[theo_luddite]

Did anyone read Dean Hoyles comments? Not sure how I take them, he made a rod for his own back with comments hes made before, like the sleep walking comment and the comment on the podcast last year. Some of the piece today seemed like he has a bit of a saviour complex and wants his saving exploits to be announced to the world. Just dont mention some of the things he's done to drag us back down!

Only seen what "The Papers" have reported. He sold the club for what, £5m plus repayment of his loans if you believe all that you read?

It's been the current (absent) Chairlump's decision to pay him back from club funds rather than from his own (or maybe that's how the deal was worked out), but then again he (Hoyle) made the loans to the club not our (absent) Chairlump. He could equally have put the price of the club at the cost of his loans plus £5m. That he's still adding to those loans because the "cash flow" in the club's finances wasn't what he was told it was kind of explains why Phil's "man" was shown the door. If our CEO didn't understand the club's finances (or chose to lie about them) why the hell was he in that job?

We'd still be in League 1 or 2 with our "prior to Hoyle" Chairlump still putting in his £1m per year whilst spending 2-5x as much on Huddersfield Giants, or maybe challenging AFC Halifax to be top of the Conference. Yes he (Hoyle) put the money in as loans as it was "tax efficient", but if any of you borrowed £20 off me over Christmas to buy a round I'd expect to get it back from you this month.

Marcus Evans got what he wanted (which I doubt was walking away from everything he ever put in) when he sold Ipswich to a bunch of Yanks after presiding over their slide into League 1 mid-table mediocrity. He's still got a thumb or two in that pie crust. Hoyle could equally have sold up to a bunch of Yanks and got all his money back in one go. Where would that have left us? Anyone's guess but they'd be expecting some return on their investment and the Prima Donna League parachute payments would have been a significant part of that return.

If you've ever worked for a company that gets taken over by an American (usually) Private Equity Company, you'll know what I mean when it comes to asset stripping. If you haven't, just hope you never are. "Last year" (2020 as the article is from Dec 2021), "U.S. acquirers bought $137 billion worth of British companies" - according to Dealogic, reported in the Wall Street Journal. We could, perhaps, have been one of them.