For the next five days, lawyers worked day and night; they gave us a lot of financial information, so we understood there was an urgency.

We are almost certainly going to appeal. We believe that attending the meeting (with Cole in January) did not go over the line… we think that the sanctions are totally disproportionate to the alleged sin.

[Buck reveals the club was sinking in a quagmire of debt.] I personally was surprised, … They had a ‘£75m Eurobond outstanding and it was perfectly clear to the markets that they might have trouble...

Montel has great hands, great speed, good height, excellent jumping ability — all the qualities you look for. He does a great job of going to the ball.

We are not overly happy but respect the decision made by the panel. We are not likely to appeal but would like to reserve the right to while waiting to hear the official reasoning from...

The overall loss increase is, in the main, down to some exceptional items that were necessary in order to help us achieve our strategic business aim of break even by 2009-10. In simple terms, we...

I was sorry that Ken went off in a huff. I was just a fan in those days, with no aspirations other than for the team to win two or three in a row, and...

Having said that, Roman has a reasonably long-term view ? and the business plan that was put together was a five-year business plan. We are doing a lot of things to make the club more...

We would like to put this incident behind us. We are not likely to appeal but we would like reserve that decision until we see the reasoning of the panel which we expect tomorrow. We...

What Montel allows us to do is to control the secondary so you can do more up front,

From an operating loss perspective – which was ‘£13m last year – that will go down but the total loss will go up because there were a lot of exceptional charges this year.

We sat down and said we wanted this club to be profitable. Peter and Paul were directed to put together a business plan that would make us profitable. Having said that, Roman has a reasonably...

It was important to Roman when he bought the club that it was in the Champions League because he wanted to accomplish something immediately,

We’re very disappointed that Arsenal chose to pursue this course of action,

You have seen the transfer spend go down just in one year and you will see it keep going down,

The past three weeks, teams haven’t thrown the ball his way.

Even though I was a Chelsea fan, I didn’t appreciate in 2003 that Chelsea was in particular financial difficulty. So it was an eye-opener for me when we were doing due diligence to see what...

We’re not deliberately making it worse. I’ve read they move the ball mostly on the ground; we move it in the air. I’m not sure that’s an accurate portrayal of a Chelsea system.

Having said that, we announced a significant loss last year and we are going to announce a significant loss today.

(Worthy) is an athlete. We just have to find a place for him on the field.

It makes things a little bit harder, but we’ll be okay.

I’m sure there’ll be conversations about the tapping-up rule and let’s see what develops. The rules could certainly be tweaked in this area.

[During July 2003, Abramovich paid a 15p-per-share premium on the trading price of a fortnight previously. Even the ‘£17m this netted Ken Bates was initially insufficient for the then chairman.] I’m told he said he...

He appreciates that this is a long-term strategy and he supports where we are and where we are going.