Football's Financial Shame: The Story of the V11

Don't see why it is football's financial shame.

Ashers said:

I'm sure we all feel very sorry for Danny Murphy. Just hope he managed to keep his watch.

Difficult to have any sympathy for him.

valleynick66 said:

cafcfan said:

Ashers said:

I'm sure we all feel very sorry for Danny Murphy. Just hope he managed to keep his watch.

Difficult to have any sympathy for him.

He doesn’t seem to
Know if he lost either £4m or £5m according to the news interview today. 

Surely you’d know which !

I cite that because it highlights the naivety of these footballers in my opinion. Whether they were wronged or greedy I don’t know. 

Its a little harsh.  High earners will have people who do the books for them, so no way they are in the detail.  Also, as it was an investment scam, money lost 20 years ago could well be between 4-5m depending on how the fund has performed.

I am not a Danny Murphy apologist.  If it were Scott Parker on the other hand...... 

jose said:

Even unpleasant people can get scammed.

As far as I can tell from the article, they weren't scammed but took advice (which turned out to be wrong) about avoiding tax through investments in specific sectors. The investments turned to crap in 2008 and the tax advice was wrong leaving them with big tax bills and little to sell to pay them. 

Worth adding context - tax avoidance is wholly legal and entirely appropriate. Any poster on here with a private pension, an investment, or is employed in the private sector, will be benefiting from tax avoidance.  Tax avoidance is about not paying tax where you don't need to. There can be a moral aspect for some, but that doesn't override the legal nature of tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is illegal.

matt88 said:

Looks like one of the people in that photo in the article is Curtis Fleming? Perhaps caught up in it too. 

There are a few hundred of sportsperson’s from that era in the late 90’s caught up in this. Well known English cricketers as well as the footballers mentioned so far. 

Fuck em. Fuck em all the immoral greedy pieces of shit.

Jints said:

jose said:

Even unpleasant people can get scammed.

As far as I can tell from the article, they weren't scammed but took advice (which turned out to be wrong) about avoiding tax through investments in specific sectors. The investments turned to crap in 2008 and the tax advice was wrong leaving them with big tax bills and little to sell to pay them. 

As far as I can see the "advice" came from a firm that was acting as an appointed representative of an FCA regulated company.  But that, crucially, the "advice" was in respect of unregulated investments. If that is the case, then obviously neither the regulation nor the compensation schemes apply.

Perhaps also worth noting that unregulated investments are really only marketable to "certified high net worth individuals" or "certified sophisticated  investors". The former are people with earnings in excess of £100k pa or net assets of 250k. The later are individuals with experience of investing in off-market products. Clearly you can see that some premier league footballers would feel all warm and fuzzy having been described as a HNWI or CSI.
 
The irony here of course is that signing up to be a certified HNWI or CSI and therefore immediately removing vast layers of financial protection otherwise available to you kind of indicates that you are an idiot rather than a sophisticated investor!  A bit of a dichotomy.

Many years ago I used to investigate dodgy financial schemes. There are two over-riding themes that the investors tell you when you interview them. First the person that took their money "seemed like such a nice guy" (it's usually a guy) and I'd often brutally remind them that they wouldn't have given money to an obnoxious git would they? Second, they admitted that they knew all about "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" but that they got greedy. 

Some interesting stuff here about it all.  https://citywire.com/new-model-adviser/news/football-films-and-finance-how-two-ifas-hit-the-headlines/a858394

The forgery of signatures is fraud. Beggars belief that part of it has not ended up in criminal justice being served 

So, rich young men try to get richer in dodgy scheme. Would it be a story if they weren’t footballers?

Nug said:

Some weird personal comments on here. These sportsmen were taken advantage of and manipulated at a young age and as stated by City of London police were victims of a crime. Whatever people think of Danny Murphy because he decided to leave for Spurs, Davis, Wallace and Thomas looked absolutely broken men. No one deserves that whether footballers or not. Howard Wilkinson didn’t come out of this show well.

It’s because he used to brag to staff at Charlton about how much money he had. Nothing to do with the Spurs move. 

BalladMan said:

valleynick66 said:

cafcfan said:

Ashers said:

I'm sure we all feel very sorry for Danny Murphy. Just hope he managed to keep his watch.

Difficult to have any sympathy for him.

He doesn’t seem to
Know if he lost either £4m or £5m according to the news interview today. 

Surely you’d know which !

I cite that because it highlights the naivety of these footballers in my opinion. Whether they were wronged or greedy I don’t know. 

Its a little harsh.  High earners will have people who do the books for them, so no way they are in the detail.  Also, as it was an investment scam, money lost 20 years ago could well be between 4-5m depending on how the fund has performed.

I am not a Danny Murphy apologist.  If it were Scott Parker on the other hand...... 

If you discovered you’d lost such a significant sum of money, you’d expect the figure to be fixed in your mind, down to the last penny. I’d imagine most people would at least quote it to the nearest £100,000 (especially if youre being interviewed for a BBC documentary about it). It might seem a minor point, but saying the loss was “between £4m and £5m” either suggests an imprecise understanding of his own finances, or implies that he's kind of boasting that the difference of £1m is of little consequence to him.

jimmymelrose said:

I caught the end of the programme and I can only assume that those posters above being nasty about these players are either heartless or didn’t watch the programme. If it’s the former than you’re all far worse people than Danny Murphy has ever been.

What I don’t understand however is how anyone who has more than a hundred thousand to invest, does so in one investment plan. 
’Spread your bets’
’Don’t put all your eggs in one basket'
You’ve only had to just hear one of these expressions to know better. I myself feel that I was a bit scammed by a company that persuaded me after Brexit that their fund was better than having pension plans left in the UK. After 8 years it’s performed badly and the fees are extortionate so I’m going to have to, at cost, move it again. I would never have put everything I have into it, however good it sounded at the time.
These guys are losing their homes! Why on earth did they put everything into this investment?  They had millions to spread out. 

Werent personally being nasty, just an observation that if Murphy is being flippant regarding the amount he lost, it does possibly show some sort of naivety around money in the first place

I recall watching a programme about Danny Murphy a few years back.

 In the interview he stated that the first bit of advice he got from someone at Liverpool when signing his first Liverpool contract, was not to take any financial advice from the barrage of lepers that will now hound him.

He then went on to say a few weeks later he was walking past a flat for sale in Chester or somewhere like that saw a flat for sale and went in and bought it. Directly no mortgage.

Felt a lot more sympathy for Sean Davis than I did for Murphy last night (talksport and bbc work no doubt bringing in the coin as Jermaine Jenas would say)

I’ve always been wary of IFA’s and probably explains why I’m so risk averse with my money despite being heavily involved in ‘risk’ in my daily job (not my own money I suppose)

Undoubtedly these guys including our own assistant manager got duped by these individuals and it happens all the time at a much lower level than ex premier league footballers still making plenty of money from the game, but good on them for taking on the system