Reading between the lines on this judgement and the knowledge of posters on the thread , it seems like a lump sum will inevitably have to be paid to SDI in order to end this painfully long drawn out saga .
It’s not going to be a million but it’s not going to be £10 million either. You’d think a payment of around £5 million will easily cover the 1mill from last season , same for this and next , plus cover the injunction .
As we are losing a fortune every time we lose in court anyway , is it not time to take a step back, pay them the £4 or £5 mill ( roughly) and get shot of these utter parasites once and for all ? The situation can’t continue and I’d rather spend that money getting rid of Ashley and SDI for good than sign another player , for example .
At some point we need to pull up stumps and call an end to the charade .
There is no lump sum payment to get rid of them. Frankly, unless we paid an astronomical and unrealistic amount, I see no reason to believe SDI would happily shake hands and walk away.
We're past that now, long past it.
They want the control they have written into the terms, all making it their choice how long this "relationship" lasts.
As far as I can see, and I've been saying this for the past couple of years now, they hold all the aces in terms of the contract.
We can and should boycott anything that puts money in MA's pockets, that goes without saying, but it would need to be a long-term and sustained effort to see if it actually makes any difference to their desire to keep us under their cosh.
When King and Co signed the new deal to get out of the 7 year one, they hailed it as a great move that normalised the revenues we were making from sales and urged us to get out and buy kit.
In truth, while the matching clause is the crux of the problem in all this, the shorter term of the new deal made sense, because it at least let us go to market and negotiate better terms more frequently knowing that at worst SDI would have to match them.
It was never an ideal scenario, but there was a logic to it.
The bit I'm less convinced by is the strategy to go and set up this Hummel/Elite deal, which is now biting us on the arse. Reading every court result around it since, it's looked unfathomable that it was ever going to work in our favour and like it was a flagrant breach of the contract we had with SDI - hence a huge risk that we'd end up liable for costs, damages and whatever else may come. Losing this also reinforces SDI's position legally for next time around.
It's definitely looking like we've either taken really poor legal advice or been reckless at a business level.
There's no doubt a fair way to go back and forth in this, but I don't see anything to suggest our case is getting any stronger as we go or more likely to start swinging to our side.
I hope to be wrong, but I am not even close to buying into the "masterplan" idea at all. There's just nothing whatsoever to suggest that's the case.