I heard your chairman or somebody from your board (I can't remember exactly who it was) saying the following:
"We'd had a good season where we reached the playoffs. The next year we took a gamble and upped the playing budget, but the gamble didn't work".
I actually like York City as a football club and York as a place but I really think to be making a £400k loss in this league is absolutely absurd. If it all goes tits up it's the fans who will suffer.
They took a gamble LAST season and the losses are covered by the owners of the club, but half of the loss is ground-related.
This season the budget has been slashed. You saw our side for yourselves a few weeks ago - did those players look like they are paid over the odds? If we really WERE going "sh*t or bust" we would be at the top of this league with the other "sh*t or bust" clubs like Torquay, Crawley etc.
Every club has their own stages of development. We will become profitable once we have moved out of our resource-sapping ground into the new stadium. Until then, we have to bite the bullet and pay off loan interest to the tune of £200K+ each season.
In past Alty used to lose money yet the people running the club managed to turn it round. However, part of that success came from exactly the same source as ours will - sale of land owned by the club. You have sold yours and are now doing fine, as we will when our deal is finally resolved in 2012.
As an aside, had Altrincham FC not sold that land would you have made a loss? And, if so, would that mean you were being managed badly as you are claiming York are? You see, it's easy to look at figures and come to the wrong conclusions if you don't analyse them properly.