The last one ended with penny pinching and being grateful for what we have and new one seems to be starting the same way. I'm feeling a bit fobbed off to be honest.
I know i bang on about Patrick but the period under him was one where the owner put substantial funds in to the club. £2m donations, £5m of written off loans and another £6m of loans only repaid on the sale. The period post under the current owners and their original board saw £750k taken out and broadly £10m spaffed up the wall. Is there any wonder the new board appear to be penny pinching?
We've been a lazy club for years. The answer to needing money has always been for the board to weaken then team to find quick money. The answer for the board is never to find new cash revenues to make us less dependent on player sales.
I just don't feel stripping the squad and using season ticket holders to fund the club is the way forward. It's penalising the wrong people. Need a complete new broom for me.
It's wrong though Helen. The seven million loss should be made up by them. I don't get why people can't and won't see that.
There's two massive differences. Owners who are fans and owners that see it as a business opportunity and a 'play thing' as a status symbol. I know which I'd choose every day of the week.
I'm still optimistic with the signings the club has made and all the new new season vibe. However, my comments from last season still stand. Until the owners put the money in. I'm not putting owt in. A reluctant £1 million doesn't wash with me.
I wouldn’t judge until the transfer window closes. The new board were upfront about the debt we had and that we’d have to sell, they were transparent, honest and didn’t sugar coat it, which is what we all wanted from the last board. I think we all had this idealistic idea (I did) that we’d sell Styles and Helik quickly, which would cover the debt and then we’d start buying, but the reality is that we are not in a position to turn bids down for other players and wait for Styles/Helik to sell. What if no one bids for them, or bidders choose to wait until winter or bidders intentionally wait until the last days of the summer window to put us into a vulnerable position and bid below our asking price, we’d be panic selling to pay that debt. It’s not worth gambling the future of the club. Duff last week said we’d review “bid by bid” unfortunately for us the second acceptable bid was for Morris, not Helik or Styles. It sucks but selling him is better than risking waiting. If by the end of this window we are debt free, have 2 first team players for every position and any new signings are signed using the spreadsheet model then I’d be delighted. Don’t forget who got us into this mess, the new board inherited this problem, I believe they are doing their best to get us out of it and into a position where we can look forward again.
They're part of the old board. It's the same people different tin. They should stump up the cash. They own the club and have the personal wealth to do so. Yes it is an ideology. If you own a business and it's in danger you put in the money to try and get things moving in the right direction. The losses are yours.
So your looking for a sugar daddy to bankroll the club. Bit like our neighbors at Hillsborough they've got one.
It’s not about whether we see that to be desirable - it’s whether it’s even remotely possible that they will. They won’t. We might as well draw up a plan that involves James Cryne winning euromillions than rely on the majority owner chucking money at us.
So are you saying the Crynes lost £7m over the 20 yrs of their ownership and made no money on the sale of the club and sales of players in recent years
So when you’ve got a club in so much trouble you just throw money at it? Yeah, that’s workable. No examples at all of that particular approach ending badly. If you are a responsible owner of a business that wants the business to still be viable long term, you absolutely do not throw good money after bad. Have you ever owned or ran a business - let alone a multimillion turnover one? What you do is restructure, reduce outgoings and realise some assets to get on a more sound footing, then start to reinvest when the turnover is covering outgoings. Even then they still had to put £1million just to keep the plates spinning until assets could start to be realised. I honestly wonder if people are grasping the reality of where the club is.