OI - replace the word Grecians with Wombles, and Gorman with a.n.other, and it’s us, no…?

"Gorman’s remit was, in essence, to make the Grecians a sustainable League One football club and matters since then show just how hard that is without considerable financial resources to fund it, something City do not have."

Vindictiveness eh?

The article that Padds mentions. From Yahoo sport which seems to have fewer adverts. [Link]

They were that financial forecasts, which the club and Trust relied upon to make decisions, were overstated; one material transaction had breached a club/Trust agreement where contracts over £50,000 are approved by the Trust board and one further matter, which the club did not reveal at the time, but is believed to be a now resolved compliance issue over VAT payments. However, Gorman says his resignation was in fact due to his growing concern about governance, direction and the working culture of the football club

Can't link from phone, but Devon online has an article suggesting that Exeter are in a similar boat: 'Former Exeter City chairman Joe Gorman slams 'vindictiveness'...'.

Pyramid Schemes by Fred Atkins is a good book if you want to find out how dodgy non and lower football league football clubs owners can be.

OI, are you new here?

OI - no.

Any chance of someone fronting up about finances rather than leaving it to rumours?

Silk - maybe not Bet365, but Paddy Power, at least their adverts are often pretty funny… 😂

Messages I've received in last few hours suggest my 2027 timeliness is optimistic. Loan of £1m from the named source, to get us to Summer. Anyone on DTB or PLC see this coming with say a five year financial projection?

What does being in charge of the plc mean? If you are talking about the day to day running of the company then the CEO or MD should be doing that. If you are talking about tha strategy and direction of the company then the plc board should be in charge. The CEO should be on the board or at worst consulted about theses subjects. For us the DTB has a veto on the plc board, something we demanded when we stopped saying the DTB should be a majority on the board. If people say they wouldn't start from here fine, but we are starting frrom here and we need to make the best of the situation we have.

Yes I agree with that Silk

Google is hugely worse with the introduction of AI. Sort of apropos- our son's Flemish father-in-law recently reminded us that at one time Google offered you articles in different languages with the possibility of translating them. As English speakers we hadn't noticed the change. He has found it limiting just getting stuff in Dutch.

LD- agree that we need to put in place protections now, if we can. I don’t know if it is still possible (I think that there are legal restrictions on the ability of a company to transfer its assets at an undervalue if it is or is nearly insolvent, but I don’t know if that would apply to us at present). That is exactly the sort of stuff that the DTB should be looking at now - maybe they are, they wouldn’t advertise or minute it publicly if they were doing so.

If we sell the club what controls can we have to stop Mr. Nice Guy circumstances changing and the club being sold to Mr. Asset Stripper shortly afterwards?

TF - isn't that the problem if it was their loss. Shouldn't the MD/CEO be in charge of the PLC. Why do we have so many fragmentations. The DTB do this, the MD/CEO does this and the PLC board does this. Why not have all decisions made from one place from people who are paid to make them and so can devote the time to get them right.

If we go into administration in an uncontrolled way (rather than selling in an agreed sale) we will of course have absolutely no control over who subsequently buys the club, so our DTB’s moral scruples will be irrelevant anyway

That loss was from the PLC, right?

Laurence - isn't that what we pay Woodruff for or wasn't he there when the proverbial hit the fan.

Silk - business acumen might have prevented £400,000 of losses?

I’d take that money all day long Silk. There’s an irony in trying to maintain the moral high ground when the integrity of the trust is at an all time low.

Does any amount of business acumen help when you are losing money every week? I am sure that Woodruff has some acumen and he cannot solve this problem. It is just re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. If we want to remain a L2 club we have to have someone who will sustain the losses. Otherwise we have to accept we cannot keep on making losses.

'I agree with Nick' which I believe was at one time a common phrase.