| Cardiff City are due to face being wound up tomorrow unless the tax bill of £2.7m is paid. |
Personally I believe too many people have too much to lose for the club to go into Administration let alone be wound up so I expect there to be a short term solution to our off-field financial worries.
As for most of Peter Ridsdale's reign we are looming from one financial crisis to another (I'm sure there have been several close scrapes we didn't get to hear about) and if Peter Ridsdale had his way we wouldn't know about the current issues.
Ridsdale has managed to keep City going through good luck (getting to an FA Cup final - lucrative TV games), player sales, capitalising on future incomes and compassionate fans willing to stump up money early for season tickets. Despite all that income no money has been paid to Langston, no money available for players and bills are not paid left right and centre. The question of "Where's the money gone" is a genuine one.
The club is getting close to hitting the wall with a major investment the most likely long term solution or promotion. The latter looks unlikely as Dave Jones has no money to strengthen the squad.
All the while a level of management at the club are being paid handsomely without visible results for the fans to see.
It would appear that the winding up order from the tax man will be resolved tomorrow with the club paying in £1m and re-structuring the rest of the debt. That is is speculation at ther moment - the news might be better (god forbid we don't want it to be any worse).
A deal has been done with the council this week that has forced an EGM (something the Supporters' Trust have been trying to get), the council deal involves land being sold to raise money for the club that is expected to be used for the tax man.
It's an intricate web that the fans should have no need in knowing. Week in week out we just want to watch the football. The actions of the board though are putting that in jeopardy.
Trust member Keith Morgan says
"The reasons I believe the winding up order won't be given is because the shareholders have made substantial loans to the club, which would they would lose if there was an insolvency. I don't believe they could afford for that to happen. And I don't believe the council here would have allowed these land deals without proof the club would get beyond Wednesday with the Revenue."
Trust chairman Paul Corkery added
"The EGM has been called for their own means really and at 10am in the morning it is purposely inconvenient. "A lot of the shareholders won't be able to attend, but we're happy it's been called regardless. "What we want is to have some clarification on the real future of the club, and we'll be sending our financial advisers into the meeting to get some answers for the fans. "They want a guarantee that the club can keep going. We will be checking with our solicitors what rights we have at the meeting in terms of the accounts. "Shareholders will also be wanting to know why £3m raised from ticket sales has been spent, but not on players as we were promised. "We are not in a position to pay the tax bill, and they've also gone £7m over budget with the stadium and what have we got to show for it? "We want to be able to reassure the football fans that firm business plans in place for the next year, two years, three years."
So hopefully tonight's game against Peterborough won't be our last ever.
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