The cost of relegation....

[Johnboy]

Interesting reading...

[Dmacca]

Thats an incentive to make sure you stay up, relegation is a no no!

Football should be renamed money because thats what its all about nowadays at either end of the scale.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Interesting reading...

Typical plausible, financial management "speak" but just an excuse for muppetry.

We were in the proverbial fans but due to us we have managed to keep the club afloat and you should be indebted to us.

Cue Music - doo, doo, doo, do, doo ................................................................

[Tichy_Blacks_Back]

Indeed - it will be interesting to see how Falkirk fair this season as they were run with a much higher wage bill so you have to assume a higher level of debt....something does need to change though for the future of Scottish football starting with the restructuring of the league system....

Having said that though just seen the first advert this morning on Showtime for the SPL opener live on Showtime Sports - Inverness CT v Celtic....it feels good....

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Let us not forget - The decision making of what particular group of individuals initially tore the club apart, lost the support of the fans and the players - and put us in a position half way through a season that made the prospect of relegation a present under our feckin Xmas trees - and did they have the humility to apologise - NO but they did attempt to project the blame and fall on the back of appointing the Messiah - a decision which was clearly influenced by the waving of hundreds of highland shoes in the outskirts of Glasgow.

They may have improved and learned some lessons but Butcher and the players are the reason that we are where we are - I hope the SPL environment does not serve to highlight the muppetry of ICT again.

[+MrCaleyjag]

This just shows that the gulf between the SPL and 1st Division is far to much for any team to cope with unless they bounce straight back up to the SPL after relegation, just look at Dundee who have been stuck there for the last 5 years.

It furthermore heightens the need for the SPL to wind their neck in and start working with and speaking with the SFL to drastically change the way the Scottish game is run and funded as it's not all about them. Maybe the kind of funding that is available to relegated English Premiership teams is needed in Scotland but obviously this would be proportional to the finances available. Just look at how the Championship has flourished with the 'parachute' payments and there is no way this couldn't work in the Scottish league.

In our case I think we can count ourselves lucky that the board got their act together and appointed TB and MM and manage to keep them, yes we went down for a season and the decision to change things, when in the SPL, was made too late but everyone makes a mistake usually upsetting a few people in the process. It is whether lessons are learned from that mistake and I believe they have been, it was a harsh lesson for those running the club that the SPL should not be taken for granted and hopefully we won't see the same management mistakes flare up again.

We have a solid basis now to help us stay in the league and I believe we will but there are other SPL clubs that should be worrying about the drop and the financial pitfalls that it throws up

Edited August 7, 2010 by MrCaleyjag

[Scarlet Pimple]

DMacca--yes the world runs on money, but not exclusively, and at ICT this is not necessarily entirely true either. No matter how selfless and spiritual you may be about the club the blunt facts are that you can't run it or survive in any meaningful way money. Money , anyway, is merely a way of exchanging energy isn't it.

Terry signed on for the duration of the SFL and beyond and stayed the course. Forget whatever other self-interest reasons he may have had do this because he has imbued the club/ players with spirit and has set a passionate example of dedication and commitment to all associated twith him and Maurice (as a team). Buit he and Maurice have been a potent force since they came and deserve priase on all levels of emotion and directgion.

IHE

You use the word "muppetry " so often and in such a negative way towards management that it seems to have lost all meaning. Maybe you feel it means puppetry but, if so, who is pulling the strings and does it matter? What is more important is the spirit within the club and the progress it has made and will continue to make as we all go forward, fans included.

Even if they did make mistakes, nobody is perfect and one learns more from mistakes than one does from listening to other people's advice (or criticism) because generally one is rarely ever willing to take it and so one learns the hard way, anyway.

So why live so entrenched in the past?

Change is taking place every day and in all ways and, if the club is to move forward in a positive way, the management has to be given their place and due for keeping the club afloat.Remember the old saying .."there but for the grace of God go I."

To be able to make a financial plan work that involved difficult cuts in staff and expenses to achieve a million pound reduction takes skill and courage, not only mental but emotional, and frankly I think it is an exceptional achievement and I will bet that several of the upper management team lost more than a few hours sleep over it before it came to fruition.. In short, the management has worked closely with the football team Manager and the players and wrestled with the financial challenges to bring the club out of darkness into light.

Long may it continue to be so good.

The Scottish Football authorities certainly have a major responsibility to address this relegation financial morass and their talk about instituting SPL 2 should be backed and implemented without further delay , provided, IMHO that money should be equally distributed to every team in both tiers to level the playing field.

Parachute payments are a great idea also and maybe a similar type of payment should be made to the team who is promoted to assist them to spend the money that needs to be found to cover the higher costs involved --again to ensure that the transition from one league to another is as financially seamless as possible and to fair .

The new S.F.A. appointee from the Yorkshire Cricket Association, hired to make necessary changes within the structure of Scottish Footbal, and who can talk up a good storm, may be part of the solution. Clearly it can't come quick enough.

[Bridge_Ender]

A pretty scary report and any Falkirk fans reading it must be crossing everything and praying to every God that they can 'do a Caley' this season...

I'd imagine the majority of SFL clubs don't even dream of reaching the SPL any more as they are struggling to operate at their own level. The only way I can see the professional game surviving in this country is for the SPL to expand to 16 sides. If you add Falkirk, Dundee, Dunfermline and one from Partick, County and Queen of the South to the SPL mix and you probably have all the clubs in Scotland who can realistically survive as full time operations.

[Charles Bannerman]

I am simply and briefly supplying this for information.

One consideration which seems largely to have been missed is that, despite this loss of ?947K, Caley Thistle have managed to remain debt free and have money in the bank. (I quote the Chairman on this.)

This has been done through:-

* Drawing on reserves.

* Management of cash flow

* An injection of ?150K from the Directors.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

SP - I aint living in the past - if I was Jethro Tull would announce me to be Thick as a Brick !! And CB alludes to the injection of money - presumably even more now since the apparent peaceful amalgamation of Tullochs and Orion.

Drawing on reserves - no comment !! Management of cash flow - just had to be tightened out after years of mismanagement.

Ok - the future appears rosier and thank feck fer that - but if only the people who made the mistakes or continued the "feuds" would only admit to it and/or apologise to the fan base. Fer yonks they projected the blame on to one another or projected the blame on to others - the Supporters Trust, the players, the managers, the fans.

They may have learned their lessons and now operate on a better playing field - but in the memory they will always be useless, amateur feckin muppets.

Terry Butcher, the players and a loyal fan base turned this club around - so lets all take the plaudits and scoff at the claims of a bunch of muppets who landed "lucky".

[Johnboy]

Terry Butcher, the players and a loyal fan base turned this club around - so lets all take the plaudits and scoff at the claims of a bunch of muppets who landed "lucky".

"Landed Lucky"..?

They are already claiming credit for appointing TB & MM, and more importantly, sticking with them through what was a difficult period.

If there was a significant turning point for the club after the Brewster years, it just has to be the signing of Foran and Hayes.

[12th Man]

You mean "the cost of relegation and promotion the following season" doesnt quite have the same ring.

An unreliable source told me that the end of season party cost 700k, mainly on a Rod Stewart lookalike and Les Kidgers fireworks. 200k on player bonuses, the shortfall was actually from the lack of will from the catering staff to have the desire and hunger to make sure they serve customers as fast as possible for 20 minutes.

[Pele_Is_God]

So to sum it up simply as long as we are an SPL outfit we will be fine financially..?

[DaveDargo]

So to sum it up simply as long as we are an SPL outfit we will be fine financially..?

Perhaps not. Last season they made a loss of approx. ?250k which was after adding over ?500k income from transfer fees so a loss of ?750k if Niculae hadn't been sold.

I also notice that if it wasn't for a property revaluation in the last year the balance sheet would be showing the club as having more liabilities than assets.

The accounts certainly don't paint a pretty picture.

[RiG]

Given there were people on here saying that relegation wouldn't be that bad a thing in May 2009 this kind of story is, in an odd way, welcomed and should make people aware of just how costly it is to teams like us to go down. Hopefully we won't have to go through that all again come May 2011

[caleyboy]

So to sum it up simply as long as we are an SPL outfit we will be fine financially..?

Perhaps not. Last season they made a loss of approx. ?250k which was after adding over ?500k income from transfer fees so a loss of ?750k if Niculae hadn't been sold.

I also notice that if it wasn't for a property revaluation in the last year the balance sheet would be showing the club as having more liabilities than assets.

The accounts certainly don't paint a pretty picture.

That's not what The Builder would have you believe!

[PullMyFinger]

Perhaps not. Last season they made a loss of approx. ?250k which was after adding over ?500k income from transfer fees so a loss of ?750k if Niculae hadn't been sold.

I also notice that if it wasn't for a property revaluation in the last year the balance sheet would be showing the club as having more liabilities than assets.

What property value affected the assets valuation of the club? I thought we rented the stadium.

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]

Terry Butcher, the players and a loyal fan base turned this club around - so lets all take the plaudits and scoff at the claims of a bunch of muppets who landed "lucky".

"Landed Lucky"..?

They are already claiming credit for appointing TB & MM, and more importantly, sticking with them through what was a difficult period.

If there was a significant turning point for the club after the Brewster years, it just has to be the signing of Foran and Hayes.

TB approached ICT - TB/MM picked up a team that wasnt theirs - how could anyone ever have turfed them ? And who signed Foran and Hayes - and why have they stayed.

[CELTIC1CALEY3]

I notice Brewster has not come on the website to say 'sorry lads, my being in denial about turning things around and my management style, losing Donald were probably the root cause of relegation.' If we had sacked him a few months earlier and given him a wad of cash to go things might have been a whole lot better. However, that is history, and hopefully many people including supporters do not want to make the same mistakes again.

[Alex MacLeod]

So to sum it up simply as long as we are an SPL outfit we will be fine financially..?

Perhaps not. Last season they made a loss of approx. ?250k which was after adding over ?500k income from transfer fees so a loss of ?750k if Niculae hadn't been sold.

I also notice that if it wasn't for a property revaluation in the last year the balance sheet would be showing the club as having more liabilities than assets.

The accounts certainly don't paint a pretty picture.

That's not what The Builder would have you believe!

To be fair the accounts paint a very pretty picture. They show that we still have cash in the bank and assetts worth greated than our debts. The true cost of our relegation was not the figure quoted in the linked article. A figure I cant find in the accounts.

The true cost of relegaqtion was a drop in income of ?1.8 million and a reduction in staff of 18. The board are to be commended for keeping the deficit to under a million considering the drop in revenue.

The property revaluation is for Grieg Street Club.

[Guest]

When I was in the scouts the motto was "be prepared" A club in our position should always be mindful that relegation is a distinct possibility and should prepare for that. It seems that, with money still in the bank and assets to back it up that the club were prepared for the worst, perhaps there were casualties with jobs going but we got through it and as long as we keep the wage bill down and are prepared should we fail to keep our SPL status then our club will survive. I don't think that calling for more help for relegated clubs is the answer, I think clubs should be forced to live within their means to survive otherwise they deserve to go under. Fickle fans calling for big signings and unrealistic results are to blame for the death of their teams.

[Alex MacLeod]

When I was in the scouts the motto was "be prepared" A club in our position should always be mindful that relegation is a distinct possibility and should prepare for that. It seems that, with money still in the bank and assets to back it up that the club were prepared for the worst, perhaps there were casualties with jobs going but we got through it and as long as we keep the wage bill down and are prepared should we fail to keep our SPL status then our club will survive. I don't think that calling for more help for relegated clubs is the answer, I think clubs should be forced to live within their means to survive otherwise they deserve to go under. Fickle fans calling for big signings and unrealistic results are to blame for the death of their teams.

I dont think anyone is asking for more help for relegated clubs. What our chairman says is " The present setup in Scottish Football, where the relegated club faces financial ruin, must change". In my opinion the system whereby two clubs get 45% of the league income is wrong. Monies coming in from TV etc should be shared equally. It is also wrong that the SPL commands a very large portion of the income coming into Scottish Football. We need one governing body distributing the cash for the benefit of all teams and not just for the elite.

[Guest]

Clubs would not face financial ruin if they budgeted for the worst case scenario, in a situation where TV revenue was equally shared then there would have to be a complete balance of how many games are shown of each team, that would mean drastically reducing the amount of matches involving the old firm which would in return devalue live SPL football as a product given the fact that OF sofa fans probably outnumber the amount of fans of the 10 other teams added together and doubled. Who would choose to watch an ICT vs St Johnstone match on a Sunday afternoon when there are EPL, Championship, La Liga and a host of other high quality matches to choose from? Lose the audience, lose the cash injection.

[Alex MacLeod]

Clubs would not face financial ruin if they budgeted for the worst case scenario, in a situation where TV revenue was equally shared then there would have to be a complete balance of how many games are shown of each team, that would mean drastically reducing the amount of matches involving the old firm which would in return devalue live SPL football as a product given the fact that OF sofa fans probably outnumber the amount of fans of the 10 other teams added together and doubled. Who would choose to watch an ICT vs St Johnstone match on a Sunday afternoon when there are EPL, Championship, La Liga and a host of other high quality matches to choose from? Lose the audience, lose the cash injection.

Re you a director of one of the OF Andy. Thats the sort of response they would make. Does Man U and Chelsea get the lions share of EPL monies. I think not. The rest would walk if that happened. As you indicate there's EPL and Championship. There's also league matches televised in England. There's La Liga and Serie A on some channel at some point in the week but, personally, I'd choose a Scottish game first.

[Guest]

I am not a director of an OF club but to start a response with an insult goes to show you are on the back foot in this discussion, cheers. The logic is quite simple as far as SPL TV rights go, SKY and ESPN need to sell advertising spaces and subscriptions to justify their financial input into the SPL not many of SKY's audience are interested in any OF matches with the exception of the OF derby. ICT (as an example of a non OF club) will be lucky to have 1 televised away match in a season the remainder of their matches being at home to the OF and maybe one of Hibs or Hearts or whichever team looks like keeping within touching distance of the OF meaning that the majority of ICT fans who are interested enough to pay to see the match will be there and have no real reason to take up a new subscription or watch the ads making it less profitable for the providers of the coverage to screen matches which do not involve the OF. The other leagues are a different kettle of fish they are filled with world class players who neutrals are more than willing to pay to watch, just look at where our signings have come from in closed season to see the gulf in quality on offer to the customer. The broadcasters want to show the OF on TV and this is a huge bargaining chip when the clubs sit down and vote on the acceptance or not of a contract and the terms of the share of revenue, each SPL team has a vote in these things and agreement has been reached via due process.

Should we also demand a share of the sponsorship money the OF receive from Tennant's and the like because our fans will read the logos on their shirts?