Thursday 14th April, 2011last year, mid-April
The stark warning as Bradford City’s future is presented in the bleakest terms
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While doing the media rounds today, Bradford City Joint Chairman Mark Lawn has issued the starkest of warnings: maintain the status quo, and there will be no Bradford City Football Club in two years time.
As we exclusively revealed last week, the Bradford City Board is attempting to renegotiate the terms of the Valley Parade rental agreement. The club currently has to find £1.3 million annual running costs to use their home of 108 years, and as fortunes on the pitch continue to stall the ongoing existence in League Two is proving to be a huge hinderance.
So Lawn has, as is his way, laid it out in plain terms. No success in renegotiating the rental terms, and the club will have to move out. This could take place within a year. Lawn tonight told BBC Look North that the club cannot survive two more years in League Two at Valley Parade under the current arrangements.
The Yorkshire Post claims Odsal is the most likely destination if City move out. Much has been discussed about the home of the Bradford Bulls over the last two years, with a proposal to redevelop the ageing ground quietly falling by the wayside as the effects of the UK’s deepest recession since the 1930s have squeezed public spending and corporate appetite for construction.
At present the Bulls could lose their Super League licence, such are the inadequate facilities at Odsal. With it’s unsuitability for football seen when City moved their in the 1980s – while Valley Parade was rebuilt following the fire disaster – it seems a hugely unattractive option that wouldn’t be chosen lightly.
As would the potential path to get there. The club has previously admitted breaking the 25 year lease they are bound to at Valley Parade would likely lead to a period of administration. In recent days, reliable rumours have surfaced that the club views going into administration as a route they may be forced to take.
Such a scenario would be one to fill every City fan with dread – we need only remember that the club’s second spell of administration, back in February 2004, was initially presented to us a technicality that we shouldn’t be concerned about. Five months later, we stood on the brink of losing our football club forever.
Moving to Odsal, potentially going to administration – these are all unappealing options to anyone with Claret and Amber in their heart. Therefore the focus returns to the club achieving a positive outcome to these rental talks. The Yorkshire Post – which has confirmed the club is looking at the rental proposal BfB had suggested (not that they are acting on our idea) – has revealed Prupim, the company City rent the Valley Parade offices from, are willing to talk about a rent reduction. However stadium Landlord Gordon Gibb is apparently unprepared to talk to City. Though a spokesman for the Gibb Pension Fund told the Yorkshire Post they have had no direct contact from City.
Why are these talks being played out in the public arena? If the club is in such dire straits, why are we persisting with cheap season ticket deals and £1 offers for home games? Why are we wasting precious money on unproven non-league strikers like Jake Speight? All of these questions circulate around the head and are not a criticism as such of City; but one has to wonder whether the seriousness of the situation we’re being presented with is quite backed up by the club’s actions.
If Gibb is the key to Bradford City’s future, shouldn’t we be banging down his door and begging him to be reasonable; rather than threatening to abstain from a 25-year agreement via the local paper?
There are worrying times for the club. Lawn has revealed that we cannot carry on as we are, and the answers apparently lie with people who semingly don’t have the club’s best interests at their heart and have very different priorities.
We can only trust in Lawn and Julian Rhodes – owners and custodians – to act in our best interests and find the solutions that ensure the future of the club is preserved and we can continue for another 108 years at least. But in the meantime, as we read the situation presented so gloomily by Lawn in the local paper, we feel worried and pessimistic and helpless and scared.
So many times over the past decade we’ve endured miserable failure and tried to stay positive by declaring it can’t possibly get any worse. As this disastrous season comes to a close, let’s hope that for once we are proven to be right.
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According to forms filed at Companies House in April 2009, the money loaned by Mark Lawn to the club attracts an interest rate of 9% above base rate.
As far as investments go in the current climate that’s better than most and seems particularly high considering the nature of the loan; ie. to bail out a struggling football club.
Mark Lawn may have already waived this interest, but if not I would implore him to renegotiate the terms to something more in line with current interest rates – around 3% perhaps?
So long as Mark Lawn is the chairman I don’t think that the loan will ever be paid back to him unless the club can afford to do so.
I think that the main reason the loan is on the books is to track the investment that Mr Lawn has made without his equal partners either having to sign over a controlling interest in the club to him or make an identical investment.
There’s two way of looking at it really, either the loan represents the amount of money the Rhodes family need to invest to bring their investment in line with Lawn’s or, in the event of the club actually making money for its shareholders, the loan represents the amount that Lawn would be entitled to take before he had to start splitting it with the Rhodes family.
What I’m really saying is that there is no point in imploring Mark Lawn to reduce his interest rate because in the end all he would be doing would be disadvantaging himself to the Rhodes family’s benefit and not actually bringing any benefit at all to the club.
Rob, I don’t really want to get in to the whys and wherefores of the Loan and how it compares with the Rhodes family’s investment.
My comment was merely expressing surprise that a benefactor (Lawn) would choose to impose an interest rate on his loan which could legitimately be described in the current financial climate as extortionate.
Perhaps if it were advertised that City pay 9% interest above base, there would be more people coming forward to loan their life savings. I know i’d be interested!
The way forward would surely to ask GG is he would consider a new agreement where the amount paid varies on the club’s position in the Football League. It makes sense, as it gives GG something in the long term.
A second alternative would be for Bradford Council to investigate a ground share at VP between City and the Bulls with the ground being purchased by sale of Odsal Stadium – or using some of the millions they had set aside for the business forest idea that has been rejected by the Government. In the current climate it would be a tough sell to the ordinary taxpayers, but it could be shown to save money in the medium term as it finally solves the Odsal conundrum. The other political consideration is the effect abandoning VP would have on the Manningham/city centre economy and the general morale of Bradford. Could we afford yet another physcological blow in the wake of Westfield/Odeon et al?
The final alternative would be for Gordon Gibb to take over Bradford City AFC. That would require Julian Rhodes and Mark Lawn to fall on their swords. We have no idea whether they would take such a step for the greater good, espcially as it would be GG taking over – and the tensions between GG and Julian Rhodes are well known. Even if the chairmen agreed to step aside would GG be really interested in Bradford City again? Two years ago he said he was interested in running a football club again, but he has also said he would never set foot in Bradford again – though that may have been linked to his spat with JR.
In closing I am troubled with the megaphone diplomacy that is currently going on. It could be argued that the club have no alternative if the Gibb’s are not responding to approaches, yet they claim to have had no direct approach. We have no idea who is telling the truth and how much of this is jostling for position. With the managers position still up in the air, season ticket sales waiting to be relaunched and City’s position in the Football League not yet certain I do wonder if this is a debate we should have been having in late May?