Fans forum

[OUFC4eva]

I cannot believe that Slappy , a right thinking and balanced U's fan,would be a member of that
Type of thing.

The comment above from Tom, a former Oxford Mail journalist,
is nothing short of an absolute disgrace in my view
and should be withdrawn.

[tomoufc]

Former Oxford Mail journalist? I'm flattered. I did once write a preview for RO though!

I'm not withdrawing anything - plus it's pure speculation/intuition.

I'll ask you this. What I've said might be utter rubbish, but why do you think Mr. Eales is involved in Oxford United? To my mind he's never answered that question, except in the vaguest of nothingness terms. It's clear why Robert Maxwell was involved, for example. Why is Mr. Eales involved? What does he want from/with us?

[dr ceri]

Well I suggest you withdraw it or delete it pronto unless you want to contest a libel writ... And whoever moderates the board these days should do it to protect themselves.

[tomoufc]

Well I suggest you withdraw it or delete it pronto unless you want to contest a libel writ... And whoever moderates the board these days should do it to protect themselves.

The libel laws are indeed ridiculous - there to protect the rich. I'll amend.

[tomoufc]

It just says that I'm suspicious of the owners' intentions, which is no more than anyone else has said - and mentions a publically reported fact about Birmingham City.

Also in the public domain is the fact that Black 'n' Rounds recently changed its registered address to an address in Northwood that is blurred-out in Google Street View http://companycheck.co.uk/company/09004013, and recently appointed THOMAS SIMON GRUNWALD as a director, whose only other appointment is to a company called 'Septwelve', which does no website and is also a few months old http://companycheck.co.uk/director/918245472. Meanwhile the Black 'n' Rounds website continues to look somewhat ridiculous http://blacknrounds.com/. The last activity on the Animalates twitter feed is: 'Good luck to Gary Waddock and @OUFClive tonight @SUFCRootsHall. We'll be watching on @SkySports #unitedwestand', following regular updates up to that point.

[YellowHoods]

I cannot believe that Slappy , a right thinking and balanced U's fan,would be a member of that
Type of thing.

The comment above from Tom, a former Oxford Mail journalist,
is nothing short of an absolute disgrace in my view
and should be withdrawn.

To be fair to Slappy, he may only have joined "Aplerton Out" to be able to read the postings within it. He certainly did that for the infamous "Wilder Out" group, as did I for a while!

[slappy]

A football friend of mine likes winding me up about how bad the club are doing, I think he set the group up and then added me. That was all.

[slappy]

My take on what I think Eales' motivation is. It's not turning a quick buck on a stadium redevelopment, or developing Water Eaton with him retaining ownership.

MY GUESS: He's done 30 years in finance, made some money, and now owns a reasonable group of engineering companies. But, he's always been a football fan, and reckons that Oxford United are a club with the potential to be a decent championship side, good demographics, lurking fanbase, good location etc.

He said he's not in it for the money, but if he can get us into the Championship and doing well, then there is the possibility of another investor seeing us as a relatively cheap club to buy (compared to an established club like Birmingham City), and so he would be able to walk off having done what he set out to do, and having turned a profit.

[slappy]

I did feel Eales got a bit tetchy about some of the repeated questioning of his motives. Perhaps he's not used to dealing with football fans, rather than experienced financial people.

This was though, the first time in public that I know of that he's said he's not in for the money or a stadium deal, and so unless people have spoken to him or Ashton face-to-face, how would they know that?

He also cleared up the ownership structure, which is now quite open. OUFC is owned 51% by Ensco, 38% WPL, and 11% others. Ensco is owned 86% Eales, 12% Ashton, 2% others. The official statement saying Lenagan and Eales owned between 30% and 50% each was I think based on the calculation for Eales being 86% x 51% = under 50%.

Eales also confirmed that Ashton would be paid by Ensco, which was funded by Eales, and that Ensco would not be onward charging by management charge. In the event that the current owners had to walk away, Eales would waive his debts due from the club.

It seems odd to me that legitimate (ie not excessive) management charges for a full time chairman wouldn't be charged to the club, as I can't think that Ensco has any other income streams, or none that are public so far, other than that Eales would still have to fund them anyway.

The AGM still hasn't been publicly discussed, and I wonder if anything was said about the issue of preference shares.

My current guess is that in L2, the club is (I think) subject to the Salary Cost Management Protocol, which limits PLAYER costs to 55% of turnover. Issuing share capital or donations to the club count as turnover, so perhaps this was needed to afford the squad budget under L2 rules. Perhaps keeping executive salaries out of the club is to keep within Financial Fair Play rules ready for the Championship? Or to keep them secret? Who knows.

Anyway, Eales has confirmed he is funding the club, but stopped short of saying how long he would do this.

[neilw]

It was me who asked how he planned to turn around current losses and to what extent is he prepared to support them. I didn't get an answer. The point being, if he's only prepared to chuck, say, £2m in, we are screwed in a year.

Unless things change on the pitch, over the next three months, Eales could find himself £2m out of pocket, heading a non-league club, with circa £8m+ debt. It's a possibility we'd do well to face up to right now in order to prevent it becoming reality.

The biggest problem is that there doesn't appear to be any recognition of the problem.

[GodalmingYellow]

I did feel Eales got a bit tetchy about some of the repeated questioning of his motives. Perhaps he's not used to dealing with football fans, rather than experienced financial people.

This was though, the first time in public that I know of that he's said he's not in for the money or a stadium deal, and so unless people have spoken to him or Ashton face-to-face, how would they know that?

He also cleared up the ownership structure, which is now quite open. OUFC is owned 51% by Ensco, 38% WPL, and 11% others. Ensco is owned 86% Eales, 12% Ashton, 2% others. The official statement saying Lenagan and Eales owned between 30% and 50% each was I think based on the calculation for Eales being 86% x 51% = under 50%.

Eales also confirmed that Ashton would be paid by Ensco, which was funded by Eales, and that Ensco would not be onward charging by management charge. In the event that the current owners had to walk away, Eales would waive his debts due from the club.

It seems odd to me that legitimate (ie not excessive) management charges for a full time chairman wouldn't be charged to the club, as I can't think that Ensco has any other income streams, or none that are public so far, other than that Eales would still have to fund them anyway.

The AGM still hasn't been publicly discussed, and I wonder if anything was said about the issue of preference shares.

My current guess is that in L2, the club is (I think) subject to the Salary Cost Management Protocol, which limits PLAYER costs to 55% of turnover. Issuing share capital or donations to the club count as turnover, so perhaps this was needed to afford the squad budget under L2 rules. Perhaps keeping executive salaries out of the club is to keep within Financial Fair Play rules ready for the Championship? Or to keep them secret? Who knows.

Anyway, Eales has confirmed he is funding the club, but stopped short of saying how long he would do this.

Good work Sloppy.

Can you show me where you got the information that sale of shares counts as turnover for the financial fair play rules? If you are correct, then that would indeed explain the shares issue (although not why prefs rather than ords). But I would be surprised if sale of shares was allowed in the calcs as that is not normally regarded as turnover (as you will no doubt already be aware).

I think everyone can see the motives for a positive outcome for Eales, but it is unusual in the modern world for a wealthy financier to be so philanthropic towards a football club that they had no previous connections with to be prepared to just write off potentially significant debts. And to take that a stage further, it would not even be debts in the everyday non-accounting use of the word, given the shares issue. And I think it is this point that everyone is struggling to get their heads around. Maybe Eales is just so confident of achieving success and has so much money, that he doesn't see it as the high risk that the rest of us do.

[slappy]

http://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/scmp.php

This is where I found a summary of the SCMP rules. I don't know if that is up to date, and although the FL rules are probably confidential, the author seems to know what he's talking about.

[tomoufc]

Maybe Eales is just so confident of achieving success and has so much money, that he doesn't see it as the high risk that the rest of us do.

That's one fat slice of 'maybe'. Really - a successful financial adviser who knows less about risk than a bunch of football fans?

If he has any nous about him he'll know that the British economy is based on the appreciation of asset value. Particularly land and property, particularly in London and the South-East and particularly in an ancient university city surrounded by uninhabitable flood plains.

[tomoufc]

unusual in the modern world for a wealthy financier to be so philanthropic towards a football club .

Indeed, so philanthropic he's been prepared to set up a tyre company just so it looks like we have sponsors.

[Eric Pollard]

There's something extremely suspicious about all of this. I just can't put my finger on it. I just can't work out how. It's interesting that Eales apparently became really defensive when asked whether he was in it for a property deal - a reasonable question given our experience with Kassam. It's also interesting to note that Birmingham City, which Eales wanted, is owned by a company based in the Cayman Islands (http://www.christianaid.org.uk/images/b ... report.pdf, p. 10).

Eh? What are you on about?