Cannot answer as the the truth of the VAT quesrtion, but a quick calculation: last 2 years 20000 pledges ( I know it depends who you believe!) at an average of £100 a go - the VAT whould have been about £360k. This does not sound like one of the amounts being touted as outstanding - so you would assume it was paid.

Also while I would conceed some employees of HMRC could be sufficiently financially challenged to serve on the BoD - I think even they would have noticed this long ago.


Anyway I have paid my pledge, and will be swelling the crowd on Sunday - so lets get behind the lads who are playing their hearts out despite the circumstances!

another thing that casts doubt on this VAT thing is that at time of the first pledge IIRC club stated one of reasons for the ppledge payment deadline being as early as it was, was to avoid the VAT increase from 17.5% to 20% and hence maximise amount club got from the season ticket money.

The main one imo is the medium/long term plans.

Hood/Bennett/Duckett - the info they have put out is that there is a medium/long term business plan which is financially stable. No further details.
Fans - there is a vague possibility of changes to the board, more fan input. Bigging up the pledge .

Caisley & co - they don't have a plan at the moment but will get Tasker/Nobby & an actor in (who is a Bulls fan)to review things & create a plan.
Fans - no mention of fans in his T& A announcement - apart from acknowledging the generosity with the pledge.

7. Is the club really losing £100,000 per month as per the T&A article.

The biggest risk to the pledge isn't claims like that, it's the fact the club are not willing (or able?) to deny them or just provide an full detail of the liabilities that need covering.

Asim, if it's worth anything, Hood strongly denied the T&A claim yesterday.

He needs to deny it in public, not to certain people - there's one poster on here who has admitted to have being made a fool of by repeating Hood's assurances before.

Unfortunately the BOD have put themselves in the position that they are no longer believable so there is no real point in denying anything,

I lose a grand a week according to my bank statement. But guess what, hey ho, I get paid every month. So far, anyway.

Totally cr@p misreporting of what happens by totally incompetent people backed up by a totally useless MP.

8. Why everyone looks to focus on the negatives when the clubs just managed to raise half a million in just over 2 weeks, won two good games and had extensive support throughout.

Read that then think how much more of a prospective investment the club becomes to individuals and businesses looking for advertisement.

There are questions to be answered just not yet, firefighters don't look to point the blame while their putting out the fire.

Atki

The club (as constituted) hasn't raised it, the supporters of the club have raised the money and supporters from other clubs. That is amazing, and a huge achievement, but means little if the owners of the club, as opposed to the supporters, aren't going to use it appropriately and to ensure we can continue to enjoy success on the field - i.e. by selling our best young players to raise the next £500k (as reported by a well respected journalist after speaking to the present Chairman.

To extend your metaphor a firefighter wouldn't put out a fire and then hand a can of petrol and matches back to the arsonist who had just torched the place.

If we were losing that £100K per month it would be £1.2 million over a year and whilst I'm not one of the accounts watchers I don't think they show that kind of loss.

The 2010 accounts showed a loss of just over £300k.

Pretty certain there will be months where we 'lose' 100k, likewise there will be months where we 'make' 500k. It's the nature of our income streams where we have several large payments spread over year with little in between. Think it's a case of selective quoting of figured without putting them in context to make a headline.

Sounds more likely....I hope.

That's the one area where the cheap pledge tickets caused us some problems. With standard prices there would always be more walk-ins spread throughout the year for home games. The cheap tickets made sure that apart from away fans, the majority of ticket income was pre-season. There were many other benefits to the pledge ticket deals but this was not one.

That is where the overdraft comes in useful. Damn banks!!

Are we still blaming RBS for this?

As I understand it:

1) We owed them £150k

2) We asked them to increase that.

3) They said no, and cut the facility.

4) We then announced that we need £1m to survive the season.

Weren't they proved right? They may have acted in a very heavy handed manner, but would we have been better off if they'd lent us another £100-200k?

Would this loss include the "extraordinary" payments being made to another club rumoured to be a round £300,000 PA. If so this would have been around break even which would be a reasonable year.

Good point

Might be worth remembering why were making these payments - maybe through an article in the T&A

Overdraft facility was agreed with Nat West and much higher than £150,000
Written agreement was in place to reduce over a "reasonable" period (many months)
Substantial headroom was achieved in mid March way ahead of agreed schedule at which point bank pulled the plug
VAT for last 2 seasons not an issue. Check accounts and do the math
2011 accounts will show a profit
Business model after November shows neutral income and expenditure

So why do we urgently need £1m?

To get through to November

But there are two problems - getting through to November is certainly one, but to assume because a business plan balances everything will be fine is naive in the extreme and lets face it hardly any business plans see the light of day which aren't good. The problem is while the costs next year are pretty certain - there is always less certainty about income and those little or not so little skeletons which com out of the Bulls cupboard, you need to have some contingency apart from begging from the fans.

The costs are controllable as the vast majority are football related.
Forecast income can be based upon many things that may or may not be certain, naivety would be for the club to forecast the uncertain, which I am sure they would not, after we have committed our hard earned cash to the pledge.They will need to cut their cloth to their forecast "guaranteed" income rather than being overly optimistic.
Just my assumption.

Positive looking cash flow forecasts and business plans are also useful tools for encouraging external investment, for example if you were wanting to shift your shares in a business.

It's up to the buyer to be able to spot any potential flaws or holes in the logic.