The Bury summer signing uberthread. WARNING - Contains tinpot material

[Boletus Edulis]

There will be no one to claim of surely.
Caveat emptor.

I would assume the T&Cs determine whether this is covered from season ticket holders to their clubs. But what I am referring to is the clubs themselves, and the income they expect. It may well be they have not case, but I would be interested in a solicitor’s views.

 

[Muzzle]

just one for the record.

Boris johnson promised £1.8 billion pounds for the NHS.
Premier clubs spend during this transfer window £1.4 billion.

And we wonder why the system is broken

 

[valefan16]

I would assume the T&Cs determine whether this is covered from season ticket holders to their clubs. But what I am referring to is the clubs themselves, and the income they expect. It may well be they have not case, but I would be interested in a solicitor’s views.

Have Bury sold season tickets as that would be a mess to sort too? Bolton I assume have if they go although dont think they will.

 

[Muzzle]

No season tickets sold yet. Tickets for Coventry only went on sale today, no pay on the day, and the website keeps crashing with people tryin to buy tickets for saturday, not sure how Cov fans are fairing

 

[PuB]

I would assume the T&Cs determine whether this is covered from season ticket holders to their clubs. But what I am referring to is the clubs themselves, and the income they expect. It may well be they have not case, but I would be interested in a solicitor’s views.

If they go bust (sincerely hope not), then there isn’t anyone to sue

 

[KeithH]

Have Bury sold season tickets as that would be a mess to sort too? Bolton I assume have if they go although dont think they will.

Sold tickets most of which have already been reimbursed

 

[stevie_howard]

Teams like Accrington have now lost a huge proportion of their income for the season, if Bolton were to go bust as well that would be 2 of their 3 biggest crowds wiped out of the money they have already committed to. I hope that our problems will not have any lasting effect on any other teams.

 

[stevie_howard]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

 

[Bartonyellow]

I got angry reading that and it's not my club.
I think Bury fans need to hire a transit van and buy some gaffa tape and take this Shithouse into the woods.
Only justice you will see.

 

[RLC]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

While I agree with you that Day is a crook, the line I have highlighted is clearly untrue. If you had not been doing this, how could you possibly have 'afforded' players like Vaughan, Beckford, Mayor and the rest, some reportedly on wages of £10,000 a week ? I am sure Day did take money out of the club, but a lot was also clearly being spaffed on wages and agents' fees.

I have got sympathy with the genuine Bury fans who did not want anything to do with Day from the start, but you effectively won two fraudulent promotions with players you could not afford, and that had a knock-on effect for all the other clubs that shared a division with you at the time.

Supporters need to realise that if they fund promotions through unsustainable debt, there are always consequences in the long term.

 

[Marked Ox]

Surely the EFL are the ones who should be compensating. They should never have let Bury or Bolton register for this season if they hadn't got it sorted when the fixtures were put together.

The EFL Football League is the clubs, it isn't a separate organisation. If you mean Shaun Harvey personally even though he has left then I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[Loyal Dale]

Stevie Howard omits any reference to the signing of a dozen or so very highly paid players...all of whom were being paid way way in excess of the going rate for a club of Bury's standing. we're talking 5k per week and upwards here...not the norm for a poorly supported L1 or L2 club.

This is where the vast majority of the money went to.

And the bit about removing Forever Bury from the Board is not exactly true is it?

Forever Bury paid for a place on the Board, and didn't check the small print in the t+c's. They only paid for a 1 year seat on the Board, and didn't have the money for year 2.

They changed their minds from opposing SD1 (as most of their members wanted them to do) to being in favour of him ...but only after they had collected Proxy votes campaigning against him.


They are as much to blame as SD1 and SD2. They sold their shares for a pittance. Shame on them for letting the genuine fans down.

 

[stevie_howard]

Stevie Howard omits any reference to the signing of a dozen or so very highly paid players...all of whom were being paid way way in excess of the going rate for a club of Bury's standing. we're talking 5k per week and upwards here...not the norm for a poorly supported L1 or L2 club.

This is where the vast majority of the money went to.

And the bit about removing Forever Bury from the Board is not exactly true is it?

Forever Bury paid for a place on the Board, and didn't check the small print in the t+c's. They only paid for a 1 year seat on the Board, and didn't have the money for year 2.

They changed their minds from opposing SD1 (as most of their members wanted them to do) to being in favour of him ...but only after they had collected Proxy votes campaigning against him.


They are as much to blame as SD1 and SD2. They sold their shares for a pittance. Shame on them for letting the genuine fans down.

Forever Bury say they have never sold any shares in the club.

BTW the above post is a copy and paste job from ming central.

 

[Back in the DHSS]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

White collar crime certainly pays and as long as you steer clear of the establishment, punishment is minimal at worst.
Who’d rob a bank when you could own a football club and fill your back pockets that way.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree and sympathise with almost everything that compilation of events has said. I object to the not being a case of overstretching yourselves to try and get promotion. Because you did do that, twice in fact. Of course Day has done that as a front to deflect attention from what he really was doing. But he sold you all a dream and the vast majority of your fanbase lapped it up and "enjoyed the ride" whilst other clubs fans and journalists such as David Conn mentioned this would end in tears 5/6 years ago. So it's wrong to deny that this is a case of a club not overstretching to win promotion, although there are other genuine factors in addition to this to consider regarding this whole fiasco.

My personal view is that Greater Manchester Police will raid the club in the coming days on a warrant and the EFL will suspend the notice of expulsion the moment they do this. Bury will play again in the league, they'll almost certainly be relegated this season, but the supporters will have a club to support and that's the most important thing. However, if overspending was to happen at Bury yet again under any future regime, a lot of other clubs fans would instantly turn their sympathy into full scale bitterness towards Bury very very quickly.

I welcome a new ownership committed to building a sustainable football club in Bury and wish them all the very best. I also wish for justice to be served upon these absolute charlatans too.

 

[Loyal Dale]

Forever Bury say they have never sold any shares in the club.

BTW the above post is a copy and paste job from ming central.

Whether they sold the shares they held, or gave them away in return for a place on the Board is neither here nor there. They did one of the biggest U turns ever when Day 1 offered them a seat on the Board, and in so doing, they sold many of their members wishes down the river.

In fact, giving them away is possibly worse than selling them imho.

 

[T.A]

You are incredibly boring tbh. You've said the same thing a hundred times. It isnt going to change the past. I just hope for your sake that nobody comes in to your club and burns it to the ground. Try and give some positive thoughts for once and don't suck on that lemon for 5 minutes.

 

[shoddycollins]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

Those guys should be in prison.

 

[shoddycollins]

Teams like Accrington have now lost a huge proportion of their income for the season, if Bolton were to go bust as well that would be 2 of their 3 biggest crowds wiped out of the money they have already committed to. I hope that our problems will not have any lasting effect on any other teams.

Not that it'll be a huge amount or anything that affects us, but we're apparently owed money by Bury still from gate reciepts at Brunton Park in April. Not sure how that works, whether Bury are supposed to pay us for the tickets they sell to their fans or what. Apparently there's quite a lot of clubs in L2 that are owed money in this way though.

 

[shoddycollins]

I see Phil Neville has weighed in on the subject, contrasting Bury's owners with how he and his chums run Salford.

Don't know what other people think, but is $al£ord and the way Neville and co. run that not a big part of the problem? He boasts about how sustainable they are but they had a blank slate and a few billion quid to build the perfect sustainable club from scratch, nobody can emulate $al£ord because nobody has the money to do and even if they did they have pre-existing obligations and liabilities such as aging grounds and expectant fans.

All $al£ord is doing by being the richest club in the lower leagues by a mile is contributing to the inflation of the cost of running a football club, and it's not even good for the fans because they don't have any, they have to pay people to go to away games for them.

 

[WhiteRussian]

We would all love a sugar daddy owner despite the self righteous indignation about Salford. Sadly there are very few rich people who are dumb enough to want a 3rd or 4th tier club as their plaything.

The problem nowadays is money and the chancers who want to asset strip (how much is Gigg lane worth to a developer?). How many clubs have had their ground seperated from club ownership and now rent their old ground back leaving them meaning they have no tangible assets?

I worry for any lower tier club that has a ground in a prime location. Vulture will be watching closely.

 

[Pompey_Squinny]

To the best of my knowledge this is correct - please let me know if I have mis-stated anything.

Demise of Bury Football Club



Following the close shave in 1999, Bury FC was run on a tight leash – each year the club would make a profit or loss of about £250,000 and things were kept in balance. The crown jewel of the club was Gigg Lane which would never be put at risk.



Towards 2014, the debt spiked up to £700,000. The then owners were committed to NOT raising money by mortgaging Gigg Lane.



A meeting was held at which the shareholders were introduced to a self-confessed Property Developer who was a Huddersfield fan – Stewart Day. He committed to put £1,000,000 of his own money into the club and therefore save the club. He purchased half the shares in the club.



Immediately he:



1) Appointed himself Managing Director and Chairman, as well as Owner



2) Borrowed £1,000,000 from an organisation named Cash for Assets at an interest rate of 10% per month. That meant that every month Bury FC was paying £100,000 in interest to this bank



3) Cash for Assets was owned by Stewart Day so he was paying himself £1,200,000 per annum



4) Removed the supporter’s representative from the Board so that his decisions could not be challenged or indeed, made publicly known



5) Hired a security firm to protect him and his associate Glenn Thomas



6) Changed the Annual Accounts format. Formerly the Accounts showed Playing Wages and Non-Playing Wages – obviously Non-Playing Wages was a small amount in a club like Bury. Under Stewart Day the wages were rolled together and increased by over £1,000,000 per annum – it is highly likely that a large amount of this was payments of salaries to Stewart Day and Glenn Thomas



Over the next four years, Bury FC, a little club which had historically reported losses or profits of around £250,000 per annum suddenly started losing money at a rate of £2,500,000 each year. At some stage Stewart Day mortgaged the Gigg Lane ground to a company called Capital Bridge Financing for £3,600,000. Of this sum, it has been stated, only £2,400,000 went to Bury FC. The sum of £1,200,000 was paid to somebody as an Introduction Fee. The remaining £2,400,000 was available for Stewart Day to pay himself his inflated salary.



Each year the club would sell players valued at more than £1,000,000 but every year the accounts still showed a loss of £2,500,000 or more. Where could the money be going?



At the end of 2018, Stewart Day decided that he had taken out enough money and decided to sell the club. To get the best price it would be usual for a club owner to announce a sale, and then review the offers and accept the best offer. Stewart Day sold the club for just £1 to a business associate Steven Dale from Cheshire.



Unfortunately at this exact time, the other eight businesses owned by Stewart Day all went bust owing a sum which might be £27,000,000 or more. His Mederco companies issued prospectuses promising investors returns of 12% per annum if they invested just £30,000 into Stewart Day’s new Student Housing blocks in Bradford, Manchester etc. By an absolute fluke, they all went bust at the same time, and investors have lost everything. A petition has been started by furious investors trying to ban Stewart Day from ever running a business again. Stewart Day has recently created eight new Limited companies and it looks like he will begin his cycle again. His personal wealth does not appear to have been reduced.



Steven Dale has a unique business history in that he has never run a club as a going concern – his career has been in closing down businesses through liquidation – Companies House state that he has owned and liquidated 39 companies in his chequered career. He has proudly boasted that he has not put a penny of his own money into Bury Football Club – his £1 went to Stewart Day personally.



Why would Stewart Day sell the club for £1 when much higher offers would have been on the table. The likelihood is that he was keen for Bury Football Club to close, for its bank accounts to be terminated, and for all record of any nefarious activities to be eliminated – for that to happen he could not risk a reputable person purchasing the company, so he sold to Steven Dale.



In March 2019, Steven Dale stopped paying staff at Bury Football Club. Three more home matches were played after this and the club received £250,000 gate money. None of this was offered to HMRC to defray debts owed. Despite this, the team won promotion to Division One. Through to the start of May 2019, salaries still were not being paid and Ryan Lowe departed and joined Plymouth. Plymouth paid compensation of £150,000 to Bury Football Club but again none of this money was showing in the accounts.



The two MPS for Bury, James Frith and Ivor Lewis, got involved. Ivor Lewis wrote to the Serious Fraud Office and asked them to investigate Stewart Day and Steven Dale. James Frith worked with the supporters group, Forever Bury, and raised the profile of the case.



The EFL have suspended the first three Bury matches of the 2019-20 season and will expel the club by next week unless Steven Dale can give a personal guarantee of £1,500,000 to ensure that the club can complete the season.



Steven Dale cannot afford to put money into the club, or would prefer not to. However, there is a serious buyer who would like to buy the club – Steven Dale will not speak to the potential buyer. Why would he not sell when he knows that next week the club will be expelled from the Football League which we joined back in 1885. The only realistic reason is that he is working on behalf of Stewart Day to close the club down so that no evidence is available to the Serious Fraud Office and other bodies who would wish to investigate his activities.



Sometimes football clubs overstretch themselves to try to get promotion – and go bust. This is not one of those cases. A criminal has taken control of Bury Football Club, taken all of its money, and left it with debts. An associate of the criminal was then given the club with the instruction to close it down. The criminal has also defrauded hundreds of investors of over £30,000 each via his Mederco schemes. A quick search on Google under the Stewart Day Mederco will show how popular he is with people who gave him their life savings.



The above is taken from a post on ming central which seems to be a pretty good guess as to what has caused all this mess.

Sounds similar to how Pompey was passed around by a connected bunch of crooks and chancers. The only reason we got ownership of our club was because the Trust (PST) was able to use FL rules that prevent an owner taking control of a club having previously taken one into administration. Chainrai would have undoubtedly rinsed the club for the £17m he claimed he was owed (owed in a court ruling against the father of previous owner Sasha Gaydamak, Arcadi). Football is the last thing on the mind of many of these crooks that come in for clubs.

I can't see how liquidating the club would prevent a fraud investigation. The police should already be investigating based on what you post. In fact, I'd like to see the FA/FL officially report the crime.

 

[shoddycollins]

We would all love a sugar daddy owner despite the self righteous indignation about Salford.

Salford are very much on another level though. We'd all like money put into our clubs (sounds like Bury never actually saw any genuine investment) but it won't be great for lower league football when potential investors realise they don't have to put their money into the Burys and Carlisles of this world, they can just build a new club from scratch, get them into the league by outbidding all their competitors in the transfer market at each level, and have 100% of the say on what goes on without pesky things like fans who set up trusts and generate negative media attention when you contradict them.

If (and that's a big 'if') Salford represents the beginning of a new kind of football then in twenty years' time we'll all be playing amateur football on the local park while the Football League consists entirely of teams set up in honour of Premier league teams playing in front of a handful of Premier league fans each week.

I worry for any lower tier club that has a ground in a prime location. Vulture will be watching closely.

It's OK then, Bury's ground is in Bury

 

[WhiteRussian]

It's OK then, Bury's ground is in Bury

Ouch

 

[shoddycollins]

Ouch

Ironically we're safe too, our ground is in the middle of the River Eden for a few weeks each year.

 

[nelsonpfc]

I worry for any lower tier club that has a ground in a prime location. Vulture will be watching closely.

Luckily enough for us when we were going through our various administrations, The Fratton Park land is protected by Portsmouth City Council. Regardless of who owed the land the council wouldn't give permission to anything being built unless it was a new football stadium or Pompey had relocated to another plot of land regardless if it was the currect PFC or a new PFC. This made the land around the stadium and the Fratton Park land worthless to anyone not interested in Pompey.

 

[B.F.C.]

While I agree with you that Day is a crook, the line I have highlighted is clearly untrue. If you had not been doing this, how could you possibly have 'afforded' players like Vaughan, Beckford, Mayor and the rest, some reportedly on wages of £10,000 a week ? I am sure Day did take money out of the club, but a lot was also clearly being spaffed on wages and agents' fees.

I have got sympathy with the genuine Bury fans who did not want anything to do with Day from the start, but you effectively won two fraudulent promotions with players you could not afford, and that had a knock-on effect for all the other clubs that shared a division with you at the time.

Supporters need to realise that if they fund promotions through unsustainable debt, there are always consequences in the long term.

While I accept we're responsible for our own problems through all of this there's a few things I need to pass comments on to defend ourselves from some quarters.
Not sure why people are quoting Danny Mayor as an example of an unsustainable signing. He had hit a brick wall in his career when he signed for us. He loved being with us and don't forget he was with us for six seasons, and probably wouldn't have left when he did if things had been different. I also heard off a fairly reliable source that he wasn't on ridiculously expensive wages either. We stuck with him when he was in a dark place on a personal level too.
I notice that some people never miss a chance to comment on the two promotions that we :cheated our way to: and yet nobody seems to have anything to say about the relegation that happened in the middle, or were we not cheating that season?
When did the Tranmere rovers supporters suddenly turn into angry oh Birkenhead? A Rochdale fan I know got buttonholed in a pub last week and was fed some absolute bollocks about the Bury fan's behaviour on the last two visits. I missed the last one as I couldn't get a ticket, but I didn't see the stuff he was told about happening on the pitch in the previous game. We were mindful of the fact that you had just been relegated and I think that the Bury FC fans were very respectful. We celebrated our promotion, who wouldn't?, all the Tranmere fans I spoke to after the game were very complimentary about our supporters behaviour.

 

[stevie_howard]

We can confirm that today we have received an offer for the sale of Bury Football Club, one that we all at the Club believe is a very good offer.

This offer has been conveyed to Steve Dale and we are still waiting to hear from him.

This offer is the only lifeline for the future of the Club and we implore Steve Dale to accept it, as it has the full backing of all of the senior staff at Bury FC.



The above is a statement on the official Bury FC website.

The EFL have given a 0900 deadline tomorrow before a decision is made on the Gillingham game.

 

[T.A]

We wont meet the deadline so you would think that game will be off too. All comes down to whether Dale is going to accept this offer. I dont think he will unless it's a very generous offer.

 

[RLC]

I notice that some people never miss a chance to comment on the two promotions that we :cheated our way to: and yet nobody seems to have anything to say about the relegation that happened in the middle, or were we not cheating that season?

The relegation is irrelevant though is not it ? It is the way you were operating that is the issue. You were employing players you could not afford to gain advantage over your rivals, and that is wrong in principle regardless of whether or not you under-achieved on the pitch. In the promotion seasons you gained an unfair advantage, and that is unarguable.

I don't think your supporters did behave respectfully at Prenton Park in 2015, but that is beside the point really. It is the symbolism of those two promotions at our ground. We dropped out of the league, not because of financial mismanagement but because our chairman wanted to retire and we had no investment, and we had to take the medicine of three years in non-league football.

You were in reality in a worse position than us, with lower attendances and no genuine investment, but there did not seem to be any contrition or sense of reality from your supporters, even though you knew the current mess was inevitable. Looking from the outside those celebrations at PP last May were frustrating and bizarre.