Post by Jon on Jul 1, 2008 21:58:02 GMT
Blimey – a lot in that post Dave! I’ll take it a paragraph at a time – those with a low boredom threshold may wish to look away now!
Merse, I have never heard spoken the reason Bateson, wanted to take over the club. One thing I do know that when he did, fans were saying without Bateson coming in, we would not still have had a club.
Well the club had declined steadily throughout the 70s and 80s and was in a hell of a state by 1990. The future would not have been bright under Lew Pope, but I think the club was actually closer to folding in 1984 than it was in 1990 – Webb wrecked the club in many ways but steadied it in others. I’m pretty sure MB thought that a fairly large chunk of money and a load of enthusiasm would crack it and would make him Mr Popular – little did he know! He liked seeing himself in the papers and on TV – remember the ModDec ads?- so this was a good way to buy a little fame and popularity. ModDec had poured a lot of money into all kind of local sports for a couple of years before 1990. Usually, sponsoring local sport does not quite stack up as a pure business move, but has an element of altruism.
Over the years it’s true that he lost interest and maybe could never understand all the anti-Bateson, talk, as he believed he was doing his best for the club. So did he do anything near the end, simply to spite those, who now were also giving is family abuse as well.
The “brick wall” came quite early as regards throwing any more cash at it – early in the 1991/92 season. I think that the desire to recoup most of what he had sunk in left him “trapped”. I’m sure that the vicious personal abuse and lies thrown at him and his family probably gave him a jaundiced view of supporters and maybe hardened his resolve to get his money back. I wouldn’t say it was to “spite” people but more of a case of “Why the hell should I write off a wedge of cash to benefit these ungrateful b******s?”
Roberts did not simply appear at the start of the season, he was in the background for some time before. It does make you wonder, what figures that Sadler had been shown, that would have made him feel his SIP pension would do so much better, in the Torquay Holding Company.
I agree that these things don’t happen overnight, and I’d love to know when first contact was made – do you know? I think Saddler would have taken advice from Bryn Walker and Walker is not an idiot so must have seen a business plan that appeared to stack up. We all know Roberts could talk the talk, but there is no way Walker would have dragged Saddler into this if he could have foreseen what would happen – as he ended up putting his professional reputation on the line.
Now did Roberts offer a carrot to Bateson, as a part of the deal Bateson would get a slice of the cake? One thing for sure the changes made to the club, IE, taking the club from a PLC to a Private Limited Company at the end of the season before, suggests that Roberts had already done a deal with Bateson. The changes made, were simply to allow Roberts to use the income of the club, to buy out a leaving director, this is not allowed in a PLC.
I disagree about the public to private change being of any importance. The club being a public company was a historical quirk that needed changing. Public status had lots of downsides and no upsides at all. It is true that private companies can buy back or cancel their own shares whereas public companies cannot. I am certain that it was never the intention of Torquay United Ltd to buy back or cancel its own shares. The intention was for the holding company to buy the shares – which it could do in a public or private company. The holding company was supposed to generate income through Roberts’ business expertise and contacts in the football world – with his company earning an agent’s commission on all activities, including a percentage of the huge sums he was going to generate for TUFC. Again public/private status would not affect this. The intention was for the holding company to make the payments. In the end the holding company was only as good as Roberts’ expertise. I understand that they only ever made one £5k payment – and who knows how they scraped that together? By “offer a carrot” do you mean a slice of the action if a windfall profit had arisen from property development?
Why did Bateson take his whole loan back when Roberts took over, £300.000, leaving Roberts with no money in the bank. Bateson would have known all the figures and I’m sure he would have known, Roberts was never going to make ends meet. The time scale of the buy out was it seems the correct amount of time needed to know, if the plans for the seafront, would go ahead.
Possibly because he had read people on dotnet moaning that it was disgusting that he was charging commercial interest on money lent money to the club. All the know-alls were adamant that he was ripping the club off and the club would be much better off if the loans were repaid. Can you imagine the flak flying if he had left the loans in the club? “He’s sold up and the b*****d is still earning interest from us!” It must have seemed far preferable all round to remove a source of further abuse, and for MB to get his interest from the Building Society instead! I don’t believe that the figures would have shown that Roberts was never going to make ends meet. As I’ve said the figures must have made sense to Walker and to Saddler, so why not to Bateson? The reality that Roberts could never make ends meet became clear when his incompetence became clear – remember he could talk the talk.
You see maybe old Mike, knew he would fail and that he could then return briefly as the man to save the club from Roberts.
I would be staggered if MB “knew he would fail”, just as I would be staggered if Walker knew he would fail. I am sure MB would not have wanted the grief and the stress of the 2006/07 season. If he could have sold the club to the current consortium a year earlier, then he would clearly have passed the litmus test of leaving the club in a better state than he found it in. A year later on, with league status gone, debts stacked up and everything messed up, he quite possibly failed it. The club would have cost no more for the consortium to buy (allowing for the cost of clearing debts etc.) a year earlier and they would have got a Football League Club for their money. We would have ended 2006/07 comfortably in mid-table and cracked on from there. I do think that the Roberts deal was structured as it was not because it was expected to fail, but as an insurance policy or backup plan to fall back on if it did fail – which is different. There might have been a small element of “rescuing TUFC” in that, along with a large element of “rescuing MB’s investment”.
To those who feel he did nothing to push up the price, I say this. The first offer was rejected, he then removed Richardson, put Merve back in charged, who was made to sack Colin Lee and then to call any bluff, that in fact we would still carry on, got Leroy back. Soon after this he got his price, or close to it.
Was the consortium’s first offer made whilst Richardson was Chairman? I had thought that no offer was made until after the Hereford game. I think Merse said that Walker was instrumental in asking MB back – is that right Merse? Mervyn told me that the bailiffs were in and nobody would or could pay any bills – Richardson had gone off on holiday. If that is right, it’s no surprise that there was little alternative but to ask MB to come back and bring along a cheque book.
I don’t think Lee was “sacked” as such. Clearly a low budget Benney/Bateson led club would not have had room for Lee as a “Chief Executive” or even “Director of Football”. He could have had the job of “manager/coach/scout/chief cook and bottle washer”, but that was never the job he wanted or envisaged. The possibility of Lee being anything other than a temporary stopgap without a regime change was always going to be remote. Colin Lee had a vision for TUFC and put in a lot of legwork to make it a reality. The vision didn’t include MB as owner! A cynic would say the vision was based on self-interest – and there were a few cynics around Plainmoor at the time. I believe that the vision was borne out of genuine desire to take the club forwards.
From what Alex Rowe told me, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of haggling over price. He said that the first offer was dismissed as “an insult”. MB then rang up to ask when a second offer was coming. The answer was “We wouldn’t want to insult you” which produced the response “Go on then, insult me!” I know that the second offer was not made before the day of the Leroy appointment. We had a Trust open meeting on the Tuesday (May 16) and Cris Boyce had told us that the consortium was meeting the next morning with a view to tabling a second offer to MB in the afternoon. On that afternoon (Wednesday May 17) I was amazed to hear that a press conference was taking place at Plainmoor. Surely it was impossible for things to have been thrashed out so quickly? Well we were all more than a little p***ed off when we saw what the press conference was about, even though the Leroy appointment had been leaked days before. The “manager for ten minutes” story is based on Debbie Hancox saying that she received a call from MB saying that the deal was done in principle ten minutes after Leroy’s press conference finished. That would mean that the deal was effectively concluded pretty damned quickly – all in one afternoon.
So if Leroy was offered the job a few days before the press conference (as rumour had it), this was probably before MB knew if a second offer would be forthcoming or not. Under those circumstances, the club would have been pushing on with plan B wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t say that was a cynical bid to push the price up, more a desire not to appear totally desperate and drive the price down. If you want to sell your house, never pack your belongings up in boxes beforehand – it makes you look desperate to sell and begs cheeky offers. In the bitter mudslinging of the time, it was even suggested that John Milton was a rent-a-mob extra hired just to make a charade look plausible. In the end, Milton’s know-how played a big part in Buckle’s squad building. His recruitment/scouting skills would have complemented Leroy’s coaching skills - so the combination made sense. Of course, with a shoestring budget they could not have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – but I believe that they were a genuine possible plan B to make the most of a bad job. Thank God we never had to find out how much of fist they would have made of it.
Well the club had declined steadily throughout the 70s and 80s and was in a hell of a state by 1990. The future would not have been bright under Lew Pope, but I think the club was actually closer to folding in 1984 than it was in 1990 – Webb wrecked the club in many ways but steadied it in others. I’m pretty sure MB thought that a fairly large chunk of money and a load of enthusiasm would crack it and would make him Mr Popular – little did he know! He liked seeing himself in the papers and on TV – remember the ModDec ads?- so this was a good way to buy a little fame and popularity. ModDec had poured a lot of money into all kind of local sports for a couple of years before 1990. Usually, sponsoring local sport does not quite stack up as a pure business move, but has an element of altruism.
Over the years it’s true that he lost interest and maybe could never understand all the anti-Bateson, talk, as he believed he was doing his best for the club. So did he do anything near the end, simply to spite those, who now were also giving is family abuse as well.
The “brick wall” came quite early as regards throwing any more cash at it – early in the 1991/92 season. I think that the desire to recoup most of what he had sunk in left him “trapped”. I’m sure that the vicious personal abuse and lies thrown at him and his family probably gave him a jaundiced view of supporters and maybe hardened his resolve to get his money back. I wouldn’t say it was to “spite” people but more of a case of “Why the hell should I write off a wedge of cash to benefit these ungrateful b******s?”
Roberts did not simply appear at the start of the season, he was in the background for some time before. It does make you wonder, what figures that Sadler had been shown, that would have made him feel his SIP pension would do so much better, in the Torquay Holding Company.
I agree that these things don’t happen overnight, and I’d love to know when first contact was made – do you know? I think Saddler would have taken advice from Bryn Walker and Walker is not an idiot so must have seen a business plan that appeared to stack up. We all know Roberts could talk the talk, but there is no way Walker would have dragged Saddler into this if he could have foreseen what would happen – as he ended up putting his professional reputation on the line.
Now did Roberts offer a carrot to Bateson, as a part of the deal Bateson would get a slice of the cake? One thing for sure the changes made to the club, IE, taking the club from a PLC to a Private Limited Company at the end of the season before, suggests that Roberts had already done a deal with Bateson. The changes made, were simply to allow Roberts to use the income of the club, to buy out a leaving director, this is not allowed in a PLC.
I disagree about the public to private change being of any importance. The club being a public company was a historical quirk that needed changing. Public status had lots of downsides and no upsides at all. It is true that private companies can buy back or cancel their own shares whereas public companies cannot. I am certain that it was never the intention of Torquay United Ltd to buy back or cancel its own shares. The intention was for the holding company to buy the shares – which it could do in a public or private company. The holding company was supposed to generate income through Roberts’ business expertise and contacts in the football world – with his company earning an agent’s commission on all activities, including a percentage of the huge sums he was going to generate for TUFC. Again public/private status would not affect this. The intention was for the holding company to make the payments. In the end the holding company was only as good as Roberts’ expertise. I understand that they only ever made one £5k payment – and who knows how they scraped that together? By “offer a carrot” do you mean a slice of the action if a windfall profit had arisen from property development?
Why did Bateson take his whole loan back when Roberts took over, £300.000, leaving Roberts with no money in the bank. Bateson would have known all the figures and I’m sure he would have known, Roberts was never going to make ends meet. The time scale of the buy out was it seems the correct amount of time needed to know, if the plans for the seafront, would go ahead.
Possibly because he had read people on dotnet moaning that it was disgusting that he was charging commercial interest on money lent money to the club. All the know-alls were adamant that he was ripping the club off and the club would be much better off if the loans were repaid. Can you imagine the flak flying if he had left the loans in the club? “He’s sold up and the b*****d is still earning interest from us!” It must have seemed far preferable all round to remove a source of further abuse, and for MB to get his interest from the Building Society instead! I don’t believe that the figures would have shown that Roberts was never going to make ends meet. As I’ve said the figures must have made sense to Walker and to Saddler, so why not to Bateson? The reality that Roberts could never make ends meet became clear when his incompetence became clear – remember he could talk the talk.
You see maybe old Mike, knew he would fail and that he could then return briefly as the man to save the club from Roberts.
I would be staggered if MB “knew he would fail”, just as I would be staggered if Walker knew he would fail. I am sure MB would not have wanted the grief and the stress of the 2006/07 season. If he could have sold the club to the current consortium a year earlier, then he would clearly have passed the litmus test of leaving the club in a better state than he found it in. A year later on, with league status gone, debts stacked up and everything messed up, he quite possibly failed it. The club would have cost no more for the consortium to buy (allowing for the cost of clearing debts etc.) a year earlier and they would have got a Football League Club for their money. We would have ended 2006/07 comfortably in mid-table and cracked on from there. I do think that the Roberts deal was structured as it was not because it was expected to fail, but as an insurance policy or backup plan to fall back on if it did fail – which is different. There might have been a small element of “rescuing TUFC” in that, along with a large element of “rescuing MB’s investment”.
To those who feel he did nothing to push up the price, I say this. The first offer was rejected, he then removed Richardson, put Merve back in charged, who was made to sack Colin Lee and then to call any bluff, that in fact we would still carry on, got Leroy back. Soon after this he got his price, or close to it.
Was the consortium’s first offer made whilst Richardson was Chairman? I had thought that no offer was made until after the Hereford game. I think Merse said that Walker was instrumental in asking MB back – is that right Merse? Mervyn told me that the bailiffs were in and nobody would or could pay any bills – Richardson had gone off on holiday. If that is right, it’s no surprise that there was little alternative but to ask MB to come back and bring along a cheque book.
I don’t think Lee was “sacked” as such. Clearly a low budget Benney/Bateson led club would not have had room for Lee as a “Chief Executive” or even “Director of Football”. He could have had the job of “manager/coach/scout/chief cook and bottle washer”, but that was never the job he wanted or envisaged. The possibility of Lee being anything other than a temporary stopgap without a regime change was always going to be remote. Colin Lee had a vision for TUFC and put in a lot of legwork to make it a reality. The vision didn’t include MB as owner! A cynic would say the vision was based on self-interest – and there were a few cynics around Plainmoor at the time. I believe that the vision was borne out of genuine desire to take the club forwards.
From what Alex Rowe told me, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of haggling over price. He said that the first offer was dismissed as “an insult”. MB then rang up to ask when a second offer was coming. The answer was “We wouldn’t want to insult you” which produced the response “Go on then, insult me!” I know that the second offer was not made before the day of the Leroy appointment. We had a Trust open meeting on the Tuesday (May 16) and Cris Boyce had told us that the consortium was meeting the next morning with a view to tabling a second offer to MB in the afternoon. On that afternoon (Wednesday May 17) I was amazed to hear that a press conference was taking place at Plainmoor. Surely it was impossible for things to have been thrashed out so quickly? Well we were all more than a little p***ed off when we saw what the press conference was about, even though the Leroy appointment had been leaked days before. The “manager for ten minutes” story is based on Debbie Hancox saying that she received a call from MB saying that the deal was done in principle ten minutes after Leroy’s press conference finished. That would mean that the deal was effectively concluded pretty damned quickly – all in one afternoon.
So if Leroy was offered the job a few days before the press conference (as rumour had it), this was probably before MB knew if a second offer would be forthcoming or not. Under those circumstances, the club would have been pushing on with plan B wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t say that was a cynical bid to push the price up, more a desire not to appear totally desperate and drive the price down. If you want to sell your house, never pack your belongings up in boxes beforehand – it makes you look desperate to sell and begs cheeky offers. In the bitter mudslinging of the time, it was even suggested that John Milton was a rent-a-mob extra hired just to make a charade look plausible. In the end, Milton’s know-how played a big part in Buckle’s squad building. His recruitment/scouting skills would have complemented Leroy’s coaching skills - so the combination made sense. Of course, with a shoestring budget they could not have made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – but I believe that they were a genuine possible plan B to make the most of a bad job. Thank God we never had to find out how much of fist they would have made of it.
Another excellent post Jon, do I sense another book or maybe an addition to the present one coming on?