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Blackpool fan here. A few personal observations :
1. I think you should get yourself organised to fight. The EFL are already enmeshed in possible litigation cases with several clubs, and have other disputes pending with several more. I doubt that they really have the capacity or will to fight hard on the case load they already have. Set yourselves up to be difficult.
2. Thank God Harvey has gone and been replaced by Parry. You might get more common sense, more empathy, and a hell of a lot less hubris. However, some of Harvey’s apparatchiks remain in the organisation and you will encounter their organisational and cultural inertia before too long.
3. Do your homework and your own due diligence, if you can. Our experience is that they are an organisation who don’t seem to fully understand their own rules. Nor do they apply them consistently, when they can be persuaded to apply them at all. They don’t respond well to challenge, but they often appear embarrassed by it.
4. I think time is currently on your side. They will want a quick resolution so that they can get on with preparing for next season with some certainty about which teams are playing where. It may make them more amenable to a compromise solution in the short term than they will be later on. So I would want to get one now, if I were you.
5. Use your MP well. She is articulate, photogenic, appears to want to be involved and she has some clout. We would have loved to have MPs like that. In fact, Parliament as a whole (Damian Collins in particular) are increasingly waking up to how rotten an edifice English football is. Milk that for all you are worth.
All personal views and I seek to speak for no-one else. Good luck.
Blackpool fan here.
I feel for you and your predicament, as most fans will. We know only too well how you will be feeling. The reason for the post is to just share a few thoughts about Gerald Krasner.
GK gave evidence at the Belon v Oyston case, as an expert valuation witness for the Oystons.
It was an interesting session. He was greeted with the equivalent of a slap with a wet fish by Counsel for Mr. Belokon, who asked him why the judge in a past case (Hopkins v Dallas) has cast doubt upon the quality of his evidence. And further asked if Begbie’s past professional dealings with the Oyston family caused him any potential conflicts of interest.
He was very old school in his approach – he said (more or less) that running a football club was more art than science and that no two clubs were alike. Nevertheless he thought the value of L1 and L2 clubs fell within a fairly narrow band and thus put the value of Blackpool at (from memory) around £5-6m.
This seemed an odd conclusion, given that the club’s balance sheet showed outstanding loans to the Oystons amounting to well over £20m. Under cross-examination, he seemed completely blind-sided by this, and at the very least did not seem to know anything about what the status of those loans were. From an “expert” witness, it was a deeply unconvincing performance. Of course, if you are cynical about these things you could argue that his assessment of value was realistic, given who the loanees were. But he wasn’t in court to give evidence about that.
Anyway, having listened to him for a couple of hours, and faithfully recorded what he said, I was not at all impressed. And, as a matter of personal taste, I think he has been saying rather too much about the work he and his colleagues are doing, over the weekend. That was not the approach followed by the Receivers at Blackpool, who said very little publicly until they had something concrete to say. By contrast, Mr Krasner seems to enjoy being in the public eye.
Make of this what you will. I just thought some of you would be interested by an outside view.