pictured with in the papers. May as well of paid Ken Hodcroft to write it.

Oh the fans will pick up the tab for that via Go Fund Me. Plus the salary of Insolvency Geoff, the Head of Recruitment, Pam herself plus Dave Jones and all of his hangers on still on the wage bill. And the clueless mob they replaced him with including Craig himself.
They must think we are all complete idiots.

jeff was right about jones...but he is wrong about blackledge and duxbury imo....unless he has seen the books of course !

It's about time they come clean and admit to how money is being drained from the club.

As I said on another thread I was talking to a former Pools player the other day, often have a chat with him and he has still got contacts in the game, and he was saying that an extremely wealthy person with connections to another north east club (no, it wasn't Raj Singh) had been interested in investing in Pools until he saw what a shambles the books and the club in general were in, withdrew his interest immediately. In the light of this it would seem that anyone with an ounce of business sense would do the same. This is not a rumour, it is from a reliable source, if the books are as bad as it seems they are it is no wonder the club won't let the trust see them.

People are falling over themselves to hand over large sums of cash to the very same people that have got the club into this mess in the first place, without even wanting to know what it will be spent on or how they plan to pay the wages and bills next month.
They are property developers, they went into Pools with their eyes open hoping to make a quick buck building houses round the back of the ground. Got zero sympathy for them.
Pam could take £200k off fans this month then ask them to do exactly the same next month and the month after.
The fact she still hasn't even got the books in order says all that needs to be said.

^^ This!!!! ^^

Greetings, this is my first post. And yes I support the Moors, and that is Solihull, not Spennymoor.

So why am I posting here? Because I have an expertise concerning company law, and I think it might prove useful to you if I post here.

My thoughts are :-

The accounts of a limited company, filed at Companies House, are readily available. For the latest accounts, those to 30.06.16 see :-

https://tinyurl.com/yalt7t8v

Now what surprises me is this. See the "Going Concern" section under Note 1.1, in particular the paragraph starting "The company has received a letter ..... ". That clearly states that the lender will provide support at least up to 30.03.18.

So query, why is that support not continuing at least up to the end of March?

See that the Going Concern note also says about a loss of over £890,000 in the year to 30.06.16. Clearly not sustainable.

We are talking here about a very old company. It was incorporated as long ago as 1 June 1908. It has company number 98,191. A company incorporated now would have a number over 10,000,000.

Cheers Moors Fan. Hopefully everything will become clear next week.

Basically having fucked the club over with a combination of bad financial management, dreadful signings and appalling managerial appointments, the property developer owners are now essentially putting a gun to the head of the fans saying give us 200 grand or we will put your club into Administration. A big chunk of which will go probably to themselves in salaries and interest payments.