Worrying times

Quote: Sam Buca "They wont be helping. I think you need a stringent financial budget and it be stuck to.
If you're making a matchday loss, you should be looking at

Don't wish to come across as patronising, but I can assure you that the Bulls are probably as clued up financially and as on top of their finances and budget as any club in the game. They have had to be. And I am speaking with a degree of first hand knowledge there, not just the usual forum talk.

I rather think there is little left to cut - there are minimum stewarding etc requirements, the only police you normally see (except when HKR are in town) are those stopping the Rooley Avenue traffic after the game, the pre-match and HT is far far less than it used to be, there are no bouncy castles or karaoke or face painting and the like, at all, and I believe the catering is let out to a third party for a fee, and see separate thread for discussion on that. I was once told a figure by the club that was the incremental contribution (in financial terms) for every body through the gate. Every additional body helps.

The underlying problem is too few bodies through the gate. We have loads of supposed Bulls fans, armchair supporters who are happy to complain about performances and perceived lack of spending, but seem unable to make the connection with their lack of attendance. It certainly does not help that we seem to be blighted by turning in bad home performances at just the time there are signs of gate recovery. Every bloody time. It also does not help that this city is more or less stuffed, and the whole place seems to me to be dying from the centre out. Or that Odsal is at the very bottom tip of the Bradford Met district, and that therefore many from the northern swathes would see Valley Parade and soccer as their more natural following. And of course there seems very little appetite for RL across much of the great band across the centre of the city.

Mick is I believe repeating some numbers that allegedly a semi-inebriated director told him. They may or may not be accurate (although I can form my own conclusions independently of that, but that's not for on here) but its the bigger picture that really matters. Matchday net income and expenditure is only part of it. The ongoing legacy of the past, including of the Caisley era, the lack of a modern-type stadium, and most significantly of all the lack of a wealthy backer to allow the board to invest more in the future, are pretty fundamental. When we are up against clubs who do not have these disadvantages.

Yet, even so, the club has just found a way to invest in what appears (from comments of players from other clubs, including your own JP) to be pretty well the best training and development facility in the game. And far far better located than the previous facilities. I've seen it - and its very impressive. This is vital to the future, and I can only applaud the club for finding a way to make it happen.

I just wish the club could find a way to make more bodies on the terraces happen. But that will mean overcoming the massive inertia and pall of apathy that so pervades so much of this city.