A copy of the below communication was sent to all members following the release of Raj Singh’s HUFC video.
Dear Members,
The last 24 hours have confirmed that we should never expect a quiet life as Pools fans! Many will have taken Herd Group’s press release as good news – the long rumoured prospective buyers confirming their identity and ambitions.
We’ve been crying out for an owner who shares our passion, and wants all supporters pulling together, backing our club. Someone who wants to be striving for promotion, not scrambling for survival. Reading the press release from Shelley Hammond’s Herd Group this all feels possible.
There are no guarantees in football but ambition is a great starting point and we know from working with Shelley Hammond over the last 18 months that she has plenty of that! She has also shown incredible determination, passion and energy to try to get the deal done. Shelley has explained a funding model that seems very sound to us and made it clear that she favours genuine, democratic supporter representation. She has our best wishes.
Make no mistake, it will take hard work and togetherness to rebuild our club, which barring a notable promotion and cup exploits, has been heading in the wrong direction for the best part of a decade. But, with new owners, it is possible. If HUST gets the opportunity to invest in the club it will be voted on in a properly organised ballot of all members
Next came Raj Singh’s own much rumoured communication effort – a very soft interview dressed up as a serious piece of news with the help of Paul Frost. The response to this on social media has been scathing and, although it would be easy to join in with the widespread mockery of the video, it did contain some serious points that we’d like to look at.
First, the casual dismissal of most of the club’s debts as “inter-group” meaning that the debts are to Mr Singh’s other companies. From what we’ve seen of the club’s accounts it is reasonable to estimate that these debts are now well over two million pounds. These debts are extremely dangerous. If they were called in they would throw the club into immediate and serious jeopardy. They are also the mechanism that Mr Singh uses to justify asking for large payments in exchange for a business which makes substantial losses most years. We know this from our involvement in previous takeover attempts – negotiations centre on how much has to be paid for Mr Singh to drop these debts. If they continue to accumulate the club will become completely unsellable.
When Darlington FC went out of existence the key block to their survival attempts was debt to their main creditor, Raj Singh. The warning is very clear.
Second, when Mr Singh boasts of putting £215k into the club recently he reveals a major issue. He says, “The wages wouldn’t have been paid, the HMRC would have served a winding up order, and people know the rest after that.” This means that the club Mr Singh claims to be well run had unpaid bills to the HMRC which must have dated back way further than May of this year for a winding up order to be impending. To make himself look like a saviour Mr Singh has exposed the fact that these bills went unpaid under his ownership – he wants our gratitude for saving our club from a crisis he caused!
Finally, Mr Singh asked HUST questions about democracy. One of our members already commented on this on social media and we can’t improve on what he said: “For the avoidance of doubt. HUST members elect their board and HUST has a clearly written constitution to govern the society. Given Raj appointed a ’fans rep’ without the actual involvement of fans, it’s perhaps unsurprising that he doesn’t understand democracy.”
As a democratically elected board we’d like to repeat a simple message to Raj Singh that we believe most of our members will agree with: You have a credible offer from a credible buyer, please stop turning our club into a laughing stock and putting it into danger, take the offer and go. Everybody connected to Pools needs a new start.
The HUST Board.