Ok fellow threaders there are a few of us including myself had a grumble about some of our perfomances of late.Now just for a bit of serious fun i will ask you all a question.Lets just say i am the chairman of Burton Albion football club and i propose to go to the bank and offer the clubs assets against a massive loan to push for promotion this season.I will give the money to the manager to go and buy top players and pay top wages to attract them.I would like you all to vote on this subject and give reasons for you decision.I will kick this vote off.I vote no to the chairman because i am not a gambler although it could come off and we would be in league 1.For me it is far to risky and i dont want my club to go out of exsistance like so many have or drop to the bowels of the football ladder.Dont forget this is only serious fun but i would like your votes please gentlemen.
posted on 21/11/13
no certainly not. quite happy the club is in a stable position and if we have to stay in div2 for a while longer so be it, at least we will have a club. not worth the risk will be happy to see the season thro and still be a div 2 member
posted on 21/11/13
I would not want to go down the route of borrowing the money, as it is gamble and would put the club under to much pressure to get results , even if it worked and we did go up , the club would have two battles on its hands. 1 . To get results to stay in League1
2 . To pay back the money we have borrowed
Ok the Brewers are not playing as well as they should this season , but I do feel that the Club looks very stable in league 2.
I would like to see us go up without borrowing the money, maybe a good run in the FA cup would help us reach our goal of promotion.
I would be over the moon if this happened to our club, but I am very aware we would have to ride a storm before we were stable in League 1.
posted on 21/11/13
PS. If I won 80 million on the Euro lotto, I would throw a few million in the pot , to see us get up a League.
LOL.
posted on 21/11/13
A no for me aswell.
In addition to the reasons already mentioned another factor is that there wouldn't be much extra support from the people of Burton I suspect.
Theoretically you could recoup some of your outlay 'living the dream' through increased turnstyle revenue. Would an extra few thousand Brewers fans turn up to watch us in league 1? Probably not I suspect.
I have to say it but I am disappointed that the people of Burton don't get behind their club more. Premiership football with its plastic all seated stadia and its overpaid journeymen is not the football I can relate to. Terracing, pie and chips and a game played by committed predominantly home grown (UK) footballers at a reasonable price. That's football for me and I don't understand why there aren't more at the Pirelli.
Sort of returning to the question, are Port Vale an interesting comparative case study? In the last 18 months they were within a few hours of going bust. I dare say their players were on twice the salary ours are on. They are now in league 1. Was it finance that got them promoted or is their core support of 7,000 the difference? If we got 5,000 most weeks would things be different?
posted on 21/11/13
A definite no from me too. I all to well remember the many times in the past when the club faced extinction after getting itself into extreme financial difficulties. Ben has brought stability to the club and financial security and I would not want to see that jeopardized for a gamble on getting further up the league.
For me just being in the Football League (something I thought I would never see) is great. We don't attract the gates yet to make a move further up the league financially viable and until such times as we do, staying in League 2 will do me.
posted on 22/11/13
No!
It would be a far too risky strategy. I like the fact that the club is currently so well run financially.
posted on 22/11/13
I would say stay well away from any dreams that incur debt. It would come back to haunt the club one day as nothing lasts forever.
In comparison the extra few grand from sky and extra income from the gate would not cover the big rise in the wages we would have to pay.
Real football for real football fans is what I say.
posted on 22/11/13
No i wouldnt want us going into debt ,im happy with where we are although i would take league one if we were lucky enough to gain promotion . I think this season if offered a trip to old trafford ,or anfield watching the brewers in round three of the cup i would take that over the play offs .
posted on 23/11/13
No! absolutely not. I agree with BA442.
If I won 80 million on the Euro lotto I would offer to help out but I'd want the money to leave a lasting legacy not go into the pockets of players and agents.
posted on 23/11/13
As an outsider I'm not really qualified to vote on this, but...
A couple of years ago we had the Canioman experience. Given financial backing by the Board he spent money like it was going out of fashion and bought players on the basis of buy 5 and 1 will be ok. We then paid off lots of useless players at great cost. We won the League 2 Championship by 5 points but the cost was huge and we paid the price the following season when the owners tired of his antics and pulled the plug. We were briefly top of League 1 (after a stunning win at Tranmere that I was lucky enough to see) and 48 hours from going out of business. We survived and made the play-offs but lost, a bit unluckily, to Brentford.
Since then we've had a massive cull in a bid to halve the wage bill. We have quite a few Spurs development players on loan and play attractive football, scoring and conceding goals. We're currently 6th and punching above our weight but badly need defensive strengthening to stop shipping goals. With a modest investment we might make the top 6 but it's not a possibility. Most of us are just glad that we avoided administration and points deduction and are still in business. It's called living within your means and sustaining the club.
So after that stream of consciousness, if I were voting it would be against the gamble.
Good luck for today against Bristol Rovers, one of my team's rivals but they're pretty harmless really.