Getting rid of Bonser

All About Walsall
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Since Dean Keates was sacked, the owner of the football club has paid the owner of the ground £12,054 in rent.

The owner of the club and the ground are the same person. It’s like charging yourself rent to live in your own home, having sold your house to developers.

The club is indebted to the owner, approaching £2m in loans, the equivalent of 5 years rent.

£440k a year rent is £8.46k per week or two quality league one players. On top of rent there is all the money on transfer fees, Cup runs, playoffs, TV cash etc… that hasn’t been reinvested or cleared our owners debt.

If the rent is not increased, we’ll pay £13.2m to play in our own ground over the next 30 years.

The advertising hoarding shouldn’t be paying the rent, it should be paying for a quality centre half! It also shouldn’t be advertising our local footballing rivals.

If the financials aren’t enough to make you wanna get rid of uncle Jeff, then the ■■■■■ facilities, flooding toilets, complex ticketing, poor matchday experience and shear contempt for fans should do.

Chuck in lack of vision, communication, ambition, openness, strategy, respect and public relations and you have a plethora of reasons to want new ownership.

This has little to do with relegation, just that many of us have enough.

I just want to believe in my club again, believe that the clubs leadership want the best for the club and not just a pension fund.

The club is dying a slow and painful death, that will only accelerate once we become established in the lower half of league two & eventually fall into non league. Which I believe we will do eventually.

After all as we head into league two, with reduced attendance, reduced wage bill and reduced infrastructure expenditure. The only thing that won’t be reduced is the rent.

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62

I agree whole heartedly about the conditions of the stadium, the treatment of the fans, the ticket pricing etc. I really do but that is operations and sits with Gamble. Particularity where customer service is concerned.

My season ticket will cost just over £15 a game for league 2. My Wolves and Albion mates cannot believe that it is more expensive than their season tickets.

However, I have been around businessmen through my job and what Bonser is and Bonser does is nothing new to me and bar a few exceptions to the rule, nothing different to the rest of the league owners, you’ll find they’ll pull money out through other subsidiary companies or other means. I believe the Glaziers did something very similar. You wouldn’t make money in football otherwise.

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63

And they were very popular. Call me old fashioned but football is a passion, any money making is about strengthening your club. If Bonser was a faceless american then fine, but he is WFC’s self proclaimed biggest fan.

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64

Agreed but he still doesn’t seem like a guy sitting on the type of unlimited millions that would enable him to give up his income.

Income is relative and that may be a lot of money to him, you don’t really know his current and past financial situation.

Football may be a passion to you and I but I would imagine when you’re throwing that much money at it you want some reward. A bit like spending £350 on a season ticket and not wanting your team to get relegated. It’s very easy to spend someone else’s money.

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What money is he throwing at it?

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I’ll change that to has thrown at it or even is being asked to throw at it.

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I dont believe people want him to suddenly throw millions at the club, but we would like him to have a plan to sell up…for the good of the team he supports. We are asking him to actively look at offloading the club, not just to sit on his rental income when it is obviously hurting the club.

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68

I mean I’m not going to be too upset should he decide sell up. I do imagine that he has priced the club at a level that would secure his family and I can’t blame him for that. He will be losing a steady income and as I say is at pensionable age.

I would be looking at where the new perspective owner will be gaining his ROI though as we would be in fairytale land to find someone that only has the intention to pump money into the club and not get anything but gratitude from it, even then people like Abramovich are getting bored with that.

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I suppose someone like Abramovich likes the adulation and trophies!

70

This has turned into the most pointless post on here

The accounts are on record and he charges the club rent - the key issue is that he does it to the detriment of the fans and the club but to the personal benefit of the Bonser pension fund so anyone can (and we all have) argue the toss of the sentiments of it all but ultimately, the facts are that the club is dying and he’s partially (arguably, mostly in many folks opinion - mine included) responsible.

The entire personal ownership issue has been cleverly manipulated by the Bonsers since they first had the opportunity to gain ownership of the club and it’s now, finally, coming home to roost…

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71

He threw £250k at the club about 20-odd years ago, an investment which has made millions. He has lent the club money to keep it solvent: it does not serve his pension fund’s interests for the cash cow to die. The selling off of the club’s assets (Dann, Fox etc) at knock-down prices at a time when we had genuine hope of promotion to The Championship, seemed to show his real motives - many fans have never forgotten or forgiven that. We don’t ask for much as fans: a decent cup run, a season without fear of relegation and some hope that we are moving in the right direction. I don’t think many fans will stand for more seasons like the last two.

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72

100% agree.

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£249,999 for the stadium, £1 for the club, in 1991, then £140,000 for the land a couple of years later.

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Thanks Exile

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No probs. Think the land figure is accurate but that’s on the other computer…

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£1 for the club? He was done!

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Hopefully you can tell I’m being sarcastic when I used the words “saviour” and “what a guy”. My thoughts on the opportunism have been recorded on these pages over many years.

We did go into administration by the way. 1990. We had the PFA paying the players wages for a spell.

78

Sorry mate we never went into administration,
And the pfa neverstepped in to pay wages

The two companies bonser was involved with at that time did, and they owned the majority shareholding of Walsall football club, , but the administrators where satisfied that wfc could still trade and where solvent

I have the historical cuttings will dig them out and post up, Barry blower came out and publicly stated that despite the two said company’s going under it did not affect Walsall football club and st that point in time although struggling they where still solvent
Obviously our so called saviour came out of no where and took over shortly afterwards, rather strange don’t you think

The story of administration is purely another fabrication, which he plays on , yes we where close but it never materialised

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I should note Bonser was part of the Miller consortium that bought the club and stadium, so it wasn’t just his money, and that his old company’s pension fund that bought the land.

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80

You spelled ‘we’ wrong…

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