Steve Gibson “pumps in £1m a month to keep the club afloat”

Ingleby_Flash said:
I said this elsewhere and got slated for it. At the end of the day we aren’t a Liverpool or city that isn’t Gibson’s fault. That we aren’t a Darlo or Pools is to his credit. I don’t think we can complain about the chairman’s commitment or the money he pumps into the club. The questions to ask are around whether the management make the the best decisions on the spending of it.
Click to expand...

We get ten times the amount of fans at home games than Darlington, about eight times the number Pools get. In fact we get more fans home and away than most teams in our division and several in the Premier league. No one can deny the massive contribution Gibson has made to this football club, but we've undoubtedly underachieved as a club for the last 15 years.
 
NorthumberlandBoro said:
In the clubs published accounts to June 2021 the amount on the balance sheet owed to group undertakings (i.e. Gibson) is £120 million. These loans are interest free.
Not a small sum.
Click to expand...
But he hasn't "put this money in", it is loaned only and a Balance Sheet offset.
And due within 12 months, putting him ahead of other creditors.
 
I always felt somebody would be interested in buying us we have a decent stadium and great facilities at rockcliffe. Having said that I would hate for us to have a middle Eastern or US ownership.
 
The Card Cheat said:
We get ten times the amount of fans at home games than Darlington, about eight times the number Pools get. In fact we get more fans home and away than most teams in our division and several in the Premier league. No one can deny the massive contribution Gibson has made to this football club, but we've undoubtedly underachieved as a club for the last 15 years.
Click to expand...
But the point is if we didn’t have Gibson propping the club up would those fans show up. I’ve been to a few midweek midwinter games with 7.5k on the gate.
 
NorthumberlandBoro said:
Every year he signs a letter of support stating the loan won't be recalled within 12 months.
Click to expand...
If he didn't then the club is insolvent, not a going concern, and would have to go into Administration. At that stage if he wasn't prepared to write the loan off, then the club would go into liquidation.
He does it to protect himself and give himself an outside hope of getting some of the loan repaid. He will make profit this year for example because of lower wage bill, increased revenue and a £22.5m transfer profit from Spence and Tav.
 
indeedido said:
If he didn't then the club is insolvent, not a going concern, and would have to go into Administration. At that stage if he wasn't prepared to write the loan off, then the club would go into liquidation.
He does it to protect himself and give himself an outside hope of getting some of the loan repaid. He will make profit this year for example because of lower wage bill, increased revenue and a £22.5m transfer profit from Spence and Tav.
Click to expand...
He does it because he loves the football club.
 
Alex-The-Kid said:
He has said as much. People will use anything as a stick to beat Gibson with, he’s made mistakes but who doesn’t. He’s fully behind our football club so I am fully behind him.
Click to expand...
If he doesn't expect to get this back (please show a quote about this by the way) why would he not write it off and enable somebody else to take it on.

Our club is not fecking Hartlepool or Darlington.
It is not Barnsley, or Preston either.

It has a catchment area, lack of local competition, a large fanbase that needs little encouragement to massively engage, top flight history, reputation and potential.

Brighton, Bournemouth, Watford, Palace, Brentford are clubs that have left us standing from lower starting points.
Gibson is now a brake, not an engine.
 
atypical_boro said:
The club has never been a Darlo or a Pools though to be fair.

Let’s be honest since the money ran out in the mid-00s we’ve not even been what we used to be (a yoyo team). One crack at the PL which went disastrously wrong.

I am fearful of what would happen without Gibson, but I also don’t think we will progress again with his ownership, the ship has sailed, we’re just treading water now. And we need to be apprehensive about how long that will last too.
Click to expand...
If that is so then we face a very uncertain future indeed. I don't see a white knight coming in to a club of our size in the lower reaches of tier 2 (or worse!) that you could trust with their intentions. A sovereign fund is out of the question. A consortium of businessmen with the requites resources to take us over ? Im sceptical that could ever be achieved. The new manager it is clear will need ro operate on a tight budget, get the most of the resources available and be canny in the transfer market and fund gems that are not on the radar of clubs higher than ours. And there are a lot of them now.

I have never felt as low about my club since the early 1980s sadly.
 
MFCJ said:
We are losing due to poor decisions going back years. Brighton, Crystal Palace, Forest etc seem to do well & communicate with the fans.
Click to expand...
Forest? They have been out of the top flight longer than us. Also had a very similar transfer history (dross players on big money).

They have now just sp*nked 140mil on a completely new team that didn't get them up. It's no suprise that Bournemouth and Fulham are fairing much better with the core of the promotion side intact.

Brentford and Brighton are two of the best examples. I'd argue both 'smaller' or no bigger than Boro. Yet had a fantastic few years in terms of transfers / managers etc.
 
indeedido said:
If he doesn't expect to get this back (please show a quote about this by the way) why would he not write it off and enable somebody else to take it on.

Our club is not fecking Hartlepool or Darlington.
It is not Barnsley, or Preston either.

It has a catchment area, lack of local competition, a large fanbase that needs little encouragement to massively engage, top flight history, reputation and potential.

Brighton, Bournemouth, Watford, Palace, Brentford are clubs that have left us standing from lower starting points.
Gibson is now a brake, not an engine.
Click to expand...

It says something in that article posted, I wonder if there would be some financial or another reason for keeping the debt active? As you’ve stated in your post we aren’t at the same levels as those teams just now but that’s football, there will always be over achievers and under achievers. Our time will come again.
 
JM14 said:
Well run club? Have a day off

6 years ago we were a premier league club, we are now sat in the championship relegation zone clearly skint and struggling to find a manager.

Can you give me one example of a good decision Gibson has made in the last 6 years

FFP hasn’t stopped us at all, it certainly hasn’t stopped numerous historically smaller clubs from overtaking us in the last decade
Click to expand...
You obviously don't like Gibson, you want the perfect owner to come in, spend billions and lead us to CL glory. As do hundreds of other clubs across Europe.

Gibson has made plenty of bad decisions - Southgate, Strachan, Woodgate being the worse ones. Some were "understandable" - Pulis, Warnock. Some were odd and just didn't work out behind the scenes - Monk and Wilder. Mowbray and Karanka were successful appointments in their own way - Mogga steadied a sinking ship and Karanka got us promoted.

Every chairman makes bad decisions, football is full of too many variables for things to be guaranteed. Gibson has made his fair share of those.

But what do you want - new owner to come in, promise the world and we end up like Derby, Sheff Weds, Sunderland, Oldham..... Stockport, Bury, Macclesfield? They (mostly) wanted their owner out, got giddy because of the PR bullsh*t by the new regime and ended being royally shafted.

If this is the risk you are happy to take......cool. Personally not a road I'm happy to go down.
 
Last edited:
Ingleby_Flash said:
I said this elsewhere and got slated for it. At the end of the day we aren’t a Liverpool or city that isn’t Gibson’s fault. That we aren’t a Darlo or Pools is to his credit. I don’t think we can complain about the chairman’s commitment or the money he pumps into the club. The questions to ask are around whether the management make the the best decisions on the spending of it.
Click to expand...

We never have been like darlo or pools . We were never like them pre Gibson either

**** me how small do some of our fans think the club is? We’re a medium sized club and always have been , not a small one . Proper inferiority complex from some people
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
Why do people pick Brighton or Brentford to compare ourselves to? Why not look at some of our late 90s 00s premier League contemporaries?

Bolton. Coventry. Sheffield Wednesday. Charlton. Wimbledon. Derby County. Ipswich. Blackburn.
Click to expand...
I guess because those two clubs owners have taken their clubs to mid Premier Table status in recent years without breaking the Bank. Just canny recruitment.
 
Last edited:
This is something I don’t get - a lot of posters claiming the money he puts into the club as some kind of magnificent gesture.

It’s not at all. It demonstrates quite clearly he can’t operate a business plan for the club to save his life!

We have the 4th highest home support, some of the most expensive walk up prices in the league and a substantial size of season card holders.

And yet we are still out to the tune of £1 million a month?

That’s rank bad financial planning. It’s not a one-off either. Rockcliffe still posts losses.

Says it all regarding competency
 
Without Gibson’s financial support we would have gone pop.

Without Gibson’s financial support we wouldn’t have seen Juninho, won the cup or got to the UEFA Cup Final.

However, without Gibson’s negligent decisions over the last 6 years we wouldn’t need anywhere near as much financial support. He wasted the opportunity that promotion gave us and since then has lurched from one disastrous decision to the next.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top