Quote Originally Posted by Andy_Faber View Post
Theres clearly more to this depreciation mullarkey than we’ve been told. Both straight line and ‘reducing balance’ (curved) approaches are widely used in accounting, but footballers offer a number of excuses for fiddling: using different depreciation in different circumstances, or to suit FFP: revaluing players with insufficient justification. Making contract lengths unrealistically long for older players to reduce the ‘in year’ depreciation - I’ve been poacher and gamekeeper on this stuff for years so know the cheat codes (as gamekeeper only obviously guvnor!) - if you have too then this ramble is for others benefit. One thing the above tweaks might suggest is front-loading player values to beat FFP in an early year and hoping promotion makes future years irrelevant, problem being you can’t keep doing it or you run out of years and it all collapses like a pyramid/Ponzi scheme
The thing is though, whatever the rights and wrongs of the player amortisation, the fact that Mel has been resorting to these practices, together with the sale and leaseback of the stadium, tells its own story, he has been pushing the boundaries of FFP and thats where I see his culpability lies.

Fine, he was the owner, he wanted to achieve promotion, he promised he would deliver this to the fans, BUT, he still has to operate within the EFL rules and within financial parameters. So yes Covid is a contributory factor, but in reality it has merely brought forward what would have been inevitable, he gambled his cash and the clubs future on promotion, he didn't succeed, now the clubs in the ****e! Thats down to his bad judgement and poor financial and I'd say operational management.

Yes fans may have salivated over the signings, though many took the view we were over paying for average players, but then Mel didn't say, look fans, I'm going to gamble the financial security of the club on getting promotion.

If he had said that, then many fans might not have been so keen to support what he was doing.

For me the guy has to take the blame, he was in charge and took a financially stable and viable club into administration.