https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/sport/ ... -1-8948677

200k by jan 25th
Even the Council are involved now


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Then £200 k on February 25th... then March.

It’s not sustainable.

When we were paying big wages and paying fees for players back in the early 2000’s Larsen was pumping nowhere near £2.2 million a year of his own money into the club (it was about £800k) the club was debt free less than two years ago before crooks got their grubby hands on it. How has it come to this? Somebody needs to held accountable.

Agreed

Even if say 2000 Boro fans were to turn up and pay £20 a head, its a fifth of whats needed for just one single month.

The end is nigh.

I'd just love to see the books for the past three years.

The huge sums being bandied about make no sense at all without financial transparency. What is the wage bill for the playing staff? The manager and coaches? Advisers and consultants? How much is the youth set up costing the club? What debts are being serviced?

It's easy in these circumstances to sling around accusations of corruption, which may be a factor, but from the sound of things massive incompetence has also played a part since IOR left the scene. For a failing football club to live beyond its means to the extent being talked about is staggering.
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In my view nothing has changed and Duxbury should stick to her word regarding opening the books up. Only then should we be throwing money at it.

Yes I will probably be vilified in some quarters for saying this, it is great the intent of the Boro fans etc to rally round and help etc. However as things stand any money raised now will just go into servicing the debt to Sage before eventually they bail out and won't in the long run help the club survive

That seems to be the view of the majority.

IF the money collected is used for benevolent purposes (paying laundry and bus company debt etc) then it can be justified.

However, separating it in terms of accountancy from the bloodsuckers will not be an easy task.

You shouldn't be vilified as what you are saying, it is sadly, completely correct but I still think it's nice idea after 86 and everything and should be greeted positively. Anyone thinking it will actually make a difference needs to go for a lie down though.

A mate said to me this morning that if we can get through to the season end and then get the season ticket money in then things may be ok.

Thing is I dare say season ticket money/merchandise etc will be £650k tops. ie 3 and a bit months. Obviously money comes in from the League or whatever but even thats massively reduced from this season isnt it?

How many points do we lose for Administration?

I think you’re probably right but the day is largely symbolic in my view. If we’re going bust, which looks very likely, a show of defiance and pride might help on the long road back.

Any money raised is pissing in the wind really. I joined the Trust the second it was set up and I remember Darlo fans imploring us to set it up years ago. For all the efforts it’s only been partially successful and despite well meaning words, I don’t think the trust or any other group connected with the club could actually fund and run the club from the current position. If we’re starting again, that is a very different proposition though. It’s not what I want - I want a rich benefactor to come in last minute. I just don’t see that happening sadly.

The season ticket money is only one source of income, there are many others.

1. Sponsorship
2. Corporate boxes
3. Events
4. Club shop
5. Food outlets
6. Business partnerships
7. Advertising
8. Website
9. Match day tickets
10. Raffle
11. Tournaments

and that's just off the top of my head.

We CAN manage because we HAVE TO.

Books need to be opened up!

They do.

The Boro fans who are talking about turning up deserve nothing but gratitude - it would be a magnificent response to a crisis at another club. After all, on the radio they were talking about Sage as benefactors and HUST have consistently said that Pam is OK even while making it clear that there were deep concerns about the health of the club. You can see why the Boro fans think it is just a case of Pools running out of cash and needing a boost to see them through.

If a look at the books confirms that Sage really are doing the best they can for the club, and have clean hands when you go back to JPNG ownership being propped up by a loan from them, then fair enough get the cash in. If the books don't show that then we have to ask Boro fans, and anyone else who wants to help Pools, to hold on to their money for now because it will probably disappear in interest and loan payments.

If Pam still won't open the books in the current circumstances that surely has to be confirmation that Sage have been up to no good. Maybe without malice, or maybe to cover up accidental involvement in scams they didn't start. Maybe just to get their cash back after being conned. Whatever the answer is, anybody thinking about giving cash to Pools needs much better assurances about where it will end up than they have now. I think HUST should come out and say that officially because people who give support now won't keep doing it again and again.

And how can the club afford to pay PR adviser Sam Lee to go to meetings with the council when we're losing £200k a month?

I suspect its all about protecting their image now and paying for a PR firm is a cost they dont mind paying.

If you mean Sage's image you might be right. Think it might be a bit late for saving Pools' image.

Probably paid for by Sage outside of pools budget. Taking your PR adviser to a council meeting is never a good sign. Clearly want the messages managed, when actually a meeting like that should be handled by the business people. As a PR person myself i know sat on the otherside bringing a PR in to a meeting like that would automatically get my back up and/or make me suspect there is something to hide. So the meeting from the off takes on a different tone. As much as the PRs linkedin profile shows she knows what she is doing and is very credible...it's a case of wrong meeting to attend and it should have been dealt with before the meeting and after, not in it, and i suspect she should have known that and should of advised that first before thinking of putting her clients interest at heart. Funny tits the same PR who works for some of Pools sponsoring companies like Seymour and UA etc...

I've yet to see a linkedin profile that says anything other than the profile owner is the saviour of the known world.

I can't comment on the funny tits though.

Unfortunate typo in the last line there JHumps.

Oh, it was a typo?

I'm leaving it there and not editing it so the question will never be answered. Adds to my air of mystery. besides they might be which would be a great discovery to add to the discussion

Seem ok to me ...

I'm going to walk into the Vic on the 24th like...

You'll need a perm first.

Sam Lee the same one who was a journalist for The Mail a few years ago ?

Yes, but it looks like she's had some surgery.

I joined the Facebook page again after seeing wierdo manchild fruitloop Gavin ‘Blues Stripes Roger Waters’ Smurthwaite had plagiarised one my posts from here as I was going to ask admin to remove it. I spent 5 minutes reading it and removed myself again and now I have a busting headache!

He done it to one of mine the other week, felt a bit famous.

"Wierdo manchild fruitloop Gavin ‘Blues Stripes Roger Waters’ Smurthwaite" doesn't sound like your best effort to avoid squabbling PJ. If he's wrong about something might be better to put him right rather than calling him names.

I was reading through and just though nah I can’t even be bothered to ask them to remove it.

This story about them needing £200k to save the club is garter my pace though, exactly what Sage wanted I imagine. Why is nobody questioning how we are costing that much a month and where this money will go. Throwing good money at bad, never to be seen again into a black hole. Then what about next month??

It’s no effort with him he’s been trolling Pools forums for years he’s can’t be wired up properly. He’s doesn’t try to be right he’s a t roll.

I've asked this question to the mail reporter today and he reckons its wages etc, but he's not certain, if he's not certain then I cant go along with it that 200k is our monthly wage budget, cos it's fookin massive, and its unsubstantiated, with pam now employing a PR firm also, she's clearly controlling what info is released to the press and you don't know if this is part of it.

I'm sceptical of course but the last thing I want to see is pools fans rallying, and then throwing good money at bad.

The problem I have is the two main reporters involved in this have both happily printed that the fella behind Sage has put £1.8m of his own cash into the club, without a single question or comment.

How on gods earth has he sunk that much into a club that has received transfer fees, league payment and season ticket money? It simply does not add up. And how does that make the club look to a prospective investor? I'm not sure they really want investment, this is just a staged managed death, we've even been told the day we'll die, charming.

Is the £200,000 monthly the cost of everything from the water rates to the wages / expenses of everyone connected with the place? How much is a PR advisor costing and who is it billed to ?

I actually bought a Mail this morning in the garage when I saw the front page. Reads it, but nothing at all in the front pages, turns to the back page, photo and headline but nothing on the inside pages, it’s ALL about Newcastle, turn even further into it and we’re safely tucked in with as many column inches as the report on Bristol City last night.
Do the Mail do any sort of investigative journalism or merely repeat issued statements?

You spent five minutes reading your own post?

He read his own post then deleted himself.

He read his own post then argued with himself.

The trust need to get a statement out ASAP with this just giving page and people encouraging boro fans to come. I appreciate people work etc but in the coming days they need to be proactive not reactive.

Is it 200K to save Pools or is it 200K to put administration off for a month? Seems like the latter to me.

£200k to delay the inevitable, throwing money at the club sadly won't help things. The save pools day and just giving pages etc.. are a nice thought but again won't secure our future. This is exactly why the trust was set up a number of years ago, offering a minimal £20 membership fee where only the fans best interests are at heart.

These fundraisers should be for the local businesses that are out of pocket such as the laundrette and bus company.

He hasn't though has he? He's most likely loaned it to the club to pay off, amongst other things, that loan from Toblerone thieving, lap dance club owner who wasn't fit to run a company but was allowed to provide pay day loans.

The money raised with these ‘events’ should be for the Trust. No question.

Once again though, this can’t be seen by those that won’t see.

I'm 100% behind the trust, joined immediately and completely see the sense of it. Despite much hard work, which I personally really appreciate, it has stalled a little. There's no point even getting into why this is at this stage. Having legal assistance and standing it potentially has more teeth than other well meaning groups and it may well be that it is a vital part of the future, especially if we're starting again.

However at this stage I agree there needs to be a little more leadership. I acknowledge that its very difficult not knowing all the facts and many an attempt has been made to view the accounts. There are loads of good ideas like savepoolsday, justgiving pages etc. but I would have to question where all this goes? The supporters association apparently have some contingency funds, there are bits of money here and there. I don't know how it happens but resources needs to be pooled and a decision made on where money is targeted. Using the Trust as a vehicle makes most sense to me but that's not going to happen at the moment. Pooling resources is a crucial issue though and I wish the best to anyone who is grappling with that.

I think most casual users of forums and facebook, by which I mean people reading and not necessarily contributing are utterly confused why a relatively few people squabbling has scuppered more progress and it seems that we've reached a point where all of these fundraising ideas are coming too late. We've known this day is coming for some time and complacency kicked in early in the season when we thought everything was relatively calm.

I'll give as much money as I can, although don't really know what will happen to it but I'll do it in good faith that it might help.

Cant argue with any of that, the trust were advised by supporters direct to not do anything yet, until things moved on a bit further, well i think the last few days that has certainly happened.

My concern just like yours with handing money over to a just giving page is who is controlling that, where does it go when we reach D day, if we still go into admin what happens then? Have you just paid some money to the club or are you gunna keep it for after administration?

I trust in the trust because of the legal side of things that supporters direct gives you, the money is going into their pot and will more than likely come down to a vote as to what you do to it.

I am sure we will hear from them soon.

Our friends down the road were in this situation. They raised a fortune to try and save the club, and a good deal of that went into a black hole. We shouldn't make the same mistake.

Looks like let what's going to happen, happen, hang onto your money and pick up what's left and start all over again.

Absolutely no point just servicing the interest payments on the debt we owe sage. We are going into administration some point this season, as we cannot fundraise 200k every month. Save it for the real fight.