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Not yet financially sustainable

FourMarkGreen

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From today's Daily Catch-up, Simon Hallett speaking with Chris Errington:

“Our goal is to be financially sustainable, and we are still not financially sustainable.
“I’m still putting money into the club. We are not operating on a financially sustainable basis, and probably won’t be next year".

Have I missed something or is this new news? I thought Argyle were now operating sustainably?

Should I be worried?
 

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FourMarksGreen":29luvdyg said:
From today's Daily Catch-up, Simon Hallett speaking with Chris Errington:

“Our goal is to be financially sustainable, and we are still not financially sustainable.
“I’m still putting money into the club. We are not operating on a financially sustainable basis, and probably won’t be next year".

Have I missed something or is this new news? I thought Argyle were now operating sustainably?
Yes
Should I be worried?
I think he mmeans things like infrastructure & the like, I am aware he would like to spend a few bob on the Acadamy & improve their facilities. So presumably this is what he means as the club are not able to afford these improvements.
 
Jun 22, 2015
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Basically is letting the manager know no money.
All owners say 'want' to put money into academy to keep fans happy. its not producing so would rather money go into 1st team.
 

JannerinCardiff

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Not sure if I’m on my own here but this worries me a little. We have decent gates, we don’t really pay transfers and our wage bill is less proportionally to our attendance in this league. (Adams was quoted as saying we’ve a bottom half budget, yet our crowds are top half)..

I would have thought that we at least are a sustainable business ?
 

demportdave

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FourMarksGreen":kfqrcp7l said:
From today's Daily Catch-up, Simon Hallett speaking with Chris Errington:

“Our goal is to be financially sustainable, and we are still not financially sustainable.
“I’m still putting money into the club. We are not operating on a financially sustainable basis, and probably won’t be next year".

Have I missed something or is this new news? I thought Argyle were now operating sustainably?

Should I be worried?
It's good that Hallett has come out and said this, it's a much-needed reality check for those who naively seem to think our financial position is going to improve almost immediately on completion of the Grandstand refurbishment.

It's a bit frustrating with our healthy fan base and good gates over several seasons to be told that we are still some way from financial sustainabilty.

It once again demonstates the need for outside investment on a serious level if we are to ever get back to the Championship and stay there.

We will still be a long way from being able to compete with the likes of Fleetwood next season. Their sub-3000 gates don't matter when you have an owner who gives you £10M.
 
Forgive me repeating this in many posts, but the fact is that the average Championship
loss, because of the wages and infrastructure required to maintain a Championship team, is currently £11 million. In other words the only business model currently available to any club with championship aspirations, is that of a rich owner willing to take a punt. Until and unless that happens we have no choice but to carefully construct a model that creates income at least to a level that matches the cost of staying in the top half of league one. Thank god we have stable management and a sense of financial purpose and direction.
 
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demportdave":2gsfkb4k said:
FourMarksGreen":2gsfkb4k said:
From today's Daily Catch-up, Simon Hallett speaking with Chris Errington:

“Our goal is to be financially sustainable, and we are still not financially sustainable.
“I’m still putting money into the club. We are not operating on a financially sustainable basis, and probably won’t be next year".

Have I missed something or is this new news? I thought Argyle were now operating sustainably?

Should I be worried?
It's good that Hallett has come out and said this, it's a much-needed reality check for those who naively seem to think our financial position is going to improve almost immediately on completion of the Grandstand refurbishment.

It's a bit frustrating with our healthy fan base and good gates over several seasons to be told that we are still some way from financial sustainabilty.

It once again demonstates the need for outside investment on a serious level if we are to ever get back to the Championship and stay there.

We will still be a long way from being able to compete with the likes of Fleetwood next season. Their sub-3000 gates don't matter when you have an owner who gives you £10M.

Also, hopefully puts the lid on the naive argument that our Budget should be bigger just because we have larger crowds than the sub 3000 others maybe get.
 
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mervyn":1c0res6t said:
... but the fact is that the average Championship loss, ... is currently £11 million.

But that is the 'average'. Some will be in the red and some will be in the black. It's not true to say that if you want to be in the Championship you HAVE to operate at a loss.

I fully accept that there is devil in the detail and I don't have the time to debate all the obvious errors in my statement. I just feel that data is too frequently reduced to a simple figure without consideration of the whole picture.
 

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The warning signs were in evidence after a poor January transfer window and it looks like any spare cash is being diverted towards completion of the refurbished grandstand.

I realise we have overheads, the Academy needs funding and maintenance of Home Park etc but we've had years of virtually no money following administration while we paid off historic debts, while now we are virtually free of the financial shambles of 2011.

The last available accounts show we made a small profit of £32,000, last seasons average home attendance was higher than our last season in the Championship in 2010 and this seasons average home attendance might eclipse 10,000, it's currently the 7th highest in League One.
Only in the Premier League do attendances not matter.

Why are we not financially sustainable?

There's no way we should return to spending money we don't have, we spent 87% of turnover on player wages in 2009 which killed us but there is scope within League One rules to spend up to 60% of turnover on player wages so how close are we to that limit?
Is there wiggle room to improve the player budget so that better players can be enticed to Argyle?

The fans are certainly backing the club through the turnstiles but the standard of player signed last summer and the lack of activity in January doesn't reflect that?
Is that Adams' choice or lack of a good budget?

Edit: I've just read Graham’s brief synopsis of the Fans Forum and it seems the cost of the refurbishment of the grandstand has jumped up another £1m to £7.5m, so that explains a lot about where the money is going.
 

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I must admit, I had assumed we WERE financially sustainable. Though I don't quite know what that means, in this context.

Clearly we're not financially sustainable enough for us to be building a grandstand with our own resources. Is that what he means?

Does he mean he has to inject money into the club for it to be sustainable day-to-day? Surely not.
 

JannerinCardiff

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How can we not be financially sustainable yet we
made a profit last season?
 

FourMarkGreen

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This is the bit that concerns me:

"We are not operating on a financially sustainable basis, and probably won’t be next year"

That suggests to me, as an accounting layman, that he's talking about annual operating costs rather than exceptional capital expenditure like the Grandstand. And anyway, next year the Grandstand redevelopment will be done and dusted.

What am I missing?
 
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Is it not that the implication is that we will not be financially sustainable until the grandstand is finished and the hospitality and non-match day income ramps up? We knew that already, didn't we?
 

JannerinCardiff

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warney":q8u1vko0 said:
Is it not that the implication is that we will not be financially sustainable until the grandstand is finished and the hospitality and non-match day income ramps up? We knew that already, didn't we?

I didn’t. I thought that as we made a profit of £32,000 last accounting period that we were a financially sustainable business.

My worry is that this message from SH might put people off going to Home Park if it’s expected due to a poor financial position that next season will be a season of consolidation. The knock on effect that we could struggle to keep our better players / are unable to sign players of suitable ability to improve our squad.