QPR 1st had its first contact with Ron Noades at the end of last week. This came about when he approached us with a draft press release which he had put together following a meeting he had with Maurice Fitzgerald. Mr Noades had gained the impression that QPR1st indirectly supported his bid for Loftus Road. We were quick to shatter that illusion, pointing out that we could not make such a commitment without the backing of our membership and that, anyway, we were absolutely certain that QPR 1st members would vote against his proposal.
Basically, Mr Noades said that Brentford FC has already offered £10m for the Loftus Road ground, or £6m for half. This was no surprise to us since we published the bones of the offer on our website a week ago. The next bit was a surprise, though. Noades said that a consortium of Harold Winton and Maurice Fitzgerald “(supported by the QPR supporters trust)” had also made an offer for QPR FC. To say this was news to us is to understate the case, we were astonished to find that QPR 1st’s name had apparently been taken in vain.
Noades’ release went on to say that the Winton-Fitzgerald consortium would bring £2m to the party, which would be QPR’s working capital. In addition, “Brentford FC Limited and the Winton Fitzgerald consortium will protect Queens Park Rangers Football Club rights to remain at and play football at Loftus Road. It is the intention of Brentford Football Club and the new Queens Park Rangers Football Club to relocate out of Loftus Road and construct a new purpose built stadium in West London in the next (2-3 years) using the Griffin Park and Loftus Road sale proceeds. This proposal is being rejected by the current owners of Queens Park Rangers because of the rights of Wasps (the rugby union club) to occupy Loftus Road.”
For the benefit of those supporters who heard rumours on Saturday of a Noades bid supported by QPR 1st. Let us make one thing absolutely clear. The rumours are simply not true. QPR 1st could not and would not take a decision of that magnitude without seeking the views of members and the wider QPR fan-base. In any case we have no doubts as to the scale of opposition to any Noades involvement with QPR. Indeed, we have had e-mails from members already, with almost all completely hostile to the thought of Chris Wright allowing Mr Noades within a country mile of QPR.
There is no doubting that the Noades approach was very serious. We believe that he had little reason to tell us what he did. In conversation, he did not appear to know a great deal about QPR, but he also said that the club is currently £12m in debt and would lose another £2m between now and the end of the year. The information that QPR 1st has received suggests that both the debt, and the loss, are being exaggerated. QPR 1st does not know, for certain, where Mr Noades got these figures.
So would the proposed deal work? We are making some supposition here, but Noades has sold a half share in Brentford FC to Bees United football supporters trust, which now has responsibility for Brentford’s £4m debt. If Brentford bid for QPR for £10m, it sells Griffin Park for £17m. So Brentford has £7m left over, £4m of which presumably goes to pay off Brentford’s debt and leave it with £3m working capital. Meanwhile QPR is debt-free and has £2m working capital.
However, the two clubs then have to find an alternative site and jointly build a stadium, presumably on the outskirts of London. They could only fund this through the sale of Loftus Road and, even then, QPR1st does not believe that the numbers add up. All QPR, and Brentford for that matter, would be doing would be changing from being a central London club with too much debt into an outer London club with too much debt.
If, as we suspect, the numbers don’t add up, QPR1st recommends to its members that they reject this bid out of hand. However we continue to seek a meeting with Bees United through the offices of Supporters Direct in order to clarify the Brentford position and examine any additional material that may be offered.
Fulham groundshare update
On Saturday, prior to the game against Cambridge, Juzza, Tracy and Libby met with David Davies to have a chat about the Fulham groundshare deal. In her role as Secretary, below is a short report from Tracy. Our thanks to Mr Davies for making the time to meet with us on a busy matchday.
It was disappointing because we were hoping that he would be able to divulge some of the details of the Fulham deal to us. Unfortunately he said he couldn’t do that because of being bound by confidentiality etc…
The deal was close to going through. Though there is still one other contract to be signed. An announcement will be made on the offish site on Monday at around midday giving the news of the groundshare deal having been completed. Juzza asked him if he was happy with it and he said yes, and that he was confident that everyone else would be.
We spoke of Ron Noades. He didn’t seem at all surprised to hear that Juzza had spoken with Uncle Ron on Friday. We told him about the press statement which came into our hands on Friday and how Juzza insisted that our name be removed from it. He (DD) also mentioned that Maurice had asked the same thing. Which, if one looks at the wording on Noades’ statement, asks the question what was Maurice doing talking to Uncle Ron in the first place?! Unless it’s Mr Noades at his most mischievous?
Someone from the Noades camp had been speaking with Mr Hocking (who only arrived back in this country on Thursday). But the £10m deal was considered not good enough. £6.7m owed to Chris Wright (I queried it thought it was £6.4m and David Davies said that includes interest) £3.2m owed to other creditors. Which would have left us with £100,000 from it. Interestingly, when Juzza made the point that if he were to make an offer of £15m over the weekend before the Fulham thing is defo finalised, what would happen then? David Davies replied to Juzza that he was confident that would not happen.
Spoke a little of groundsharing in general. Said how they (the club) were utterly opposed to anything that would make us tenants of LR. And also more of the Brentford situation, and how, effectively, by giving the BU people the 51% shareholding, the debt (BFC’s £4m) becomes their problem.
Councillor Andrew Slaughter and the council are totally against having 3 teams play in one stadium in the borough because of the residents living near the stadium itself. Spoke of the value of LR (the ground). Now what David Davies said has actually been mentioned to me before from someone else, probably the council. If it were to be sold the first option would be for it to be sold for another sporting venue. If not, then because of their stipulations, it would have to be sold to enable the space to be used for 100% social housing. Council, housing associations etc.
Oh, and it would appear that Chris Wright could well be receptive towards Maurice Fitzgerald and his group’s latest bid. David Davies confirmed that Maurice and Harold Winton met with Chris Wright on Friday, which we’d already had confirmed from another source the previous day. We warned him that the club could well be given a bit of a rough ride by the fans regarding the dreaded remortgage word. Mr Davies said he would have to be extremely naive if he didn’t expect that.
QPR 1st will be meeting with Mr Davies and his QPR Operational Management team on Wednesday evening. If you have any queries then please email us on info@qpr1st.co.uk as soon as possible.