Does anyone know any Derby fans?

[pete 0]

They''ve made a couple of bids for Freddy Eastwood (rumoured to be over £1M) and have already paid out £1M for another player. I thought they were heavily (over £50M?) in debt.

Can anyone who knows a Derby fan find out how they''re managing to buy these players in thier current financial position?

 

[Rossi 0]

re-financed their debt

[Evil Monkey 52]

I wondered the same thing, but don''t know anyone to verify it with.

Maybe they''re just spending beyond their means in a final effort for promotion?

[San Miguel 0]

I think they consolidated their debts into one manageable monthly repayment

[norwich4ever 0]

A new board of directors made up of a consortium of wealthy businessmen, All who are well known derby county fans. the clubs debts are down to somewhere around £8 million. A new manager and a whole new coaching staff have been appointed. All derby county fans are delighted and extremely optimistic about the coming season. Another team to add to the eleven teams to finish above the canaries. Gawd help us.[:''(]

[Derby Exile 0]

They have a new board in place which must be providing new funds.

 

 

 

[Carrow89 0]

Make of this what you can -

Derby County''s chairman, John Sleightholme, has refused to be drawn on the level of Derby County''s debt saying that the club''s accounts will tell the story when they are published in June.

However, Mr Sleightholme has commented on the role of the ABC Corporation in re-financing the club, the role of Director of Football Murdo Mackay and recent press speculation.

When asked about press speculation that Derby County''s debts could be close to £40 million, the chairman said: "I''m not going to discuss these matters. As far as I''m concerned we have said each year we will discuss such matters when we produce the accounts as we think that''s the proper time.

"The thing I would say, though, is that we have maintained all our repayments as and when they were due." But he conceded that getting into the Premiership would have a significant impact on the club''s ability to reduce the level of debt. He added that money would still have to be spent to improve the squad and to attempt to maintain Premiership status.

Mr Sleightholme, who took control of Derby County in October 2003, also refused to be drawn on the subject of the ABC Corporation, the so-called ''mystery backers'' of the club. He said the re-financing came from two sources - the Co-operative Bank and ''other lenders'' who were the subject of a confidentiality clause.

The chairman dismissed suggestions that the Director of Football, Murdo Mackay, was actually running the club, saying: "I am certainly not his puppet and I think if you were to ask him you''d very quickly get the same response.

"The positions are fairly clear - I own two thirds of the club, Mr Keith owns the other third. "Murdo Mackay is our director of football - that''s what he does. He has high profile - I don''t."

However, he went on to say that Murdo Mackay had spoken to all the directors before they took control of the club but that he had not ''orchestrated'' or organised any takeover.

Murdo Mackay himself, in a subsequent interview, confirmed that he had been involved in discussions but was not able to talk about them because of a confidentiality agreement. He said the issues discussed were related solely to football matters and had been instigated at the request of Finance Director Andrew Mackenzie and former chairman Lionel Pickering.

**************************

Senior figures from Derby County Football Club visited BBC Radio Derby''s studios last night to take calls from fans.

The club''s chief executive, Jeremy Keith, was joined by finance director Andrew MacKenzie and manager Phil Brown to answer questions posed by listeners.

Unsurprisingly, the state of the club''s debt was one of the big talking points of the evening - something that Jeremy Keith tried to clear up, denying debts of £44 million.

Mr Keith revealed on BBC Radio Derby''s Sportscene Talk-In that they''d taken on a further £3 million of debt when they took over in October 2003, believed to be money owed to the Inland Revenue and VAT.

He said: "The debt when we took over was £38 million. The debt, as it stands, is not £44 million. What we are saying right now, the figure we are quoting in the media, is between 40 and 42 million pounds. The reason that it''s not an exact amount is that during the course of a month the figure oscillates up and down."

When challenged over the loan from ABC, Mr Keith went on to say: "None of the shareholders have any relationship, direct or indirect, with the ABC Corporation. That is something that has to be tested by the auditors - they have to satisfy themselves fully on that point and that is something they commented on... so I can put your mind at ease.

"People are accusing [us] of having an asset-stripping agenda, of trying to line our own pockets. In the two years that we have been at the football club the only assets we have sold are two players - Tom Huddlestone and Grzegorz Rasiak. We haven''t sold the stadium and we haven''t sold the training ground. Where are all these assets that we are supposed to be stripping?"

Mr Keith revealed that he took a £60,000 salary from the club. Meanwhile, Finance Director Andrew MacKenzie said that the turnover and trading position of the club had improved to a point where the income was now greater than the costs, albeit before interest - a position that the club was not in when the current board took over.

plus - http://www.therams.co.uk/details.asp?back=true&key=1D29|0|2185366269754|R|536|9197241052006365914331&parentkey=1D29|0|2185366269754|p|536|0

pretty scary stuff, well worth ploughing though though