This bond malarky

i have tried my best to be balanced about this (cue sniggers at the back) given my oft publically stated position on our owners refusal to consider selling the club. In the interests of balance therefore:

1. Its a form of investment into the club and an area of the club that will be important;
2. Its not compulsory for any fan or business;
3. The rate of return as an investment is reasonable even if it is unsecured.

In isolation, therefore, this bond scheme has its merits.

However, when viewed in the wider picture I cannot shake off my unhappiness with the way this is going and the way that again, the fans/community are asked to pick up the tab. Fine if you are a genuine "community club" owned by the fans who have a real stake in it but if you will pardon the use of an overused phrase at the moment it strikes me that there is some real "cake and eat it" stuff going on here from the owners. When it comes to who owns/controls the club its clear its them, its their club and they will do with it what they want with it even if "the fans won't like it." Yet when it comes to the cost of running the club its clear those owners are unable to sustain it and/or not willing to pick up the tab anymore. Despite what i say about the bond above, a few things continue to bother me:

1. 18 months ago we had £2m of debt owned to Delia and MWJ and Foulger, interest free. If this bond comes off, we will have replaced that with £3.5m of external debt with interest payable at 5%. Hard to see how that change is actually to the benefit of the club. Of course its the owners prerogative to charge interest on any loans they make to the club (so fair play for that) and I guess they may re-invest via this bond and receive some interest. I also find it interesting that previous loans from our majority shareholders were converted into shares (thus giving them a controlling stake of the sort they previously publically said no person should ever hold - this controlling stake is the only shareholding in NCFC that really has any significant value except maybe Foulgers) yet we are told more recent loans were repaid to the owners/directors at the insistence of the club.

2. That it appears (unless I am missing something) Foulger was quietly repaid his half of the "rebate" monies a while ago on the basis his matched funding was suddenly a "loan" doesn;t sit well with me. Do the rest of us who didn;t claim our rebate get our money back as well for the "loan" we made to the club? I don;t recall it being made clear that the matched funding was a loan at the time.

3. That they are having to do this raises serious questions about our ability to obtain finance elsewhere. I'm afraid I dont quite share this notion that they are being philanthropic and want to give the fans the opportunity to make some money. Setting up schemes like this is a hassle and has a cost.

All in all therefore it just comes back to the fact that we have owners who can;t afford to run/sustain a championship football club with a cat 1 academy yet at the same time refuse to countenance selling to someone who does and are intent on passing the club to their nephew regardless of what the fans think about it. Thats not a "community club."

For that reason, when it comes to this investment opportunity, I am out.

Posted By: Jim, Mar 9, 09:24:08