Grayson deal nearing close

Andrew Pilley at Fleetwood has done a remarkable job imo. He has moved many of his other businesses which he owns to Highbury and they share many of the backroom services with the footballclub. He has reduced the overhead of running the club enormously. As you say, he had the foresight to invest in the future by building a great training facility to develop the future talent as part of the club's development. He's already said that he expects this to be the raison d'etre for the club and to regard it as long term investment. He was also willing to fund most of it from long term loans which might not go down too well with some Fleetwood supporters if they have the same mindset as some on here!

It's a very realistic vision if he can develop the youngsters as he expects to. And he certainly has a much better base on which to build than his competitors including ourselves. I wish we's had that kind of vision at VP over the years rather than expecting it to just happen or by running the club's infrastructure into the ground.

Like you, I'm hoping that we see some kind of statement of intent from the owners in the near future but I'm not feeling too confident about this. The 'lessons learned' piece would have been a good starting point but it really said nothing of significance. Maybe when Grayson or whoever is announced as the new manager will provide an opportunity for this but I'm not holding my breath!

 

This is what you said ... 'even last season getting to Wembley we lost money' ... And last season we made a profit!

Rahic's reference to a £700k deficit refers to the current season and I don't recollect having been to Wembley this season.

 

Maybe you need to get your facts right rather than quoting things incorrectly .. as usual!

ps the word is 'pedantic' not 'padantic'!

 

Indeed. Having debt on the club's balance sheet is regarded as some as a portend of some future disaster! And yet for several years, the club had a debt of £1m on its balance sheet and we managed to service that debt without difficulty. It's a far cry from the £36m of debt and other creditors we had when we went into Admin 1 and unfortunately as we know that led to a disaster. But we shouldn't be basing our 'we don't like any debt' mantra on the back of the actions of a convicted tax fraudster. There is a happen medium between the extremes of 'no debt' and 'unsustainable debt' as most normal businesses understand.

ps As an example, Man U have debts of around £500m - a sum very similar to their annual revenues - which appears to be sustainable for them. Applying a similar approach, we should probably be able to sustain a debt around £5m

 

I believe Rahic's £700k deficit reference, referred to situation the new owners inherited when they took over, that is that the Club was spending £700k more than its income, without any extraordinary income such as cup runs, play offs, player sales. Of course, under Phil Parkinson a series of successes masked the underlying position.

More recently, I think it was at the player of the year, evening, Stefan indicated that they had got the Club to a break even position. I guess we'll find out when the accounts are 'published', probably around March next year. This season will have had little, if any extraordinary income, so it will be a good indication of the current underlying position.

 

The accounts for 15/16 certainly support what you've said. The loss in that year when they bought the club was almost £800k. And if they've now turned that around to break even, in one sense they've done remarkably well. But there has been a cost to that!