Thetownend.com

(as Crispy would put it)

The AGM's been announced for 19th Jan at 6pm. Accounts will be available on the night and published on the OS beforehand. Nick Watkins and Jeremy Wray standing for reappointment to the board

Erm, that's about it, really.

 ???

I'm so excited I think I've just shit myself

I wonder if there will be any talk of the CG redevelopment on the night it all seems to have gone very quiet

So does this mean that Bert is NOT standing for re-election?

I for one shall miss him immensely.

Not sure, it's biannual IIRC so depends when he was first appointed I guess

This is tonight.

The key issues for me are whether we broke even last season, and if Bert will remain on the board.

Fingers crossed no muppets turn up seeing it as an opportunity to slate the club. Quite apt that this is now. It's a good reminder that no matter how buggered people may think we are at the moment, we are anything but, and it is nothing compared to the mire we've been in over the last 15 years or more.

Anyone going, and willing to post an update?

Quite so. The two big stories of the week bring it into sharp contrast: Diamandis getting told to do one and Charlie putting in a transfer request. We may well lose Charlie in this window, but if we do at least we can have confidence that any deal done is for the benefit of the club.

They might even announce some details regarding the ground re-development

Can someone ask if the position of the chef has been filled and what we can expect from the new exciting menu?

Does Andrew Black have any involvement with Betfair anymore?

He retains some ownership of the company but recently sold a chunk of it as part of the flotation.

He is a very rich man. And one of the good guys.

from his Horse Blog

They said the accounts will be posted on the web site prior to the AGM - have I missed it??  Cannot find it.

 I always used to go to the AGM, as it used to be a laugh under various old regimes....I've yet to go since the new regime took control because everything seems fine....did the welcome to Fitton bit, when Gazza jizzed his pants at some meeting or other, but don't think that was an AGM.

The adver guy just tweeted "AGM reveals operating profit at Town and plans for 19,000 all-seater stadium redevelopment. Full report tomorrow morning"

Blimey. Operating as in pre-Cox sale? (That would be in this set of accounts right?)

Only 19000? No room for johnny and the other season ticket no buys then ;)

With power to add if need be i should imagine.

Operating at a profit??! That must mean we are one of the only clubs in the country to be doing that?! Very rare for a club to be doing that..

 I'd have thought something the size of ColU's ground would do for us, with all the drop out fair weather fans.

Not forgetting those poor souls who stopped going because they don't like hearing people moaning

10,105 ?

We have exceeded that in 3 games already this season 6 last season as well as getting within 500 of it on several more occassions.

As long as they do something funky with the seating design for quiet days. I suggest a magic eye pattern.

Sounds about right to me.  Just about every development/redevelopment plan we've heard about (and there have been many) in the last few years has been in the 20,000 region in terms of capacity.  Any bigger than this, and we risk creating a white elephant; any smaller, and we'll not be able to capitalise when our fortunes rise.

I'm pleased with the initial news.  Looking forward to hearing the detail tomorrow.


Great idea.  They could create a 3D image of Big Shaun celebrating his goal at Wembley in 1993 (obviously visible only to fans sitting in the opposite stand who have the nack of doing the magic eye thing.)

I suggest a moaning zone and a non moaning zone...as well as a singing area.

Same.

Some good news about off the field stuff lately, what with the club winning the court case and now this profit/stadium news.

Let's hope this run of good fortune moves on to the pitch.

45000 minimum for me. ( that way it will still be 2/3rds empty and I can get a beer at half time still.

We have the moaning zone already. I like the idea of the other two!

We made a profit? WTF? Aren't we at risk of getting expelled from the Football League for that?

Can Fitton play up front?

I will try to remember what was said :

Yes, we did make an operating profit, but that was due to some 'exceptional' items including a 'profit' of over £1m on the CVA (due to the fact we paid a creditors a smaller amount which they invoiced for), and due to the fact that we 'only' had to pay St Modwen back £1m of their loan, which the club accrued for the whole amount in previous accounts. The club has also accrued for 'settlement costs' totalling £445k in respect to legal action by a certain Greek fellow, who Fitton refused to name. Fitton said that he thought the Greek won't go any further with his legal action, and that they were likely to only get upto have the court costs.

The club made nearly £1m on player sales (mostly from Coxy). Turnover rose from £3.4m to £5.3m, part of that rise down to the play-offs. Revenue from commercial activities doubled in a season.

Regarding ground development, 19,000 was the figure mentioned, with plans maybe going to the council next month. They are looking into turning the new Arkells into the front of a Technology park, after an idea from Andrew Black. There was a old block who moaned that instead of spending money on a ground development, spend it on the team, and who couldn't see the point of oing to a capacity of 19k, when we've only been getting 8k !!

And a head shakers zone, a sack whoever is our current manager zone and a it was better in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's (delete as appropriate) zone

But the bigger picture is boring, I say spend, spend, spend like it's a previous regime. What's Juan Cobian up to these days?

Was anything mentioned about new players? Austin?

Fuck that, what about the chef?

Not much. We could have some loan players in from Reading, but nobody was mentioned. Charlie had a meeting with Fitton and Wilson this afternoon, but Fitton would not divulge what was said.Charlie's contract still has another 2 and a half years to run, so he said it is up to the club if they sell or not, and at the right price.

I want to know more about the "old block who moaned".

[url width=350 height=228]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_f9BeAGYl9nw/SOJPx38NXJI/AAAAAAAAAAY/jsF42s8ZHYM/s400/statler_waldorf.jpg[/url]
Who says we don't have celebrity supporters?

Guess 19k seems sensible, with potential for further expansion i guess. Key is being able to include the other revenue generating functions like this technology park idea to further increase the clubs income.

Its good to see the club seems to be being run so well and sensibly. If only the on the field scenario looked so promising at the moment.

2 1/2? Does that mean he signed the extension then?

They're getting in the chef from the Muppets...

thought austin only had 18 months left not 2 1/2 years?

maybe just an error from Fitton

Did they confirm he'd asked for a transfer as at present there have been no direct quotes about it at all.

No, the contract was originally a two and a half year deal, with the option of another year, and the club have obviously taken this up...and Fitton refused or confirm or deny a transfer request has been received.

This could be the start of something quite special.

Massively important point. Fair play to the club for this, and long may it continue

The rise in Revenue looks the best news, we've been sat with the same turnover since about 1994 ( I remember seeing some accounts back than for a college project).  After years of costs being the only thing we could ever hope to do anything about, our financial status now has two ways of improving.

Wonder if there will be much rejoicing about the contract offered to Austin, ensuring the extra year, in the same way that there was much maligning about the Morrison one?

Agree entirely. While the headline profit is somewhat misleading due to one-off adjustments, the underlying picture is very encouraging even though the club is still reliant on he owners putting in their own money each year.

The turnover figure of £5.3m is easily a record. You have to go back to 1998 the last time the club exceeded £4m in turnover so to go from £3.5m to £5.3m in one season is very impressive. Obviously reaching the play offs helped a lot but in 2003-04 (a comparable season in many ways), turnover was only £3.9m

Plowing through the back of the accounts last night I did notice that we only paid £75k for players, which must be for Charlie and Scott Cuthbert, which is in total a lot less than previously thought.

Was there any breakdown of wage costs between playing/non-playing staff? And any indication whether that has gone up/down/stayed the same?

Nothing yet on club or Adver sites about the ground redevelopment.  Hope they get something up later.

Was they not going to put the accounts of the website before the AGM

PaulD: Must be the first year you have not attended an AGM did you not get withdrawal symptoms and feel you needed to be there to challenge things  :D

Wages were £3.85m up from £3.57 in 2009. There isnt any explicit breakdown between playing and non playing staff but I think its safe to assume the vast majority of that is playing staff.

http://www.swindontownfc.co.uk/staticFiles/25/67/0,,10341~157477,00.pdf

Accounts are now online for the sad saps like me who read this crap.

Staff costs went up to £1.115m from £849k. If you take these out of the total figures, which should be the playing staff, 2010 salaries total £2.735m, whilst in 2009 in was £2.721m, an increase of £14k.

Thanks So69/ah. Was there any info on year-on-year changes through to this season? I'm interested as to whether our wage bill has changed across the time since Fitton et al were fully in control, whether it's been stabilised etc

Shows just how good our board are. Well done and I'm really pleased. It's just a shame the profit figure is even mentioned as this will likely bring out the thisistards and their cries to spend money on more players.

The fact is if you stripped out the exceptional items, we are still running at a loss of about £1.5m.

One little thing on the last page in regards to new signings, plus any other liabilities for transfers. It says that the net income since May, is £62,300. The contingent liabiliy from these transactions amounts to approx £200k (Caddis and Ferry's transfer fee?).

Also, it mentions that the club may be liable for extra payments, dependent on the success of the team totalling £80,500, and that the club might be receiving extra payments up to £198,500 on future sell on clauses.

The only way to do that is to dig out all the accounts for the last few years to do an analysis, as they just compare year on year here. It is noticable that the number of personel has dropped from 367 to 298 in just a year.

In next years accounts, they will be able to take back the £300k they had to put on deposit with the courts, but it'll be interesting if a certain Greek fellow will pay a penny of their court costs back.

:) Clashed with a council cabinet meeting I wanted to ask some questions at, so sent my apologies. I haven't felt I needed to be at an AGM to challenge things since, oooh, about Jan 2008 but I would have liked to have gone so I could have kissed Watkins/Fitton/Wray's collective ring :D

Plus I'd have liked to have heard the stuff about the ground redev

A proper dig through of accounts reveals a few other points:

Directors emoluments are £122,500 (page 14) - wonder if this is Nick Watkins salary, or the combined sum of what all the directors draw from the company.  Either way, not a lot of money.

Although the club is profitable, it owes the holding company 'Swindon Football Holdings Limited' a total of 7,025,984, plus an additional £1,000,000 to Sir Martyn Arbib.  A very wealthy man and the money behind the Fitton consortium.  He was the one stood next to Fitton at Wembley when Milwall lifted the play-off trophy.  This loan is interest free though until 2013, so obviously he is committed in the short term.

Page 20.  STFC was charged £10,566 by Graachi Capital Management Limited http://www.gracchi.co.uk/key-personnel.php.  This is an investment firm owned by Fitton and Jeremy Wray.  Wonder what this is for?  Probably expenses?

Also page 20.  STFC was charged £128,718 by Q4 Management Limited http://www.q4management.com/consultants.php which is a company Nick Watkins owns.  I presume this is his salary.  Fairy reasonable for a CEO salary.

All in decent reading, although seeing the £7m owed to the holding company is a reminder football is a rich mans hobby.  No sinister agenda here, but good to see the company isn't being fisted in anyway, as we would expect.

Hopefully the Austin and Morrison sales will see us through the next few years too...

For those interested in reading the accounts,here's a link from the OS.

http://www.swindontownfc.co.uk/staticFiles/25/67/0,,10341~157477,00.pdf

It looks a bit different to the one i have from the 1950's!

Fair play to them.....its looking sound for the future.

The £1m loan from Arbib was to pay off St Modwen's loan.

I forgot to mention. Someone asked Fitton if there was anymore possible court cases left. Fitton thought there was...but Nick Watkins said there wasn't. He then ran through the names of the court cases...Datatrack (Bill Power), St Modwen, Mike Diamandis and Mike Bowden....yes our own Mr Whippy has also tried to sue STFC.

They obviously thought it was all in his head...just like the plans for a stadium development. On his first day he slagged off the Trust plans...but it was still more than he ever came up with.