NEXT HOME GAME - TBC
NEXT AWAY GAME - SUPPORTERS XI ARE PLAYING WORCESTER AT MALVERN ON SUNDAY AUGUST 3rd AT 3.00pm

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Financial Difficulties at Yeovil

Several clubs in the lower Divisions have reported financial problems recently. Macclesfield and Rochdale spring to mind, but today, rather unexpectedly it's the turn of Yeovil Town. It is thought they may lose around £600,000 this season despite crowds averaging over 6,500.

If the reports are correct it will be the largest loss at Yeovil for many years.

According to the Western Gazette, chairman John Fry says that although the club sold Darren Way to Swansea for £150,000, the fee has already gone.

"One of the other biggest hidden costs is where players do not work out and you have to get rid of them - that is substantial. The transfer of one player like Darren Way pays for getting rid of another in com­pensation. People do not un­derstand that. The departures of Lee John­son and Darren last month were not unexpected. We could not match the wages and they wanted to go. Efetobore Sodje was a one-off situation where we had too many centre-backs and he wanted to go anyway. Apart from that and Gary Johnson going to Bristol City what has changed this season? We still have 95 per cent of the resources that we had last sea­son when we won League Two.

"We forecasted this season a huge loss even though it was our promotion year to League One. There has been some staggering losses and no per­son is going to come in and pay for those losses. We have got to get on top of those but we are not moaning because we are in a reasonably-healthy position. When you get knocked out of the cups early, like we did this season, you have to live for the rest of the campaign on League funds and a lot of that is up front with season-ticket sales. We have got nearly 4,000 of those so if the crowd is only 6,000 then you can see what is available in cash to run a sub­stantial wage bill. Seventy per cent of your costs at a club is wages so if you are already losing £600,000 on a forecasted budget, you can ill-afford to make mistakes on bringing players in."

"It is not the position that some of our fans believe. When you sell a player on all you are doing is filling in debts that have been incurred by the running of the business. When the board looks at budgets and they see the losses they will always say 'Reduce them' or 'Break even' and we all know that depends on either transferring players, windfalls or winning through rounds in the cups.

"Our whole objective is to stay up, maintain our status and develop the club - not put it into debt or administration. We are not in the business of buy­ing players for huge sums of money and paying them wages that are a lot higher than what is in the budget. And there is no reason why we cannot develop young players with the expert­ise that we have brought into the club."