Ring my Bellamy!

[Tactical Genius]

Ring my Bellamy!

I'll remember this when Cardiff are in administration and sliding out of existance and the fans are pleading for sympathy.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

If and when we're in administration, the Bellamy deal will not really be a contributory factor. Our relatively small contribution to his weekly wages (£20k) will be covered by extra season and matchday ticket sales and merchandise etc. Some reports are that we have already earned a chunk of it back but I'll wait to see the figures before I concur with that.

What will knock us out is the historical debt to Hammam (money he put in as loans and wants back) and stadium costs. At some point in the next couple of seasons we'll probably take administration and the ten point hit but your talk of "sliding out of existance" is just drama queenery and you won't see any of the Cardiff fans on here looking for sympathy, we've been well aware of the situation for a decade.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

ursus arctos wrote:

Though that "Homecoming" ad breaks every tenet of good taste . . .

...and of basic photo-shopping.

I like this though;



even if his Anelkaesque persistence with 39 riles me.

[David Agnew]

Ring my Bellamy!

£20k a week isn't a small contribution for a Championship club by any means (especially one already restructuring outstanding debts and not paying others), apart from recently relegated clubs, I doubt there is anyone on as much as half that amount. That'll need, what, 3000 extra on the gate to cover it?

It's frankly disgusting.

[Sean of the Shed]

Ring my Bellamy!

There are two possible outcomes to this.
1. Cardiff fail to win promotion. Their spiralling debts finally get too much and they start the next season in administration, selling all their best players for a pittance before tumbling into league 2.
2. Cardiff gain promotion. They spend all the expected TV money on cast-off players from mid-table Premiership sides and foreign mercenaries, and Jimmy Bullard probably. They get relegated. The foreign mercenaries won't play in the Championship and the parachute payment is used up on the cast-off's premiership wages, paying the debt's they didn't pay off last season while chasing glory (17th place) in the Premiership, the new debts they incurred borrowing against future seasons in the Premiership, and surgery on Jimmy Bullard's meringue knee-caps. Their spiralling debts finally get too much and they start the next season in administration, selling all their best players for a pittance before tumbling into league 2.
There is an option 3, which is get promoted, spend sensibly, and if they do go down at least they have managed to clear the debt and stabilise the club. But that's not the Cardiff way.
If Cardiff were people they'd be the ones upgrading a perfectly good 2 year old telly with some huge 50" flat screen plasma on tick from Brighthouse and buying a Blueray player with the child allowance, only to neglect to pay the leccy bill and getting cut off.
Cardiff will end up in league 2, promotion to the Premiership will merely delay it by a couple of years.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

It's a "relatively small contribution" to £95k a week.

It looks as if he'll add 6/7,000 to the expected crowd on Saturday and while I wouldn't imagine that will necessarily be sustained all season half of it might well be if he's a success.

There is talk of 4,000 shirts and 500 season tickets sold in the two days following the signing which add to the income too though , as I say above, I'd like to see some backing for those figures.

It's by no means guaranteed and we're clearly increasing the overall risk to the club this summer (with our other loan signings too such as Koumas and Olofinjana) in an attempt to get promoted, I've been clear about that all along.

Ultimately though it will not be the Bellamy deal that sinks us, all his loan will do will increase the publicity if we do fuck up and give everyone a nice morality tale to shake their heads over.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

David Agnew wrote:

It's frankly disgusting.

You felt the same about dos Santos's loan last season?

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

Sean of the Shed wrote:

There are two possible outcomes to this.
1. Cardiff fail to win promotion. Their spiralling debts finally get too much and they start the next season in administration, selling all their best players for a pittance before tumbling into league 2.
2. Cardiff gain promotion. They spend all the expected TV money on cast-off players from mid-table Premiership sides and foreign mercenaries, and Jimmy Bullard probably. They get relegated. The foreign mercenaries won't play in the Championship and the parachute payment is used up on the cast-off's premiership wages, paying the debt's they didn't pay off last season while chasing glory (17th place) in the Premiership, the new debts they incurred borrowing against future seasons in the Premiership, and surgery on Jimmy Bullard's meringue knee-caps. Their spiralling debts finally get too much and they start the next season in administration, selling all their best players for a pittance before tumbling into league 2.
There is an option 3, which is get promoted, spend sensibly, and if they do go down at least they have managed to clear the debt and stabilise the club. But that's not the Cardiff way.
If Cardiff were people they'd be the ones upgrading a perfectly good 2 year old telly with some huge 50" flat screen plasma on tick from Brighthouse and buying a Blueray player with the child allowance, only to neglect to pay the leccy bill and getting cut off.
Cardiff will end up in league 2, promotion to the Premiership will merely delay it by a couple of years.

Wow, how far off the mark was I with my silly "shaking heads over morality tales" crack?!

[David Agnew]

Ring my Bellamy!

1) We hadn't just renegotiated a £1.5m instalment due for a player on the basis that we "couldn't afford it". It's something we've never done.
2) We didn't have a club from outside the league chasing us through the courts for a payment for a player that we hadn't paid for. It's something we've never done (although I was highly critical when we stiffed Aalborg for £90k for Thomas Gaardsoe when we were in administration, especially when we subsequently sold him for £600k).
3) We were paying £6k a week of Dos Santos' wages - well within the structure of our other players.

There are many, many things wrong with our owner, and the way that we trade (a position you have held on Cardiff on a consistant basis up until the point that you signed Bellamy) but we don't say on one hand that we can't afford to pay for one player, get chased through the courts for another, then go on a spree of signing loan players.

This is financial doping.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

a) I assume by the fact that Sunderland have not tried to put a winding up order on us that they accepted the renegotiation? I'm also pretty sure we're not the first club to renegotiate payments on past transfers while continuing to loan new players. I don't like it but I don't think we're breaking new ground.

b) the Motherwell debt we're in complete agreement on, it should have been paid in January under Ridsdale or the other week when we settled our debt with Charlton on Mark Hudson. We definitely should have settled it before making a song and dance over Bellamy and I hope it's settled next week as our Chief Exec is promising.

c) I'm not sure that breaking your current wage structure counts as "disgusting" to be honest but Bellamy's £20k isn't stratospherically more than our current better paid players get. I think Chopra and Bothroyd are on £15k a week (I won't argue that's not a huge amount already) but I can't see anyone arguing that Bellamy isn't worth 30% more. Anyway the people likely to suffer from that are us if it damages the squad cohesion.

You're right that I have always been honest about the problems with our previous owners and the way our club trades and I'm not going to pretend that the Bellamy deal isn't absurd and unfair to other clubs in D2 who haven't been presented with the same opportunity to have a £10m , £95k a week player on their books.

It's just that if we're going to tackle the obvious problems of the loan system and the lack of financial probity in FL clubs then let's do it across the board and not think that one deal which has come about through a set of pretty unique circumstances is the death knell.

[EIM]

Ring my Bellamy!

Is it only fans of Cardiff's play-off rivals who are whinging about this? What do the relegation fodder make of it? Any Leeds fan care to comment?

[David Agnew]

Ring my Bellamy!

Harry Truscott wrote:

a) I assume by the fact that Sunderland have not tried to put a winding up order on us that they accepted the renegotiation? I'm also pretty sure we're not the first club to renegotiate payments on past transfers while continuing to loan new players. i don't like it but I don't think we're breaking new ground.

To my knowledge, you're only the third club who have tried. We all know how Portsmouth fared after they did it last season, and when Palace asked us to do it last season, we told them to fuck right off. What excellent company you're in.

c) I'm not sure that breaking your current wage structure counts as "disgusting" to be honest but Bellamy's £20k isn't stratospherically more than our current better paid players get. I think Chopra and Bothroyd are on £15k a week (I won't argue that's not a huge amount already) but I can't see anyone arguing that Bellamy isn't worth 30% more. Anyway the people likely to suffer from that are us if it damages the squad cohesion.

No wonder you're so heavily in debt. Getting relegated from the Premier with players on £15k put us in administration, even with parachute payments, larger gates, and higher ticket prices.

You're right that I have always been honest about the problems with our previous owners and the way our club trades and I'm not going to pretend that the Bellamy deal isn't absurd and unfair to other clubs in D2 who haven't been presented with the same opportunity to have a £10m , £95k a week player on their books.

It's not what the player is worth, or even what & of the wages that I have the issue with, it's that you're still bringing in players, while reneging on other transfer fees.

(And partly deep down the fact that we're going to come back in with another offer for Chopra and be the cunts that end up funding it)

It's just that if we're going to tackle the obvious problems of the loan system and the lack of financial probity in clubs then let's do it across the board and not think that one deal which has come about through a set of pretty unique circumstances is the death knell.

Agreed to a point (but let's be honest, all clubs are complicit in the loan system, even those that are most penalised by it)- but the financial probity should have occurred when you renegotiated the Chopra instalment. If you couldn't afford a payment for a player, you shouldn't have been allowed to bring any more players in until it was paid, whether it was Bellamy on loan for £20k a week, or a 21 year old on a free transfer for £2k a week.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Ring my Bellamy!

Is it only fans of Cardiff's play-off rivals who are whinging about this? What do the relegation fodder make of it? Any Leeds fan care to comment?

Sarcasm of your last sentence aside, the fact is that just about everybody's a playoff rival in Div 2 this year. It would be wrong at any time but it's substantially why this deal has raised particular ire now. Look at the division. Two games played and already only two teams with maximum points and one with nothing. It's going to be as tight as whatsits and the kind of edge Cardiff have finagled could make a huge difference over the season.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

David Agnew wrote:

No wonder you're so heavily in debt. Getting relegated from the Premier with players on £15k put us in administration, even with parachute payments, larger gates, and higher ticket prices.

In recent seasons we've pretty consistently had the 6th or 7th highest wage bill in then division so we're not outlandish. We have players who are individually very well paid but balance that out by having a relatively small squad as a consequence. Also don't forget we've sold around £5m worth of players every summer that we've developed or brought on which offsets the wage bill.

(And partly deep down the fact that we're going to come back in with another offer for Chopra and be the cunts that end up paying for it

The proverbial source close to Chopra told me last week that Ipswich couldn't afford him which I took to be a reference to his wages. Mind you, this week has proved to me again that, when it comes to football transfers, nobody knows anything.

[EIM]

Ring my Bellamy!

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

Is it only fans of Cardiff's play-off rivals who are whinging about this? What do the relegation fodder make of it? Any Leeds fan care to comment?

Sarcasm of your last sentence aside, the fact is that just about everybody's a playoff rival in Div 2 this year. It would be wrong at any time but it's substantially why this deal has raised particular ire now. Look at the division. Two games played and already only two teams with maximum points and one with nothing. It's going to be as tight as whatsits and the kind of edge Cardiff have finagled could make a huge difference over the season.

what about the kind of edge QPR had foist upon them?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Ring my Bellamy!

This year? Alright, go on...

[EIM]

Ring my Bellamy!

Not specifically this year, no. I'd like to get in to this in more detail, but can't as I'm posting from a sodding iPod.

[delicatemoth]

Ring my Bellamy!

Harry Truscott wrote:

It's just that if we're going to tackle the obvious problems of the loan system and the lack of financial probity in FL clubs then let's do it across the board and not think that one deal which has come about through a set of pretty unique circumstances is the death knell.

I'd love to see this happen. Apparently Leicester were 4th in the agents' fees 'table' for the division last season, behind the three relegated clubs. Mandaric has always loved chucking money at agents. I'd love to see that sort of thing properly scrutinised, especially as our recent takeover suggests we may well be liable to become a 'living the nightmare' club. I can't see King Power being happy with mid-table in the second division.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

Actually, there's been a lot of grumbling in Cardiff about Greg Clarke's comments yesterday given his history with Leicester and their administration.

[David Agnew]

Ring my Bellamy!

So what's the alternative? He keeps quiet, while Cardiff make bigger mistakes than Leiceser did?

In his job, he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. I'd rather have a FL chairman that addresses these sort of things, rather than one who sits by and does jack shit, like Mawhinney did.

[Bored Of Education]

Ring my Bellamy!

I have been on a Cardiff City list today saying that we have no right being thin-skinned about the flak we are getting about this. We have recently reneged on debts, committed what many consider a major business sin of fucking around with the taxman and what I consider the sin of delaying people's wages (not just players')

On the other hand -

The Motherwell chairman is genuinely a glass-house dweller as is the ex-Leicester City Clarke.

The FL are jumping in just because it is a big case and should have been all over pricks like Hammam, Ridsdale and Bates, years ago, with genuinely strict "fit and proper person" tests and scrutinising of clubs' abilities to pay for players. Having said that, if this heralds a new dawn of FL scrutiny of deals across the board then great, however late in the day.

As has been mentioned, we have off-loaded 10 permanent players in the close season along with their wages. As far as Sean's number 1 goes, we have sold our best players consistently for our whole time in div 2. The only reason we still have Bothroyd, Chopra and Whittingham is because of the players we off-loaded and the resulting small squad. Up until the recent Koumas and Bellamy signings, those three staying made me happiest.

Like Harry says, you lot don't have to come on here saying about how fucked our finances are, we have lived with them for ages and know all about them. The new board, Dave Jones, the players and the fans all know what the club is like and have had to deal with that that has been left behind by Hammam and Ridsdale.

Having said that, if we go into administration, we won't come on here pissing and moaning and looking for symapthy in the same way that we haven't crowed about any of the positives - aside from the footballing hight points that have miraculously been happening

[Bored Of Education]

Ring my Bellamy!

I'd rather have a FL chairman that addresses these sort of things, rather than one who sits by and does jack shit, like Mawhinney did

I agree but now he has started the ball rolling, let's hope he carries on scrutinising these deals now.

[Ray de Galles]

Ring my Bellamy!

David Agnew wrote:

So what's the alternative? He keeps quiet, while Cardiff make bigger mistakes than Leiceser did?

In his job, he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. I'd rather have a FL chairman that addresses these sort of things, rather than one who sits by and does jack shit, like Mawhinney did.

Well, I think the thrust of the complaints was that if you're going to have an FL chairman campaigning about financial probity then it would be better if he hadn't been complicit in taking a club in to administration in such controversial circumstances that the FL changed it's rules as a reaction.

So, not that he shouldn't say anything now so much but that he shouldn't have the role in the first place. To be honest, these weren't my complaints as I didn't make the connection initially and don't have all the info on Clarke's involvement with Leicester's administration.

[Bored Of Education]

Ring my Bellamy!

If anyone thinks that they are breaking new ground in highlighting Cardiff's financial misdoings to us, can I point you in the direction of this article for which Tom spoke to, at least, two of the City OTFers on here for background.

That said, there are City fans who lauded Hammam, Ridsdale, our Malaysian overlords and think that we are getting hard done by in the last week. They aren't however on this board

[delicatemoth]

Ring my Bellamy!

I agree that Clarke shouldn't have been appointed to an FL role. However, the rest of the league didn't get exercised about the circumstances of Leicester going into admin - the club was forced to apply when a hostile creditor attempted to liquidate - but the fact that we then prospered on the field despite the turmoil. In fact I'd compare that season to Bored's "football high points that have been miraculously happening."

That aside, I agree with virtually everything Harry and Bored have posted on this thread.

If your club's fucking around what can you do? You can deplore it as much as you like - I know we're living beyond our means again and it makes me sick - but ultimately you either have to completely wash your hands of it or grit your teeth and carry on despite the shit. It will take regulation from above to make clubs conduct themselves properly, and there seems to be very little political appetite for that.