Sandy and Meadow -- count me in on that too.

Nick/JAW - I definitely think that was the case up to this year. Hard not to see it as a governance issue as well. The part time, voluntary Executive Chair and no CEO experiment has, in my opinion, failed. Get a CEO in who is incentivised by profit share and voluntary Chair who primarily shakes hands and shows high net worth individuals around the ground, but doesn't have meaningful day-to-day responsibility for operations.

RK - let's hope - though I do fear that the extent of playing budget cuts needed would see us relegated, which of course would make the situation worse.

Meadow - I got that one too from Christine. Deffo a hack

Nick Woking, not if the finance guy has mentioned cuts to playing budget. Seems to me a very deliberate ploy to get the real decision-makers to start thinking

Nick, exactly this. I have hope with some of the new DT board members and the first meeting tomorrow that they will have the confidence to force the issue on this and demand answers from the PLC. This should be their role as an oversight board.

FAO Bob M if you're lurking. I've just had a really odd email from Christine and I wondered if her email account had been hacked.

I do fear that the reason why the club hasn’t come up with a plan to close the loss is that there is actually no obvious path to profitability and we are doing the classic thing organisations do when faced with a problem with no clear solution, of just pretending that the problem doesn’t exist

Biggles, pretty sure the playing budget will be in cost of sales. Would agreee about the write off. Would love to see a breakdown of admin cost

As JaW points out the debt interest saving will be limited even if we repay some of the debt, as rates have risen, but frankly it’s all a bit marginal as even if the interest went away altogether we still have a significant (~£2M per annum) structural loss, excluding the interest

Admin expenses included all playing staff (which so many people wanted to see increased, so long as someone else paid) and (I think), the mystery one-off loss £409,000*.

I ended up redeeming after looking at the financial losses from 21/22 & 22/23. But if I hadn't redeemed, my no 2 option would be to get a better return say 5%, rather than the 2% I was getting

Forgot to finish the previous post, what I meant to add is that the debt is only 10-15% of our problem. The cost of running the club is the bigger issue based on current revenues. Admin expenses were £5.4M for example!

I think RK has answered this and even if it ends up slightly less than £400k our losses without player sales are still £4-5M per season

Where some rates increased as an incentive to roll-over?

JaW - why would £8.5m debt attract the same amount of interest as £10m? Especially if, as Biggles suggests, we repay the higher returning bonds first.

That’s true Biggles but I believe interest payments would remain £400k+ per season. Won’t change our increasing season on season losses. I’m hoping there is some sort of comms after Wednesdays board meeting on how we are getting through to end of season without doubling our losses. I believe even with AAH money, Currie and Rudoni fees are still looking at a £1M funding gap.

There has already been a big change in the club's operating results. Debt has been cut by about £1.5m to £8.5m. That needs to be repeated until half the bonds (the most expensive and short term half) have been repaid. If the rest could be spread over 10-20 years the debt burden would be eased considerably.

Spit - deffo not Clive Thomas.

Love reading this debate, and the ideas from JG. All very inventive ideas. The thing that gives me hope is it seems, at least, that the realization fo the scale of the issue and task ahead is becoing clearer to all, which is always the key first step and takes longer to happen than many assume would be the case.

OTD, Clive Thomas?

I can't see a world in which the fanbase is squeezed successfully for long periods of time to solve the equation, even if it is rebranded as more investment (don't forget refinancing the PLB doesn't solve the annual losses). For me there are three plausible options to sustain fans ownership and upward ambition towards top of L1: (1) we become a top 1% best run football business in the country (2) we somehow cross subsidise club from events business or other revenue from our assets (3) we find a pool of a dozen or so HNW who are willing to 'do a John Green' and support us financially for kudos, but not a lot else.

Debt to equity swaps were already offered for the current PLB tranche due this year weren't they? Or at least there was a survey of what people wanted to do that included that as an option.

With the indictation from our Head Of Finance that we’ll need to reduce our playing budget I can see 2025 being rather tense whether we gain promotion or not.

Be interesting to see what the appetite for change is in 12 months if 2025 brings no notable change in the clubs operating results. Can't see why we would rule out further share issues (or debt for equity swaps for those that wanted to). Unrelated but the Sir Alex doc on iplayer is pretty good, only 2 x 60 mins