Keith Wyness

[Sexual Ealing]

Out of interest how do you know the unknowns were Chinese?

It was a Beijing court that issued the arrest warrant, put up wanted posters and offered a reward. I doubt very much they'd be so determined to find him if the debtors weren't Chinese.

The court stuff was a hoax, wasn't it?

[Risso]

Did Xia promise more funds? Any idea when? Let's assume for a minute he did, when would be the ideal time to have those funds in place, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the end of May.

For me, they're both chancers. As we now know, Xia was a front man backed by unknowns in China. Wyness was put in place by some extremely dodgy 'middle men'. I doubt they'll be a queue of clubs looking to appoint him as their new CEO.

He would have had to have shown the auditors at the very least that the club was a going concern for a minimum period of 12 months from the date the accounts were signed.  Obviously without working there there's no way of knowing the exact moment the cash problems became evident, but it all appeared to happen very quickly.  If Xia had signed off as the cashflow being OK, and had done so in the past with it always coming through (as it must have done when we'd bought the likes of McCormack and Kodjia) then why would Wyness question that? 

Everything is going well at the moment, but even a professional like Purslow will have to take on a certain amount of trust that funds will continue to be made available.  Obviously there's a lot more available information about Edens and Sawiris, but if they decided they didn't want to support the club any longer, we'd be in exactly the same position as previously.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Out of interest how do you know the unknowns were Chinese?

It was a Beijing court that issued the arrest warrant, put up wanted posters and offered a reward. I doubt very much they'd be so determined to find him if the debtors weren't Chinese.

The court stuff was a hoax, wasn't it?

Was it, I thought Risso and CL picked up the reward money?

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Did Xia promise more funds? Any idea when? Let's assume for a minute he did, when would be the ideal time to have those funds in place, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the end of May.

For me, they're both chancers. As we now know, Xia was a front man backed by unknowns in China. Wyness was put in place by some extremely dodgy 'middle men'. I doubt they'll be a queue of clubs looking to appoint him as their new CEO.

He would have had to have shown the auditors at the very least that the club was a going concern for a minimum period of 12 months from the date the accounts were signed.  Obviously without working there there's no way of knowing the exact moment the cash problems became evident, but it all appeared to happen very quickly.  If Xia had signed off as the cashflow being OK, and had done so in the past with it always coming through (as it must have done when we'd bought the likes of McCormack and Kodjia) then why would Wyness question that? 

I guess we'll never know but Wyness was aware we'd spent all our future parachute payments, the costs are pretty much written in stone. McCormack and Kodjia were summer signings. In the January window we only brought in Axel and Grabban on loan. Maybe that was a the first sign we were struggling. As I said, I guess we'll never know.

[PeterWithesShin]

From what I remember something like £5m a month was being paid to us by Xia (via his backers you'd assume now) those payments stopped and that's what fucked us as without those payments we couldn't pay everything.

[Damo70]

It seemed to me that plan A was hoping we were promoted to the Premier league and plan B was just a blank sheet of paper. Apart from saying 'Plan B - any ideas?' at the top.

[paul_e]

I never quite warmed to Wyness, the whole 1 team for promotion, one to stay up and a 3rd to progress thing along with the fact that we setup a playing structure at all levels except the first team made me think he was full of shit. Lets also not forget that he happily oversaw a transfer strategy that involved almost no planning for the future, either in how those players would fit into the squad for the coming season or what their longer term value to the club would be. I get that, on a purely legal stance, paying him off was sensible, but I don't like the fact that he took a fortune out of the club only to leave us in a complete mess and get another pay off when he was sacked for his part in it.

[Risso]

I never quite warmed to Wyness, the whole 1 team for promotion, one to stay up and a 3rd to progress thing along with the fact that we setup a playing structure at all levels except the first team made me think he was full of shit. Lets also not forget that he happily oversaw a transfer strategy that involved almost no planning for the future, either in how those players would fit into the squad for the coming season or what their longer term value to the club would be. I get that, on a purely legal stance, paying him off was sensible, but I don't like the fact that he took a fortune out of the club only to leave us in a complete mess and get another pay off when he was sacked for his part in it.

I'm not defending him, because he was mostly a fat plonker, but the way Xia handled things made it an absolute certainty that Wyness would get a pay out.  A similar thing happened at one of the group companies where I used to work on there IOM.  They sacked somebody (who was on about £40K a year) who made a protected disclosure, and ended up having to pay him the thick end of a million quid in damages.

[KevinGage]

I never quite warmed to Wyness, the whole 1 team for promotion, one to stay up and a 3rd to progress thing along with the fact that we setup a playing structure at all levels except the first team made me think he was full of shit. Lets also not forget that he happily oversaw a transfer strategy that involved almost no planning for the future, either in how those players would fit into the squad for the coming season or what their longer term value to the club would be. I get that, on a purely legal stance, paying him off was sensible, but I don't like the fact that he took a fortune out of the club only to leave us in a complete mess and get another pay off when he was sacked for his part in it.

No industry rewards ineptitude as much as football.

[ChicagoLion]

Out of interest how do you know the unknowns were Chinese?

It was a Beijing court that issued the arrest warrant, put up wanted posters and offered a reward. I doubt very much they'd be so determined to find him if the debtors weren't Chinese.

The court stuff was a hoax, wasn't it?

Was it, I thought Risso and CL picked up the reward money?

Risso spent most of his on women and beer, wasted the rest.



Apparently on Luke gear and swimming shorts

[kippaxvilla2]

From what I remember something like £5m a month was being paid to us by Xia (via his backers you'd assume now) those payments stopped and that's what fucked us as without those payments we couldn't pay everything.

Is how I remember it.  He was somehow finding a £5m a month working capital gap.  And just before the play off final the money didn’t arrive. Week after they told the taxman they couldn’t pay up. 

[mike]

The explanation of the pay out would have been nice doubt to keep some derogatory comments coming out in the proceedings. He’s still a fat prick who no doubt deserved the taxi to the motorway

Is he though?

The current directors accept he was acting in the best interests of the club. As a director, wouldn't he have had a fiduciary duty to take us into administration if that was the only way to protect the continued existence of the club?

Is the general consensus.  A few people who know a few things say he's  not entirely the bad guy.

Is that an understatement or damning him with faint praise?

[SoccerHQ]

It seemed to me that plan A was hoping we were promoted to the Premier league and plan B was just a blank sheet of paper. Apart from saying 'Plan B - any ideas?' at the top.

Pretty much. It's clear (from what was actually said at the RDM press conference which Wyness was also at) that we had two years to get up and when we didn't it would be a barren wasteland of living hand to mouth on day to day basis.

Thankfully Wes and Nas turned up otherwise we'd have had the season Stoke are having now. Incredibly even when we were on the verge of administration people were still demanding we compete for promotion that next season, I assume that was just people so desperate to see Steve Bruce sacked you start demanding unrealistic things.

Frightening to think how low we'd have finished without any of McGinn, Tammy or Mings and Jack being sold on. It's all worked out o.k for a change.

[SoccerHQ]

I never quite warmed to Wyness, the whole 1 team for promotion, one to stay up and a 3rd to progress thing along with the fact that we setup a playing structure at all levels except the first team made me think he was full of shit. Lets also not forget that he happily oversaw a transfer strategy that involved almost no planning for the future, either in how those players would fit into the squad for the coming season or what their longer term value to the club would be. I get that, on a purely legal stance, paying him off was sensible, but I don't like the fact that he took a fortune out of the club only to leave us in a complete mess and get another pay off when he was sacked for his part in it.

Haven't we done that anyway though? 1 team to get up (Tammy, Axel, Adomah, Jedinak, Whelan), one team to stay up (all the signings we've made plus likes of AEM and Taylor still regularly seeing action). Eventually to compete back towards top 6 those will have to be moved on and we'll have to make better signings in the final third.

The scattergun approach was pretty much down to Steve Bruce as that's just how he does things. I'd also say at championship level it's pretty rare to see a club who don't make 2-3 loan signings. West Brom's two best players are loan signings and Leeds signed Neketih from Arsenal and some young CB on season long loans, it's just how the majority do it in the championship.

[paul_e]

I never quite warmed to Wyness, the whole 1 team for promotion, one to stay up and a 3rd to progress thing along with the fact that we setup a playing structure at all levels except the first team made me think he was full of shit. Lets also not forget that he happily oversaw a transfer strategy that involved almost no planning for the future, either in how those players would fit into the squad for the coming season or what their longer term value to the club would be. I get that, on a purely legal stance, paying him off was sensible, but I don't like the fact that he took a fortune out of the club only to leave us in a complete mess and get another pay off when he was sacked for his part in it.

Haven't we done that anyway though? 1 team to get up (Tammy, Axel, Adomah, Jedinak, Whelan), one team to stay up (all the signings we've made plus likes of AEM and Taylor still regularly seeing action). Eventually to compete back towards top 6 those will have to be moved on and we'll have to make better signings in the final third.

The scattergun approach was pretty much down to Steve Bruce as that's just how he does things. I'd also say at championship level it's pretty rare to see a club who don't make 2-3 loan signings. West Brom's two best players are loan signings and Leeds signed Neketih from Arsenal and some young CB on season long loans, it's just how the majority do it in the championship.

Well no, not really. We had to sign half a squad in the summer because of the strategy under xia/wyness/bruce, I  doubt it's something we want to do regularly but the team changing over time is just normal so is expected.

However my take on what he was saying was more about style and strategy, we'd play a way to get promoted, and sign players to do it, then we'd change to stay up, and sign players for that and then after a couple of seasons we'd move on to the style we actually wanted all along. The way he segregated the first team off from the villa engine thing showed it. For me it came over as an excuse to use when people were critical of how we played, "we're shit to watch now but once we've been in the premier league for a few seasons we'll change, trust us".