Quote: Northernrelic "And there in lies the rub, because although in the last few weeks the majority focus has been rightly on just surviving - there is always the undercurrent of not only should we survive but also get back to collecting trophies. But to do this we are having to compete with clubs with either one of the "fabled Sugar Daddies" who is happy to chuck in several hundred thousand a year, or clubs with gates several thousand higher than ours - some of the swine even have both which is highly unsporting of them!
The Dark Lord may have made himself unpopular by berating the fans for not turning out in sufficient numbers but the maths behind his comments is right.'"
I think that you'll find that clubs like Leeds and Wire, at least, have managed their finances to a point where the 'sugar daddy' does not contribute at all. Simon Moran only acquired the club after several years when John Smith, a tough accountant who was CEO of Wire at their lowest ebb, cut every cost under the sun to stop the club losing money. The cuts were so ruthless that we ran no 'A' team for several years, with the result that we had no youth policy ( something other fans taunt us with to this day ) effectively before we moved to the HJ.