Impressions from last night

I have now had a chance to catch up with the whole of the broadcast of last nights session with PC, PH and LB and I have also had time to consider what was said. It must first be said that these things are about presentation and message and less about answering difficult questions. The mainly friendly questions about the pricing of match day tickets were answered smoothly and without the personal circumstances of individual supporters being used as background colour, so difficult follow up questions were, on the whole, avoided. Rather than being timed to coincide with a difficult pricing announcement, I felt that the meeting had been timed to coincide with the happy announcement of the new scoreboard, and this was certainly the big news that broke on the BBS last night. Personally, I have watched football for over 50 years without the benefit of a video screen, and I could quite happily survive into the future without that benefit too, so that was not the big news for me.

The headline for me was statement by Patrick Cryne that the annual financial statement will show that the club lost £1 million for last year. The impact of that statement is that in a year when we made two trips to Wembley, we still lost money. In fact Mr Cryne added that we had made a profit in only one year since he had taken it over, and that was the year that John Stones was sold.

Those who read my infrequent contributions to this board would have noted my attempts to quell the excitement about the potential windfall from the sale of John Stones by Everton. It was interesting that Patrick Cryne attempted to do the same thing, but it is important that what he said is interpreted properly. He said that the money would be used in order to strengthen the club's balance sheet, but what does that mean. Now I do not know for certain what it means, but I can tell you what I think it means. I think it means that the club has no intention of blowing the lot on a short lived spending spree. Mr Cryne spoke about how the first instalment of the Stones fee allowed the club to increase its cost base, and how that could not be sustained over the long term. Reading between the lines, his words told a tale of how mistakes were made and how lessons had been learned. I believe the cash will be used to build slowly using the template that we are operating under now as a guide, but do not expect the club to move away from that template even if relegation could be the inevitable result.

The club must be weaned away from the bottle feeding by its benefactor. It must learn to stand on its own feet. As well as a football club, it is also a business and it must make decisions according to sound business principles. Slow and strategic growth is preferable to feast and famine, which is unfortunately what you get as a benefactor loses patience and gradually withdraws financial support. I want my football club to live on after I am gone in order to give future generations the pleasure and pain that I have experienced, and the only guarantee of that is that it becomes self sustainable.

 

The council wont sell their share, nor do i want them to thinking about it.....whilst ever BMBC own part of the ground/land no one can come in and asset strip the club..thats one of the reasons we never get big investors coming in....without the ground / land the big business hasnt nothing to borrow against....all they would be doing is buying the team......then if the rent for the ground wasnt payed we could end up with a middlesborough situation that took place some years ago.

Its been a major ongoing argument between PC and the BMBC of late.

 

If The Council won't sell the 50% they own, I trust they are willing to pay for 50% of the scoreboard and the rebuilding of the West Stand when that is found to be required.

 

Does the Club pay a commercial level rent? I'd guess not and if also guess that the club is liable therefore for all upkeep.

 

Was there any context as to how we lost so much money given we were supposedly operating under SCMP?

 

Imagine the out cry if they did..lol..on saying that the part of the business that owns the team pays rent to the other part of the business that owns the ground basically, so as tennants, the team side are responsible for the upkeep of the ground and improvements...i think thats how it works

 

I thought that the 50/50 deal was done to protect the assets, and so put them in a kind of trust.

 

We bought our house under a shared ownership scheme - 50% mortgage, 50% rent. We have to pay for the upkeep 100%.

 

But that isn't in doubt, the question is how it happens given the constraints of SCMP?

 

Pretty sure in the last set of accounts I saw, the club pay around £100,000 per annum, in rent.

 

http://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/scmp.php

 

So what we are saying is that our wage bill exceeds income by approx £2 million? In the 3rd division. And with us being one of the better run clubs?

Football is ****ed

 

I've not seen the video yet. Does Patrick explicitly say last "season" or last "year"?

If he's referring to a tax year that encompassed the previous season where we didn't win anything and probably still had some Championship earners then I can understand the loss. If he's referring to the season just ended with a League 1 playing staff and two Wembley trips, we may as well pack up and go home - football's screwed.

 

It was. And all these years later, it still hasn't sunk in for some...

 

Just watched the whole session, In Patrick we have someone who no questions asked will always do the best for BFC, there will be no off to Brizzie or on his bike up the M1, while he`s at the helm they have my unquestioning support. Great Q&A well done to all three.

 

I cannot remember the exact words, but he went on to explain that we made very little from the two trips to Wembley, so I am certain that he was referring to last season.