Gingerlad Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 The manager will walk, he's far better than he can ever prove at that tiny club. I expect if the rumours about Hughes to villa are correct then Alex could go to Fulham? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parisvilla Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 I just thought id let you know - your comments regarding Blues have been so infuriating I've had to delete you from my mini-feed. the above was posted on my facebook earlier. excellent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted May 25, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted May 25, 2011 I just thought id let you know - your comments regarding Blues have been so infuriating I've had to delete you from my mini-feed. the above was posted on my facebook earlier. excellent.That may well be what has happened with my nose mate. He'll get over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tismyk Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You can relive it all again here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/default.stm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildwood Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You can relive it all again here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/default.stm A more interesting read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2011/05/birmingham_city_set_for_the_bl.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SemperFi Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You can relive it all again here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/default.stm A more interesting read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2011/05/birmingham_city_set_for_the_bl.html Overly dramatic though isnt it? Im sure it wont happen like that as much as id like it too and i fully expect them to be back up next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tismyk Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You can relive it all again here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/default.stm A more interesting read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2011/05/birmingham_city_set_for_the_bl.html Overly dramatic though isnt it? Im sure it wont happen like that as much as id like it too and i fully expect them to be back up next year. Interesting, it was posted 4 pages back Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wildwood Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You can relive it all again here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/default.stm A more interesting read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2011/05/birmingham_city_set_for_the_bl.html Overly dramatic though isnt it? Im sure it wont happen like that as much as id like it too and i fully expect them to be back up next year. Interesting, it was posted 4 pages back Apologies tismyk. I try not to talk too much about SHA, because I get a rash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 Can anybody confirm how bad things are for them finance wise? Noses down here seem ignorant of it and think they are funded well and will bounce back within a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted May 26, 2011 VT Supporter Share Posted May 26, 2011 Can anybody confirm how bad things are for them finance wise? Noses down here seem ignorant of it and think they are funded well and will bounce back within a year.This was quoted back in the thread, but I'll post it again for convenience. Birmingham City set for the blues Comments (149) Share this page 347ShareFacebookTwitter.Post categories: Football Matt Slater | 22:45 UK time, Monday, 23 May 2011 Given what happened to Avram Grant and Carlo Ancelotti, Birmingham City boss Alex McLeish was lucky to make it to White Hart Lane's car park on Sunday still in employment. Relegation is a blow for any club but relegation from the Premier League comes with added recriminations and relegation from the Premier League for a club that was not expecting it can be catastrophic. There is a firmly-held belief at PL HQ that nobody goes bust on their watch. Pompey were the exception that proved the rule, you see. And they had it coming. But this ignores what has happened to those who crashed into the Championship and kept going until League One and/or administration broke their fall. Some are still tumbling. This is a bit like a landlord filling a sailor on shore leave full of grog but getting him out of the door just before the furniture starts to fly and of the three relegated clubs it is Birmingham City that stagger into the night in the greatest disarray. Birmingham City face an uncertain future after relegation from the Premier League. Photo: Getty There are three reasons for this bleak prognosis and they can all be found in the most recent set of financial accounts filed by the club. This time-bomb of a document provides a detailed look at City's financial health as of last summer and it was signed off by majority owner Carson Yeung and his board on 25 October. That was two days after the club had beaten Blackpool 2-0 to move into a comfortable mid-table position after nine league games. Most of the numbers were commonplace for English football: rising television revenues cancelled out by wage inflation and the drag of debt. That said, none of the figures on their own were terrifying, not by Premier League standards. What was scary, however, came in the notes under the subhead "going concern". It was in this section the club's precarious hold on solvency was outlined. In short, City were projected to spend more than they had coming in even after a year that had seen TV income rise from £16m in the Championship to £42m in the Premier League. The club's forecasts revealed £7.5m would have to be pumped in to keep the Blues inside the terms of their "agreed bank facilities" - accountants' talk for staying on top of the loan and overdraft repayments. But there was a problem with this forecast: it was based on more of the same. The year under scrutiny had been a stellar one on and off the field. New owners, ninth in the Premier League, turnover up by 105% - if this is mid-table mediocrity could we have more of it, please. The only concession to more negative thoughts ("the sensitised forecast") was that an additional £3m would be needed if McLeish's men misfired and could only just beat the drop. Which brings me to the second reason for concern in Small Heath: the board's plan for filling the hole that is actually much bigger than anybody was willing to consider seven months ago. The deficit problem was supposed to be fixed by two Hong Kong stock exchange share offerings in the club's parent company, Birmingham International Holdings (BIH). The first placement of 450 million shares was underwritten by Kingston - a brokerage firm with investments in Hong Kong and Macau - and it raised the promised £7.15m. But the second tranche of shares, 1.1 billion of them, was meant to fly off the shelves earlier this year, bringing in £17.5m. This was a "best efforts" placing and not underwritten, making the shares less attractive and the sale has been postponed. We are expecting some news by Wednesday but no analyst I have spoken to in Hong Kong has heard a whisper about it. Which brings me back to the mysterious Yeung. A barber turned entrepreneur, the Hong Kong-based businessman first came to the British football public's attention in 2007 when he bought a 29.9% stake in Birmingham City from David Sullivan and the Gold brothers. The plan was to buy the whole club soon after and build the "Birmingham brand" in China. But two years, one of which was spent in the Championship, passed before Yeung was able to complete the deal. During this time more than a few fans wondered if this self-proclaimed billionaire was quite as rich as he claimed. This sense of unease was compounded when the complicated deal actually went through. The new owner was really a Hong Kong-listed, Cayman Islands-registered firm called Grandtop International Holdings. Yeung was the majority shareholder of Grandtop and his actual holding in City was somewhere between 25-20%. This is where it has remained over the last 18 months or so. While efforts to attract new investment from Asia this year have stalled, Yeung has been active in trading BIH (the holding vehicle that Grandtop became) shares, first increasing his stake to 24.9% and then diluting it to 23.3%. The club's official site currently says he owns 22.5% of the shares. This last move, which the club said brought in £3.6m, took place earlier this month. It followed news that Yeung, who remortgaged some of his property portfolio earlier this year to raise £12m, had loaned City £4m. This is on top of existing loans of £15m. So we have money and shares going to and fro between Yeung, his holding company and fellow "third party" investors, but no indication any of it is the fresh investment needed to fill the Premier League-sized hole in the books. And this is the final worry for City. Relegation from the Premier League, even with parachute payments of £48m over four years, hits the bottom line hard. The Championship TV deal is a paltry £3m for each club (the worst team in the top tier earns £40m) and commercial revenues (already underwhelming at St Andrews) also suffer. You can conservatively wipe £25m from next year's revenue column. So it is hardly surprising Yeung has told McLeish he can keep his job - it would cost £2m to sack him - but only if he gets them promoted at the first opportunity. Monday's club statement was straight out of the crisis-control manual. Praise the fans, back the manager but hint it was his fault, remind everybody of how much money you have poured in and then praise the fans again. But the reality is that the club's wage bill will have risen again (Nikola Zigic's four-year deal alone is worth a reported £10m), the deficit remains and will get worse and now McLeish must turn around a club that has won only two league games since 27 February. He could also lose half of his squad, which may be no bad thing if there was money to replace them but there isn't. That late winter day, of course, was when they beat Arsenal to win their first major piece of silverware for 48 years, the Carling Cup. What should have been a passport to better and bigger things for McLeish and the Blues will next year be a painful reminder of the type of football their forecasters budgeted for but can no longer afford. Matt Slater BBC blog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 yeah by and large the ones i know here consider themselves to be ****, think they will lose a big chunk of the playing staff, dont trust egg foo yeung but still think its great they are europe not sure what i want more, their european adventure to be going out to a scottish team or for them to take 12 fans to a team closer to beijing than birmingham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 I like the comment about Birmingham's group in the Europa league next season. It looks like the rest of their group will be Real Trouble, Inter Administration and Rapid Decline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imavillan Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 I never tire of looking at this..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwpzxjor1 Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 That picture's just beautiful. Birmingham with an 'R', Villa finish on a high note, and then, just for good measure, 'Birmingham are relegated' along the bottom. It's almost poetry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imavillan Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 That picture's just beautiful. Birmingham with an 'R', Villa finish on a high note, and then, just for good measure, 'Birmingham are relegated' along the bottom. It's almost poetry. its fantastic.....i couldnt resist taking it on my phone and text it to all of my Villa and nose mates.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetrees Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 Can anybody confirm how bad things are for them finance wise? Noses down here seem ignorant of it and think they are funded well and will bounce back within a year. There is an awful lot of hearsay about Mr Yeung not having any money, and about him being allegedly duped by the previous owners for the kind of money that would buy a top scoring English striker. But it's clear from various articles that trouble is on the horizon. The best a Blose fan can wish for is a fumbling season ending up mid-division. The worst is administration, points deduction and relegation. I never wanted the best for them :winkold: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjw63 Posted May 26, 2011 Author Share Posted May 26, 2011 Would love it if the folded, **** superb that'd be :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrentVilla Posted May 26, 2011 Moderator Share Posted May 26, 2011 Nah, don't want them to fold it would end their agony I would prefer a prolonged and painful decline into nothingness over many years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 Can anybody confirm how bad things are for them finance wise? Noses down here seem ignorant of it and think they are funded well and will bounce back within a year. I read that but thought it came across as pure speculation so was wondering from perhaps people who are an accountant or in business who might have a better idea from the financial report the blose released. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjw63 Posted May 26, 2011 Author Share Posted May 26, 2011 Amazing lack of scum shirts/flags/anything here in Chelmsley. **** love it :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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