Albion Assembly share Ron Gourlay stance on West Brom loan controversy as Steve Bruce attends
Ron Gourlay spoke honestly and openly about money owed to West Brom by owner Guochuan Lai in an Albion Assembly meeting on Thursday night.
Steve Bruce became the first Baggies manager to attend the fan-focused meeting while new director of medical Tony Strudwick was also in attendance.
The Albion Assembly confirmed this via their Twitter account on Friday morning (26 August), accompanied by an image of Bruce speaking to fans and a list of the attendees.
While it could be some time before the minutes of the meeting are released, Albion Assembly’s Twitter account say CEO Gourlay “didn’t swerve or duck any questions put forward about the outstanding loans”.
When asked if Gourlay expects the £10million of loans to be repaid in full, the account added: “He referred back to the statement that followed the release of the accounts. Let’s wait and see…”
Action, not words
West Brom fans have already lost faith in Lai.
He’s failed to put a single money into the club since buying it from Jeremy Peace in 2016 and while he didn’t promise to ever do that, he’s taken money out and now owes the club around £10million.
Half of that is from a loan he inherited from Peace but to the detriment of the Baggies, there’s no repayment date on that.
And the other half was revealed in the club’s financial accounts for the 2020/21 season that were released earlier this summer.
Lai took £4.95million out of West Brom to help a struggling overseas company he’s involved with.
One repayment date has already been missed and the interest is fixed at a measly £50,000.
It has already been promised that loan will be repaid before the January transfer window re-opens – but that doesn’t help Bruce right now when he’s seeing striker target after striker target go elsewhere while Daryl Dike is injured.
And it doesn’t answer what’s going on with the loan inherited from Peace, although that could be because an investigation has been launched [The Express & Star].
We’ll await the full minutes of the meeting but we doubt there’ll be anything said that will rebuild the fractured relationship between the Chinese ownership and West Brom’s increasingly frustrated fanbase.
In other West Brom news, Nigel Quashie has shared what everyone is telling him behind the scenes about Jake Livermore amid heightened criticism.
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