Crystal Palace FC: Epitaph Denied.

Although it really doesn't matter much in the great scheme of things today has been a momentous day for my local football club, Crystal Palace FC. At 15:00 this afternoon they faced a deadline to find a new owner or face bankruptcy and being consigned to the pages of history. They found a new owner.

Like a lot of football clubs Crystal Palace got into a lot of trouble when the credit crunch hit and their high level of borrowing suddenly became unaffordable. As the clubs main creditor was it's Chairman this wasn't seen as much as a problem because he was unlikely to file for bankruptcy against himself. Then Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs got involved and started bankruptcy proceedings against the club over an unpaid tax bill. This unleashed endless confusion as on somedays the 'Palace was a metaphor for me and my barracks. Then on other days it was a metaphor for Croydon Council and their barracks and on some days it was a metaphor for MI5 and their barracks in Northern Ireland.

Amid all this nonsense there was still no need to worry because as the club was, in sporting terms, a strong investment a new consortium of buyers (the consortium) was soon found. The only problem was that the clubs main asset, its stadium, was not owned by the club. To make matters worse the company that did own the stadium also went bankrupt meaning the stadium became the property of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). As you may remember following the credit crunch the main shareholder in the Royal Bank of Scotland is the UK Government.

Today's drama has been caused by a dispute over the sale of the stadium to the consortium. RBS were prepared to sell it at a knockdown price provided it was only used as a stadium. If the land use was later changed to build houses then RBS wanted a percentage of the profits. In the event of the land use changing the consortium were only prepared to pay RBS a fixed sum. This led to a white knuckle ride where RBS agreed this afternoon to sell the stadium to the consortium under terms that I have yet to read.

Personally I've always known how much Crystal Palace FC is worth to the local economy so I was just waiting to see how far the Brits would go before they chickened out.




Oh and as it's Tuesday I've been to the pub. The usual pub was broken so we had to find a new pub. This took a little while but the new pub had beer so everything was OK.