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Football League chairman Brian Malwhinney has warned clubs to cut costs to survive the current credit crunch.
The one time Government minister will visit clubs in March to check that clubs are ready for the impending impact of the crunch. Most clubs have been reasonably immune so far thanks to season ticket sales, but he tells The Guardian that next season's tickets will be much harder to sell:
"Things look calm now, but the crunch comes in the run-up to next season. Crowd numbers have held up so far, but they won’t as things go on. The next three years are going to be terrible and football is not immune to the problems in the wider economy.
"Clubs will have to slim down. The sensible club chairmen will have put downward pressure on their costs. The big problem is player contracts, which have to be honoured. We have seen the result of soaring wages in the Premiership having the effect of dragging up pay in all the other leagues, right down to the Conference."
Malwhinney's prediction that the problem will last for three years flies in the face of the Government's own claims that the crisis will be solved by next Autumn but his prediction is in line with - what one friend of mine debatably claimed - 'people who live in the real world'.
Stevenage chairman Phil Wallace was stark in the effect of the crunch on his club: "In September, October, November and the first half of December income fell off a cliff and we have lost more in those three or four months than we made in the previous two years. Anyone supporting lower-league clubs should be concerned. If we don’t change, the chances of surviving what I expect to happen in 2009 and 2010 will be greatly reduced."
Wallace's words suggest they're losing £30,000 a month, or more, at the current time having made £75,000 last season alone. Eleven of the 24 Conference sides have warned of financial difficulties this season, even though gates have been relatively steady across the board, thanks to rising off-field costs.
The January transfer window may well be a buyers market, with players scrambling for any deal they can get as squads are slashed across all the divisions. Any club that offers more than a deal until the end of the current season will be braver than most.
