Bluedell

Really sorry to hear that, mate.

It is that time of year again when James McClean sparks uproar among thousands of football fans because of his notoriously stubborn refusal to wear a decent first touch. No matter how much abuse they shower upon the Stoke City winger, his left foot insists on turning to concrete as soon as it makes contact with a ball. The frustration and resentment it has caused for most of this decade shows no sign of abating. In comparison with this gross professional negligence, his notoriously stubborn refusal to wear a remembrance poppy could be considered a matter of personal choice. For anyone who believes in freedom of expression, it is not a misdemeanour at all. It is the essence of liberty, a living assertion of the citizen’s right to democratic choice — which is not to say that the 30-year-old clogger does not need a few lessons in politics and manners. McClean grew up brainwashed with a simplistic version of the distressing story that surrounded him in Northern Ireland. In this version Martin McGuinness, his fellow Derry man, was a freedom fighter, a working-class hero, a revolutionary inspiration. It seems that John Hume barely existed at all, albeit that he is a Derry man who is revered as a statesman and who in 1998 was a co-recipient of the Nobel peace prize. In his pronouncements over the years, McClean has never mentioned Hume. When McGuinness died in March 2017, McClean described him in a statement as “a good friend . . . a great leader, a great hero and above all a great man. Thinking of all your loved ones.” Julie Hambleton was thinking of loved ones that day, in particular her 18-year-old sister Maxine, who was one of 21 people murdered by IRA bombs in two pubs in Birmingham on November 21, 1974. She has devoted much of her life since to bringing the perpetrators to justice. McGuinness, she steadfastly maintains, had “so much blood on his hands”. The death of the unrepentant IRA commander prompted a diametrically different response from Ms Hambleton. “I feel sad because here was a man who I believe could have given us so many answers to our questions and the questions of many others who are victims of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His family have our genuine condolences. We are not evil people. But he has had a full life and has a family, children, grandchildren — how lucky for him. What about Maxine and Jane Davis and the rest of the 21 who were killed in the pub bombings?” Through Sunderland, Wigan Athletic, West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City, McClean has made a handsome living in those English heartlands where McGuinness and his cadre of sociopaths wreaked the most dreadful human suffering. Warrington, Manchester, the M62: does he know what happened in these places? Does he care? His comments have shown a regrettable insensitivity to the country that has given him a livelihood of which he could never have dreamt in Derry. If he has struggled to show a modicum of consideration for his adopted community, perhaps he ought to be mindful of his fellow emigrants, the Irish men and women who for generations before him made their lives in Britain. The atrocities of Irish terrorism brought crippling shame upon them. It was they who were left to deal with the inevitable backlash provoked by these crimes against humanity. It seems that in McClean’s world there is only one such crime that matters: the shooting dead of 13 unarmed civilians in Derry by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday — January 30, 1972. Five years ago, while at Wigan, he wrote an open letter to Dave Whelan, the club chairman. At the time he was being subjected to a storm of vitriol. He prefaced his explanation by stressing he had “complete respect” for those who fought and died in both world wars. But Bloody Sunday made the wearing of the poppy a step too far. “Please understand that when you come from Creggan like myself or the majority of places in Derry, every person still lives in the shadow of one of the darkest days in Ireland’s history. It is just part of who we are, ingrained into us from birth.” Fair enough. His conscience will not allow it. The problem arises of someone who seems to know only a fraction of the story. “Ingrained into us from birth” is an admission that he has been force-fed a version that leans heavily on denial, self-pity and sentimental nationalism. While Hume, his SDLP colleagues and their supporters stood four-square for peace, civility and civilisation, it was McGuinness, the IRA and their counterparts in Ulster loyalism who were dragging that society into its chamber of horrors. One of the most infamous horrors was perpetrated at a ceremony to commemorate the war dead in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, on November 8, 1987. Irish terrorists killed 12 people that day and injured 63, many of them elderly. It was an outrage that stunned both nations, known as the Remembrance Day bombing, the Poppy Day massacre. The wearing or not of a poppy on a football field seems trivial but it would be no trivial matter if McClean reconsidered his position in the light of that hideous day. Stripped of history and tribalism, it would be a simple, stand-alone gesture of atonement for that unfathomable act of cruelty. McClean takes a lot of pride in the strength of his convictions. He insists he has done it on principle and that, as he said in his letter to Whelan, “if you’re a man you should stand up for what you believe in”. The point is that it matters less what you “believe in” than what you know. Believing in something is often a shortcut for people who do not bother to inform themselves or who do not want to know. Blind conviction becomes a refuge from inconvenient truths. McClean’s political sensibilities are as crude as his football skills. He has not made life easy by refusing to wear the symbol of “the Brits” but it is easier than telling home truths to his people. If he needs to know one thing, it is that standing up to one’s tribe is the toughest principle to live by, the hardest test of all. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/james-mcclean-has-right-to-snub-poppy-but-he-needs-to-learn-full-story-vwmgbl5j0

The original post is in a larger font size than the normal font that you and I are using. It makes the threads harder to read, and so ideally when pasting a thread, the poster should click on the "paste as plain text instead" option that appears at the bottom of the post.

Excellent interview, @Stevie - 4lads Blog. I really enjoyed it. Good to hear how a player feels rather than the usual platitudes.

Another vlog from an English Porto fan

Goldson was immense and on any other night I give it to him, but I have to give it to my one true love.

Big shout out to the Union Bears for their display tonight. Totally outstanding!

Very proud of the team.

Rangers will get nothing from BT directly . BT will pay UEFA, and UEFA pay the clubs, depending on the usual various items, which resulted in us getting £6.4m last season.

I don't see Aribo replacing Ojo. If anything, he'd replace Kamara and it would be Arfield who'd replace Ojo, depending on how Gerrard sees the game.

From an income viewpoint, yes, clubs would release a proportion of season ticket income per game, so that the half year accounts would show approx. half the money as income as part as a 'creditor', even though we had banked all the cash. However here we have the credit card companies doing the same so we are only receiving the income proportionately unlike pre-admin where we would have received it up front. Certainly sounds possible. There's a further £2m stadium improvements and grounds equipment that has been agreed to be spent after these accounts. The thing about this type of expenditure is that it certainly hits the cashflow immediately but will be depreciated over a period of time so doesn't impact the profit and loss account.

I'm not convinced that the aim is to reveal the underlying health any more but that's not a discussion for here. I don't know if your suggestion is allowable (I suspect not or else they may have done it) but it would make a lot of sense to do it if they could.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of 10IAR financially. We move onto the next season and try and win the league and do as well as we can in Europe if they do. I'm not bothered about XIAR. It's tainted as it was won off the park by them voting us down to the bottom division and and threatening others to do so. It's not worth anything. I couldn't even tell you what number this season would be if they were to win the League. We need to continue to rebuild and strengthen and we'll get there. Let's focus on ourselves and not the mob across the city.

We already had the article on the other thread on the accounts and I don't see the need for our forum to be infected by mad Celtic fans who throw doubt on our ability to trade through to the end of the season, no matter where they're published.

It's not the full £11.3m noted. It's really the £8.7m figure that I refer to. The notional interest doesn't refer to a previous period or is a non-repetitious cost. Accounting rules have changed since you had your company. Let's say that Rangers owe £9m for players and there are directors' loans of £15m. We both understand that these are the amounts that are to be paid. However new accounting rules state that notional interest has to be charged on these amounts, so accounting entries of £1m interest for the players and £1.5m interest on the loans are charged. This means that in the balance sheet rather than £9m and £15m showing as being owed, it now shows £10m and £16.5m and we've got an interest payable charge of £2.5m in the P&L. This is despite the fact that we're only going to repay £9m for the players and the loans will probably be converted to share capital. We're never going to incur the £2.5m through the P&L. It's crazy, but that's the way that accounts are being prepared at the moment. Apologies if you understood that already but I fail to see why notional interest is an actual loss. I'd agree with your point on the non-repetitious costs and the fact that we've still got a way to go yet to survive without support.

Thanks mate. The problem with press coverage is that the current agreement was freely entered into by the current board so it's difficult for the press to criticise SD, and they'd be loathed to go overboard anyway due to the litigious nature of SD.

Overview A loss of £11.3m has unsurprisingly made the front pages but are we really in such a bad shape? I’d argue that we are not for 3 main reasons: · The loss is funded by the directors/investors who have converted most of their loans into share capital. · We have no external debt · I will argue below that the inherent loss is well under £5m and can be contained by regular European football and the sale of players after development. What is the loss? The loss of £11.3m has been heavily publicised but the extent of the loss is misleading due to relatively new accounting rules, which make it harder to understand the accounts. Included in interest payable are net amounts of £2.6m of notional interest which is only there for accounting purposes and will never actually be paid and can therefore be ignored. I would therefore argue that the actual loss for the year was £8.7m. To highlight this, we had £2.3m charged through last year’s accounts, most of which were on investors’ loans. When the loans got converted to share capital, an amount of £2.8m got added back to retained earnings. That is the main reason why the retained loss in the balance sheet moved from £38.7m of losses to £46.8m, a movement of £8.1m and not the £11.3m that you would expect. Confused? Yeah, me too. It’s difficult enough for accountants to understand it, never mind the man on the street. The bottom line is that if the accounts were prepared 10 years ago, they would be showing a £8.7m loss. Results The £8.7m loss contains at least £3.6m of legal fees which will hopefully not occur in the longer term plus some additional player amortisation (the writing off of transfer fees) of £3.3m on top of the normal charge of £4m. There would always be an extent of additional write offs but this year’s seems very high (possibly due to some of Pedro’s purchases and Grezda?). The underlying inherent loss is therefore arguably well under £5m. Revenue Revenue increased from £32.7m to £53.2m (+£20.5m), mainly due to our European run. We received £6.4m in European prize money and £7.9m in gate receipts, a total of £14.3m, which highlights how important a run in Europe is to us. Staff costs Staff costs increased by a whopping 43% in the year, going from £24m to £34m, which was a result of bringing Gerrard to the club and a significant increase in the quality of the squad. This sounds bad but the following should be taken into account: · Staff costs as a percentage of revenue have actually fallen from 73.8% to 64.8%. The average for the English Championship, League 1 and League 2 for last season were 106%, 94% and 78% respectively, so it shows that the level we have it is reasonable, albeit based on European income, which isn’t guaranteed. · Celtic’s staff costs are 63% higher than ours. Other operating expenses Other Operating Expenses increased from £13m to £22m due mainly to · the costs involved in an additional 9 home games · the travel costs for our European games and pre-season · additional legal and professional fees of £3.6m, due mainly to the ongoing Sports Direct dispute Sale of players We made a £3.1m profit on the sale of players. I assume that Windass and Gilmour would make up a majority of that. However we need more of that to sustain a break-even situation in the future. Our model looks to be largely working as I’d argue that we have at least 10 players on whom we should be able to make at least a 7 figure profit. Retail Retail income was £3.3m for the year whereas it was probably under £500K in the prior year. This was offset by high legal costs of at least £3.6m. The legal costs for the current year may not be reduced and therefore there’s an argument that we are worse off signing the new agreement with Sports Direct than we were previously as we had an end date after giving our 7 years’ notice, whereas the current agreement appears not to have an end date. The full facts have yet to come out and therefore a full assessment can’t be made yet but, although the directors should take great credit for funding the club, it seems that they have not dealt with the retail situation well and we are not any better under the new arrangement which they signed. Cash I was initially surprised that the level of cash was only at £1m, but we have £14.7m of debtors which is season ticket cash which is in respect of season tickets that are paid by supporters using deferred payment plans or credit cards so that will be converted into cash. The credit card companies are passing on the cash over the course of a season to limit their risk. This isn’t an issue as it’s only a short term cashflow problem and it hasn’t prevented us from spending £10m on Kent and Helander after the financial year-end. However I may consider paying my season ticket by debit card rather than credit card in the future to allow the club to get the cash quicker. Funding The accounts show investor loans of £11m down from £23.4m after some were converted into shares, and another loan, possibly from Close Leasing, of £3m. There were additional investor loans of £5.2m provided during the year. Dave King has committed to providing an additional £10m this season and £5m next season which highlights the incredible commitment he and the other investors have to the club. Improvements There was £4.3m of fixed asset expenditure, presumably work done on Ibrox and HTC. This highlights that the directors are investing significantly in the club’s infrastructure as well as the playing squad. Sundry The club’s bankers have changed from the Metro Bank to Barclays. This is a further example of the normalisation of the club’s operations and it’s good to see that we’re now dealing with a bigger high street bank, and also removes questions created by Metro Bank’s issues earlier this year which saw a number of other clients leave them. Post year-end The accounts do not reflect the signing of Kent and Helander and they will appear in the 2020 accounts, although it should be remembered that the £11m spent will be written off over the length of their contracts. The future The losses over the last few years are not a concern as they have been fully funded by our directors/investors and we should be very grateful to them for that. We are able to continue to make losses while the directors continue to fund them but that cannot go on indefinitely. King has committed to fund us at least until the end of next season, so the level of losses are not an issue at the moment, and player sales, with hopefully in excess of £20m being realised for Morelos in the summer will put a much brighter light on our financial position. We do need to get regular European group football, sort out the retail side once and for all and regularly make profits on player sales in excess of £5m to allow us to break even and this is the business model that our directors have been putting in place. We know from bitter experience that we need to keep an eye on our financial position and my outlook may change over the next few years but I don’t believe that this set of accounts is anything to be overly pessimistic about. The loss isn’t great but it’s been fully funded. We are in a solid financial position and there are no short term concerns.

It's actually not an £11m loss. Watch this space..... ?

Yeah, thanks, saw it earlier and listened to his pod on it.

I'm feeling under pressure. ? I'll have something up before the end of today.

Do we really need a Celtic fan's view on here? I'm sure we could go into the Celtic forums if we want to read how we're not going to make it to the end of the season but there's no need for it here.

It was, but it caught me out! ?

FFS Ian ?