GREGORY'S LOOKING FOR A TEN AND HE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE

Wednesday 25th July 2007
by Ron Norris

John Gregory explained today how he was looking for the “perfect ten” to fill Kevin Gallen’s boots in the legendary R’s shirt, however he’s not the only person at Loftus Road looking for that figure as Gianni Paladini will spend the next twelve months desperately searching for his own ten, ten million quid that is. 

Over the last few days the facts around the new deal with ABC have been made clear to everyone and the shock is still sinking in over this corner of Northolt. I’m not particularly surprised that this board has risked the future of the club in a desperate effort to avoid administration but I am staggered they had to go back to ABC to do it.  

We are now in a position where we have to pay off ABC’s ten million pound debt by next summer which leaves us only four realistic options. 

Firstly hope and pray the promised new investors materialise. Of course we’ve heard all this before over the years so forgive me if I don’t instantly relax at the prospect of knights in shining armour riding across The Bush. I don’t care how much money you’ve got, why would you want to throw away over twenty million quid on a new business just to get back to a zero balance.  

You can make that outcome seem even more unlikely when you add the fact that Paladini and the Monaco investors have openly said they will sell their shares only for the price they paid. I just don’t understand why someone wanting to buy a business that has spent the last three years trading at a growing loss only offset against the increasing value of a ground the company doesn’t really own anymore would value its shares at the same level as they were before. But then I’m no Peter Jones…. 

The second option is to get promoted. Yes it’s that simple, all John Gregory has to do is guide a club that’s just sold its best player from relegation strugglers to promotion contenders and all our problems will be history. Yeh, I can’t see that one either, although I have this horrible feeling that’s the sole suggestion on the Loftus Road ideas board. 

The third is to refinance the ABC debt with someone else, but how are we going to do that when no one other than this most shady of lenders would let us near a million quid even though we were going to be able to pay it back four weeks later? 

The final, and most worrying option, is to sell the ground to ABC which would leave us homeless, sharing with someone like Fulham or even Brentford and looking forward to a pretty awful future.   

The next twelve months is going to be one of the most worrying of recent times, this really is a make or break season for us and the truly terrifying thing is there really is very little any of us can do about expect sit back, pray and trust the people who got us in this mess to get us out of it.