[rodney]

Don’t worry. The club is in safe hands. Enjoy the ride

[Andy Spireite]

Quite the opening post. Any guesses on who is being reincarnated?

[Cosmo Kramer]

If you have expertise in the business side of things then good for you and you should definitely raise any concerns that you have with the club on EFL rules if you think they missed anything.

On the football side, leave it with the manager and try not to worry so much.

[Blue roan lily]

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. We may well be heading for administration or even worse liquidation.

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.

You’re being harsh on Will Grigg.
He brings a lot more to the team than just goals, you watch him in a game he’s got some cracking touches and his awareness of team mates around him is first class.

[jonnythespireite]

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. We may well be heading for administration or even worse liquidation.

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.

Good lord.

[Surrey Spireite]

Nurse!!

[Search & Destroy]

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. We may well be heading for administration or even worse liquidation.

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.

Who are ya, who are ya, who are ya

[FORZA AZZURRI]

Why not email the club and ask for a meeting with finance director and the Kirk brothers,

I’m sure they will sit you down and address all your concerns one by one,

Meanwhile enjoy the ride this season as will be record breaking / most exciting in years!

[gordon_brittas]

An overly negative post, and that’s from me!

Who knows where we will be in 12/24 months time. If you’d have told me Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth would be established Premier league sides today at the end of the 90s, I’d have said to call the men in white coats to take you away.

Football is a game when the unexpected happens. Never in my life worst nightmares did I envisage we’d be in this league, never mind spending 6 seasons in it.

Enjoy and pointless worrying.

[Looker-on]

1866_Spireite_14, on 09 January 2024 - 06:44 PM, said:

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.)

Not even a Chesterfield FC run by Ashley Carson could break EFL rules while it is not in the EFL.

[Bankrobber]

Ashley, let it go.

[ash_cfc]

I’m not reading all that

[LondonBlue]

Raise some interesting points and proof will be in the pudding finances wise, but we really do need to get out of this division and thankfully crowds are very high. For now, I place my trust in the Kirk’s to be making a sensible roll of the dice here with promotion and not a boom or bust scenario.

[1978blue]

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. We may well be heading for administration or even worse liquidation.

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.

Crikey , where have you come from? You obviously weren't at the FA Trophy game because at 2-1 up we had 6 youngsters on the field so 4 goals were scored with all the youngsters on! As for the Long Eaton game you can't judge the young uns on that game when they were up against an established men's team bottom of the table or not men against boys I think the saying is , if we had 3 or 4 experienced players with them like against Southport they would have been fine. As for the finances that you are apparently worried about I'm sure the Kirk brothers know exactly what there doing so don't see what your problem is!!

[Alan Birch]

Bankrobber, on 09 January 2024 - 07:27 PM, said:

Ashley, let it go.

Ha ha ha, best reply so far!

[Snowflake McBedwetter]

The magic money tree is bearing fruit. The team are winning. The fans are happy. We're on the crest of a wave.

What could possibly go wrong!?

[Blue5]

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. We may well be heading for administration or even worse liquidation.

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.

Forgive me for saying that the timing of your post reeks of an attempt to destabilise our promotion push, it's that obvious.

As for your final sentence of paragraph 3, that is totally without foundation and nothing more than scaremongering on your part.

[60s 70s Spireite]

You seem to be conflating a number of issues. Before being hyper critical why not wait for the next accounts to be published and hear what the Kirks have to tell us?
Specifically you have ignored the £1.1M from TV and central funds we will receive in League 2. Gate income will be much higher this season, and then next, especially with much larger away followings. Moreover the 50% rule is for Player related expenditure, our £3M was all wages, including pay offs for previous managers.
Kieran Maguire of course says virtually every EFL club is a loss of a backer away from financial ruin, so nothing new to see there.
There’s no problem with the amortisation of players - we were over prudent so no issue using the standard method. The rule has been brought in to stop clubs under amortising. Plus of course the sale of Kabby will be all profit in the accounts.
As for the football, stick to game by game, cos from what we’ve seen in our games v League One and Two teams over the last 2 seasons, we have nothing to worry about.

More importantly, what’s your post all about? Which club do you support?

[hilly81]

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.

Lost interest less than 1/4 into that.