Today is probably a good time to publish them again and ask if he's considered all these things.
An Open Letter to Sir John Madejski .....
So I’d ask you to bear in mind the below points in any negotiations and due diligence of any potential sale of the club :
1. Who wants to buy and why?
Clearly, supporters want someone who is here for the football club and will do the same as you in safeguarding it for the future – someone who buys it as a potential money-making venture will inevitably fail, and may well bring the club to its knees in the process.
2. What are their plans for the club?
Is the intention to carry on building the club, or to pump endless money in to try to compete with the biggest clubs? Although some Royals fans would love the latter approach, I don’t think it’s appropriate for Reading FC or would actually work. Yes, it might bring some short-term success, but it would inevitably change the whole ethos of the club, and it’s fundamentally unsustainable – boom is inevitably followed by bust.
3. Where’s the money coming from?
Does the money actually exist, or is it all empty promises that will bite us later on. And what are the implications of where it has come from? We know you are a man of great integrity, and we love the way our football club has the same attributes. So it would leave a nasty taste in the mouths of many supporters if the club we purchased by someone who has acquired their money in questionable or possibly illegal ways – and in my book not knowing where it has come from means it has almost certainly been obtained in a questionable way.
4. Will it leave us saddled with debt?
Whilst perfectly legal, leveraged buy-outs such as those seen at Manchester United and Liverpool leave clubs saddled with debt, and the only way that can be recovered is by slowly turning the financial screw on the supporters. Supporters universally hate leveraged buy-outs, so please don’t allow any purchase to be funded in such a way.
5. Who is the owner?
Too many football clubs are owned by unknown parties, through tortuous ownership models and umbrella companies in overseas tax-havens. Supporters have got a moral right to know who owns their football club, and why would any club owner want to hide their ownership through such complicated ownership structures? Again, something that would leave us all very worried and suspicious, and which would inevitably change the club for the worse.
6. What will be their relationship with the Supporters?
If I were going to criticise you, this is the one area I’d choose, because you’ve often had an arm’s length relationship with the club’s supporters, appropriate to your ownership of 97% of the club. But times are changing, and supporters across the globe are participating more and more into the clubs that they put so much financial and emotional investment into. And there are so many talented and committed people out there who care deeply about the future of their club that the club can only benefit from their involvement – not every supporter thinks only of short-term results. Countless legal structures exist to allow supporters to participate in their clubs, so how much involvement would any new owner be prepared to allow them?
7. What guarantees are being made?
A tricky last question, this. How can you be sure that any of the answers to the above questions will actually be true. Partly a judgement call, but partly also something that can be judged from due diligence and proper investigation of the bona fides of any potential buyer. But there ought to be conditions in any sale ensure that any promises made are translated into actual deeds.
Sir John has always said he'd only sell to the *right* buyer. Now's the time for him to prove that.
