“Right and Proper” owners tests.

[mickd1961]

What a shambles this is.

Look at the plight of Bury and the ongoing travails at Bolton......one s h I t e owner replaced by an even worse owner.

One of the proposed buyers of Bury is the a r s e clown Norman Smurthwaite who ran Port Vale into the ground and as ground owner at Nuneaton Town forced them into liquidation.......how on earth can a bloke like him be allowed within a hundred miles of buying any club!?

It strikes me that the EPL and the EFL are run by career “nobodies” and especially the EFL.

The hoops I have to jump through to get a mortgage ( same as most people and rightly so ) yet people like Dale at Bury are allowedto take the reigns and take the p I s s when they “buy” a club for a £1 and “take on the existing dept”......what a joke.

Allowing this just allows these scum to asset strip and then go t I t s up as a limited company and face no real consequences.

It’s not difficult to find out if people have real money these days.

All owners should be forced to put up a Bond of X number of £ millions that is held by the league.

This would sort the chancers from the rogues.

[holmleighchris]

That bond idea is a very good one Mick.
Who are the people who run the league? How do they get their positions? Are they like owners, already rich?

[Yarmbaggie]

Why should football clubs be any different to any other business? Because of the fans? Maybe but who gives a toss about us anymore?

It beggars belief to me that any sane person would want to buy the likes of Bury or indeed any EFL team and especially any non league team and risk losing their own money for the benefit of overpaid footballers and all their hangers on.

The Right and Proper tests need to be there to protect the fans but obviously are not working in all cases. At least they exist and surely the way forward is to make them more rigorous not putting up other barriers to stop people investing in clubs in the first place.

The likes of Ashley at Newcastle is on record in saying that he is well off but is not rich enough to invest the type of money that the club needs to take it to the next level. Even Gibson at Boro, a fan of the club, isn’t investing much money in it these days. If these two as examples are not well enough off to prop up football goodness knows then who is.

That is why we end up with buyers the likes of Lai, the Venkies etc etc. The whole football business model is for me totally shot and is driven by tv money and people trying at all levels to make a lot of money out of the game. No longer the local community club game that I grew up with and all the worse for it.

[mickd1961]

You’re missing the point Yarm.

People like this guy at Bury are buying these clubs for a £ and supposedly taking on the debt.

They then don’t pay the debt and over the next few months they pocket gate and commercial receipts and EFL payments to them lining their own pockets.

A lot of them end up owning the ground and training ground for their £1 investment as well.

The whole thing stinks.

Today this t w a t at Bury has said on the radio.....”I don’t need the money but if the fans wanted to pledge £3-£4 million then how can the EFL deny us the right to play”.

Unbelievable......talk about a “brass neck”.

[Leicesterbaggie]

There is so much wrong with the game today that I can only see it all ending in tears. I don't see anyone immune to it either.

[WBA123]

What a shambles this is.

Look at the plight of Bury and the ongoing travails at Bolton......one s h I t e owner replaced by an even worse owner.

One of the proposed buyers of Bury is the a r s e clown Norman Smurthwaite who ran Port Vale into the ground and as ground owner at Nuneaton Town forced them into liquidation.......how on earth can a bloke like him be allowed within a hundred miles of buying any club!?

It strikes me that the EPL and the EFL are run by career “nobodies” and especially the EFL.

The hoops I have to jump through to get a mortgage ( same as most people and rightly so ) yet people like Dale at Bury are allowedto take the reigns and take the p I s s when they “buy” a club for a £1 and “take on the existing dept”......what a joke.

Allowing this just allows these scum to asset strip and then go t I t s up as a limited company and face no real consequences.

It’s not difficult to find out if people have real money these days.

All owners should be forced to put up a Bond of X number of £ millions that is held by the league.

This would sort the chancers from the rogues.

For once we are in agreement Mick,

The EFL should hang its head in shame for what has happened at Bury.

This Steve Dale is nothing but an asset stripper, with a history of doing this at other businesses. If a fan found out this type of information about him, how could the EFL not have done their due diligence?

Its so sad to see a proper football club go to the wall. And the EFL have done nothing to protect them.

[Yarmbaggie]

Buying clubs for a pittance and taking on the debt has been going on for years. My point is the process of the ‘Right and Proper’ needs to work not putting up barriers like the one suggested of holding a couple of million in a bond.

Ken Bates famously bought Chelsea for a £1 in 1982 before eventually selling it to Abramovich at a massive profit many years later. Even Terry Venables bought a controlling interest in Portsmouth in 1997 for £1 as did the new owners of Hull City in 2010. Swansea were sold for £1 in 2001 and Wrexham for the same in 2011. It even happens abroad and Parma were sold for one euro a few years ago and I suspect there are many other instances all over the place.

The whole thing does stink but it is just a reflection of what football has become, a way for people to make substantial amounts of money at all levels out of the game that we all love, although admittedly for some of us, not half as much as we used to.