Chris Roberts

I notice Mickey Evans is the only player who doesn't look thoroughly disgusted with this idiotic scheme.
Unfortunately football really does seem to attract the Walter Mitty-esque sections of society into club ownership. It is so refreshing to finally have a Chairman and board who are not in it for self publicity and their own little ego trips.
How Roberts ever thought this idea would work is beyond me, the PFA would have been up in arms and can you imagine trying to attract new players when they are likely to be disciplined by their own club in this way.

Thank you for putting this up Jon and many would do well to read it all and remember just how bad things were only two short years ago.

If we had been able to rebuild the club in five years after that we would have done well, but the board did it in only two years and got the club back into the football league into the bargain.

After reading this I had to make my Time to stop picking hole post, as we really should be so happy and grateful to those who have restored pride back in our club.

I had forgotten some of the details, but that Gang of 4's sure must have felt they were important, I mean did they believe they were speaking on behalf of all the TUFC fans?

I know they did what they did for the right reasons as they saw it, but sorry what they did was no more than another thorn in Roberts side and had really did not play any real part in him leaving.

As I said on another thread, Roberts knew that Bye had backed so far away from him, he knew he was never going to get the Rec site and he also knew he was unable to meet the next installment.

Merse says they were trying to make the backers see they had the wrong man up front., Walker and CO already knew that and were only ever looking to find the best way out for Saddler's sake.

Bit inflammatory that, Dave. Have a look at the post above. I'm sure you and merse can have a joust over the rest.

Dave, I think it was 34% of the total share value which was getting on for £500,000 (so maybe nearer £170,000?). The next payment would have taken it to 51% followed, in time, by a further 34% tranche. Perhaps someone can confirm that the ultimate 85% shareholding would have represented the Batesons' overall stake?

I'm sure you're correct in saying that Bryn Walker wasn't an investor. I always considered him to be a facilitator - I think Roberts once described him as the director with responsibility for "fundraising" (but not of the raffle ticket and bucket kind I suspect) - and I wonder how the business with Sadler was conducted. Was this on a private basis or through the auspices of Silver Planet, of which Bryn Walker is a director?

Silver Planet's website describes the business in this way: "Silver Planet Group is one of only a few truly independent distributors of wealth preservation and tax management solutions designed to help wealthy companies and individuals keep their tax levels to a minimum. It is this philosophy that drives our business". Hmmm....I'm getting out of my depth.

I totally agree. A lot of speculation gets repeated on the internet and goes down as "fact". Dave R is not a million miles away from the truth, but sometimes fills in gaps to make facts out of speculation.

My take (and that is all it is!) is that Roberts was delusional and genuinely believed he could do a great job of running a football club. I expect the "land" angle was merely his way to raise the capital.

Walker and Sadler were purely in it for the money.

I disagree strongly with Dave R in his belittling of the role fans played in toppling Roberts. I believe that what terrified Walker, and Giordano too, was the threat of their reputations being very publicly trashed by very determined TUFC fans.

When they felt the fans' determination, they had to back away quickly.

If fans had shown no interest, it would have taken longer to isolate Roberts and get him out. If Roberts had been left to it for much longer, then the damage he wrought might well have been irrepairable.

I'm not saying every bit of the strategy was particularly well done or professional and errors may have been made along the way.

It was maybe akin to untrained amateurs attempting open-heart surgery with a rusty pen-knife. You wouldn't dream of getting involved if the patient was only "slightly poorly".

The patient is now in fine shape, so whatever the rights and wrongs, it all turned out far better than anyone dared imagine.

I think you get closer to the FACTS than anyone else on here Jon.

Roberts saw the club as his latest business venture and, needing capital; went to people he knew who would provide that capital and business leads in his quest to build a new stadium.

Roberts believed (I am surmising here) that in order to be welcomed as the new owner and therefore "saviour" of the club, he had to present a shiny new future that the supporters and town would connect with whilst knowing that he did not have the available funds to significantly improve things on the field....................in fact he did admit this off the record to a certain person who whilst he was prepared to tell people verbally of Roberts limitations as regards providing working capital for the "football" was not (I think) prepared to put this in print.

I recall my thinking at the time was "oh well what's different ~ oh I know what's different THIS guy has a positive outlook towards the future (the stadium) and not cynicism" I took this stance because I have always felt that the only realistic way forward for a small provincial football club trying to maintain full time professional football in an unforgiving and largely disinterested town is not on the field of play at all (as such success can only at best be cyclical) but by projecting and developing the business footprint of the club to embrace the potential and positives of their particular area. What other area is there in Torquay than the area of tourism and leisure? Developing community links and providing sporting facilities will go a certain way along the road to increasing the loyalty factor amongst the community but it is not that great a money spinner, certainly not as great as a potential development on the sea front would be that's for sure.

Bryn Walker indeed was and is a "facilitator" as has been described but he also held an interest and layman's knowledge in football and how it connects with the supporters. Being a season ticket and corporate box holder at Birmingham City led him to another football (Walsall) fan ~ Michael Sadler, who also had a need to "use" some of his substantial pension funds to set against tax requirements and thus Sadler was sold an idea to "invest" in Roberts' Torquay United project.

Of course, like all salesmen; Roberts embellished the positives and minimalised the negatives to his backers and the most significant negative was the outcry and objection encapsulated by Dave Roach (and I mean this with respect, Dave) and the general "Torquay reticence" towards large, imaginative projects. The growing ridicule of the supporters in general was another factor that we (the "Four") and others felt should be put in the "in tray" of the investors also and thus the movement towards "No Confidence" was set in motion and the forthcoming TUST "forum" in Boots was the ideal opportunity to bring it to the fore.

Walker then started trying to build bridges and develop conduits of information with the supporters and chose to make his moves through those he sourced on another site that he felt were showing an interested and balanced attitude towards matters as he sensed a growing crisis whereby his client's (Mr Sadler) money was being put at risk and saw the chances of any realistion on this "investment" minimising by the day. This was not only bad for Mr Sadler but potentially catastrophic for Mr Walker and his membership of various professional bodies within the finance industry and thus his business integrity. i.e. he had given bad advice to Mr Sadler due to his being "duped" by Roberts..............................it's still "bad" for Mr Sadler because he now has substantial sums invested in Torquay United shares that are of no use to him AND of no current commercial value either, as the current majority shareholders (the consortium) were perfectly able to increase their own shareholding by taking up the many unsold shares available without recourse to buying him out.

Why was Roberts unable to meet his agreed payments to the Batesons? Because (a) his backers closed down his supply of investment, (b) he failed to attract more than one extra backer{Ms White of major event caterers Sodexo} and (c) the turnover of the football club failed to provide the funds he needed to underwrite that purchase......................and what is more iniquitous than a football club (rather like Man Utd in the case of the Glazers) effectively "buying itself" for a new owner?

Dave, Jon is right; you should not have ridiculed the "four" and you know you did it to use as a weapon towards me. I did not bring up the subject of the "four" for any other reason than to illustrate that mine was not blind obedience to the Roberts' mantra ~ far from it. What I saw at the time was an opportunity of light at the end of the very long and dark tunnel of restriction in the way that OUR football club has always had to run and my growing concern that attacks on Roberts were by association attacks on the football club (like him or not he was the 'new Bateson') and likely to bring about it's demise which was not what anyone wanted.