Post by Macmoish on Aug 30, 2010 6:05:39 GMT
Interesting read
Guardian/Mark Tallentire
I'm a former Crystal Palace owner … get me out of here
As Crystal Palace settle into the season after nearly going into liquidation, their former owner Simon Jordan could be heading for the Australian bush
Simon Jordan's plans for the winter are suitably vague but the man who owned Crystal Palace for 10 years no longer attends their matches and is reported to be on a shortlist to travel to the Australian bush for a downsized series of I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here in November.
ITV has trimmed the programme's budget by almost 75% and is sifting through a host of low-rent lesser names. So the perma-tanned blond, whose club were placed in administration in January by a creditor and Agilo, a hedgefund group that were owed £5.5m, has time on his hands and fits the bill perfectly, at a bargain £20,000 for a maximum of three weeks' work.
Palace were chasing promotion to the Premier League at the time but going into administration was to cost them 10 points, their best player, Victor Moses – sold to Wigan Athletic for a knock-down fee rising to £2.5m – and their manager, Neil Warnock, now with QPR. The team were eventually forced to play for the club's future at Sheffield Wednesday on the last day of the season, knowing defeat would leave them in League One and might cost the club its only prospective buyer. They secured a 2-2 draw on a tense afternoon which ended with Wednesday taking the drop instead.
It has been a tough year for everybody involved with Crystal Palace. Twenty-nine non-playing staff were laid off in late May, with the administrator warning that he would have to start selling players and begin the process of liquidation at 3pm on 1 June unless a deal for Selhurst Park could be struck with the prospective new owner CPFC 2010.
The fans were mobilised to picket the offices of Lloyds, the principal creditor, in the City on the day to help pressure the bank to accept a compromise deal for the consortium to purchase the club and freehold of the ground, which had been purchased for Jordan at a cost of £12m by the former Spurs director Paul Kemsley's Rock Investments group, which doubled the rent to around £1.2m a year when the Palace owner was unable to complete his part of the deal and was in administration itself by May.
The fans' efforts and the bank's desire to keep its goodwill helped and the consortium of four supporters headed by Martin Long and Steve Parish secured the ground, the club and the players for less than Rock had paid Ron Noades, the last owner but two and who would not deal with Jordan directly having separated the ground from the club when selling the club's name and the team to Mark Goldberg in 1998.
"When a club goes into administration a lot of things change. There was hardly any staff here and only about 10 first-team players," said the manager, George Burley, who was hired by CPFC 2010 after also interviewing Paul Hart, the caretaker from last term, and the former Palace captain Chris Coleman.
"It's a case of trying to build the confidence back. The new consortium really support the club and financially we are very stable now, so it's one step at a time as we try to build things. Everyone is relieved we have still got a club – it could have gone one way or the other.
"Everyone realises it will take time to build it again. We have got to introduce a lot of young players, which is great, but it showed today, especially after playing on Tuesday with 10 men for 35 minutes. They didn't have quite the same sort of energy they showed in previous games."
Palace had just gone down 3-0 at Sc**thorpe, a third successive league defeat, but the goalkeeping captain Julian Speroni was excellent, as ever, while the presence of the former Juventus and Spurs midfielder Edgar Davids at left-back marked him down for a place in midfield and quickly if the "open-ended", pay-as-you-play arrangement persists.
"The new owners have been great, they have been very supportive and helped all they can," Burley adds. "Steve Parish and myself are in contact by phone on a daily basis. I faced Palace a lot as player and a manager and they have always been a very good club who bring players through. That's one of the things that caught my eye about the job."
Parish, whose partners are hardly cash rich and were "reluctant buyers", intends to re-examine the issue of moving to a purpose-built stadium elsewhere in Croydon and has told Burley that he can reinvest money he makes in the market but does not want the club's future to be contingent on the whims of big-name signings, presumably thinking about past purchases of Attilio Lombardo, Michele Padovano, Ade Akinbyi and Shefki Kuqi.
That is not the case with Davids, who says he became aware of the club's plight through his Twitter account during the summer, and Burley admits he needs more know-how in the team if he is to reach the Championship play‑offs for the seventh time. For now, though, most fans would settle for a season of mid-table consolidation as the scars begin to heal and their former owner contemplates being ordered to do bushtucker trials by the citizens of London SE25.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/aug/30/crystal-palace-simon-jordan
Guardian/Mark Tallentire
I'm a former Crystal Palace owner … get me out of here
As Crystal Palace settle into the season after nearly going into liquidation, their former owner Simon Jordan could be heading for the Australian bush
Simon Jordan's plans for the winter are suitably vague but the man who owned Crystal Palace for 10 years no longer attends their matches and is reported to be on a shortlist to travel to the Australian bush for a downsized series of I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here in November.
ITV has trimmed the programme's budget by almost 75% and is sifting through a host of low-rent lesser names. So the perma-tanned blond, whose club were placed in administration in January by a creditor and Agilo, a hedgefund group that were owed £5.5m, has time on his hands and fits the bill perfectly, at a bargain £20,000 for a maximum of three weeks' work.
Palace were chasing promotion to the Premier League at the time but going into administration was to cost them 10 points, their best player, Victor Moses – sold to Wigan Athletic for a knock-down fee rising to £2.5m – and their manager, Neil Warnock, now with QPR. The team were eventually forced to play for the club's future at Sheffield Wednesday on the last day of the season, knowing defeat would leave them in League One and might cost the club its only prospective buyer. They secured a 2-2 draw on a tense afternoon which ended with Wednesday taking the drop instead.
It has been a tough year for everybody involved with Crystal Palace. Twenty-nine non-playing staff were laid off in late May, with the administrator warning that he would have to start selling players and begin the process of liquidation at 3pm on 1 June unless a deal for Selhurst Park could be struck with the prospective new owner CPFC 2010.
The fans were mobilised to picket the offices of Lloyds, the principal creditor, in the City on the day to help pressure the bank to accept a compromise deal for the consortium to purchase the club and freehold of the ground, which had been purchased for Jordan at a cost of £12m by the former Spurs director Paul Kemsley's Rock Investments group, which doubled the rent to around £1.2m a year when the Palace owner was unable to complete his part of the deal and was in administration itself by May.
The fans' efforts and the bank's desire to keep its goodwill helped and the consortium of four supporters headed by Martin Long and Steve Parish secured the ground, the club and the players for less than Rock had paid Ron Noades, the last owner but two and who would not deal with Jordan directly having separated the ground from the club when selling the club's name and the team to Mark Goldberg in 1998.
"When a club goes into administration a lot of things change. There was hardly any staff here and only about 10 first-team players," said the manager, George Burley, who was hired by CPFC 2010 after also interviewing Paul Hart, the caretaker from last term, and the former Palace captain Chris Coleman.
"It's a case of trying to build the confidence back. The new consortium really support the club and financially we are very stable now, so it's one step at a time as we try to build things. Everyone is relieved we have still got a club – it could have gone one way or the other.
"Everyone realises it will take time to build it again. We have got to introduce a lot of young players, which is great, but it showed today, especially after playing on Tuesday with 10 men for 35 minutes. They didn't have quite the same sort of energy they showed in previous games."
Palace had just gone down 3-0 at Sc**thorpe, a third successive league defeat, but the goalkeeping captain Julian Speroni was excellent, as ever, while the presence of the former Juventus and Spurs midfielder Edgar Davids at left-back marked him down for a place in midfield and quickly if the "open-ended", pay-as-you-play arrangement persists.
"The new owners have been great, they have been very supportive and helped all they can," Burley adds. "Steve Parish and myself are in contact by phone on a daily basis. I faced Palace a lot as player and a manager and they have always been a very good club who bring players through. That's one of the things that caught my eye about the job."
Parish, whose partners are hardly cash rich and were "reluctant buyers", intends to re-examine the issue of moving to a purpose-built stadium elsewhere in Croydon and has told Burley that he can reinvest money he makes in the market but does not want the club's future to be contingent on the whims of big-name signings, presumably thinking about past purchases of Attilio Lombardo, Michele Padovano, Ade Akinbyi and Shefki Kuqi.
That is not the case with Davids, who says he became aware of the club's plight through his Twitter account during the summer, and Burley admits he needs more know-how in the team if he is to reach the Championship play‑offs for the seventh time. For now, though, most fans would settle for a season of mid-table consolidation as the scars begin to heal and their former owner contemplates being ordered to do bushtucker trials by the citizens of London SE25.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/aug/30/crystal-palace-simon-jordan