chinapig

So we may find in due course that DCC pays off the loan straight to the lender. Let's face it if it was paid to Morris who knows what he would do with it?

So not a penny then??

I accept that is accurate but how much of the £81.1m did the football club receive for the "sale" of it's stadium? Did Derby fans object at the time or did they think it a clever wheeze?

How do Derby fans feel about Morris, the man who put them in this position, benefiting from any sale of the ground to DCC? Or is he going to use the proceeds to pay the taxes he thought were optional?? I have been shocked by the relative lack of vitriol he gets from the fans. He doesn't even seem to be top of the hate list, that position being reserved for the EFL for daring to apply its rules. Apparently rules are for little clubs.

I'd love to have a Jan Moller type keeper now. Huge guy who totally dominated his penalty area. Otherwise Gibson would be my number one.

Certainly, if he had acted solely as Chief Executive using the skills he actually had and we had had a functioning recruitment team headed by an expert it might have worked out ok. It just baffles me that successive clubs have given him so much power.

Why would you want a non-football expert, who nevertheless sacked successive chief scouts and referred to "my player database" and "my recruitment team" in charge of recruitment (other than the financial element) though? I keep coming back to the club's own statement that he had control of all day to day football activities (my emphasis) , a job he was not qualified for. Gould made it clear he is not involved in football matters in contrast. Though we still don't plan to appoint a head of recruitment.

No, you're right. Some people just seem to be taking it as a given. Local Authorities have had massive cuts to central government funding since 2010 so quite how it could be justified is beyond me.

Yet Kirchner is said to want the Council to buy the stadium and Rooney is talking about signing 30 players to cover the first team and U21s.

I'm sure you are right about GE given your expertise. I suppose the dispute was to do with the fact that the settlement was so much less than HMRC claimed was due. You are certainly right about Derby. Their fans might be wise to keep the champagne on ice.

Thanks, that's helpful. I'm not qualified to judge and I'm going off topic but their claims are still disputed. Take this from TaxWatch and an All Party Parliamentary Group re a deal done with GE (though HMRC say they got as much as they could have got it they had gone to court): TaxWatch has written to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the National Audit Office, and the Treasury Committee, requesting that inquiries be held into an out of court settlement between HMRC and General Electric (GE). Following a lengthy tax dispute regarding a tax avoidance scheme that saw billions of dollars transferred around the world, it was revealed in the trade press on 15 September that the two parties had reached an out of court settlement, with HMRC settling for a deal that involved no cash payment and just £82m added to GE’s deferred tax charge, and agreeing that there had been no wrongdoing by GE. GE revealed in their 2020 accounts that if HMRC were successful in their claim, they could face a liability of $1.1bn, before accounting for interest and penalties.

This may no longer be relevant but didn't HMRC challenge the football creditors rule in court and lose?

HMRC claim they do not do sweetheart deals. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-responses-to-inaccurate-claims#hmrc-does-not-do-sweetheart-deals-with-anyone Fact: HMRC does not do ‘sweetheart deals’. HMRC aims to make sure every taxpayer, no matter what their size, pays everything they owe. Some (like Taxwatch) will dispute that and point to historical cases where they have done just that. Google and Goldman Sachs were two cases iirc.

Personally I'm fed up with players missing games because they're "feeling their groin". Bunch of w*nkers.?

You may well be right and I'm speculating. If the situation arises I suppose there might be a tension between "we saved WRDC from the evil taxman" and "we can't let people not pay their taxes, let this be a lesson to others". Of course Morris is morally responsible but not legally so either way he gets away with it. The local MPs have made a big deal of how much they are doing to save the club so there might be a negative impact on their reputations at least if the club is liquidated. I also wonder if the public at large would be as bothered about a football club not paying its taxes as they would be a politician. Time is running out so we'll soon know.

The law was changed as you say but to make them a secondary preferential creditor. For EFL purposes football creditors still come first.

No, football creditors come first. HMRC are not going to get their money up front or in full so either they accept a payment plan or go for a winding up order. Then they would be blamed for the club's demise and Morris would be off the hook. The political pressure in Derby's favour comes from the local MPs. It was debated in the Commons after all, with some push for HMRC to go easy on them. There are votes to be had if you claim that you saved the club from the evil taxman. Still, trust the process eh? Cynical, me??

Actually it's been reported in the past that Steve didn't like Brentford's model because - wait for it .... they paid wages that were too high.? I agree you can overstate the importance of data in Brentford's model but it is an important factor and they do it much better than us. But as you say they have extensive scouting whereas we seem to regard scouts as optional.

He said himself that he found things to be even worse than he expected. Which would doubtless have put Steve's nose out of joint given that he told us to the end what a great job Ashton did. Anybody who tells Steve some home truths is taking a risk but Nigel is not going to grovel like his predecessors. So it may be a case of will he jump before he's pushed?

Agreed but my point was that currently our set up doesn't even match up to 50 years ago.

It implies that HMRC will have to take a haircut one way or another. Whether they are prepared to do so remains to be seen, though they may come under political pressure perhaps. I certainly can't see Kirchner having the money or the will to pay the debt in full.

Kieran Maguire said on his podcast this morning that, if his sources are accurate, the bid is not good news for HMRC and unsecured creditors. As he rightly said, Kirchner had his bid roundly rejected in December and he certainly won't have increased it since. This comes as no surprise of course but there is a long way to go on this yet.

Even in the 70s Alan Dicks had Tony Collins as what these days we would call head of recruitment. His scouting network led to us finding the likes of Gow and Ritchie as youngsters as well as more experienced stalwarts of the promotion side. Here we are 50 years later with nothing comparable. Passive or what?

I see they are 9th, 8 points off Sunderland in 6th having played a game more. Top 6 not looking likely but he will spin it as a personal triumph. NEXT SEASON IS #OUR TIME (POSSIBLY BUT IF NOT IT'S SOMEBODY ELSE'S FAULT)

Nigel has been asked at least twice if we are going to appoint a head of recruitment. The answer on both occasions was a terse no. On the second occasion he said further that this was "club policy." Who knows what the implications of that phrase are but it does seem to suggest it is not necessarily his policy. But the fact remains that we do not have a proper recruitment infrastructure and have no intention of creating one. Baffling.