Fan-owned Toon. Bet your pension on it.
Posted on August 31st, 2009 | 11 Comments |
Remember Graham Roberts and his plan to put Newcastle United in the hands of the fans?
I thought that had faded into oblivion. In fact I thought it was a complete non-starter and imposed a reporting embargo on myself about it, but I’ve lifted it in the interests of amusement.
It seems this bid is still simmering away and Sky Sports are reporting that Graham Roberts thinks his chances of turning the Toon into a Barcelona-style club are 75%. Things didn’t get off to a good start though. Roberts said:
“There’s a few people who have put some money together, we went to meet the Newcastle board but they didn’t turn up. [Derek] Llambias didn’t show up, we had the financial director and the club secretary.”
That doesn’t sound too promising, although I suppose they could have sent the tea lady.
Roberts goes on:
“They think we’re just wasting their time but let me assure them… we’re not.
“We want to do a Barcelona. You get the supporters to buy into the football club, they have six or seven proper members on the board, you have a chairman who is voted as President, and the supporters who invest get financial gain back out of it.
“We’re not sure how much they would have to invest, maybe between £10,000 and £20,000, but you can do it through your pension scheme and the supporters who have invested gain a dividend each year – plus they get a season ticket out of it.
Well I’m a passionate Toon fan but I’m not so sure I’d risk my pension on it. Anyway, Roberts continues:
“The Supporters’ Trust is on board, they think it’s a wonderful idea, I’ve got 2,500 members who are all going to join up to this, one fella phoned us on Friday night and gave us a £1 million donation. “We’ve got some money already [among the founders of the consortium], it’s not the £100 million but we’ve got somewhere near that.
“And the way this works is, under our plan, the club becomes very very rich.”
Roberts claims that Newcastle’s debt is more than the debt figures released to the public:
“I can’t divulge the club’s current debt, it’s not massive, but there are other things that the football club are not letting out.
“The overdraft is what has been released into public domain, but we’ve got accountants working on it, doing due diligence on it, and they’re coming up with other things.
I’m guessing this is the money still owed on outstanding transfers which, if I remember correctly, goes way back to Freddie Shepherd’s tenure.
And of course Shearer would be appointed manager:
“I would say there’s a 75 percent chance we could do this. I’ve got a big meeting on Monday, and it’s a chance for the football club to be a wealthy football club.
“All we would do is set it up, the fans would then pick their president. They’re talking about Barry Moat taking over but he can’t get the money.
“If he wants to have a meeting with us maybe we could all get together and he can be the chairman.
“Alan Shearer would be manager because the fans want that.
“The money generated by this system would clear anything the club has got. It would give Alan Shearer £20-25 million to spend on players every year.”
So there we have it – easy! I’m reimposing my reporting embargo on this nonsense again now.
You just have to read a few lines into his quote to know that this is just some idiot talking out of his arse.