On the finances, Roy Whalley said that it’s been a difficult time, but we’re working hard to rectify the position. All of the contracts entered into when we had the ITV Digital money have now ended. We have only survived without going to the extremes other clubs have thanks to the Chairman and Directors’ support.
The reasons are all to do with the collapse of ITV Digital. We did not spend any money we didn’t have, but were committed to spend on the basis of having it.
We did spend more than intended trying to stay up, but Roy was certain that is what the fans would have wanted us to do.
He did not say anything about having to sell players to survive, and did not seem pleased with the stories in the Express and Star.
He did say that the work put in on the youth system in recent years was now bearing fruit and that we had, probably, the best set of youngsters we’d had since the sixties, not just at youth, but also at schoolboy level.
In response to a question about the Stadium Suite, RW said it is generating more business, not just during the week, but before games too. He was very pleased with how well fans were looking after it and wanted to thank everyone.
The new stand. We are still working hard on finding an advertiser, but there are no time scales.
The hotel should be ready April/May time.
The deal for the hotel was a one off payment for the land, which will come through in the next set of accounts. That was the deal the company wanted, but our benefit will be the cash for the land and the increased business.
Roy confirmed that we had a clause in the agreement that Paul Smith will not be playing on Saturday and that was at the Manager’s insistence. The deal had been made because Smith had not relocated, which was part of the deal for him to come here. The constant driving was itself causing him injury problems.
The last Banks’ 2 for a tenner scheme was not a success, as some of their pubs had not participated. He would be taking this up with Banks’s.
Roy himself brought up the question of Ron Atkinson’s booking. He defended his actions on the basis of Mr Atkinson not having committed any crimes and being no worse than some others they have had on. However, he did seem surprised by the strength of feeling expressed by all fans, not just the Trust and ISSA reps there, that Mr Atkinson had done something which, if he repeated on match days, would quite rightly have meant him being ejected and, possibly banned. Roy also was unaware of the racist joke told by Mr Atkinson at Sheffield Wednesday earlier this year.
