fulwoodshrimp wrote:It's a worry if Cala is the only option. He wasn't a success in Italy- didn't the club he bought go bankrupt in a few weeks?
When questioned by the reporter yesterday, his claim was that when he bought the club it was on the basis that it was a couple of million in debt. When they got in, it transpired the debts were 20+ million.
I don't know if this would be plausible that due diligence would be so poor to not expose the level of debt, nevertheless that's his explanation. Diego and Abdul did their due diligence and even they claim things were worse than they thought once they got in.
When Diego took over there were still some voices of caution and I think it was Hodgy that said he felt that without Diego we were finished, with him we had a fighting chance. As it turned out Diego was a false dawn.
Players / staff haven't been paid again. It can't go on. We're now in a position where someone is coming in claiming they can give the club a fighting chance. Reject this, or indeed if they don't get approval, my fear is administration follows. Then a further housing estate will rise (with an area of recreation that might be deemed as satisfactory to meet the covenant in place) and Morecambe Football Club (renamed appropriately) will play games on a field watched by a very small number of people romanticising over the phoenix rising from the flames. I don't think Jim and Ken would be there under such a structure and given that there has been strong opinion that if they go, people will end their association with the club, will anyone turn up to watch?
There's a lot of emotion around at the moment, understandably so. All we can do now is hope that Cala comes in, steadies the ship and lives up to promises of focussing on the football and the supporter. Cala will know that Jim has been working with so many restrictions. Hopefully he'll realise this and not make any rash decisions. It's then up to us to make our support for Jim and the team heard.
I also hope that a new board structure is receptive to Shrimps Trust involvement. We need to hope that things can get sorted in the short to medium term, so that the trust can become more established and be in a position to make a difference going forward.
Of course I'm nervous about current events but .... we are where we are. We can keep kicking against the process of what's going on behind the scenes and make the clubs demise a self fulfilling prophecy. I'd prefer to hope that new ownership comes in with massive investment in the team (and of course a cover behind the home stand!) and we don't throw away years of work.
Finally, I hope we can all have some appreciation for *every* member of the board for their efforts in recent times. We may disagree with some decisions they make but I firmly believe that everything they do is with the best of intentions. It must have been extremely difficult dealing with events this past week and who could have blamed any of them to follow Diego into hiding? We can debate why we are in this mess in the first place but right now they are there trying to sort it.
Let's do our job in the stands and cross our fingers that what's going on behind the scenes allows us to do so for many years to come.
We have to accept there is no wealthy local businessman willing to just come in and bankroll the club. If this deal with Cala doesn't make it over the line, I fear the worst.