Tightening Belts

[CaleyD]

The club must look at every cut on there own merits and whether it would be justified, but I think we should leave it to those who know to do the right thing!

Asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas is never a wise move!!!

[Scotty]

I agree that there is a need for a manager. It just seems to me that Commercial manager and Chief Exec should maybe be one job.

The type of person who is good at being a Commercial Manager in a football club is generally different to that of a Chief Exec (or General Manager). The Commercial Manager needs to have a bit of flair (in a commercial sense) and have excellent communication skills as they are 'customer facing'. The Chief Execs role is to implent policy from the Board and in the terms of the football club minimise outgoings to deliver the Business Plan. In a traditional business the Cheif Exec is effectively there to maximise profit for the Shareholder - in a football club it is a slightly different situation for obvious reasons.

Ultimately CaleyD is correct in that it is a return versus outlay arguement.

Commercial Manager - Takes in more than he costs

Chief Exec - 'Saves' more than he costs

Some people can combine the two, however this is not the case in the majority of situations.

I would agree with Tree. As much as we might need to cut costs, we cannot cut our nose off to spite our face. If the chief exec and commercial manager positions are living up to the "saves more" or "takes in more" model as mentioned then there is no need to lose those positions. Even in lower divisions the people doing the roles now called chief executive or commercial manager were always separate.

We had a Commercial Manager even in the Highland League, so don't see why they won't have one now. The Youth Development as far as I was aware was self funding, so why would you need to get rid of that. Not sure about CE or what he does and not sure when this was introduced, so don't know if we need it? I had heard DoF was going back to unpaid, so again do you need to get rid of this? There will not be the same amount of stewards and police at SFL games, so should be a saving there. The club must look at every cut on there own merits and whether it would be justified, but I think we should leave it to those who know to do the right thing!

I made my comments abot Ch Exec and Comm Manager above but to add to this I would say that cutting youth development would be a mistake IMHO. It has taken a few years to get where we are and to cut it would basically undo all the hard work performed over the years. We have seen more youths come through the system in the last two or three years and if we do not bounce straight back up the youth side of the club may prove to be a very important resource in attracting and developing new talent. Also, if as Mike says, it is self financing (or as near as dammit) then there is no benefit to making deep cuts here.

The best thing for the club right now is to trim costs where they can, but without trimming too deep. As has been noted, a lot of our costs will be reduced next year, but then again so will a lot of our income so its a case of finding a sustainable point to rebuild and begin to move onwards and upwards again.

[CaleyD]

The Youth and Community Development side of ICT does not rely on the club for any of it's income and I believe it actually has some kind of "charitable" status as a result of this. What I'm not entirely certain of is where (what age) their responsibility stops and the clubs takes over in terms of the younger guys coming through....or if the Y&CD is responsible for any money paid to those on an apprenticeship...this may well be a "club cost".

I do know that the Supporters Trust have helped out considerably over the last season by making a sizeable contribution to the travel costs for the Youth Teams (several thousand).

Each time someone buys a ticket for or attends a Supporters Trust, Supporters Club or Football Club organised event it helps put money into the pocket of the club in some form or other. As individuals we might take the view that our ?10 or ?20 contribution (or whatever amount) is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, when you start pulling all that together then it really does have the power to make a difference and the Trust will, hopefully, be sitting down with the club in the not too distant future to have a discussion about what can be done in the season ahead.

Forgive my shameless plug, but if there's fans out there who are serious about doing what they can to see ICT through and giving them the best opportunity of a return to the SPL (maybe not next season or the season after, but at some point) then they need to come together and pull resources to ensure that every penny they can afford or every minute of time they can give is put to best use.