Southend fans trying to block the Chairmans drive yesterday.
Don,t know how that club is going to survive.

https://twitter.com/fan_southend1/statu ... 7233899867

They are in Court today over an unpaid Leccy bill - be no floodlights soon and don't ask for a cup of tea.

October 4th is the next (and possibly last) hurdle when they have to show the sale of the Club to realise the £250k to pay the Tax Man.

They are down to the bare bones with players, especially having 2 sent off last Saturday, think down to 11?

Feel really sorry for their fans who in quite numbers follow them home and away.

Dire Straits for sure!!!

Depressing how so many fans who have followed the club down the generations can have their dreams smashed to pieces by the actions of one ….I can’t call him a ‘man’…for what…?

Minority rules all aspects of life, Unfortunately

They keeper is injured too now.

Oh Dear

Only 2 subs on the beach tonight, has to bring in out of contract David Martin to play in goal. On a non contract basis, playing for free. Only was to sign players.

they won which shows to the fans that they have not given up. the thing that always annoys me with these situations is all the fans can do is keep turning up to watch their team. not a single one can be blamed for the situation their club has been dragged into but are the ones that will suffer if things do go wrong. with the billions knocking around in football you would think some positive action could be done for them. just get all of martins assets off him, bang him inside alomg with a lifetime ban of having no interest in any business apart from just working on the shop floor for one.

I live in the area and the outlook is pretty grim what players they have are sticking together and it shows in their results even with the points deduction they are now off the bottom.

He’ll build his luxury apartments in it and compensate the fans by calling it Roots Hall Gardens….more like Roots All Gone….and probably won’t lose a seconds sleep over ruining the lives of thousands.

Just been reminded last time I was in Southend was when a ship rammed the pier coming down the Thames estuary and demolished the toilet block …anyone constipated in a cubicle would have soon got instant relief as the bow came through the wall.

thats a real definition of having the piss taken out of you.

The Court case over unpaid leccy bill didn't happen as the Court ran out of time - can you believe it. Postponed until 3 October.

Strong comments that the consortium trying to take over Southend and have been in negotiation with RM for the past 10 weeks are getting no where as the boundaries keep regularly changing.

But you never know his houdini act might still prevail?

David Martin is their goalkeeping coach and I believe is on non- contract terms as they do not have a back up one.

Very sad. Southend United the first side Pools played at home under floodlights Pools 1 Southend Utd 2 on a snow pitch in 1967. Crowd was 9,000 plus. The championship, Stan Collymore et al. Like Oldham, Scunthorpe and others all lost to the fabric of the football league which we grew up with. Hope they survive. Like others have said the fans deserve better and they play in blue and white which gives them brownie points in my book.

My outlaws and wife are SARFend fans (as mentioned previously) apparently Martin has already turned down TWO bids from said consortium.

I don't think, he thinks, that the court will wind them up- the bloke is taking the piss. He has the money to settle the bill, he simply doesn't want to pay it. He clearly thinks that HMRC aren't his problem - he's been taking the piss out of them for years. Trouble is once this bill is settled they'll then need to pay the next one and so it rolls on.

I just can't see how they survive beyond the first week of October - which is devastating for their fanbase and wider community. Should they fold which is a very real possibility - the football authorities need to put in safeguards that means this can't be allowed to happen again, to another club and community..

Surely they could take him out and run the club on a temporary basis until it can be sold- like when train companies are taken back into public ownership

if we flatly refused to pay our bills we know where we,d end up. behind bars even for just a television licence. think we know nothing of the sort will happen to martin apart from banning from football ownership again. everything seems to favour those with more money but with much bigger debts.

I think the rules are far too lax towards owners over their responsibilities towards not just the club but the fan base as well.
Guidelines about basic financial transactions such as paying utility bills etc , should be built into a contract with the league instead of dragging it out for the courts to enforce.

Below is a post from a southend supporter who posts on another forum on whats upcoming.
Things just seem to be going from bad to worse. 4th Oct court date, But also 1 the day before.

"4th October so two weeks today. We're in court 3rd October too due to owing nPower £1m. They want to cut the power. There will be no sale before the 4th October and it has been mentioned that Martin won't even be going to that hearing "

What a lovely person

What's a television licence pretty sure my great great grandad mentioned one of these to my great grandad who told my grandad and grandad told my dad and dad mentioned it to me 50 years ago.

Its a thing that they called monochrome (black and white) and when some of us were kids people were frightened to death with detector vans roaming the streets with aeriels the size of the Town End catching those who didn't have one. Then the upstarts arrived who challenged the BBC monopoly whose licence you and me all pay for despite them now being a political party/pressure group. And if you after having a licence since Watty Moore played for Pools and for some reason don't renew it, they set the dogs on you 'cause your name is on a computer. They also hound 75 plus year olds on occasions. Oh, and they pay that smirking I know best Liniker ooodles to spout propaganda. Where were you Gary when the Peterlee factory shut? They are also into diversity where depending on the official source that around 81 per cent of our population is "white" they have to have token people from other hotter places on the planet to appear in fillums. programmes and news etc, where they in fact seem to represent about 30 or 40 per cent of the population. Expecting cancellation papers in the post the morrow.

Getting back to SARFend-

I watched their manager Kevin Maher's post match interview and the poor bloke was almost in tears. How he hasn't chucked his hand in, is a great testament to his commitment to what's looking like an increasingly lost cause - you can feel his pain down the lenses - just awful

Latest news on this unfortunate fiasco;

Essex Police have contacted the National League to advise that if there is no concrete evidence that a sale is going through then next Tuesday's match v Oxford City should not go ahead on safety grounds. This on the day Southend being in court over the unpaid leccy bill and the day before the big one with unpaid taxes owed to HMRC.

Another week and we "SHOULD" know the answer.

I reckon he hasn't been paying the Police bill either- and rather than say that, Essex Police have decided that as it seems a strong possibility that they could go pop on Wednesday, not to increase a debt they won't be able to recover should the worst happen.

Could the court put them into administration rather than liquidate straight away- effectively taking him out of the picture?

Possibly could mean a further 10 point deduction BUT also that Pools keep the 3 points, at least in the short term?

They is an Australian business man who want to buy them. However Ron is asking for to much money, for all the debt too.
The new owner won't own Roots Hall or the training ground, so all he's buying is the name and players and the land for the new stadium (which is nowhere near nowhere) so the court could put them into administration, with a -10 deduction, then it allows this business man to buy the club for a tenner, while Ron walks away with nothing. However, he says that he refuses to pay anything to him for the use of Roots Hall and training ground. So looking at ground sharing with Chelmsford, Dagenham, Canvey or Braintree.

Its not a TV licence really, Its a BBC licence.

Will they pay the Leccy man before their court appearance this afternoon?

Will they play Oxford City this evening or will the police get their way and stop it?

Will they have paid HMRC before their appearance in the high court tomorrow?

I can just see further adjournments and the agony goes on.

Hope for the best for the Shrimpers fans.

Close to be taken over, an announcement may be made later today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66992758

On the subject of crooks anyone knows what has happened to Coxhall?

Raj Singh newest Share holder of 51% at Hartlepool United.

They seems to be a massive gap in our history from 1994 to 2017, until Coxhall came on the seen. Wonder what happened, thank goodness he's nowhere near us, but this is under his filing on government sight.

Can,t see any more Adjournments happening.

Apparently Southend paid all HMRC bill and the sale of the club will be completed 1st November.

Working to a completion by 1st November.

Not sold yet and would you be paying HMRC etc until all the paperwork is exchanged and finalised?

RM could still stall any sale, so I would proceed with caution until I have "the keys"

As a Pools fan first and foremost I hate the position Southend United is in and would give up our three points against them if they were to survive. Apparently it might not come to that and that's good. Southend United a proper football club and long may they be so. All the best SUFC for your court case and take over.

I will second that

yes, i have no gripe with southend or scunthorpe as clubs or their fans. if shit has to happen i,d rather see it fall on betty,s boys or fleetwood.

Or Definately SW.

The winding up petition presented by HMRC was dismissed by the court this morning.
https://www.southendunited.co.uk/news/2 ... dismissed/

So The Shrimpers survive for now. They haven't have done bad on the pitch when you consider their squad size and the sword hanging over the players. Wish them well except the visit to The Vic of course.

Southend will be able to attract players from the London area, not many southern based players fancy the cold north east.

thats why all those ULEZ area clubs seem to do well season after season with the same players moving around from one club to another with the same travelling distance from home but a different route.

Beat Solihull 5 nil yesterday and soon be passing us!

Although their saga is still not over with some technicality delaying their take over until at least mid November.

Near neighbours Colchester sack their Manager with them lying 2nd bottom and staring the Conference in the face.

Ron Martin is another Raj Singh, not interested in selling the club, will say the right things to the courts and media to keep them off his back.

This Australian business man won't have the patience to hang around and the other two local business men don't really have much money to front it. One of them is a local taxi firm and only worth around £300k.

Southend Squad = Squad full of MEN who care.

They’re in a lot worse predicament than us, yet they go out and perform, it’s called ‘character’.

I'm delighted SARFend have managed a stay of execution for now. No one wants to see an established club fold- however hobby clubs, I'm less bothered about.

Over time every club seems to return to their natural level- so only a matter of time before the hobby's sink, once the benefactors get bored. Both Sutton and Forest Green struggling at the moment

As mentioned above SARFend's players are putting our pea hearted bunch to shame- they really are fighting for the shirt, club, fans and own livelihoods AND there is only 15 of them!

Can we not ship the likes of Hastie, Ndjoli and Paterson and maybe a few others out on loan, as we have Pruti and Burton?

Even if we paid part of their wages- with the money saved, could use to bring in a nasty centre half and a horrible midfield general to shake the fuckers up!?