Tuesday 28 July 2009

Latest desperation

The plight of our club has reached new lows this week. So desperate are we for revenue that the Club is trying to incentivise attendance at this evening's Ipswich friendly with the barely disguised conceit of an ability to get a limited number of first release new home shirts. They have stopped short of saying you must produce a match ticket in order to purchase the new shirt but the launch of the new kit is at 5pm, clearly targeting fan attendance.

Ordinarily, there would be nothing wrong with launching the new home strip on the day of a match in my mind. In fact, it would be good business. Unfortunately the Marketing folks are spinning the yarn that production of our kit has been delayed due to the late KRBS sponsorship deal and that 500 shirts have been specially rushed out for this evening's match. Sorry but I don't buy this. If the manufacturers can produce 500 for this evening, then they can produce 500 for next week and the week after etc. If you do the maths, all this is likely to generate is 500 x £40 = £20,000 plus a maximum of an additional £10,000 in ticket sales if you assume everyone buying a shirt came with someone else and bought two match tickets. However, when you consider that those likely to rush out and purchase new shirts will, in all probability, but them anyway, so this is really all about getting some cash in earlier.

It really puts the wage-bill slashing opertion into context. Chris Dickson could be next to be sacrificed and perhaps for a paltry £50,000 to Gillingham. We are apparently holding out for twice that but Paul Scally will know the score and I suspect he will be let go for an undisclosed fee (of £50,000 or very close to it) as wages are the real issue.

If there is going to be a successful takeover from Varney's consortium, then realistically it has to happen this week or next. If it doesn't then they are clearly short of funds which would question whether or not it would be necessarily good for the Club's long-term future. Again, if it doesn't happen the vultures will be allowed to pick at our carcass and it's very hard to see anything other than another dire season in prospect on the pitch. Without a major change we look like we could run the risk of doing a Bradford City.

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