Sorry, I don’t buy this.
Can you - or anyone - tell me why we’re losing £1.2m a year? Why haven’t we cut our cloth accordingly?
Where is that money going? Legal fees? Architectural drawings? Hiring and firing the wrong managers time and time again? Fines? Helicopters?
Without Ron at the helm, there’s no reason why this club can’t run on an even keel, or even turn a profit… just like any other club.
This line, that we lose vast amounts of money every year, is something that Ron has brainwashed us into believing. It’s his business methods & practices that have led us to that point. It’s him. Not the club itself. We’re not some freak of footballing nature, where despite what we do, we’re forever doomed to lose money year after year.
We’ve all asked the question, how can small clubs like Accrington and Morecambe, with tiny attendances, be run so better than us? It’s not rocket science, they’ve learned to live within their means and utilise what they’ve got. We, on the other hand, have pressed pause on the general day-to-day running of the business and put all of our eggs into the FF basket, hoping for the best. Where we’ve stagnated and run out of funds, clubs like Accrington and Morecambe have shown us how it’s done, whilst embarrassing our owner in the process. Now we’re not only out of the EFL, but are now close to being out of the NL too.
And we’ve all heard that Roots Hall doesn’t make money. But why? Simple answer is because it was completely shelved over a decade ago. Ron made his mind up that he wasn’t going to spend a penny utilising the old girl. Why would he want to trim his profit margins? So the money we could have earned in the last decade, is in the wind now.
Several people in this thread alone have given some brilliant examples of just how we could utilise RH in its current state, to make more money. This isn’t innovative, design and technology, it’s simply catering to your fanbase, which is something Ron stopped giving a **** about, years ago. Just ask the East stand toilets.
On top of that, we could learn to budget properly. Maybe not paying off multiple management teams (and doing financial gymnastics to bring them in, in the first place) would be a start.
Running the business properly so we’re not racking up fines and and legal fees would be handy too. I’m sure every club will encounter this, but 18(?) trips to the High Court says we’re in a League of our own when it comes to that expenditure.
Don’t mean to rant, it’s nothing personal, but this notion that we’re a club who loses bucket loads of cash every year is frankly garbage.
Take Ron out of the equation, replace him with someone that has a shred of business acumen, and tell me we’d still be in this position.
