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Les Hutchison


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It is an interesting time indeed. The club may break even but is that necessarily good enough? What happens the next time substantial money is required to be spent to keep Fir Park in operation, being a crumbling old ground, for example? Could it lead to areas of the ground being closed and left to fall into disrepair as a result of a lack of finance? Raith Rovers have one side of their ground closed is a case where this has already happened. Not sure if the club directly financed the pitch improvements over the years or renovations such as that in 2008 were financed by the board. But I'd be worried if something were to come up in that respect.

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It is an interesting time indeed. The club may break even but is that necessarily good enough? What happens the next time substantial money is required to be spent to keep Fir Park in operation, being a crumbling old ground, for example? Could it lead to areas of the ground being closed and left to fall into disrepair as a result of a lack of finance? Raith Rovers have one side of their ground closed is a case where this has already happened. Not sure if the club directly financed the pitch improvements over the years or renovations such as that in 2008 were financed by the board. But I'd be worried if something were to come up in that respect.

Maybe the directors will sell the ground for £20 million, build a new box stadium at the 'Craig for £10 million and pocket the rest - no need to worry about things until they happen.

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Anyone considered Les maybe got wind of these boards, read through them and went "tae fuck with yous then"

 

I hope so.

 

Les, stop talking to the fucking Daily Mail all the fucking time.

Yer pal,

 

Graeme

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I am puzzled as to how the club is almost running at an operating profit. Our last accounts showed a loss of almost £1.2 million on the back of a loss the previous season of approx £190k.

 

Our turnover was down from £4,5 million to £3.4 million. Our biggest expense namely that of staff costs was down from £3.5 million to £3 million. Our other costs have already been pared to the bone so any further savings must come from the staff costs. Although we released 10players in January given the composition of who they were and the cost of paying out contracts early I do not see how currently we will have made further significant savings there.

 

The annual accounts stated " The board recognise that the achievement of it's cash flow forecasts is critically dependent on football performance( both league and cup) for the remainder of. 2015/16 and player trading income in January 2016 ".

 

Given that this has not happened it's difficult to see therefore how our income will have improved significantly and we surely must be looking at making a significant loss again as the boards projections will not be met again.

 

I appreciate the money for Erwin and Murphy will to some extent plug this gap however it will not address the longstanding fundamental underlying problem we have in not budgeting appropriately for our means.

 

The Well Society are undoubtedly going to inherit a very difficult situation to say the least.

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Our last reports were up to May 2015. A lot can happen in a year.

 

Depends how you cut the figures as well. We could be saying right now we are about breaking even on a monthly basis and now budgeting correctly, so to speak, but maybe that has only been the past month or so....so the yearly accounts this May may still show losses. But the projections would be differnt this time around if we have started to break even.

 

Again we will have to wait and see.

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Sounds from reading that, that he feels fans were too comfortable with him owning the club that they didnt need to step up. By transferring the shares he is changing that dynamic and basically challenging the fans to make it work by making fan ownership the only game in town. From some of the posts on here it might already be working.....

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Sounds from reading that, that he feels fans were too comfortable with him owning the club that they didnt need to step up. By transferring the shares he is changing that dynamic and basically challenging the fans to make it work by making fan ownership the only game in town. From some of the posts on here it might already be working.....

I think its now dawning on many fans that whilst they are not 100% satisfied with the Society's performance to date, and have outstanding questions, there is no feasible alternative. Doing nothing is simply not an option.

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Read that yesterday and for what it's worth and despite it being in the Heil I found it a pretty reassuring interview though that's pretty much just taking it on face value that everything said is indeed true re: break even, deferred loans, they're finally working/planning to realistic budgets & not depending on Cup runs, the club isn't having the rug pulled from under it etc etc.

 

It also suggests that a fair amount of the decision is down to McGhee's performance since he's come in and the integration of players like Cadden and Hall. For all Les was vocal in his support of Baraclough after he was binned that's certainly a wee bit of a dig at the end.

 

Again on face value it very much reads as if it's a case of; "that's you stabilised, you're on an even keel and have people in place who can clearly do their jobs. On you go and make a go of it."

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That is an insightful interview. Of course he's going to put a positive spin on things, but if what he says about budgets and loan repayments etc. is accurate (and no reason to believe it's not) then it sounds like we a have a good foundation to build on.

 

Now I need a shower after clicking on a Daily Mail link.

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We should be spending like a club that has 3000 regular home fans, and if that means we end up a championship team or lower then so be it. Unless someone wants to pour money into the club for the sake of it, this is reality.

 

The well society is supposed to raise funds to provide a buffer for when the need arises, but the club also has a responsibility to budget properly.

 

This is it in a nutshell as far as I'm concerned.

 

We're claiming that we don't have enough fans to make the ownership idea work. What we actually mean is that we don't have enough fans to make the ownership idea work at the level we're currently at maybe?

 

The truth is, we'll need to make the changes required to operate within our budget. If that means dropping down a league then so be it, I'd rather be in that position than have no club at all.

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Very concerned for our future. We don't have the fan base and the good supporters we have are in general....skint, and cant afford to pay any more than they are already!!

 

I look forward to our local derby in a few years v Wishaw Juniors.

I said the same thing to my dad last night. Spl football was good while it lasted we will be a 2nd div club within 5 years

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A couple of thoughts from having a quick glance at the internets:

 

- 2010 was our first posted loss in 6 years, if we were able to trade in relative profit in the years post-admin then what changed after that? Is it really that outlandish to imagine we can't do it again. Yes we've seen a drop in attendances but in comparison teams like St Johnstone average less and still turn profits.

 

- Last year's loss aside we've been posting losses of http://stv.tv/sport/football/1321105-celtics-average-wage-bill-is-25-times-higher-than-ross-countys/

 

- The loss last year is clearly an outlier given circumstances, we dropped from the income from 2nd place (£1.8m) to income from 11th (£940k) a drop of £860k. The loss posted seemed to be £1.13m so while it'd be daft to simply overlook that £860k it still accounts for a fair chunk of it. It leaves additional losses of £270,000 so bearing in mind we brought in Ojamaa not to menton an additional 7 players on top of the squad that started the season plus the medical costs of those injured or "injured" players then it's not difficult to see how that expenditure would stack up not to mention highlight the value of Andy Boles to us this season.

 

- It's fair to look at the players we released or moved on in January and say "how can we have been posting losses but now almost breaking even if all we've moved on is David Clarkson and Dan Twardzik." however that overlooks the fact there was a massive turnover in the summer. With players such as Sutton and Vigurs amongst others moving on is it that difficult to imagine that the players we brought in were on less money and the overall spend that Les is now talking about dropped accordingly? I don't know if it did or not but it's certainly possible.

 

So given that our attendances are no different to St Johnstone, our wages are no different to St Johnstone, they're currently sitting above us in the league and their owner isn't a billionaire tax exile then we can come to 2 conclusions 1. it's perfectly possible to remain competitive in this league with those crowds and not have some sugar daddy owning the club and 2. it's possible to turn profit with those attendances.

 

All the above is clearly back of a fag packet stuff but the idea that we're absolutely doomed and a complete lost cause needs to stop. It's not difficult to see how some re-structuring and some prudence could have had a very positive result for our balance sheet. We just need to get an actual grip.

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Based on what?

We don't have the fan base to survive on our own our average home gate is what 4.5ķ.

Our stadium is falling apart (my daughter was with me at the united game on Friday and complained a few times about water dripping on her head.

We will need to sell at least one player per season for a mimimum of 300k to top up the coffers and go on the squad we have just now there is no chance of that happening

 

OK maybe 2nd div within 5 years is a little pessimistic but IMHO we will not be able to survive without someone to subsidise us.

 

My mate who is a dundee fan texted me to say hope you enjoy your slide down the league. Only part time clubs are fan owned.

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