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The whole thing gets more and more confusing the more you read about it. I don't know if they'll be able to use the Covid pandemic to get out of it personally, think the recent takeover means they should have had the funds to cover the season & next, right? That's like the legal minimum IIRC.

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1 hour ago, RiseAgainst said:

Extraordinary decision to condemn them to a 12-point penalty without good reason. I assumed they were in a Bolton/Bury-style situation and administration was a last desperate roll of the dice, but I can't see from what @Hendrie_7 has posted how the benefits of this move will outweigh the penalties.

Sadly, there's absolutely no chance of jail terms. If Steve Dale is still a free man, some dodgy Oriental investor hiding their funds in the Cayman Islands isn't going to be held accountable.

Without good reason? The clubs owner called for the club to enter administration and that means a 12 point deduction. That's about as good a reason as you'll get. Whatever his reasons are for that decision is anyones guess but the fact is it was the clubs owner that made the decision.

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24 minutes ago, Borodane said:

Without good reason? The clubs owner called for the club to enter administration and that means a 12 point deduction. That's about as good a reason as you'll get. Whatever his reasons are for that decision is anyones guess but the fact is it was the clubs owner that made the decision.

I read it as he was saying it was an extraordinary decision by the owner to go into administration knowing the penalty.

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1 hour ago, RiseAgainst said:

Extraordinary decision to condemn them to a 12-point penalty without good reason. I assumed they were in a Bolton/Bury-style situation and administration was a last desperate roll of the dice, but I can't see from what @Hendrie_7 has posted how the benefits of this move will outweigh the penalties.

Sadly, there's absolutely no chance of jail terms. If Steve Dale is still a free man, some dodgy Oriental investor hiding their funds in the Cayman Islands isn't going to be held accountable.

And this is what happens when football clubs are used as financial toys by the rich.  Say what you like about Gibbo's decision making, but at least we don't have this sort of nonsense to worry aboutl.

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Call me old fashioned but I prefer the league positions to be settled on the pitch, not off it. I don’t care how well run or badly run a club is, the idea is to beat them with the team that you have on the pitch. Docking points from struggling clubs only helps the bigger and stronger clubs, the owners don’t get punished, just the fans and the players, that’s just rotten. 
 

If these draconian rules were in place in 1986, we would have started the 86/87 season on minus 12 points and would never have have got out of the third tier that season and Rioch and the players legacy would be very different. Of all fans, Boro fans should have real sympathy for any teams that struggle financially.

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5 minutes ago, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

Call me old fashioned but I prefer the league positions to be settled on the pitch, not off it. I don’t care how well run or badly run a club is, the idea is to beat them with the team that you have on the pitch. Docking points from struggling clubs only helps the bigger and stronger clubs, the owners don’t get punished, just the fans and the players, that’s just rotten. 
 

If these draconian rules were in place in 1986, we would have started the 86/87 season on minus 12 points and would never have have got out of the third tier that season and Rioch and the players legacy would be very different. Of all fans, Boro fans should have real sympathy for any teams that struggle financially.

Understand what you are saying, but back then you didn't have as big a problem with shabby owners that'll ruin the club over night if they think it's fun. There is so much at risk these days with all the money in play, so you need some sort of rules off the pitch too. It'll hurt the fans no doubt, like this one, but with Wigan you need to lay a lot of the blame at the EFL fit and proper test.

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2 minutes ago, Borodane said:

Understand what you are saying, but back then you didn't have as big a problem with shabby owners that'll ruin the club over night if they think it's fun. There is so much at risk these days with all the money in play, so you need some sort of rules off the pitch too. It'll hurt the fans no doubt, like this one, but with Wigan you need to lay a lot of the blame at the EFL fit and proper test.

Read up on Amer, Kitching, McCullagh and Duffield if you want a catalogue of disastrous Boro chairman, the club really was flying by the seat of its pants under those guys. 

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Told yers.

The extensive research I did into this consisted of googling for a few mins so you can imagine the lengths that the good people of the EFL must have gone to in order not to spot anything 🤨

 

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2 hours ago, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

Read up on Amer, Kitching, McCullagh and Duffield if you want a catalogue of disastrous Boro chairman, the club really was flying by the seat of its pants under those guys. 

Well, at least one of those was dodgy, the others perhaps doing their best with a bad hand at times?

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Duffield and McCullagh decent people who didn't realise just how much had gone on earlier...Alf put more than he could really afford into club in hope of turning things around...so don't think they can really be blamed....but the true story of the "sports centre" would be the sort of thing that Arthur Daley might have been involved in (allegedly)

  

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Just been reading a Sheff Wed forum there and between spitting bile about Steve Gibson, one of the posters mentioned that one of Wigan's administrators said on the radio that another club in the Championship is close to filing for administration.

No idea if that's true, or which radio channel he said it on, but that could be interesting.

Sheff Wed failing to pay all their players this month, and releasing high earners, it could even be them.

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3 minutes ago, TeaCider24 said:

Just been reading a Sheff Wed forum there and between spitting bile about Steve Gibson, one of the posters mentioned that one of Wigan's administrators said on the radio that another club in the Championship is close to filing for administration.

No idea if that's true, or which radio channel he said it on, but that could be interesting.

Sheff Wed failing to pay all their players this month, and releasing high earners, it could even be them.

Yes I read that earlier today. The administrator said he knows of at least one other championship club in trouble and he expected them to enter administration before the end of the season. He did not name the club. Unfortunately he also said that several League 1&2 clubs are also in serious difficulty and he expects a lot of clubs to disappear in the next few months.

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2 hours ago, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

Call me old fashioned but I prefer the league positions to be settled on the pitch, not off it. I don’t care how well run or badly run a club is, the idea is to beat them with the team that you have on the pitch. Docking points from struggling clubs only helps the bigger and stronger clubs, the owners don’t get punished, just the fans and the players, that’s just rotten. 
 

If these draconian rules were in place in 1986, we would have started the 86/87 season on minus 12 points and would never have have got out of the third tier that season and Rioch and the players legacy would be very different. Of all fans, Boro fans should have real sympathy for any teams that struggle financially.

I do understand where you're coming from Billy but football isn't just decided on the pitch, it is decided by decisions made on the pitch and off it. To keep being able to make those decisions both on and off the pitch, a club has to function as a financially sound business. When it doesn't, how else can you penalise the people running it? Well a fine isn't gonna do any good as that just exacerbates the problem. I'm not sure how else you do it beyond penalising how competitive the club can be.

It's horrid in terms of the fans, it really is. That's why we need a fit and proper test for owners and we need it to actually be solid, as solid as it can be. Whatever it is right now is complete rubbish and only further emphasises my standing on Steve Gibson remaining in charge of our club. It's a case of better the devil you know, right now and until that test changes for the better, I don't want our club on the market.

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I've been doing some digging into the Wigan situation. This is what I have found so far.

IEC, a Hong Kong Based investment company (Seem to have made their money in property), acquired Wigan in Nov 2018. Interestingly although based in Hong Kong, they are registered to the Cayman Islands (Which is a known tax haven). Within a year (Nov 2019) they were then known to be actively looking to sell the club. In Feb 2020 they released a document to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange stating they were wishing to sell the club due to "income and profitability of the club were not significantly improved as expected". Within the same document they state that the club was under-performing despite the investment of "significant working capital".

On 29th May IEC announced to the HK Stock Exchange, that it has sold Wigan for £17.5 Million and that the £24.6 Million they invested into Wigan had been repaid (Via the sale of the club). Interestingly IEC only paid £15.9 Million for Wigan in the first place. So looking at the figures they have actually made a profit (also with all their investments have been repaid in full). Not bad for a years work. But who did they sell Wigan to? This is where it gets murky.

After looking into it the chairman (Dr. Choi) of IEC (who owned over 50% of IEC), also owned over 50% of the Next Leader Fund (The new owners). So initially IEC sold the club to NLF, then interestingly on 24th June Dr.Choi was suddenly no longer the primary shareholder in NLF, and Au Yeung became the majority shareholder of NLF (75%). Au Yeung is now assumed to own 100% of NLF. On the exact same day that Au Yeung became the main shareholder of NLF, his lawyers approached Begbies Traynor (The administrators currently) to ask them to become administrators. So NLF paid close to £41 Million to buy Wigan, only to then not fund the club at all and then immediately place it into administration.

Without knowing the ins and out, this seems like IEC wanting to dump the club and remove it from their books entirely. Seems like they saw this as a way to make a some money. Initially I think they intended to cut costs as much as possible and increase the income, so they could skim off any profits. Once they realised this wasn't possible they then wanted to sell the club. They probably didn't have any interested parties paying £41 Million, so instead used something like a newly created shell/dummy company, to transfer ownership and wash their hands of the club.

The EFL once again have to be held accountable in this case, their "Fit and proper" tests are paper thin. They also require buyers/owners to prove that they have the funds to fund the club. But they have no requirement of the owners/buyer actually funding the running of the club! 

When the story broke I was initially quick to shoot down the fact that the owners/EFL were to blame for this situation, sorry @Brunners! But once reading up on it all, it is clear that yet again the EFL have failed to protect the clubs.

Edited by DanFromDownSouth
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47 minutes ago, DanFromDownSouth said:

I've been doing some digging into the Wigan situation. This is what I have found so far.

IEC, a Hong Kong Based investment company (Seem to have made their money in property), acquired Wigan in Nov 2018. Interestingly although based in Hong Kong, they are registered to the Cayman Islands (Which is a known tax haven). Within a year (Nov 2019) they were then known to be actively looking to sell the club. In Feb 2020 they released a document to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange stating they were wishing to sell the club due to "income and profitability of the club were not significantly improved as expected". Within the same document they state that the club was under-performing despite the investment of "significant working capital".

On 29th May IEC announced to the HK Stock Exchange, that it has sold Wigan for £17.5 Million and that the £24.6 Million they invested into Wigan had been repaid (Via the sale of the club). Interestingly IEC only paid £15.9 Million for Wigan in the first place. So looking at the figures they have actually made a profit (also with all their investments have been repaid in full). Not bad for a years work. But who did they sell Wigan to? This is where it gets murky.

After looking into it the chairman (Dr. Choi) of IEC (who owned over 50% of IEC), also owned over 50% of the Next Leader Fund (The new owners). So initially IEC sold the club to NLF, then interestingly on 24th June Dr.Choi was suddenly no longer the primary shareholder in NLF, and Au Yeung became the majority shareholder of NLF (75%). Au Yeung is now assumed to own 100% of NLF. On the exact same day that Au Yeung became the main shareholder of NLF, his lawyers approached Begbies Traynor (The administrators currently) to ask them to become administrators. So NLF paid close to £41 Million to buy Wigan, only to then not fund the club at all and then immediately place it into administration.

Without knowing the ins and out, this seems like IEC wanting to dump the club and remove it from their books entirely. Seems like they saw this as a way to make a some money. Initially I think they intended to cut costs as much as possible and increase the income, so they could skim off any profits. Once they realised this wasn't possible they then wanted to sell the club. They probably didn't have any interested parties paying £41 Million, so instead used something like a newly created shell/dummy company, to transfer ownership and wash their hands of the club.

The EFL once again have to be held accountable in this case, their "Fit and proper" tests are paper thin. They also require buyers/owners to prove that they have the funds to fund the club. But they have no requirement of the owners/buyer actually funding the running of the club! 

When the story broke I was initially quick to shoot down the fact that the owners/EFL were to blame for this situation, sorry @Brunners! But once reading up on it all, it is clear that yet again the EFL have failed to protect the clubs.

Good post @DanFromDownSouth

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