1866_Spireite_14, on 09 January 2024 - 06:44 PM, said:
The biggest concern I have about the club at the moment is the amount of money they are spending. Where is this money coming from? According to our previous accounts we brought in £2.4 million in ticket sales during the 2014/15 season where we recorded an average attendance of 6,925 (the second highest at the SMH stadium prior to this year, where we are averaging 7,765). Therefore, I doubt that the fantastic crowds we are having this year will have too much of an impact on our finances, when we ‘only’ received £2,049,047 from tickets in our most recent accounts.
Furthermore, the £2,366,217 loss we had in the previous accounts is concerning. Why are we spending so much and planning on spending when we are losing so much money? The spending is unsustainable. Why do we need to rip up the pitch at the end of the season and get a new one? At the end of the Bromley game in the playoffs I got a close up look at the pitch and it was a carpet. At the moment WE ARE A NON LEAGUE CLUB, we don’t need to get a brand new pitch every season. Now I understand that our training facilities were in need of an upgrade, but what did we get for the £300,000 we spent on the training ground? By the looks of it it was even more money spent on the pitch with some nets around the pitches. On the podcast it was mentioned that the pitches are of a similar quality to St Georges Park. Realistically, we don’t need to have a pitch that is a similar quality to the national team when we are just a non league club at he moment.
When is the spending going to slow down. Are we going to spend even more next year and get into more and more debt. What happens in the worst case scenario and the trust and Kirk brothers can’t keep subsiding these losses. Whose going to pay off these debts when Derby County, who are a significantly bigger club with a vastly bigger fanbase, struggled to attract any buyers. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has inferred that the club are spending beyond their means on his podcast, which adds to my concerns.
Moving onto next season when we have successfully bought our way into League 2. Are the club aware of the Financial Fair Play Rules in place. Clubs in League 2 are only allowed to spend 50% of their income on their team and before we bring up Wrexham, they have a number of significant sponsorship deals, which keep them within FFP rules. Looking at our most recent accounts, our total turnover was £3,928,008, whereas we spent around £3,000,000 on wages. While we will be getting more from our crowds, we have also added players such as Will Grigg and Tom Naylor, who will be on very good wages. It would not surprise me if Will Grigg is on a league 1 or good league 2 wage, while according to sources Tom Naylor was supposed to sign with Derby County, until the EFL rejected his registration due to his offered wages supposedly surpassing the £5,000 per week salary cap they were put under. Realistically, would a player of Naylor’s quality drop a number of divisions for a pay cut? I doubt it, although I may be wrong. How much will be able to spend next season when we are to close to the FFP rules. We may have to lose players in order to bring them in and even then we don't have any players of significant value in reality. For example, we'd be lucky to get £50K for Dobra at the moment.
Additionally, are the club aware of how the clubs new amortisation policy breaks EFL rules. To put it simply, the EFL requires clubs to break down the transfer fees evenly over the course of their contract. For example, if Player A signs for £500,000 on a 5 year contract. Each year £100,000 would be put down in the club’s accounts. I’m sure Mike Goodwin or someone else at the mentioned at the last AGM that the club write transfer fees off straight away, which is a breach of EFL rules. It would be a disaster if we start League 2 next season with a 9 point deduction (the penalty applied for this breach of rules.) In addition, the EFL have set the precedent that clubs are allowed to claim compensation if they are negatively impacted by a club breaking these rules, which we have appeared to do.
Now onto my concern with the playing side of things. Quite simply I believe that some of our forwards our carrying a lot of players in the squad. Defensively we are to prone to mistakes and gifting goals and opportunities to our opposition. In my opinion we don’t have a League 2 standard central defender at the club. Once we start playing week in week out against better opposition Jamie Grimes is going to be found out big time. He is far to slow and not good enough with his feet, like a number of our defenders. I can’t understand the hype around him. He’s very good in the air and is a leader, but that’s about it. As a unit how many of the goals we have conceded come from through balls over the top of our defence. The answer …. Far too many.
In attack, we are as near to unstoppable as any team has ever been in this division. However, that is due to how many chances we get, which is a positive. However, we are nowhere near clinical enough to go up the leagues like some are talking about. We are almost guaranteed to get at least 2 goals a game, where one of our players receives the ball in the 18 yard box with no-one within 3 or 4 yards of him, which could be put away by most people watching from the stands. We definitely won't be getting as many of these chances next season. We also miss loads of chances. How many times do we get in a good position only for us to completely miss the target.
In my opinion, the only players we have who could push us to the top half of league 2 are Tom Naylor, James Berry and potentially Jacobs, Colclough and Quigley. Ryan Boot could be a solid option in goal as well. But, our top scorer this season in Grigg has proved that he is not a prolific EFL goalscorer. Since he scored 19 goals in 43 games during the 2017/18 season; he scored 30 in 176 (Around 1 every 6 games). And if National League teams are finding ways of beating our defence, League 2 teams will follow.
We aren’t going to be getting any players from the youth team make a significant impact in our first team any time soon. The fans who are claiming they are fantastic are quite frankly deluded. While it was a good win in the FA Trophy, most of the team that day were 1st teamers and more youngsters were brought on as the lead got bigger. When they were left to themselves in the Derbyshire Senior Cup the youngsters were beaten comfortably by a Long Eaton United team who were without a win around 25 games in the Southern League Central. The players on loan at Matlock Town are struggling to break into a struggling Northern Premier League team and when they do play they look just as poor as the test of the team.
Kieran Maguire infers that 99.9% of clubs in the top 6 tiers are spending money beyond their means. That's the nature of football ownership in this country. It's a
jeopardy pyramid not a franchised sport.
It's called "chasing the dream".
How clued up do you think you are on the Kirk's approaches to debt redemption, costs control, income maximisation and equity investment?
EFL amortisation rules will not he broken. The Club doesn't amortise any more. It takes a one off hit in the year of transfer. EFL rules
are a maximum, not a minimum.
If pitch is in great nick this summer, they wont re-lay it. What did you think to it last night? Does Sheff Utd contribution exceed the costs of re-laying anyway?
Your views on our current players are fair enough. Some will stay, some will go. That's football.
I suspect that we need to get promoted this season, as we're taking a calculated gamble on doing so. If the gamble comes in, I think we'll be fine going forwards for a while. If it doesn't then I think the Kirks and the Trust have some serious thinking to do. The Kirk's want the Trust to remain as majority owner, which could mean Ash and Phil each owning say 30%, or bringing in another investor. Regardless, I don't think there's anything to be concerned about. They're fans of the club, extremely wealthy and are businessmen of the highest order.
"Keep calm and carry on."
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