In the past 4-5 seasons we’ve made approx. £100k-ish from selling a player direct to a premier league club, made an £150k-ish in cup/TV money (Burton and Colchester seasons combined), and we now have a new income stream via the CSH, but have alarmingly still managed to make a net cash loss over this period. Within the ‘football club’. You don’t have to have Jamie’s expertise in accountancy to realise that “consistently balanced the books” is stretching it somewhat Pukka. Just for the record.
In fact, given we’ve probably had an extra quarter of a million (supposedly unbudgeted?) pounds come into the club during the current chairman’s tenure, it’s even more baffling that we find ourselves cut adrift in a regional league nevermind that we are making a loss doing it.
And who exactly are all these people crippled with envy at our community set up? Most opposition fans I see visiting Moss Lane every other week are too busy pissing themselves laughing at how sh*t we are on the pitch to worry about 8 people turning out to walking football on a Wednesday evening, or how many Zumba/Herbalife classes the club holds in a week. I do actually agree with a lot of what else you've said elsewhere, and I accept that you are still a bit giddy that the club asked you to design part of the infrastructure, but a bit of perspective is needed.
Matt. Im guessing you probably havent seen the clubs accounts over the last 10 years or so (as a shareholder for 20+ years I have), but the club has not made a loss over this period as you suggest, indeed the club owed 600K before the current regime took over and paid that off. Your assumed figures from player sales and FA cup ties also are incorrect, just see the accounts for those years. Basically, with a very frugal approach and without wasting money at all the club has lived within its means extremely well, there are few National League teams who could survive on our overall income, look at Telford which started this thread off. There are plenty of others who have either gone bust and faded away during this time.
As regards the Community set up, AFC receives grant funding for it and has won several community awards for it, we have something like 45 teams playing regularly which is attracting so many new and young fans and their parents to the club and attendances have grown very encouragingly over the last few years. You mention walking football, 2 of the new players who came support other sides and are now becoming Alty fans and will boost future attendances. That's what engaging with your community does.
I can only agree with you about the recent down side which has come about due to poor decisions by the club's managers, who the club have rightly placed their faith in,..... towards the end LS and then particularly NY and it is HE who you could argue has made us a laughing stock. We all hope that Jim Harvey reverses this recent trend, he seems to have made a decent start.
On your last comment about being giddy,.... as the director who brought the whole ground up to FL standard in the 1990's, have successfully designed and managed many hundreds of sports and leisure buildings round the UK over the last 40 years, including premier league grounds, who owns and runs several large leisure businesses, please believe me when I tell you I have plenty of perspective and experience all of which I have gladly volunteered to support the club that I love, namely AFC.
If you want a chat, my name is Ian and I will be in the CSH tomorrow, hopefully watching us beat Matlock
Hi Ian. Thanks for your kind offer to chat, but I’m straight off tomorrow unfortunately and I can’t stay around. Happy to arrange for another time.
For a start, I wasn’t talking about the last 10 years (and the selling of land and paper profit associated with cancelling historical loans), I was talking about the cash loss of the past 4/5 years under the current chairman of the football club. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
That loss is a fact. You are wrong. It is in the annual accounts. The club has made a loss over that period and we are losing money.
The chairman said as much at the AGM this year. If you weren’t able to make it, I have reproduced below.
“The accounts show we made a £40k loss last season, following on from a £16k loss the previous season, despite bringing in substantial funds from the transfer of Duncan Watmore to Sunderland.”
“The 2015-16 budget is projected to lose £36k and, as a consequence, the Club’s cash reserves will be down to £38k by the season end, leaving little room to manoeuvre.”
Are you accusing the chairman of lying Ian? Otherwise let’s dispel this myth that we are living within our means and balancing the books.
Admittedly the other figures I was using are slightly ‘back of fag packet’ but perhaps you would be able to help?
In terms of unbudgeted cup money, if we take the Burton year as an example then we made £25k prize money (excluding gate receipts) before we arrived at Burton. We then made £35k for hosting an FA Cup 1st Round Replay on the TV. I make that £60k (ish) before we had taken any share of gate receipts from either Burton game or the earlier rounds. So would you be happy with me rounding that at £65k-£70k all told? I haven’t done the same calculation for the Colchester run last year – but perhaps if you would excuse me rounding the total (as I did) for both at around £150k (ish) for both years?
In terms of player receipts, I admit I am only trying to read between the lines from the club accounts. However if you take the total turnover in the year we sold Watmore (2014 accounts), and exclude the cup/TV money from the year before we sold him (Burton), then you would be left with approx. £100k (give or take) extra unaccounted turnover in that year. Either way, there is a sharp and unaccounted increase and it would be reasonable to assume that this is in some way linked to the sale of a player to a premier league club. Please feel free to correct me if my, admittedly basic, calculations would be incorrect.
So that would be an educated guess of an additional quarter of a million pounds into the club under the current chairman that wasn’t budgeted for – as I said in the post above. The actual figure is almost irrelevant. It is still baffling and alarming that we are in the position we are in given the amount of money that has poured into the club under the current chairman. And we are STILL losing money.
To claim we are “consistently balancing the books” is a total myth Ian.
And I can see why NY is an easy, and worthy, scapegoat but he was manager for 6 games. We have been sh*t football team, and in decline, for 18 months.