How about trying to raise 400k, or at least significant proportion of it, rather than 'save' it?

league Express apparently have a piece on which player is going first in tomorrow's paper

It would have to be through additional sponsors as getting fans to raise it won't work due to what happened last time :/

You can't just 'let somebody go', Purtell would be quite within his right to demand we buy out the remainder of his contract. And let's face it, nobody will be making an offer for the bloke, we're stuck with him.

I'm hopeful that Purtell will have a much greater impact this year anyway. You simply cannot judge him on last season after the problems and disruptions he had to overcome.

Hopefully RHP and his team have some ideas to improve revenue streams in merchandise. It's been pretty dire for sometime IMO so some definite scope to improve that side of the business. And perhaps the lottery might get another look at? I was in it from the BigOne launch but admit that after they doubled the price and made the prizes pretty crap I decided it wasn't worth bothering with. I was also contributing to BULLBUILDER so supported the academy via the Trust. Wonder what numbers are like for the lottery nowadays?

Saving £400K looks a lot more feasible if you think in terms of saving £200K, and generating an extra £200K in some way. I hope they are thinking of generating more income, as well as reducing the spending.

Also why are we assuming that we need to shed £400K off the playing side? It has already been made clear that they are going to look at savings 'in all departments'. I've honestly got no idea who actually works behind the scenes at Odsal, or even what 'departments' exist. But I'm assuming that there are some savings to be made there - which might reasonably reduce the savings on the playing side down to less than £100K - which is only going to be a couple of players.

In fact, haven't they already said that the playing staff are ring fenced and that savings will be made elsewhere first?

Which seems the sensible way of doing things, after all, how can you raise any money if no one wants to come see a team of no hopers who get tonked nearly every week? That business plan certainly hasn't worked for London.

The club need to get people through the gates. The reduced season ticket deal would have worked but for the fact that, IMO, it was TOO cheap. Clearly, the club had the idea that people would buy the cheap ticket and turn up every week to spend money and thus make up the short fall. However, it seemed more like people bought the cheap ticket and just turned up at the games they felt like.

Cheers, this is loads of fun

'Fun' was meant as a bit of irony considering we have done this plenty of times over the past 2-3 years :/ Sorry if that wasn't clear enough.

I think the wording was "the first team squad will be ring fenced [ias much as possible[/i"

The board have said that 2014 will be "survival mode". Which means increased income (sponsors - old & new) and decreased expenditure (wages, suppliers).

Which should stand us in good stead for 2015 after we get next year out of the way.

At least we will have £600,000 more Sky money next season providing we stay in SL as well!