To be fair the director of any business takes the hit when anything happens where his company is put at jeopardy. You are there and have a responsibility to keep the company running and running well.

Regardless on what is said, once this is all sorted and we have overcome the current financial problems Peter Hood has some big questions to ask himself over his position at the club. Unfortunately I feel he has lost trust within the fans and I've no doubt in investors as well, he feels the need to drip feed us information in regards to our situation as a club as if there is something to hide. If there was more information to hand in regards to what we face other than the boards "word" then some more cash may have left my account.

Atki

I fell into the same trap as I suggest you have, that first day. I jumped to conclusions before finding out the facts. So I'm not really that smart, after all - it is all too easily done though, especially in the heat of the moment.

I felt I had been made a fool of because I backed the board, against any number of ridiculing and sceptical outsiders, over the sale of the ground to the RFL. And it was not nice to be told by, amongst others, those highly-supportive chaps over on Substandard that our chairman had left me hung out to dry. Especially as I had no-one else to blame but myself, and what seemed to be my poor judgment. And I will not deny I was angry.

And so, seeing now when you sent your email, tbh I can hardly berate you for saying what you did at the time.

Very early the next morning, I became much better acquainted with the facts. Ryan rang me at 7.20 am, in response to a short email I sent him early the previous day - where I asked wtf had happened and what could he tell me. He admitted he had been so busy on Tuesday that he had not even had the chance to turn his computer on till 10-30pm that night.

I have since become better acquainted again, not least as a result of a long discussion I had on Friday morning. And, to the extent that I can judge, I believe (and woe betide if I have been misled, but I really really do not think so now) what I have learned.

And, provisionally at least, I regret jumping to hasty conclusions. In particular, I am pretty satisfied (as far as I can be) that the situation that we are in now arose since the last fans' forum. And that therefore, at the time, in general I was not being misled. Spun a bit, maybe; but not lied to.

There remain some unanswered questions, mainly regarding the RFL loan/advance/whatever that we knew nothing of before (although the leakers out of the RFL last year clearly did). And, to the extent that they never said that part of the Odsal lease sale proceeds were to be used to repay part of that immediately, yes you could say we were misled. Looking at the wider picture now, I can perhaps understand why the club would not seek to draw attention to that. I would not have, in their position.

But overall, if I was to point the finger at the club anywhere, it would be that they are hideously under-resourced in next-tier support for Peter, Ryan, Andrew and Stuart. Hideously. Because every spare penny has apparently been spent on the football side, not on admin, support and marketing. Rightly or wrongly, through necessity or whatever. And, amongst other things, this clearly impacts on the time they have to engage with the fans, or to put into how they do it.

Ryan told me Friday lunchtime that they had not even had time to see what Nawest had said about pulling the facility, and were not aware of it, until family had mentioned it the previous night. As an example.

So when we berate them for some of the pants communication (or lack of), or for Peter's sometime difficulties in engaging with the fans personally at the right level (on a one-to-one I have found him far more effective and friendly and open than I ever assumed) I have increasingly come to realise that we are blaming symptoms, not causes.

No-one is perfect - although I think too many fans expect both players and club officials to be as near-so as makes no difference - but I'm perfectly satisfied that those people running the club have been working their 'nads off for ages, and doing it to the best of their abilities and with nothing but the club's best interests at heart. Had the shareholders - amongst whom the current board has always been a minority (and until recently very much a minority, at that) not agreed, they could have replaced the directors at any time.

As a fan, I'm not sure I can really ask - let alone demand - much more?

And there is.

But remember, the club has to keep on good terms with all parties on whom it depends or whose support it needs. So it is not always that easy to put the full tale in the public domain.

Even so, I have implored the club to clarify and explain better a number of key issues that are causing some of the supporters to have concerns and reservations. We saw some of that happen late yesterday lunchtime, regarding the bank. I am hopeful we will see quite a bit more again regarding the other concerns, and soon. I suspect they are just so snowed under right now; but this is IMO pretty important.

Adey have pm'd you, but your in box might be full!

Adey, is there a reason you are not posting on here what you know? If we could find out be ringing Ryan, then it can't be confidential can it?
I would ring them, but they have better things to do I should imagine.

I am an outsider, but not a ridiculing one, though I would make no apologies for being sceptical.

I recall you assuring people when the deal to buy the lease was done that you knew the terms of the deal and that it was all about saving the ground from "predators".

It now appears that there was a loan debt owed to the RFL (when this loan was made and what it related to is perhaps best left to another thread - suffice it to say that this gives rise to a host of other serious questions!) which was discharged by the sale of the lease. The deal could instead be described as saving the RFL's bacon by giving it an asset in repayment for the debt...

Given the fact that the club is, by the admission of its directors, unable to meet its liabilities as they fall due only a short period after that sale, there must be a big question mark over the validity of the discharge of debt owed to one creditor (the RFL) by the transfer of an asset to that creditor, even if the transfer was at market value. The unfairness of this from the perspective of other creditors of an insolvent business is obvious.

There must be a significant risk that an administrator or liquidator of the club will challenge that transaction and seek to have it reversed so that the lease reverts to the club and can be sold along with its other assets. The alleged motive of the deal with the RFL - to save the ground - may well end up being thwarted if that happens. Surely it would have been better for the RFL and the Club and its major creditors RBS and HMRC to have done a deal between them that saved the club....

I hope that you are right to continue to trust the club.

Personally I would be very, very sceptical indeed. The directors ought to announce their resignations at say the end of April and call in the meantime for local business people to come forward to replace them. They do have time to be transparent with fans and investors and they really need to set out what has gone on and what their plan is to put the business on a sound footing.

There is no way that - despite the sympathy I have for the fans and employees of the club and the anger and concern I feel at the shocking state one of the most important clubs in the game is in - I will be pledging any money until there is a clear-out of the current senior management team. Otherwise you are probably just throwing good money after bad, I am afraid.

I can understand the posts calling for a change at the top, I really can, but I wish people demanding a new chairman would just look at the current list of people with hands up asking for the (unpaid) position:

Here it is below:










So, which of the above is it to be then?

If I recall the RFL mentioned the word predators not the Club, so naturally it got picked by everyone else

So you know that for a fact do you.

It it's wrong, you fill it in..

Just as soon as you provide a list of shareholders publicly offering their shares for sale and at what price.

One point that you have consistently - and, as far as I can tell, correctly - made is that we as a club are hamstrung by our shareholding profile. I believe that one of the reasons why you possibly looked favourably on administration was that it was one way to resolve this issue. We may soon see whether it does, but if we evade administration, do you have any ideas of how else we might be able to address it?

You suggest above a public sale of shares by the current shareholders. I take it that, by this, you mean all (major) shareholders, not just the current board. If this were to happen, what would be the optimal result? A single new investor (or small consortium) buying them?

Would there be any mileage in a new issue of shares, or would this risk compounding the issue by fragmenting the holding further?

I know that there is a lot of suspicion around at the moment, but I can assure you that I do not ask this with any agenda - I would just like to understand better, and I ask you as it's clearly a subject to which you have given a lot of thought.