It strikes me that there's a world of difference

between thinking that an annual loss of £5 million is unacceptable, and not accepting the football clubs should run at a loss at all.

The fact is that since Delia and Michael came in the club's debt has increased alarmingly and how can anyone argue that it cannot go on like that? Chase left behind debts of around £8 million - that has increased to £20 million now. But the real amount of spending in excess of income has been masked by a number of things: huge amounts of debt were converted to equity by the Jones's, there were two successful share issues, Mr Watling waived a debt of £1 million. The figures are frightening and it cannot be sustainable.

I've argued for a long while that there is a problem with the financial control of the club - and the problem is Doncaster. It was alarming - to put it mildly - that we did not have the £50,000 to buy Carl Robinson with in January 2006. The club made a song and dance about not wanting to sell Ashton but the fact of the matter is that they HAD to sell someone, and if the size of the cash injection needed is what I think it was then Ashton (and possibly Green) was the only option.

The board had no sense of the notion of "opportunity cost". If you spend all your time on catering then the football side gets neglected. And I don't mean that they involve themselves in every detail but surely they could have asked Worthington what his strategy for achieving promotion again was? They don't seem to have done because all they ever said was "he's done it before so he can do it again" - but how??????
Did the board ask him what he was doing about our lack of success from free kicks? Yet as soon as PG came in suddenly players were practising free kicks and the most crucial game of the season was won with a last-minute free kick?

Did the board ask Worthington what his plan was when spending the whole transfer budget on Earnshaw? Because under those circumstances Earnshaw could never have won us promotion - he needs a big man to play off - we didn't have one and we then had no money to get one.

If someone on the board is going to apply a modicum of sense to the running of the football club then I'm all in favour of it.

Posted By: Creosote Ah Um on July 6th 2007 at 11:29:51

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in