Wiggins is one of the players who will have other clubs keeping tabs - Kermogant also. I think it ould take a big wage rise to pry Kermogant away, but Wiggins will be easier to nab I suspect. The problem is - how are we going to offer him a contract if we don't have any money? Hopefully something the board will sort out as he is a player we need to keep.
No, but Wood chose us over any alternative last summer and Yann, apparently, turned down a pay rise to stay with us the summer before.
The risk SHG is that if clubs are going to fall into the trap of allowing Agents to threaten them to keep increasing players wages every year then the debts will continue to grow and administration will be inevitable for most clubs.
This is exactly why FFP was brought in. The truth is that as much as we want to secure the players, if we offer them too much then we will have a transfer embargo slapped on us and then we will be unable to sign any players at all.
At some point those running football have got to stop paying these players so much money. The clubs can't afford it and the players, and their agents, already live like Kings. If every club is forced to reduce their wage bill then there will be many alternatives available. However, as much as I agree with you that it is a risky strategy, the club just can't afford to have a different one. Either the players stay or they leave but, for certain, the club needs to get control of the wage bill and that isn't going to happen by letting the players and their agents decide what we pay them.
The alternative, I suspect, is that we will all have to pay significantly more for our tickets. If I had to agree to pay an extra £1,000 a season to watch Charlton play in order for these players to have three £50k cars rather than two then I would decide to let them leave. Asking someone else to pick up the bill is not realistic, and in the absence of the money the players can't have it!
Our current wage bill is about £5m, maybe a bit less. It will be one of the lowest in the Championship and the consequence of that is what we have been seeing on the pitch - at best, inconsistency. Our ticket sales have fallen and are falling, because there has been a lack of investment in the team, and possibly because of some bad pricing decisions around the £30 games, although that's a speculative judgement.
More significantly, the club has no sense of direction or purpose, caused by a complete absence of leadership, other than Chris Powell. It is simply adrift and supporters see that, and respond accordingly. It is possible to provide leadership within an organisation, provide a narrative and a cause around which people can rally, even without money, but no one is doing it.
The net benefit of last year's significant season ticket price increases will have been about £250k, after the reduced take-up. That's about what Charlton pay one player on average. If anyone at the club thinks increasing prices further without investing in the team is going to yield significant additional revenue they must be mad.
The reality is that it usually costs more to recruit footballers than to retain them and even if you take the view that we are likely to be relegated it makes no obvious sense to have players with a potential transfer value falling out of contract unless the marginal cost of re-signing them exceeds both that value and the marginal cost of replacing them.
All we have at present is a situation in which the current owners hope to pass the problems on to their successors. It has little to do with what's good for the club, in my opinion.
But if the players have a significant transfer value surely they would have been sold already. If we give players more money than they are worth then that in itself would reduce their transfer value would it not?
We have to question how many players we have they other Championship clubs would want based on where we are in the table. Jackson and Yann are both past 30 and have both had significant injuries in each of the last two seasons. There was a suggestion (by you I think) that the club were desperately trying to sell Wiggins last summer so either no one wanted him or he refused to leave. I'm going to assume that we wouldn't have been stupid enough to demand way too much money for him with a year left on his contract. If he refused to leave that might be because wants to stay (which would make keeping him less of a worry) or he wanted a free contract next summer in which case he might refuse to sign an extension anyway.
I know you have much more information than the rest of us Airman, and I'm not saying that I like the current tactic, but I just understand the logic of those that are making the decisions.
Also, low (by Championship standards) or not, a £5m wage bill doesn't seem sustainable to me. At an average net income of £250 - and I suspect it's less than that - we would need to sell 20,000 season tickets to cover that. I doubt that the sponsorship and corporate income covers the Rates and the debt servicing so lowest in the division or not the wages are, presumably, already too high.
I would also be bold enough to suggest that most of the players would not give up football and change career if they were forced to earn less than £250k a year. If all the clubs offer lower wages on renewal then in the end clubs will be able to move away from expecting rich benefactors to dump c.£10m and move on every couple of years.
If Yann has a clause for a contract extension then there really is no need for us to offer a contract now... once he plays X games then he will be offered that extra year that we all want anyway.
But if the players have a significant transfer value surely they would have been sold already. If we give players more money than they are worth then that in itself would reduce their transfer value would it not?
We have to question how many players we have they other Championship clubs would want based on where we are in the table. Jackson and Yann are both past 30 and have both had significant injuries in each of the last two seasons. There was a suggestion (by you I think) that the club were desperately trying to sell Wiggins last summer so either no one wanted him or he refused to leave. I'm going to assume that we wouldn't have been stupid enough to demand way too much money for him with a year left on his contract. If he refused to leave that might be because wants to stay (which would make keeping him less of a worry) or he wanted a free contract next summer in which case he might refuse to sign an extension anyway.
I know you have much more information than the rest of us Airman, and I'm not saying that I like the current tactic, but I just understand the logic of those that are making the decisions.
Also, low (by Championship standards) or not, a £5m wage bill doesn't seem sustainable to me. At an average net income of £250 - and I suspect it's less than that - we would need to sell 20,000 season tickets to cover that. I doubt that the sponsorship and corporate income covers the Rates and the debt servicing so lowest in the division or not the wages are, presumably, already too high.
I would also be bold enough to suggest that most of the players would not give up football and change career if they were forced to earn less than £250k a year. If all the clubs offer lower wages on renewal then in the end clubs will be able to move away from expecting rich benefactors to dump c.£10m and move on every couple of years.
I'm not talking about Jacko or Yann, or proposing a one-size fits all solution. I wouldn't be signing Mark Gower or Danny Hollands or Jordan Cook, with due respect to them. But I would be protecting the better players in their mid 20s, particularly Hamer, Morrison, Wiggins, Stephens and maybe even Wood.
Since you alight on Wiggins, let's use him as an example. The "suggestion" that the club wanted to sell a player (for £3m) last summer came from the club, in a document produced on its behalf by a leading firm of accountants. It's set out in black and white, although I accept I have the advantage of having seen it first hand. The name of Wiggins came from the playing management, via a very reliable source, but it could just as easily have been Solly.
I don't personally think Wiggins is likely to be worth anything like £3m in the current market, but let's say he's worth a much more modest £250,000 to another Championship club. I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption. No matter how unrealistic you think footballers are about the general situation - and I suspect they, or at any rate their agents, are much better equipped to judge it than we are - it seems highly unlikely that in the current situation he could command that order of pay rise at Charlton, even spread over a contact extension. Or that he if he is re-signed he will then have no transfer value going forward, barring serious injury.
It seems highly unlikely to me that if we allow him to test the market over the summer he will come back in July with his tail between his legs. More likely he'll turn up at a mid-ranking Championship club having banked what would have been Charlton's fee as a signing-on payment.
Leaving that aside, it's too easy an assumption that because players have not been sold they have no transfer value. Indeed, as the example of Dale Stephens showed, one reason players haven't left is because the club refused to accept the fee offered because it wanted more, even though it may well have been sensible at that point to sell Stephens at the price available and reinvest the proceeds to produce a more balanced squad.
In the same document I have seen all the players' current salaries, other than those who have signed new contracts since last summer, so in that respect I do have an advantage over you, but the reality is that if you further reduce the wage bill relative to other clubs in the division then the overwhelming probability is that the team will be relegated and that will reduce the club's revenue by about £5m. We cannot control what other clubs do. FFP attempts to do so. I think a wise response would be to hedge our bets.
Personally, I neither want nor expect investment from the current owners in what is and will remain a loss-making business, until and unless it returns to the Premier League. I want them out. But even if you paid the players nothing the club would still make a loss on its current revenue. The business is quite obviously unsustainable without investment, so trying to cut costs to break-even will only end one way - in administration.
In general terms you may be right about players' wages. But it remains the case that some players will be able to command more than they did before, because they have improved their position in the market since they signed. Solly is the outstanding example of someone who was chronically underpaid relative to his teammates and was thus able to command a higher salary. What you seem to be saying is that none of the other players is conceivably in that position. I don't believe that and equally I don't believe that they will command the scale of increase that would make it particularly expensive in the short term to secure them.
But mainly where I differ from you is that you are trying to make a business case for behaviour which I don't think stacks up on its own terms, never mind the impact that it must have on Chris Powell's attempts to secure the team's current status. I understand you expect them to behave logically. I think you are wrong.
It seems to me that the club is making a very clear statement that it doesn't value the current squad, while at the same time doing little or nothing to improve it.
On a related note, exactly how can it package that message to supporters when it comes to ask them to renew their season tickets, with or without a price increase?
Airman raises an interesting point regarding season ticket sales. I have through both work and family commitments missed more games this season than for a good few years and next season I will think long and hard before committing. No sign of investment and a price hike will to me and many like me send a very clear message that unless you can attend every game the cost of a season ticket versus convenience of having it will be very difficult to balance. I've supported the team and club through thick and thin but I'm not going to be mugged off. New owners please.
It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are with other people's money...
Never ceases to amaze me how generous football clubs expect supporters to be with their own money. Why would anyone pay more for less when the person doing the selling doesn't even bother to make an argument that they should?
Don't suspect we'll let any strong first teamers go unless we get an offer too good to refuse, even with contracts running down. They'll leave it until the last possible moment to renew those but it'd be shooting ourselves in the foot to sell the likes of Wiggins and Stephens in January.
If those players are the difference between relegation and survival, then losing out on about 200k for the pair is the price we must pay.
It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are with other people's money...
Never ceases to amaze me how generous football clubs expect supporters to be with their own money. Why would anyone pay more for less when the person doing the selling doesn't even bother to make an argument that they should?
Then don't do it. I am a Charlton fan. I will support Charlton whatever league they are in, whoever owns them, whoever is the manager.
If you don't like it, you could always go and watch another club?
It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are with other people's money...
Never ceases to amaze me how generous football clubs expect supporters to be with their own money. Why would anyone pay more for less when the person doing the selling doesn't even bother to make an argument that they should?
Then don't do it. I am a Charlton fan. I will support Charlton whatever league they are in, whoever owns them, whoever is the manager.
If you don't like it, you could always go and watch another club?
And that's exactly how you end up being part of a 3,000 crowd watching Charlton at Selhurst Park. Luckily for you there were many people who thought it was their business to question what the directors said was inevitable, unavoidable and even a good idea.
On a related note, exactly how can it package that message to supporters when it comes to ask them to renew their season tickets, with or without a price increase?
I think this is going to be a major problem for them. I have not renewed my season ticket early since we were relegated from the Premier League apart from the year we won the third division title. I believed that the club (owners etc.) delivered on their promises in the summer of 2011 and I might have given them the benefit of doubt the following summer as it was not known if the championship winning squad was good enough for the second division until they were given a shot at it.
This last summer I believe that they failed to bring players in when I (as well as many others) recognised that we needed to do so.
Despite the current financial position I think it would be unwise to ask fans to part with their money before more players have been signed up for next season. However, even if I refuse to pay for my season ticket in January or March or when ever they ask for it this season, I will not, realistically, let my seat go so will probably renew in the last week before they offer to give my seat away. I left it a week too late to renew my son's seat this year and it has now been sold to someone else.
I completely agree with you that we need new owners, and as I've said I'm not happy with the current contract situation, I just (all be it with much less information that you) am less concerned that we will lose players and not be able to replace them, and I suspect that the current owners are less worried about it than I am.
If one of our mid 20s players is close to being able to earn a sign on bonus elsewhere (especially true from 1st January) I can't see why they would agree to a contract extension now that paid them much less than that. I take on board what you say about keeping players being less expensive than signing new ones but I remember the contract negotiations played out in the press by both Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney, the former of which did it when he had just a few months left. From memory he spoke to Juventus and as good as demanded that Man Utd pay him the same.
Even if you have seen details of the current contracts, and even if the Agents and/or the players are much better able to predict what they are worth than you or I it doesn't stop the Agents from taking the piss and demanding much more than they know they will get elsewhere.
I have no idea how these discussions work, nor do I know if FFP will work as all the clubs might withdraw it when it becomes apparent that one or two will spend more than all the rest, but what I am sure of is that if the Agents are allowed to force the club's hand it will cost money that might be better used elsewhere.
Another subject that we seem to have a different opinion on is potential new owners. I clearly hope that you are right, but I find it difficult to believe that there are many (if any) people out there with enough money that they are willing to invest in our club. It, like all the others, looks like a money pit with no bottom.
We are all aware, AB, that you have an issue with the current owners and board.
But just so we are sure, NOBODY forces me to buy a season ticket. Or to pay my Valley Gold membership. Or to buy a programme every week. I do it because I support Charlton.
I was born in Charlton, on the Cherry Orchard Estate. I went to Charlton Manor and Roan schools. I was taken to my first game at the Valley by my brother before I could read.
Am I unique, or even special? No. I didn't ever go to Selhurst Park, because we had been sold out, and hated the travel.
But I do not deign to tell other supporters to do as I do.
Nor do I tell people what to do with their money. Whether that be a supporter, or the club owners.
We are all aware, AB, that you have an issue with the current owners and board.
But just so we are sure, NOBODY forces me to buy a season ticket. Or to pay my Valley Gold membership. Or to buy a programme every week. I do it because I support Charlton.
I was born in Charlton, on the Cherry Orchard Estate. I went to Charlton Manor and Roan schools. I was taken to my first game at the Valley by my brother before I could read.
Am I unique, or even special? No. I didn't ever go to Selhurst Park, because we had been sold out, and hated the travel.
But I do not deign to tell other supporters to do as I do.
Nor do I tell people what to do with their money. Whether that be a supporter, or the club owners.
I don't think whether the contract situation is a sensible one has anything to do with issues between me and the directors.
The question is not even whether the directors should spend money, it is whether or not there is a rationale behind the situation. If you were unfortunate enough to have lost the roof of your house in Monday's storm then you might not have the money to replace it, but that doesn't mean it would be prudent to continue without a roof or pretend that it was still there.
The reality is that however you react to a situation and however I react, the team doing badly, losing matches, getting relegated, etc, would result in some people not going anymore, as would increasing the prices regardless of that situation. I am not telling anyone to do that, I am recognising that it would happen, and that in turn would cost the club money and weaken it further. You seem to be saying that's not our business. I disagree.
If you don't like people having views about the club then I am not sure why you are on a message board in the first place?
On a related note, exactly how can it package that message to supporters when it comes to ask them to renew their season tickets, with or without a price increase?
I think this is going to be a major problem for them. I have not renewed my season ticket early since we were relegated from the Premier League apart from the year we won the third division title. I believed that the club (owners etc.) delivered on their promises in the summer of 2011 and I might have given them the benefit of doubt the following summer as it was not known if the championship winning squad was good enough for the second division until they were given a shot at it.
This last summer I believe that they failed to bring players in when I (as well as many others) recognised that we needed to do so.
Despite the current financial position I think it would be unwise to ask fans to part with their money before more players have been signed up for next season. However, even if I refuse to pay for my season ticket in January or March or when ever they ask for it this season, I will not, realistically, let my seat go so will probably renew in the last week before they offer to give my seat away. I left it a week too late to renew my son's seat this year and it has now been sold to someone else.
I completely agree with you that we need new owners, and as I've said I'm not happy with the current contract situation, I just (all be it with much less information that you) am less concerned that we will lose players and not be able to replace them, and I suspect that the current owners are less worried about it than I am.
If one of our mid 20s players is close to being able to earn a sign on bonus elsewhere (especially true from 1st January) I can't see why they would agree to a contract extension now that paid them much less than that. I take on board what you say about keeping players being less expensive than signing new ones but I remember the contract negotiations played out in the press by both Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney, the former of which did it when he had just a few months left. From memory he spoke to Juventus and as good as demanded that Man Utd pay him the same.
Even if you have seen details of the current contracts, and even if the Agents and/or the players are much better able to predict what they are worth than you or I it doesn't stop the Agents from taking the piss and demanding much more than they know they will get elsewhere.
I have no idea how these discussions work, nor do I know if FFP will work as all the clubs might withdraw it when it becomes apparent that one or two will spend more than all the rest, but what I am sure of is that if the Agents are allowed to force the club's hand it will cost money that might be better used elsewhere.
Another subject that we seem to have a different opinion on is potential new owners. I clearly hope that you are right, but I find it difficult to believe that there are many (if any) people out there with enough money that they are willing to invest in our club. It, like all the others, looks like a money pit with no bottom.
I don't think we're quite in the Keane and Rooney scenario, but I agree we may well have got to a stage where the club is no longer in control of the situation. I just dispute the idea there is a rationale behind it. These are, after all, the same people racking up legal costs in Steve Kavanagh's case when there's as much chance of it going the distance as of Jimenez winning Businessman of the Year.
It seems to me that absolutely everything is predicated on a takeover and there is no forward plan. Take your point about saving seats, but the current board will need to sell the tickets early for cash flow reasons and with relegation a possibility many people may not be convinced they will need one at all.
Perhaps I ought to add that I am not a pessimist. I believe Chris Powell has a fighting chance of keeping us up and that the club will be taken over sooner rather than later. I just don't think we should be blind to the risks now being run.
Comments
More significantly, the club has no sense of direction or purpose, caused by a complete absence of leadership, other than Chris Powell. It is simply adrift and supporters see that, and respond accordingly. It is possible to provide leadership within an organisation, provide a narrative and a cause around which people can rally, even without money, but no one is doing it.
The net benefit of last year's significant season ticket price increases will have been about £250k, after the reduced take-up. That's about what Charlton pay one player on average. If anyone at the club thinks increasing prices further without investing in the team is going to yield significant additional revenue they must be mad.
The reality is that it usually costs more to recruit footballers than to retain them and even if you take the view that we are likely to be relegated it makes no obvious sense to have players with a potential transfer value falling out of contract unless the marginal cost of re-signing them exceeds both that value and the marginal cost of replacing them.
All we have at present is a situation in which the current owners hope to pass the problems on to their successors. It has little to do with what's good for the club, in my opinion.
We have to question how many players we have they other Championship clubs would want based on where we are in the table. Jackson and Yann are both past 30 and have both had significant injuries in each of the last two seasons. There was a suggestion (by you I think) that the club were desperately trying to sell Wiggins last summer so either no one wanted him or he refused to leave. I'm going to assume that we wouldn't have been stupid enough to demand way too much money for him with a year left on his contract. If he refused to leave that might be because wants to stay (which would make keeping him less of a worry) or he wanted a free contract next summer in which case he might refuse to sign an extension anyway.
I know you have much more information than the rest of us Airman, and I'm not saying that I like the current tactic, but I just understand the logic of those that are making the decisions.
Also, low (by Championship standards) or not, a £5m wage bill doesn't seem sustainable to me. At an average net income of £250 - and I suspect it's less than that - we would need to sell 20,000 season tickets to cover that. I doubt that the sponsorship and corporate income covers the Rates and the debt servicing so lowest in the division or not the wages are, presumably, already too high.
I would also be bold enough to suggest that most of the players would not give up football and change career if they were forced to earn less than £250k a year. If all the clubs offer lower wages on renewal then in the end clubs will be able to move away from expecting rich benefactors to dump c.£10m and move on every couple of years.
Since you alight on Wiggins, let's use him as an example. The "suggestion" that the club wanted to sell a player (for £3m) last summer came from the club, in a document produced on its behalf by a leading firm of accountants. It's set out in black and white, although I accept I have the advantage of having seen it first hand. The name of Wiggins came from the playing management, via a very reliable source, but it could just as easily have been Solly.
I don't personally think Wiggins is likely to be worth anything like £3m in the current market, but let's say he's worth a much more modest £250,000 to another Championship club. I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption. No matter how unrealistic you think footballers are about the general situation - and I suspect they, or at any rate their agents, are much better equipped to judge it than we are - it seems highly unlikely that in the current situation he could command that order of pay rise at Charlton, even spread over a contact extension. Or that he if he is re-signed he will then have no transfer value going forward, barring serious injury.
It seems highly unlikely to me that if we allow him to test the market over the summer he will come back in July with his tail between his legs. More likely he'll turn up at a mid-ranking Championship club having banked what would have been Charlton's fee as a signing-on payment.
Leaving that aside, it's too easy an assumption that because players have not been sold they have no transfer value. Indeed, as the example of Dale Stephens showed, one reason players haven't left is because the club refused to accept the fee offered because it wanted more, even though it may well have been sensible at that point to sell Stephens at the price available and reinvest the proceeds to produce a more balanced squad.
In the same document I have seen all the players' current salaries, other than those who have signed new contracts since last summer, so in that respect I do have an advantage over you, but the reality is that if you further reduce the wage bill relative to other clubs in the division then the overwhelming probability is that the team will be relegated and that will reduce the club's revenue by about £5m. We cannot control what other clubs do. FFP attempts to do so. I think a wise response would be to hedge our bets.
Personally, I neither want nor expect investment from the current owners in what is and will remain a loss-making business, until and unless it returns to the Premier League. I want them out. But even if you paid the players nothing the club would still make a loss on its current revenue. The business is quite obviously unsustainable without investment, so trying to cut costs to break-even will only end one way - in administration.
In general terms you may be right about players' wages. But it remains the case that some players will be able to command more than they did before, because they have improved their position in the market since they signed. Solly is the outstanding example of someone who was chronically underpaid relative to his teammates and was thus able to command a higher salary. What you seem to be saying is that none of the other players is conceivably in that position. I don't believe that and equally I don't believe that they will command the scale of increase that would make it particularly expensive in the short term to secure them.
But mainly where I differ from you is that you are trying to make a business case for behaviour which I don't think stacks up on its own terms, never mind the impact that it must have on Chris Powell's attempts to secure the team's current status. I understand you expect them to behave logically. I think you are wrong.
It seems to me that the club is making a very clear statement that it doesn't value the current squad, while at the same time doing little or nothing to improve it.
On a related note, exactly how can it package that message to supporters when it comes to ask them to renew their season tickets, with or without a price increase?
It never ceases to amaze me how generous people are with other people's money...
From the rumours thread (applies here too I suppose):
If you don't like it, you could always go and watch another club?
This last summer I believe that they failed to bring players in when I (as well as many others) recognised that we needed to do so.
Despite the current financial position I think it would be unwise to ask fans to part with their money before more players have been signed up for next season. However, even if I refuse to pay for my season ticket in January or March or when ever they ask for it this season, I will not, realistically, let my seat go so will probably renew in the last week before they offer to give my seat away. I left it a week too late to renew my son's seat this year and it has now been sold to someone else.
I completely agree with you that we need new owners, and as I've said I'm not happy with the current contract situation, I just (all be it with much less information that you) am less concerned that we will lose players and not be able to replace them, and I suspect that the current owners are less worried about it than I am.
If one of our mid 20s players is close to being able to earn a sign on bonus elsewhere (especially true from 1st January) I can't see why they would agree to a contract extension now that paid them much less than that. I take on board what you say about keeping players being less expensive than signing new ones but I remember the contract negotiations played out in the press by both Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney, the former of which did it when he had just a few months left. From memory he spoke to Juventus and as good as demanded that Man Utd pay him the same.
Even if you have seen details of the current contracts, and even if the Agents and/or the players are much better able to predict what they are worth than you or I it doesn't stop the Agents from taking the piss and demanding much more than they know they will get elsewhere.
I have no idea how these discussions work, nor do I know if FFP will work as all the clubs might withdraw it when it becomes apparent that one or two will spend more than all the rest, but what I am sure of is that if the Agents are allowed to force the club's hand it will cost money that might be better used elsewhere.
Another subject that we seem to have a different opinion on is potential new owners. I clearly hope that you are right, but I find it difficult to believe that there are many (if any) people out there with enough money that they are willing to invest in our club. It, like all the others, looks like a money pit with no bottom.
But just so we are sure, NOBODY forces me to buy a season ticket. Or to pay my Valley Gold membership. Or to buy a programme every week. I do it because I support Charlton.
I was born in Charlton, on the Cherry Orchard Estate. I went to Charlton Manor and Roan schools. I was taken to my first game at the Valley by my brother before I could read.
Am I unique, or even special? No. I didn't ever go to Selhurst Park, because we had been sold out, and hated the travel.
But I do not deign to tell other supporters to do as I do.
Nor do I tell people what to do with their money. Whether that be a supporter, or the club owners.
The question is not even whether the directors should spend money, it is whether or not there is a rationale behind the situation. If you were unfortunate enough to have lost the roof of your house in Monday's storm then you might not have the money to replace it, but that doesn't mean it would be prudent to continue without a roof or pretend that it was still there.
The reality is that however you react to a situation and however I react, the team doing badly, losing matches, getting relegated, etc, would result in some people not going anymore, as would increasing the prices regardless of that situation. I am not telling anyone to do that, I am recognising that it would happen, and that in turn would cost the club money and weaken it further. You seem to be saying that's not our business. I disagree.
If you don't like people having views about the club then I am not sure why you are on a message board in the first place?
It seems to me that absolutely everything is predicated on a takeover and there is no forward plan. Take your point about saving seats, but the current board will need to sell the tickets early for cash flow reasons and with relegation a possibility many people may not be convinced they will need one at all.
Perhaps I ought to add that I am not a pessimist. I believe Chris Powell has a fighting chance of keeping us up and that the club will be taken over sooner rather than later. I just don't think we should be blind to the risks now being run.