Can I return the conversation to its subject title? Over the last season my concerns have covered three areas
1. I was concerned that the club was in a money mess again. The recent accounts showed that as at the end of November 2015 we had £404,791 negative funds. This was only around £40k worse than the year before and so showed things hadn't deteriorated a lot. The debt is supported by loans from past and present directors. So at that date things appear to be ok…..but…..I understand that of this amount a large sum is owed to Tony Abbott, and in addition the cash flow since the last accounts have not been good. So I am concerned that we may now be in a considerable worse position than then. Rumours around the club support this.
2. According to the last Company return Reactiv Media Ltd are the largest shareholder of the club. when they went into liquidation Mr Steel told me that the shares were now owned by Mr Abbott, This means that he is the largest (although not the majority shareholder) but if you include Mr Sweeney, Mr Posner & Mrs Pearson, the majority of shares are owned by people not active in the club. Although I do not think they want anything but good for the club, it appears to show that the club is really being run by minority shareholders, which is far from usual.
3. On the field the season has been very poor. We were not relegated but we certainly failed to challenge to win anything, with a big lack of consistency and often effort. This would have had the positive effect on our cash flow of reducing players win bonuses but the drop in attendances would have been a bigger negative. I cant understand the ongoing support for the coach and I certainly don't think our recruitment process was much use.
All of this causes me to be negative for a while and ask the club to respond, But the silence is deafening. Who is really running the club, what is our true financial position (now and in the year ahead) and what is our recruitment process for next season? To add to that the club are now trying to sell me a season ticket when I don't know if we are going to play at the Shay, with both or one stand open or somewhere else?
I don’t want to tell me its secrets I simply want them to respect the fact I am long term fan and communicate with the fan base an not let Rumours be the only information we get.