accrington........"a bit of debt"...you mean the 1.8 million.?......"others with smaller crownds and bigger debts just get on with the job".....name me the clubs ?

Our debt wasn’t exactly your run of the mill football club debt, we were shafted. We paid the price for being shafted and now we’re on our way back. But there’s a way to go still and considering the circumstances of our demise people need to realise we’ve still got a way to go till the balancing act can be stood down.... but not forgotten.

Any loans coming in or going out I would expect to be well on the way to be completed.
Permanent signings are a different kettle of fish, especially with agents involved, playing their usual brinkmanship tactics.
DC reckoned he had deals over the line in the summer only for agents to demand more money just as the deal was about to be completed. I seem to remember him saying one agent came back for another £400 per week on top of what DC thought had been agreed.
Bloody leeches and troublemakers the lot of them.

I can't believe any player in their right mind would choose an Accrington over pools if we paid the exact same money, like has been said if you don't pay the going rate you don't sign anyone apart from under 23s. As for hartlepool being in the 10 worst towns, you could probobly name 4 or 5 in the north alone worse than Hartlepool, no one can seriously tell me Stockton, Billingham, thornaby, Boro etc are more attractive towns. Then you got the lovely towns of Rochdale, Luton and the likes, some towns in London are shitholes. Hartlepool may not be a great town but I've not seen a football ground situated in many better areas than the marina at pools.we love making excuses as to why we can't sign players, end of the day if your trying to get players on the cheap you will always struggle, you just have to look at our managerial choice that took 6 weeks to realise, January will be a difficult month for us to attract anybody. Our debt at pools now is probobly better than 90 percent of clubs in the football league, can you imagine how much Accrington are having to pull out each month.

Depends on how much their owners are pumping in/writing off.

I don't think we'll struggle to sign players if our offers are competitive. Perhaps we should be looking to Scotland too.

The problem today is clubs are no longer run by a board of directors like years ago where all use to help finance the club or represent a company (e.g Cameron’s and yuils had a representivit) now we have an owner. Obviously the richer he is the more money goes into the club.

billingham..... same old record with you isn't it ?..."Our debt at pools now is probably better than 90 percent of clubs in the football league, can you imagine how much Accrington are having to pull out each month"......based on what exactly pal ?....name me any clubs that have "more debt".....ok...just name me one ?
...and.....you are wrong about accrington....holt sorted out the debt when he took over....and he now prides himself on running a sustainable club .....with the lowest player budget in the league....google it ....and doing well.....10th in league one...success without buying it.....but cant be done according to you can it ?.....oh ....and.....as for why any player would choose accrington over pools.....maybe because of the chance of playing league one or even championship football ?.......

ps...count the weeks between 1/11/21-1/12/21....

Great, the hardy perennial that is the club finances discussion - is it the close season already?

BBC Sport has a piece about Chelski's year-end accounts today. They posted a loss of £145.6 million. This caught my eye though:

"Chelsea FC PLC continues to be supported financially by Fordstam Limited, a company owned by Roman Abramovich - with confirmation in the accounts that the club owes more than £1bn to "related companies".

Imagine my surprise. It turns out Abramovich hasn't invested £1 billion in Chelsea, he's only loaned if from other companies he owns! Shocking behaviour from a chairman of a football club. Hope it never catches on around here

so youre saying chelsea have "more debt" than pools ?.....errrr ok.....and chelsea's annual income compared to pools is ?

Do you seriously believe their isn't clubs with more debt than pools? Seriously? Ok will name you an obvious one derby county. Holt in same interview that I presume you read said the championship sides will lose 200 million between them, then you have clubs in our league splashing the cash on very low crowds, telling me they aren't in debt.

I've never said it can't be done I will once again say pools are 5 times the size of Accrington, so if they can do it why are we struggling so much, yes he did wipe out debt as well more than pools supposedly owe. He doesn't say how they are self sufficient? On their 1000 to 2000 crowds though does he. As a fan base we love making excuses why we can't compete with other teams for players. Doesn't matter how much income you have at your disposal if your in debt your in debt.

"Doesn't matter how much income you have at your disposal if your in debt your in debt".....????...wtf.....and so derby county are the only club you can mention ?.....is that it ?....but according to press reports they are on the verge of bankruptcy !!...that is not a club managing its finances successfully with "more debt" than pools now is it ??......they are where we nearly were 4 years ago.....are you suggesting pools adopt a similar strategy in order to return to this ?....top and bottom of it mate is you are making no sense....and you have no information on which to base the statements you keep spewing out like.... "our debt at pools now is probably better than 90 percent of clubs in the football league"...you are talking off the top of your head.....to put it very politely....

You said name one club that's in debt. Someones already mentioned Chelsea ,I told you derby county. Are you implying that only pools have debt in the lower leagues? If so its you not making sense.Do you think these clubs in the lower leagues have less debts than pools? If so putting in politely deluded.1.8 million or whatever we are in debt is chicken feed compared to what most other clubs are in debt. No one is suggesting we bankrupt ourselves, we are talking about being able to compete on even keel with these massive clubs like Sutton, Mansfield, Crawleys in the wages department.

With any debt, it’s complex and dependent of the flexibility to whom the debt is paid. You can can have a club in massive debt but if the person or organisation to whom the debt is owed takes a benign view of the debt it can almost be of little consequence whereas a debt that has to be paid on a regular basis as part of a formal agreement without flexibility can be a whole lot more problematic to a club’s finances. The one good thing of this is that after the initial troubled period of paying, the debt is cleared, whereas the debt from a patient friendly source may even grow, but remains in place.

its all guess work but i guess oldham, port vale, northampton , ccrawley, stevenage. at our level for a start. fact is there vare only a handful of clubs out of the 92 that are not carrying debt. even the mighty stockport have a similar running debt to pools that i imagine is going up. as someone said iys aboit how our sebt has to be paid off and the time frame. even accrington are in debt for around a million but businessman andy holt says that its manageable. even a big crowd there with a nearly 50/50 home and away split wou;ld nowadays be classed as a low crowd at the vic with a couple of hundred away fans.

[quote="billinghampoolie1908"]
I can't believe any player in their right mind would choose an Accrington over pools if we paid the exact same money,
a lot depends on the type of player we are looking at. younger players without a new family with roots would take the best deal on offer especially if they are looking to their future. an older player who has a growing up family who say lives in the manchester area would choose accrington over us as their kids are settled with friends and schools as their wives will also be. no need then to uproot them when they can stay put with a shortish drive every day for training.

Very true Middlesbrough are 105 million in debt, obviously that will be written off, Swansea 10 million, every championship club has massive debt, the same thing will happen at pools if raj takes the hit and writes the debt off eventually.

Scunthorpe were 11 million in debt in the summer, their Chairman took the hit and wiped it for them, Walsall debts now 2 million, virtually every club has debt.

Well done for spotting the bleedin' obvious ( ) but my point is that pretty much since Raj Singh took over, various people have come on here saying that because his investment in HUFC is in the form of loans he can somehow take the money out again and leave Pools in the shit.

The reality is that the value of the asset is far less than the amount loaned. If Raj ever walks away he'll lose a ton of his own money. Even Abramovitch would take a big hit - Chelsea FC is a much more saleable asset than Pools but he wouldn't get £1 billion for it.

Doubt any owner of a football club has ever made money out of it. The reason why i am always dubious about single ownership of a club. So much in one mans hands who could lose interest or his other business dealings taking a hit that will cause him to walk. Thers is no continuity like the old days of a board and a chairman and the clubs yet again have to start from fresh.

I expect the Glaziers are making money at Manure.

Borrow XXX amount of millions, buy the club for XXX millions, interest is Y millions, profit is Y+Z. Pocket Z.

That's the way to do it.

You cannot have a business plan for a club based on the occasional millionaire strolling past and saving your club. To have debts reaching 11 million begs the question what where the previous owners doing?
Any fool can run up debt, it’s not a badge of honour to flaunt, it’s a sign of poor management in any sound business.

Owning a club is for fools, rich fans, people who like a challenge or some benevolent fuckwit. There is NO money to be made out of it unless you have other motives, because it’s an hobby, a pastime, a Labour of love, but it was never about getting rich.

billingham.....you spewed this out ...."Scunthorpe were 11 million in debt in the summer, their Chairman took the hit and wiped it for them".....

errrr.....dont you think thats just a little inaccurate and misleading pal ?.....you missed out the second bit of the sentence...

"He has wiped out the £11-million debt he has incurred - but as compensation he has acquired all the assets, the stadium and the surrounding area"

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/spor ... re-5350245

just really pathetic.....

Yes so where they not in debt?. You said name one club that was in debt, I think you will find virtually every football club in the land is in debt. Or have all these owners found some sort of miracle over night to make money, you mentioned Accrington self sufficient you said, no mention of the 1 million there prepared to lose. You must be very naive if you think many football clubs make money, even in Spain the biggest clubs in the world Barcelona and real Madrid are in huge debt.

[quote="billinghampoolie1908"][quote="poolie1"]billingham.....you spewed this out ...."Scunthorpe were 11 million in debt in the summer, their Chairman took the hit and wiped it for them".....

errrr.....dont you think thats just a little inaccurate and misleading pal ?.....you missed out the second bit of the sentence...

"He has wiped out the £11-million debt he has incurred - but as compensation he has acquired all the assets, the stadium and the surrounding area"

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/spor ... re-5350245

just really pathetic..... [/quote]
Yes so where they not in debt?. You said name one club that was in debt, I think you will find virtually every football club in the land is in debt. Or have all these owners found some sort of miracle over night to make money, you mentioned Accrington self sufficient you said, no mention of the 1 million there prepared to lose. You must be very naive if you think many football clubs make money, even in Spain the biggest clubs in the world Barcelona and real Madrid are in huge debt.[/quote]
In fact to be honest mate I'm not even sure what your point is looking back so we are best just leaving it at that, I could provide you a list of about 15 clubs in the championship in debt. Scunthorpe were 11 million in debt doesn't matter what the chairman gets for paying it off? The fact is they are losing ridiculous amounts of money, being given the ground won't change that.

billingham......yes leave it there ...because you have been found out posting misleading crap to justify the cobblers you are talking ...you fail to understand even basic sums mate ...,,the amount of debt you can afford to run within any business is related to your income and the pay back period.....debt to income /value ratios and all that.... you have also mentioned walsall....good because it makes my point for me....yes they have debt and loans by directors totalling 1.8 mill...but they also have annual income of 5.5 mill and have made a profit every year for nearly 20 years ...and here is part of the reason why....take a look around...

https://aperture360.s3.amazonaws.com/to ... /index.htm

http://www.wfcthevenue.co.uk/

now compare that to pools .....who couldn't pay the laundry man.... let alone the tax man 4 years ago....and you come on here spouting out misleading crap about pools debt being "less than 90 per cent of league clubs"...and insinuating impropriety on the part of the chairman ....reference money from dc's compensation, a potential sterry sale, cheap options in recruiting lee/nelson, inadequate playing budgets etc etc ....when actually the bloke is the only reason we have anything to talk about on here at all...completely out of order and shameful...imo...that's my point .....

I think we must all be in the wrong business then, if only we knew taking over a football club was profitable. I fully expect now loads of people jumping at the chance to own pools in the coming months.

I've said many times on here raj has done a lot of good, I don't think anyone can say he hasn't. That said is it not fans right, who put in hundreds of thousands of pounds into the club every season to question why, we can't afford players yet the Suttons can? Why it took 6 weeks to get a managerial team in, which consisted of a guy who was bottom in the national league North and a man that was struggling to get results for an under 23 team? We are on bout money we have already lost some 600 to 1000 a week paying customers over last few games, why we have gone nearly all season with the forward line we have? Is it not time we dropped the nearly went bust 4 years ago line? Are we going to use that as an excuse forever more?

So in answer no I don't find it shameful asking raj certain things, especially when most people have wanted to jump ship out of the club since being promoted.

[quote="billinghampoolie1908"Why it took 6 weeks to get a managerial team in, which consisted of a guy who was bottom in the national league North and a man that was struggling to get results for an under 23 team? We are on bout money we have already lost some 600 to 1000 a week paying customers over last few games, why we have gone nearly all season with the forward line we have? [/quote]

It took just over a month to replace Challinor - it only felt like 6 weeks!

But you're a long way from being the only one asking questions about whether Lee and Nelson was the right choice to replace him. This transfer window is massive for those two and for any chance Pools have of picking up the momentum that has gone missing in the last 2 months.

not really surprised gates have gone down. its probebly will be those who have found the vic again are the ones now staying away. the high of bristol is now slipping from memories with the team struggling yet again. could get even worse this week with pools being dumped out of two cup competitions with only a struggle to keep a few places above the bottom 2 to look forward to.

always wonder who if any were approached or applied for the job in that 6 weeks who were turned down or turned pools down. just a bad feeling if their appointments were like signing fondop as a player. despiration as there was no one else. really hope though that they do well if only for the enthusiasm they seem to have for the job. problem is how long will that last on falling gates and poor performances.

I don't think you should find it shameful to ask. It would give us a good gauge of what kind of ambition we can expect from him for our club. Not an unreasonable ask. Not an accusation of wrong doing (of course keeping the club alive is not wrong doing).

A fair and far from unheard of topic of discussion for football club independent message board. No need to leap on it to try and stamp out the dissent. To have fans so far under an owners thrall is not healthy.

Are you going to make a valid point Snowy or make it all about your problems with specific people? Shame if its the latter.

I’ve just made several sunshine, you’ve banged on with your long running saga about the running of the club but never produced the goods....give us the information and I’ll pat you on the back..... over to you, deliver the goods.

It took just over a month to replace Challinor - it only felt like 6 weeks!

But you're a long way from being the only one asking questions about whether Lee and Nelson was the right choice to replace him. This transfer window is massive for those two and for any chance Pools have of picking up the momentum that has gone missing in the last 2 months.[/quote]

Nothing against those two lads and some will point to the fact they have lost just one game. Think they have been extremely lucky with the fixture schedule. We won at Lincoln, it was pretty much Sweeneys team even lee pretty much said, we have been pretty dreadful at home in all games, very lucky against Rochdale, dire against 2nd bottom Scunthorpe and well yesterday failed against a club in disarray. We somehow lead 2 nil at Mansfield and then predictably blew it.

We are in serious trouble, one of the worst away records in the country and now struggling at home, no more pinning hopes on a burey return, it's not looking very good especially with covid about for his return.

It was a bizarre managerial choice at the time, a risk not worth taking it could easily cost us football league status, very few teams struggle when they get promoted to the football league in the first year, it just has to be us doesn't it. We are now relying on two inexperienced lads. Two month ago we would of gone into these two cup games fancying it, almost like we were favourites, now we're probobly hoping their teams have been ravaged with covid.

Give me some information that says all is rosey. We lost the man who was making a silk purse out of a sows ear on the pitch. We at least had that. Now it just looks like pig lugs everywhere.

You know what happened with DC then?

I know what happened to DC, he was offered more money around a month or so after he agreed, yes agreed, a three year deal with Pools, which took him to Stockport.
Going to Stockport has made him and his family more financially secure and the job saves him the task of continuously fighting traffic on the journey over the Pennines. I don't blame him for doing that but hinting that all is not well at the club, without producing evidence, only contributed to the speculation. That's the bit that I don't like.
There are rumours, suggestions, speculation etc that it wasn't just for the money or that the job was nearer home but nobody has been willing to, or able to, put any more meat on those bones.
There is also the fact that Raj said he withheld some of the transfer pot and the alleged reason was that DC was actively touting for other jobs but Raj hasn't produced any substantial evidence to back that up, nor has DC denied it. However if it is true then that would inevitably generate a lack of trust.
DC deserves our gratitude for getting us out of the hellhole but Raj also deserves the same gratitude for making it possible. It was Raj who gave DC his chance to become a league club manager and gave him a three year contract to take it further. DC turned his back on that.
DC has gone, Raj has put his faith in another rookie. The formula worked with DC, time will tell if Raj has got it right again.
I suggest we leave it at that and move on, at least until the picture is clearer at the end of January.

Fair enough. We shall see.

Indeed we will.

the first point is the reason i do not go to all the games and not the money. its hard to believe how anyone could actually do it day in day out. secondly DC was hardly a rookie at being a manager. promotions with his two clubs prior to his one with us must have made him hot property in the national league as well as div.2 at least. we were lucky to get him for the time we had. if it had not been stockport it could have been someone else shortly after he did. pools are only a stepping ground for a good manager or a rest home for as long as they can for the bad.

He is just as much a rookie in the football league as anybody else who only has limited experience and his only success as far as promotion to the football league was with us and that chance was given to him by Raj, which is the point I was making.
If he gets Stockport promoted, which isn't a given, there is absolutely no doubt he'll be expected to do it again next season and then we'll see how good he is in the EFL. You also have to take into account that Fylde have a bit of cash and Stockport appear to have a lot of it. I would expect the Stockport hierarchy to have aspirations of at least league one or even championship football and probably have the financial clout to achieve it. Time will tell if DC is up to it and time will tell if GL is up to his task.

Yes, he scuttled off.

Just had a thought, does anybody think DC might want to lend us a few players from his bag of riches as a friendly way of apologising for his behaviour.

DC was no rookie when Pools took him on. All credit to Raj Singh for going out and getting him because he was an established and respected National League manager. A rookie would be someone who is not an established and respected manager at that particular level, such as those we just appointed. I really want our management team to thrive but its just not looking good.

Let go, he’s gone, take down the signed portrait, burn the DC duvet set and Jim jams, face up to it he’s not coming back..... you can always apply for Stockport nationality if the longings too much to bear. Mind you he could be on the move again after 18 months, so best not .
Altogether now.....
I was boooorn under a wandrin star,
I was booooooooorn under a wandrin star.
Clubs are made for leaving,
Bags are made to pack,
I never seen a club that don’t look better looking back.......

I was born under a wandrin star etc, etc,.......
Clubs make you a prisoner, and results can make you cry,
What am I doing here I think then up and off I fly.

Fair point. Love that song. I'll go and paint me wagon and chill out.

might end up a situation where the club outgrows DC but even then he will not be short of offers from smaller clubs in an area he will not have miles to travel everyday.

Thank god he wasn’t an airline pilot. He’d be flying from Manchester no further north than Carnforth International, no further east than the Pennines, no further south than Crewe Intercontinental and flying west ain’t gonna happen into the Irish Sea.