You raise some interesting points...
With regard to point 1, you make it sound like those guests coming on to explain what is happening a bad thing. We give all our guests a free platform for comment.
You also appear to have pre-supposed that FFP isn't the big issue the club is claiming, and that in fact the club is over-playing its importance. Indeed, you called it 'spin'. Do you have any evidence to support your pre-supposition? If so, it would have been good to have heard it before we recorded the show (FFP has been in place for quite a while now), in order to know to ask the right questions.
In researching FFP (the information is freely available on t'interweb, and it is a brain-fryer to a non-accountant), I couldn't find anything to say that it's not important to the Albion, and to football in general. Therefore, in the absence of any information to infer that the club is lying, what sort of challenge would you expect the show to make? What sort of challenge to the club's assertion that FFP is important would you make now?
With regards point 2, as has been stated, the accounts are not with Companies House yet, so no-one knows how the figures were arrived at, and where the expenditure was. When they are lodged and published, there are several people on here who will go through them with a fine tooth comb, and ask the relevant questions. However, as has also been stated, Tony Bloom has not received a penny in repayment.
Point 3 - I'm not sure of the point you're making. The £8m deficit is the club's headline trading loss figure. At present, that figure falls within the rules of FFP. In two years, that figure of £8m wouldn't fall within the rules; the maximum allowed would be £5m. Paul Barber was very explicit on that, several times.
Point 4 - again, I'm not sure of the point you're making. But as it looks like an Accounts question, again, we'll have to wait for the published figures.
Point 5 - I don't disagree we could have challenged a bit more about the contention that the cheaper seats weren't so easy to find online.
Point 6 - No-one, it appeared to me, was trying to hide - or hide behind - anything. In fact, the fact that they stated where they're at at present smacks to me of a level of openness. If you're challenging their honesty, let us (or better stiil, them) know where and how you think they're spinning us. Of course the club should be striving for better efficiency - that's a given - but they've still got to find savings / higher income that is minimum £3m better than they're trading at at the moment.
Anyhoo, thanks for listening in, and for your comments.
