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Post by Dan on Jan 15, 2020 8:46:05 GMT
I see Gloucester City's last 8 home match attendances have all been below 400 and half of them below 300.
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Post by stonesforlife on Jan 15, 2020 9:05:41 GMT
If were over budget, our budget must be pretty low, when you look at the level we bought some players in from, that cant be on big wages, like leatherhead, three bridges, etc, looks like the owners have really tightened up what we are paying Being professionals and this being their only income then I would expect the players to be on a minimum of £400 per week. A squad of 18 would therefore cost the club £7200 per week . As every other game is away that works out at £14,400per fortnight and last nights attendance of 1200 will not have been enough to pay the wages let alone all the running costs of the club. This is juston £400per week per player but I bet some are on more than that still not bad money for kicking a little ball about ,beats working for a living. PS. I forgot the management and coaches so if you add their wages into the equation you can see why we are struggling financially. But also add to the pot, the pitch usage 6 days a week, plus kids academy sessions, and spitfire hire for functions, and food and drink on match days, with a crowd of around 1800 mostly this season.
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Post by 61666 on Jan 15, 2020 9:16:39 GMT
I see Gloucester City's last 8 home match attendances have all been below 400 and half of them below 300. Interesting. So where are they getting their money from? Not hard to guess! Previous posts have shown our likely approximate wage bill, so clubs on gates in the hundreds MUST have additional funding to survive, not least because our business model relies heavily on the extra income the 3G pitch hire brings in. This situation points to the fact that a lot of non league clubs are being bank rolled, all round the country, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why Terry and Oliver can't find the additional investment at the moment. All the investors are otherwise engaged. When you think that the average Premier League player could probably fund a club at our level out of loose change down his sofas, it only serves to highlight the imbalance between the haves and have nots. Peter Crouch, for example, was happy to waste £25k swapping a brand new Aston Martin for some a little less ostentatious, because he realised it looked a bit of a prat driving it. Personally, while disappointed, am not devastated. Lower league football has its own attractions, not least cost, ease of parking, not needing to get to the game an hour beforehand, etc. It's the same game, regardless of level and our facilities are better than most. In the medium term, the development squad is a big pointer towards going forward - grow our own players, who have strong attachment to their home town club and eventually get success without shelling out vast fortunes. It's been done before!
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Post by jdl on Jan 15, 2020 9:38:11 GMT
We're clearly still paying for letting Jay go and the Clown fiasco. The owners cocked up big time (and I'm sure they'd admit that) and then pumped money into to the club to try and fix the damage. And we all know how well that went ..
The end result was that belts had to be tightened this season. But, to their credit, they didn't just do that - they kept the squad full-time, and they let JS/HH go over budget with their initial team building.
But it was clear from the start that the management were expected to trim the wage bill later, once they they knew which players were worth keeping. And that's what's happening at the moment. In fact, by the sound of it, it's still got a way to go, as we're still over budget.
But, looking on the positive side, even with a reduced squad, we're still looking good and quite a few of JS's buys have turned out to be really good value. Were it not for games in hand, we'd be in the playoffs, and we look good enough to still be there at the end of the season. Which is pretty much what most of us hoped for this season.
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Post by porkystone on Jan 15, 2020 9:40:21 GMT
I see Gloucester City's last 8 home match attendances have all been below 400 and half of them below 300. Gloucester currently play @ Evesham's Ground ( not even in the same county ), so no surprise gates are low, currently 19th of 22 in their league, so signing a quality striker like McClure a gamble to stay in National North.
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Post by bear5 on Jan 15, 2020 9:42:40 GMT
Disappointing about MM but he's every right to get more money - I doubt many players at this level gets a contract of more than 9 or 12 months so the onus is on them to get as much money as possible.
As for the budget, I wonder how much was taken up with George and Jake Cole? They were the two signings which stood out from all the rest because they had been playing at a higher level. Also, Dan Wishart must be up there in terms of the highest paid.
I think it all says much more about football in general than Maidstone in particular - 95%(?) of clubs are simply living beyond their means and relying on someone to pay the bills and bail them out. It's difficult to argue with T&O that this isn't sustainable.
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Post by sword65 on Jan 15, 2020 9:50:18 GMT
Being professionals and this being their only income then I would expect the players to be on a minimum of £400 per week. A squad of 18 would therefore cost the club £7200 per week . As every other game is away that works out at £14,400per fortnight and last nights attendance of 1200 will not have been enough to pay the wages let alone all the running costs of the club. This is juston £400per week per player but I bet some are on more than that still not bad money for kicking a little ball about ,beats working for a living. PS. I forgot the management and coaches so if you add their wages into the equation you can see why we are struggling financially. But also add to the pot, the pitch usage 6 days a week, plus kids academy sessions, and spitfire hire for functions, and food and drink on match days, with a crowd of around 1800 mostly this season. But this pitch will need relaying in a couple of season at huge cost so any income from its hire has to be put to one side or at least a fair percentage of it. When we set out with this business model it was on the understanding that the 3G pitch would last a minimum 10 years but chronic overuse has cut that down to 5-6 years and these pitches aren't getting any cheaper. By the time we next play at home we will have had one home game in 24 days but I know that will even itself out by the end of the season but nonetheless we would have paid out £20-25,000 in wages for last nights measly takings.
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Post by jdl on Jan 15, 2020 9:55:30 GMT
As for the NS being our 'natural level' - is that such a bad thing?
I think most of those who were around in the 80s and 90s would agree that things have moved on in non-league over the last 30 years, and the 'Conference' (NL) of today is much more like Div 4 of the League was then (if not harder). So today's NS is pretty much the same level as the old Conference. We were ok with that being our 'natural level' then, why not now?
I enjoyed the NL years (despite everything!), just like I enjoyed Div 4, and I'd like to see the club back at that level. But, if there's one thing history has taught us, it's that there's a very high price to be paid for playing at that level. The first time it broke the club, and, even though the second time wasn't as disastrous, it was certainly traumatic.
We're a top non-league club, which expects to do well most seasons, and always has the expectation of the occasional promotion or good cup run to look forward to. Without extra funding, we're not a regular NL/EFL club. We might grow into that, but let's do it that way. One Thompson is enough in anyone's lifetime.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2020 9:59:10 GMT
Lots of discussion about the financial situation. What follows is a guess and it could be totally wrong, but I do have a suspicion Oliver and Terry are starting to pay themselves back at least part of the huge loans they put into the club. I guess the accounts will reveal whether that is correct.They may have a long-term exit strategy from the club that includes reducing the value of their director's loans. Don't shoot me down if I'm wrong, it's just a thought.
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Post by sword65 on Jan 15, 2020 10:01:57 GMT
I would like to apologise for my last post but I am not going to he is a greedy cnut. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I hope he f**king enjoys playing in front of 400 fans week in week out. I hope the river Severn rises up and drowns him, God I hate greedy bastards! I think you’re being very unfair. I’ve no doubt McClure is being paid a lot less here than when he was in the FL. It’s his career, his living, he doesn’t have some sort of moral obligation to stay with us. It’s easy for us as fans to accuse players of greed but we all love a pay rise, don’t we? He’s going, let’s get over it, we’ve got a number of good forwards so maybe John and Hakan will redistribute his wage and get in a quality midfielder or defender. To the best of my knowledge he has swapped a full time club for a part time club so heis getting more money for doing less work ,that makes him not only greedy but lazy as well. You are though right more money,less work it's a no brainer really. Still despise him for it though.
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Post by jdh80 on Jan 15, 2020 10:04:49 GMT
If were over budget, our budget must be pretty low, when you look at the level we bought some players in from, that cant be on big wages, like leatherhead, three bridges, etc, looks like the owners have really tightened up what we are paying Being professionals and this being their only income then I would expect the players to be on a minimum of £400 per week. A squad of 18 would therefore cost the club £7200 per week . As every other game is away that works out at £14,400per fortnight and last nights attendance of 1200 will not have been enough to pay the wages let alone all the running costs of the club. This is juston £400per week per player but I bet some are on more than that still not bad money for kicking a little ball about ,beats working for a living. PS. I forgot the management and coaches so if you add their wages into the equation you can see why we are struggling financially. Something none of us will ever know, but we also got the under 23 side with their coaching team, does the amount they get paid come out of the playing budget as well?? I'd guess it would not be much to a lot of the players and maybe just small match fees travel expenses but things do add up. The other thing is insurance with an additional team then the players insurance is likely to go up, does this also come out of the playing budget?? As i say we will never know but there are certainly a lot of things that are paid out by the club that we would never know about, but the money all has to come from somewhere even silly little expenses like broadband and satellite TV subscription add up, web hosting/domain name rights etc add up.
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Post by porkystone on Jan 15, 2020 10:05:10 GMT
Lots of discussion about the financial situation. What follows is a guess and it could be totally wrong, but I do have a suspicion Oliver and Terry are starting to pay themselves back at least part of the huge loans they put into the club. I guess the accounts will reveal whether that is correct.They may have a long-term exit strategy from the club that includes reducing the value of their director's loans. Don't shoot me down if I'm wrong, it's just a thought. Indeed so, accounts for 2018 / 19 due to be filed by 31 March so we'll soon enough find the true cost of a clown. Must have dawned on our owners if they didn't know before that top level NL football is a one way drain on money.
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Post by jdl on Jan 15, 2020 10:09:43 GMT
Lots of discussion about the financial situation. What follows is a guess and it could be totally wrong, but I do have a suspicion Oliver and Terry are starting to pay themselves back at least part of the huge loans they put into the club. I guess the accounts will reveal whether that is correct.They may have a long-term exit strategy from the club that includes reducing the value of their director's loans. Don't shoot me down if I'm wrong, it's just a thought. Indeed so, accounts for 2018 / 19 due to be filed by 31 March so we'll soon enough find the true cost of a clown. Must have dawned on our owners if they didn't know before that top level NL football is a one way drain on money. I doubt very much if they are paying back any loans (with the possible exception of any emergency funding they might have put in last season), it just doesn't match what we know of O&T or what they've always said. They went into this knowing that they were effectively paying to build the new ground and were unlikely ever to get that money back. I think they'll be more than happy (and quite surprised) if they get much of it back when they eventually come to sell up. Football, especially at this level, is never an investment. It's just uber-fans spending their money on the club they love, or often just vanity projects. And thank God for that - imagine what it would be like otherwise...
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Post by sword65 on Jan 15, 2020 10:09:59 GMT
Lots of discussion about the financial situation. What follows is a guess and it could be totally wrong, but I do have a suspicion Oliver and Terry are starting to pay themselves back at least part of the huge loans they put into the club. I guess the accounts will reveal whether that is correct.They may have a long-term exit strategy from the club that includes reducing the value of their director's loans. Don't shoot me down if I'm wrong, it's just a thought. It's a very good point especially as Terry Casey isnt a young man I am sure he would like a fair percentage of his investment back before he retires. I say a fair percentage because I cannot see him getting it all back and will probably have to write some of it off. Oliver is a fair bit younger but unless he has fallen on hard times he has plenty more years to recoup his investment.
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Post by Bernie on Jan 15, 2020 10:51:22 GMT
I was under the impression they pay themselves back in good years and increase the loan when there is a new stand or pitch to pay for. Thus ironing out the peaks and troughs to more or less break even every year. I'm sure the last year or two will have been a massive challenge to that scenario. Does anyone else at this level employ two managers?
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