Whilst Kosh may have good intentions with him buying a pass to keep the club afloat it's clear that the fans money has been abused over the past few years £450K paying players off is an embarrassment to be quite honest. Our team is still suffering from poor recruitment of previous years. I'd say this year apart recruitment/retaining of players under Pearson has been the poorest I can remember we have let players slip through our grasp in Manu & Briscoe & signed many a dud in O'Carroll, Arundel, Crookes, Miller, the list simply goes on. We were promised internationals & England knights players. Yet all we did was sign young players on over the top contracts that were hyped up. Tuson was a fine example, I feel he was a steady player. Wigan thought that too which is why he was offered to stay but in the lower tier pay bracket yet ourselves & Wakey were prepared to move him up to the higher banding of pay & here lies the issue he was never gonna be a world beater neither was Pitts or O'Carroll but they came and the club bugged them up. So when these players don't meet the bugged up standards the club the. Throw them to wayside, they can't have expected these to have turned into international standard players within a season or two. We'd have been better served cherry picking from the lower leagues, Whiting, Walmsley, Hardaker & Hill have all shown the step up can be made. Bringing someone in with potential on a small wage isn't so much of a risk.

I started writing a really long dull appraisal of the situation but got a bit bored. My two penneth:

On the club's finances:
Buy a pass or we're fecked. Or do an @airliebird. If we've dropped £600k already and passes are down, regardless of the extra half a million on Sky, we've got shrinking income streams. Not good.
Costs could get out of control. There seems to be permissible variability of contract terms with the SMC. AP's already bankrolling improvements in the academy, fees for Sneyd, EBTs for Manu and a warm weather camp. Can't say he's not doing his bit. Needs backing. Mistakes have obviously been made on recruitment in the past, and a bit more humility and holding up of hands wouldn't go amiss frankly, but we are where we are and need to get on with it.

On the SMC show today, I think it could be bollox. The Council have refuted that anything has gone on outwith terms of the head lease, and the whole thing was in place before the Allams did their acquisition, so should have been covered by their due diligence. As for the accounts, wowzers. The direct costs attributable to Hull FC have reportedly gone up from £200k in 2010 to £1.2m last year, on lower crowds. The direct costs of City, with total attendances around 200% more than ours are £1.8m, just 50% more. Amazing stuff.

Some good points you've made, some signings can be made to look good because of the club they have come from, some are risks that have or haven't paid off, but it's about learning from mistakes which we as a club never seem to do, maybe with the halfback situation the signings have been panic buys, but it's about who is available at the right time with a small budget to work with.

Some fair points

I posted mid season when the 3 league split thing was launched how in 2015 we'll be looking at 7k gates and Batley visiting. As usual was shot down in flames.

Moving to the season end now, with the 2 relegated trams gone we are second bottom. In the pic form the pre season opening talk by AP and LR at Chants Av with a slide show to the players, the slide on the pics said "season aim, the super 8"

Do you think all this attendance talk is some kind of realisation that if we dont make the 8, we WILL see gates of 7K with the likes of Batley Sheffield Whitehaven in town, threats from the SMC, threats from Pearson about falling gates, we are closer to those gates falling, maybe giving the SMC and AP an excuse to follow their threats through.

Of course its all bawlicks as we will be in the top 4 and unbeaten at home all year.

It is scaremongering to state that if the stay away fans don't come back the club will fold.

The club won't fold, it's been in far worse positions before and it's still going.
Pearson's finding out the hard way that there's no money to be made in RL. it's alright moaning about 'off cap' salary expenses, but apart from the Manu situation (which AP knew about) they've all been of Pearsons doing, he signed the deals off. Our attendance hasn't fallen out of line with the rest of SL, so they're not Hull FC stay aways, they're RL stay aways.

Pearson spent the first 2 years of his tenure promising this, that and the other. Now he's publicly saying the club faces financial difficulties. Doesn't sound dissimilar to Hudgell really.

if we are playing 'haven, Batley & Fev et al at least we'll be winning and the fans will come back in droves... see this is Pearson's master plan with Igor at the helm to help achieve this goal.
IF we fail to get in the top 8 will Igor hand in his resignation

My view is if you go when your side is winning and stop if they are losing your not a true fan more of a glory hunting bandwaggoner.If Pearson on his take over of the Club started with the words " well took the Club on dont expect us to win anything probably might scrape the eight but cannot promise anything" wonder what fans would have made of that. This guy clearly wants the best for the Club and fans knock him.Yes we have brought in some players who clearly not good enough that was Bombers doing . Johnson and Pitts tried hard but not good enough ,O'Carroll was just awful.Crookes looked decent at Bulls but lacked any confidence.The biggest for for me was Arundal like many i really thought he would be a great signing,many in the game saw him has a future star.He came here unfit looked drained at the fans forum and never recovered from is long injury.We all knew Pearson was not a expert in RL so he thought other around him did..clearly not. Like many have said if you want a Club to support then do just that or we wont have one.Allam is on a mission to destroy Fc he as made that clear .Lets show him what our club means to us and show him what real fans are about

The Manu situation does make you wonder if that '3 year massive deal' we offered him included a deal to sort out this off-shore payment mess, which is why he opted to take a good 2 year deal with Saints, and then pocket his £200k on the way home...that and he's ended up with an SL winners medal of course. Mr Manu's had a good year!

You remember where we were prior to the merger, right?

Not sure if it has been asked or worked out but what effect did the 7 out of 8 home games have on attendances last year? Pay on the day fans having to find the cash each week rather than each fortnight?

And you do realise we're still going, right?

If you think there will be another miracle-merger to keep us going in the future then it will be with Rovers.

So lets say that thenhttps://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55995939.jpg" >

Just think it's all got a little bit over exaggerated, even the clubs mouth piece is in the paper today saying as much.
People are dealing in absolutes, fans not returning to the club won't see it out of business, it'll just mean the club restructures and lives within its means. Hardly the end of the world.

Maybe you don't remember just how close we came to being either closed down or permanently relegated to the lower divisions, and the unique set of circumstances that led to our survival. I do. And relying on anything similar to occur is the worst kind of head-in-the-sand complacency IMO.

On the other point you raised I agree that dwindling attendances is not a problem just for FC. The game as a whole is suffering. But I'm concerned primarily on what we can do in our particular circumstances to avoid the inevitable negative consequences.