A deadline of 3 p.m. BST has been set for the sale of Crystal Palace to be completed, otherwise the club may be starting down the slippery slope towards liquidation. Administrator Brendan Guilfoyle sounded a worried man when he was interviewed on Radio 5 this morning and said that he was ‘genuinely concerned’. That is administrator speak for ‘things look grim’.
A deadline of 3 p.m. BST has been set for the sale of Crystal Palace to be completed, otherwise the club may be starting down the slippery slope towards liquidation. Administrator Brendan Guilfoyle sounded a worried man when he was interviewed on Radio 5 this morning and said that he was ‘genuinely concerned’. That is administrator speak for ‘things look grim’.
The money is running out and Guilfoyle will have to start selling players if an agreement is not reached with the CPFC 2010 consortium today. The consortium have indicated if that happens, they will walk away. There is no other buyer on the scene so the club would then have to be liquidated.
One of the difficulties in the negotiation has been that the stadium is separately owned. The Bank of Scotland is the main creditor there and they want a clause in the contract that would give them a share of any future sale of the stadium. This is not objected to in principle, but actually drafting it is difficult. One would think that some way could be found of doing this and the deadline, although reflecting the realities of the financial situation, may also serve the purpose of concentrating the minds of the negotiating parties.
One thousand Palace fans demonstrated at Selhurst Park yesterday and, given that the Bank of Scotland is publicly owned, there were calls for David Cameron to intervene. However, the Coalition Government has made it clear that it regards the matter as one for the club. The Government maintains a ‘hands off’ relationship with the banks in which it has a shareholding.
I think there will be a last minute deal. Should not that happen, Palace may have to consider ground sharing, for example with fierce rivals Charlton Athletic at The Valley. This would reverse what happened in the 1980s when Charlton were on the brink of liquidation and moved to Selhurst Park.
At that time there were individuals on the boards of both clubs who thought that the two clubs should merge to form a South London club. Football south of the river has punched below its weight with all the Premier League clubs north of the river. In part this reflects the fact that North and West London contains more wealthy areas than the south side and is more attractive to rich foreign investors.
In most areas of business, merger is frequently resorted to as a solution, but it is relatively rare in football, even if a combined club would be stronger than two separate ones (and that is by no means certain, although the case of Dagenham and Redbridge, recently promoted to League 1 shows that it can work). Fans identify strongly with their club and a merged club could lose supporters of both clubs.
The situation at Palace is one of the most serious encountered in recent club administrations and it shows how the recession is impacting on football away from the top clubs. I would bet on some kind of solution being found that would enable Palace to continue playing at Selhurst Park.
At 4.30 p.m. BST it was reported that talks were progressing. Croydon Central MP Gavin Barewell has asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to intervene.