BBC Stanley blog

[lancsmatt]

Apologies if this has already been posted, however if not is worth a read, someinteresting comments good and bad from readers too. BBC - BBC Sport: Paul Fletcher: Can Accrington save their Stanley without help?

Also, great result and game last night, typically first time in about 15 games I missed the kick off becuase of traffic on the motorway, got in just as second goal was flying in!

[Minister Onymfo]

Some interesting opinions voiced on there particularly from the people who had already made their minds up before they had digested the facts, although not suprise by some of the responses if I am honest.
Thankfully the well-wishers are in larger numbers than the critics.

I supose the beauty of asking for donations in a democratic society is that those that don't want to give can tell you to f*** right off - and they do. Maybe some people should remember 'let he who is with out fault cast the first stone' and all that.

We got average crowds of 2500 in the conference and six/seven? figure sponsorship we all thought that the average crowd would be sustainable or increased, when we reached the League, hence I suspect the club set their stall out accordingly (budgeting is an element of looking at track records and an element of forecasting, lets face it weathermen would be out of business within a year if they where running a football team)
Lets be sensible about the cost of running a football club with full-time staff.
If the squad was only 30 players (incl. youth team) even on something like a minimum wage say £6 an hour for a 40 hour week then

£6 x 40hours = £240 a week (we all know you can't pay decent professional footballers this, however)

£240 x 52 weeks = £12,480 a year per player

£12,480 x 30 players = £374,400 squad wage bill per year

Yes folks if you paid minimum wage for a squad of 30 full time players it would cost you 1/3 of a million quid per year. Then you have Coley and Jimmy, simple economics tell you that Coley didn't give up teaching and a part time football managers fee for £6 per hour full-time managing. The admin staff, groundsman, stewards, bar staff, doctor, physio it would not be unreasonable to say the wage bill for the club is £500,000 absolute minimum.

Income from gates if you predicted 2500 average attendance per game paying an average of £10 then

2500 x £10 = £25,000 each home game for a probable 30 games that is a cool £750,000 per year.........but we only got 1200 average, so

1200 x £10 x 30 games = £360,000 per year........... 'sh*t the wage bill is £500,000,

never mind we've got a decent sponsor................damn they've gone bust'.

'Oh yes and the Football League need us to put another 1000 seats in for all those thousands of fans that are sqeezing into the stadium and want to rest their feet. Maybe if we invest some money and put a roof over the Clayton end it will encourage people to watch.......whats that, the gates are down??????!!!!!!!!!!!!'

These are back of a fag packet figures and I have absolutely no idea about the actual accounts at the club and yes there are other income streams and there are other expenses but you can see from my simple calculations that attendances need to be better, but you can't blame anyone for predicting they would have been better when we won at Woking back in April 2006. We could have stayed in the Conference and still ended up in the same situation.

So I would say to all those financial experts on the blog, who say football should get it's house in order, when you took your mortgage out did you have a signed guarantee from your employer saying that you would be employed on a sufficient wage to pay your bills for the next 25 years or did you take a calculated risk like the rest of us and pray to God every night that you won't be made redundant before the mortgage is paid.

To all those who have shown us support and it is the vast majority, thank you so very much it will not be forgotten.

[VALAIRIAN]

Very good post, with much common sense

[MikeA]

Originally Posted by Minister Onymfo

If the squad was only 30 players (incl. youth team) even on something like a minimum wage say £6 an hour for a 40 hour week then

£6 x 40hours = £240 a week (we all know you can't pay decent professional footballers this, however)

£240 x 52 weeks = £12,480 a year per player

£12,480 x 30 players = £374,400 squad wage bill per year.

An interesting exercise and similar to one many of us will have done over the last few weeks. There's an important omission, however, that's often overlooked. Don't forget HMRC. Based on just these figures, there would be an additional £26,000 to pay in employer's National Insurance Contributions on top of the £374K.