Wray keeping tight hold of purse strings (From Swindon Advertiser)
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Wray keeping tight hold of purse strings
6:00am Saturday 21st July 2012 in STFC News By Sam Morshead
KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS: Jeremy Wray, left, and Paolo Di Canio
SWINDON Town chairman Jeremy Wray has hinted that manager Paolo Di Canio may have to temper his desire to spend to fit in with the Robins’ budget for the remainder of the summer.
Over the course of the past week Di Canio has been suggesting that he would be keen to add up to four more players to his squad as he prepares for life in League One next season.
Town have already recruited seven new faces, however, and Wray mentioned that the club would not go over their spending limit in pursuit of back to back promotions.
Nevertheless, the County Ground supremo is more than happy with the current state of play in SN1, and he believes Swindon are well set to stage a serious challenge at the top end of the table.
“Paolo has mentioned three other players, I think as the budget stands at the moment we’re probably looking at one or two definitely,” he said.
“Paolo has said he wants to give some thought as to which specific positions he’s looking at and I think the next couple of pre-season friendlies will clarify his thoughts.
“He has at the moment identified a couple of people who he wants to bring in and hopefully we can get that done before pre-season.
“His feeling is that we are in a much stronger position than we were in last year and that we’re just a couple of pieces short of being really ready to go.”
Wray was in attendance yesterday as Swindon Town Football Company Limited held their annual general meeting at the County Ground.
The accounts for the year ended May 31, 2011, which revealed a pre-tax operating loss of £1.3million, were approved and Russell Backhouse was re-elected as a director.
“There’s nothing wrong with making losses if the losses are what you budgeted to make,” Wray said afterwards.
“What you don’t want are unexpected losses, so there is an awareness going on this year that the club will lose money and that is funded in order to get to the next stage.
“We have recognised that the only way this club becomes sustainable and stands on its own two feet is by getting into the Championship, sharing those much greater revenues that are in the Championship, and doesn’t necessarily position itself to spend crazy amounts to try to get to the Premiership.”
A general meeting followed the AGM, during which resolutions were passed allowing the sub-division of the £1 shares in the company into 1p ordinary shares and 99p deferred shares.
The change in the share structure is designed to more easily allow further investment in the club, as Wray explained: “Very simply, the wage cap constraints that we are under means that the money we put into the club has to come in as equity, it cannot come in as loans because we have to use 65 per cent of our turnover plus any funds that we put in directly as equity.
“That is what is available for the playing budget. We’ve gone out and said that we’re trying to put together a playing budget that gets us to the Championship and it’s necessitated putting funds directly into the club.
“We could no longer use the holding company structure because loans are not recognised.”
Comments(27)
Swindon1984
says...
6:47am Sat 21 Jul 12
London Red wrote:Same as, didn't know that was allowed.
Interesting I didn't realise investor injections were allowed as Equity - thought all were banned
.
So our £4.5 (our ave L1 income) plus £2m injection gives us £6.5m - 65% of that is £4.2m - so that seems to work this year
matt69andover
says...
6:53am Sat 21 Jul 12
the wizard
says...
7:49am Sat 21 Jul 12
Interesting I didn't realise investor injections were allowed as Equity - thought all were banned
I think you will find that is how Crawley were doing things, and then their Chairman made his , if we don't get more legs through the turnstiles speech and the board then re couped some of their money by flogging off their two best players.
With a bit of luck they will start sliding this season, downwards.
red white
says...
7:52am Sat 21 Jul 12
matt69andover wrote:Well 65% of my alcohol intake of 9% of 45% what i drank was,hang on,what did you say?
Does anyone else struggle this morning getting their head around figures after a few last night?
red white
says...
8:13am Sat 21 Jul 12
SAPFanSTFC
says...
8:40am Sat 21 Jul 12
red white wrote:I need a beer after that!
matt69andover wrote:Well 65% of my alcohol intake of 9% of 45% what i drank was,hang on,what did you say?
Does anyone else struggle this morning getting their head around figures after a few last night?
Stilloyal
says...
9:37am Sat 21 Jul 12
SAPFanSTFC wrote:Large brandy n coke please :-)
red white wrote:I need a beer after that!matt69andover wrote: Does anyone else struggle this morning getting their head around figures after a few last night?Well 65% of my alcohol intake of 9% of 45% what i drank was,hang on,what did you say?
the don69
says...
9:46am Sat 21 Jul 12
Swindon1984 wrote:Platini said it was banned! maybe the rule comes in force next season or is it that your banned from Euro Comps if you do it?that wouldn't affect us yet!LOL!!!!!!!!!
London Red wrote:Same as, didn't know that was allowed.
Interesting I didn't realise investor injections were allowed as Equity - thought all were banned
.
So our £4.5 (our ave L1 income) plus £2m injection gives us £6.5m - 65% of that is £4.2m - so that seems to work this year
Redhouse Red
says...
9:49am Sat 21 Jul 12
TheDukeOfBanbury
says...
11:02am Sat 21 Jul 12
Robfm_is_wrong_because
says...
11:40am Sat 21 Jul 12
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:I'm off the buy my season ticket this morning, new shirts and various bits. A good £500 I have earmarked for the town!
In simple terms.... Get down to the GG and support your club.
All money well spent in my book.
TheDukeOfBanbury
says...
12:13pm Sat 21 Jul 12
Robfm_is_wrong_becauNice one and let's hope we have another great season.
se wrote:
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:I'm off the buy my season ticket this morning, new shirts and various bits. A good £500 I have earmarked for the town!
In simple terms.... Get down to the GG and support your club.
All money well spent in my book.
My 10th year wedding anniversary in August and Mrs Duke has been promised a weekend away in Newcastle on the first Saturday of the season.
Trading a romantic weekend away for a 3.00 pm kickoff at Victoria Park Hartlepool !!
Lovely Mrs Duke :) or Duchess :)
Another view
says...
1:12pm Sat 21 Jul 12
vertiser.co.uk/news/
9829826.Shareholders
_meet_to_discuss_STF
C_plans/
This report from the AGM was hidden away in the main news items. It suggests the stadium redevelopment should still begin next summer subject to outline planning approval - what if we don't get a summer? :-(
red white
says...
1:49pm Sat 21 Jul 12
Robfm_is_wrong_becauGreat posts lads.
se wrote:
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:I'm off the buy my season ticket this morning, new shirts and various bits. A good £500 I have earmarked for the town!
In simple terms.... Get down to the GG and support your club.
All money well spent in my book.
We are Swindon,
We'll be top of the league!
Steve. Brentford
says...
3:05pm Sat 21 Jul 12
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:Yooouuuuu lucky lucky lady.....
Robfm_is_wrong_becauNice one and let's hope we have another great season.
se wrote:
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:I'm off the buy my season ticket this morning, new shirts and various bits. A good £500 I have earmarked for the town!
In simple terms.... Get down to the GG and support your club.
All money well spent in my book.
My 10th year wedding anniversary in August and Mrs Duke has been promised a weekend away in Newcastle on the first Saturday of the season.
Trading a romantic weekend away for a 3.00 pm kickoff at Victoria Park Hartlepool !!
Lovely Mrs Duke :) or Duchess :)
PS Duke,please stop sending Town fans down the "GG" please or the County Ground may end up empty.
TheDukeOfBanbury
says...
7:15pm Sat 21 Jul 12
Steve. Brentford wrote:Ha ha Stevo that will teach me posting on my I - phone with my eyes going to pieces.
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:Yooouuuuu lucky lucky lady.....
Robfm_is_wrong_becauNice one and let's hope we have another great season.
se wrote:
TheDukeOfBanbury wrote:I'm off the buy my season ticket this morning, new shirts and various bits. A good £500 I have earmarked for the town!
In simple terms.... Get down to the GG and support your club.
All money well spent in my book.
My 10th year wedding anniversary in August and Mrs Duke has been promised a weekend away in Newcastle on the first Saturday of the season.
Trading a romantic weekend away for a 3.00 pm kickoff at Victoria Park Hartlepool !!
Lovely Mrs Duke :) or Duchess :)
PS Duke,please stop sending Town fans down the "GG" please or the County Ground may end up empty.
Rained off Sat as Teme flooded but will be back hopefully Saturday to kick start the season. If not Banbury is going to get a Minnow trap :)
southside7
says...
8:50pm Sat 21 Jul 12
Oi Den!
says...
9:25pm Sat 21 Jul 12
London Red
says...
10:08pm Sat 21 Jul 12
.
Cup Gate Receipts are not to prevent a lucky draw handing a club potentially 100s of thousands of pounds in extra wages
.
I thought that all owner injections (loans and equity) were banned from turnover calculations to provide a more even playing field - partly the reason the cap came in (with trying to stop clubs going bust the other main one)
.
By allowing equity investments to be counted as income you could simply be handing a club a blank chequebook in terms of their 55% or 65% wage bill can be
.
Whatever it ends up the owners could then simply bridge the gap - thus defeating the point of the cap in terms of fairness
.
As Wiz said earlier Crawley could then have their massive wage bills on less than 2000 people purely by some secret backer putting cash in
Oi Den!
says...
10:30pm Sat 21 Jul 12
jayden
says...
7:41am Sun 22 Jul 12
Oi Den! wrote:Still only 23 days to go.Just found out her indoors as booked a holiday and i will miss the CTmatch need some help to get out of the holiday i think.
Ah! The penny is beginning to drop. I didn't understand Wray's comment at first. I'm amazed that loan or equity capital would ever be classed the same as turnover - for capping purposes or for anything else.
ciclosporindorset
says...
8:39am Sun 22 Jul 12
Stratton Red
says...
10:03am Sun 22 Jul 12
*
Personally I still feel the club should be sorting the Ritchie situation and extending his contract, or at least geeting him to agree STFC have a one year extension clause, if not I'd sell him. Can we really afford £1m?
the don69
says...
10:16am Sun 22 Jul 12
Stratton Red wrote:Agree with that Stratton,time we sorted out the Ritchie situation,we don't want this dragging on long into the season!lets get it sorted J-Wray &Paolo and have full focus on a promotion push!!!!!!!!!
Rules aside, the most important point of this article for me is JW is correctly balancing the finances V's promotion. I suspect PDCs wish list will be determined by our league position come January. If we are right in the mix I suspect funds will be avaialble.
*
Personally I still feel the club should be sorting the Ritchie situation and extending his contract, or at least geeting him to agree STFC have a one year extension clause, if not I'd sell him. Can we really afford £1m?
London Red
says...
10:48am Sun 22 Jul 12
.
During the summer all attention should be focussed those out of contract and new recruitments
.
Then come 1 Sept when the window closes attention can be turned to those who require an extention
.
Ritchie, Ferry and Flint should be on that list to renew at that point
.
Others like Risser and Cibo etc should be left with a decision made next summer depending on performance and where we are ie L1 or Championship
Stratton Red
says...
2:55pm Sun 22 Jul 12
London Red wrote:Never agreed with AFon this. Good mgt. / negotitaion means always having the player on the right contract. If I were in JWs shoes I'd have made it totally clear to Ritchie and his agent a new contract was needed by now or he would be transfer listed. Begs the question why a 1 year option type clause wasn't negotiated in, I would speculate that Ritchie had a clause stating that if we didn't go up he could be sold...
This is one area I fully agree with AF's stance . During the summer all attention should be focussed those out of contract and new recruitments . Then come 1 Sept when the window closes attention can be turned to those who require an extention . Ritchie, Ferry and Flint should be on that list to renew at that point . Others like Risser and Cibo etc should be left with a decision made next summer depending on performance and where we are ie L1 or Championship
London Red says...
6:17am Sat 21 Jul 12
.
So our £4.5 (our ave L1 income) plus £2m injection gives us £6.5m - 65% of that is £4.2m - so that seems to work this year