Birmingham | Vital Football

Birmingham

Luke Imp

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Another one to have sold their Stadium to a Company presumably controlled by one of their owners £11m price but have kindly rented it back for £1.25m a year for 12 years (£15m). A nice earner for them, and a Stadium effectively FOC by Year 9.
 
Another one to have sold their Stadium to a Company presumably controlled by one of their owners £11m price but have kindly rented it back for £1.25m a year for 12 years (£15m). A nice earner for them, and a Stadium effectively FOC by Year 9.

It's a quite revolting pattern that is emerging with stadium sales. Contrast with what The LA did for us when they bought SB to enable survival, and then sold it back cheaper than they'd bought it, when the club could afford it and needed an asset.

The generosity of The LA is sometimes overlooked in the history of our survival, during the years when society in the main was doing it's best to distance itself from the pariah and evil that was professional football.

I may be wrong but when you consider how LAs often refuse to help out or even undermine their clubs, it was quite an unmatched act of astonishing foresight by ours in that era.
 
Just Crazy, it will come to haunt them. Selling the ground, unless to a supportive local authority, is not the answer to dealing with a football club's financial problems.

So many examples of when this has gone wrong, yet: "In a 14-page announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, signed by Chairman Wenqing Zhao, confirmed the owners will sell 75 percent of their stake in Birmingham City Stadium Ltd. The buyer is named as Ms Kang Ming-Ming, a real estate investor using a British Virgin Islands company called Achiever Global Group Ltd to make the purchase".

The football ground is part of the heart and soul of a football club. Birmingham City fans have just lost theirs.
 
I heard that Coventry, Charlton and Oxford were on the advisory board extolling the virtues of separating ground ownership from the club itself. Anything to help out the Blues because they are such a beloved club.
 
My mates a birm fan . He saw it coming ages ago said the current owners have done nothing but asset strip sold che eveans then jude bellingham closed the academy he reckons the stadium is only the start of a massive downnturn.
 
I heard that Coventry, Charlton and Oxford were on the advisory board extolling the virtues of separating ground ownership from the club itself. Anything to help out the Blues because they are such a beloved club.
And Derby, Reading, Wednesday, Villa and formerly Mansfield.
 
This the same Birmingham who had a points deduction because they previously 'sold' their stadium for a vastly inflated figure to 'another company' to get round ffp requirements?
 
Writing as a brummie and with the blues very close to my heart I have to say that they have been breaking my heart for the last 10 years. Their demise is rapid and the reason for it sits wholly with appalling ownership. Asset stripping from day one. Everything is sold with the profit seemingly spirited away to China. I love Birmingham city but they embarrass me now. A far cry from my days of watching Trevor Francis Bob Latchford & Kenny Burns.

If Lincolnites can learn anything from this sorry state it has to be, appreciate Mr Nates and the board, then appreciate Mr Appleton, his back room boys and the 11 that pull on the shirt, they appear to all pull in the same direction. Even if it’s league one for a while longer yet, even in home defeats the moral must be...’you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. I must write a song about that!
 
Asset stripping from day one. Everything is sold with the profit seemingly spirited away to China.

What football fans consider as asset stripping interests me. You're closer to it as I can only read the club's accounts.

In 2015-16 Birmingham City lost £5m. These increased year by year to £16m, then £37m in 2017-18.

The club lost £25m in 2018-19 which it pretended was only £8m by selling the ground to another company which the owner had control of.

Up to June 2019, which is almost two years ago, the owners had funded Birmingham City's operations up to almost £100,000,000.

They may be terrible owners, but could you explain how they're salting profits away to the far east?
 
100% wrong, really shouldn't be allowed.
The efl aren't fit for purpose by letting this happen.
 
What football fans consider as asset stripping interests me. You're closer to it as I can only read the club's accounts.

In 2015-16 Birmingham City lost £5m. These increased year by year to £16m, then £37m in 2017-18.

The club lost £25m in 2018-19 which it pretended was only £8m by selling the ground to another company which the owner had control of.

Up to June 2019, which is almost two years ago, the owners had funded Birmingham City's operations up to almost £100,000,000.

They may be terrible owners, but could you explain how they're salting profits away to the far east?

If their accounts are in the red, they have the option to reduce costs through salary reduction, selling players, and staffing positions that are not critical to operations. It's not great and would no doubt see league position suffer, but would not put the existence of the club at very real risk.

Selling long-term assets as described, in a way that guarantees profit to the buyer from the club itself, is the type of transaction that 10 years down the line may result in the club no longer existing.

Whether the profits go to the Far East, Dubai, or Dudley is irrelevant. It is the risk that the club is exposed to that is so troubling. The EFL shouldn't allow this.
 
Writing as a brummie and with the blues very close to my heart I have to say that they have been breaking my heart for the last 10 years. Their demise is rapid and the reason for it sits wholly with appalling ownership. Asset stripping from day one. Everything is sold with the profit seemingly spirited away to China. I love Birmingham city but they embarrass me now. A far cry from my days of watching Trevor Francis Bob Latchford & Kenny Burns.

If Lincolnites can learn anything from this sorry state it has to be, appreciate Mr Nates and the board, then appreciate Mr Appleton, his back room boys and the 11 that pull on the shirt, they appear to all pull in the same direction. Even if it’s league one for a while longer yet, even in home defeats the moral must be...’you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. I must write a song about that!

Thanks for the post Asylum. I cannot agree enough with your point about appreciating where the Imps are with the Board and management we have in place. This season we have been seduced by the possibility of Championship football, but there are far, far more important goals each and every season than promotion or relegation, and that is the ongoing viability of the club to entertain fans and contribute to the Lincoln community each year.

Sadly, the perceived sexiness of the higher leagues can cause some to forget that. I'll take League 1, and even League 2 if it means I can still watch Lincoln next season, the season after that, and the season after that. And I feel the same about all the other clubs in the EFL that have a long and proud tradition.
 
No BB I won’t be explaining anything, I don’t really need to. What I can say is that what I believe, which is the the debt will be the clubs when they go bust. The ownership will be in the Far East, untouchable and with the money from the sale of Che Adams, Jude Bellingham and the stadium. I can only write it as I see it.

Aside from that, a prediction, there are big numbers of very rough Birmingham supporters that will cause unpleasantness wherever they go in their anger and arrogance at being in league one (substitute Sunderland/Ipswich/ Portsmouth for thinking league one is below them). Please be careful when they come to town.
 
The ownership will be in the Far East, untouchable and with the money from the sale of Che Adams, Jude Bellingham and the stadium.

For the 2019/20 season, the accounts for which your club hasn't published yet, you were obliged to make a profit of around £5m in order to avoid another points deduction.

Because in the previous two years the club's operating losses had been around £30m in each year, that meant the best players had to be sold.

The performances and results this season may have been awful but you can't claim they've replaced the departed payers with nobodies. Apart from appointing the expensive Karanaka as coach, you brought in high-salaried proven players in the summer like Etheridge, Friend, Hogan, Clayton, San Jose, Sanchez and Toral.

The pitiful EFL, of course, should never have allowed clubs to use bogus stadium sales as means of circumventing their own FFP rules, but they did. So that's led to this situation where you, and several other clubs, are apparently no longer in control of the stadium and have to be charged rent in order for it to appear like a genuine transaction, which it isn't. It's currently just a transfer from one of the owner's pockets to another.

They shouldn't even allow clubs to use stadia as collateral in order to get loans, but that's another matter.

As I understand it, though, St Andrews is listed as a community asset so it's going to be hard for them to sell it to someone who wants to convert it into something else.
 
How can Birmingham have sold their ground a couple of years ago and then still had to sell again this time?
How many more times will they be able to sell something they no longer own?

Or is this a magical ground?