Bristol City Finances

Quoted from Poojah

I’m pretty familiar with Brighton’s story as it happens. Brighton, like Brentford (and Bournemouth) have recruited very intelligently but their success wouldn’t have been possible without a staggering injection of cash from their owner, Tony Bloom.

Don’t get me wrong, as owners go I think what Bloom has done for Brighton is absolutely brilliant. He’s a local boy, a life-long fan and part of a family that has been involved with the club for decades. He also happens to be extremely wealthy, and that bit’s the key.

What this whole thread really touches on the challenges our current owners face. Hand on heart, I believe John Fenty wanted the best for GTFC. For a man with such overt ego, it would have been of great personal significance to have been revered by the town for positively transforming the football club.

Sadly there were two fundamental problems as I see it. One, he lacked the vision and / or the talent to create positive, transformative change, and two, he took control of the club in financially uncertain conditions. The club he took over needed managing austerily in order to survive, but once those financial black clouds had dissipated he could never get out of that mode of thinking. The notion of speculating to accumulate simply wasn’t in his book of tricks; he could only manage the club within strict and safe financial parameters.

In terms of finances, there can be few clubs that have been as stable as us over the past decade or so, rarely making a substantial loss or turning a noticeable profit. But there’s a reason such stability isn’t seen as a footballing case study; and that’s because the policies employed by the club during that period we’re so flagrantly risk-averse that they suffocated the life out of the club and its fan base.

And so this is what the new owners have inherited. A club at least a decade behind the times in terms of infrastructure and in a division which at this time is dominated by clubs with disproportionately large and unprecedented levels of wealth for this tier in the football pyramid.

We’ve already seen that improvements in facilities and match day experience can improve crowds (increasing our disposable income in turn), but without meaningful success on the pitch this is unlikely to be totally sustainable. The gate against Halifax on Monday will be the lowest of the season so far, and whilst there will be lots of mitigating reasons for this, results are by far the most significant.

My worry, given how challenging this league can be to get out of, is that without major, inorganic investment in the playing side we will struggle to achieve the momentum needed to ascend to our natural potential in the modern football environment.

This isn’t a criticism of our new owners - to the contrary I think everything they’ve done so far has been very positive and long overdue. The issue is that we find ourselves in this condition and in this division in the first place - the blame for which sits firmly with JSF and his cronies.

The harsh reality though is that money wins football matches. We can see this at every level of the game, not least the National League.

Our promotion chances this season already look shot; if we did make the play-offs would anyone realistically fancy us to overcome at least one of Wrexham, Stockport or Chesterfield (not to mention any of the other contenders)? So what about next season? And the one after that if we don’t go up?

I just feel the owners have major headache on their hands with the club having failed to avoid relegation last season, and the state of football (and in particular the National League) in general. Maybe things will change when Fenty has his money back, who knows, but I can’t help but think that we need to at least temporarily abandon the underlying strategy of break even and sustainability if we we are to crack on and begin to realise our potential as a club.

TLDR? The club has been subject to such massive under-investment over the last decade and a half that the new owners are going to have to underwrite an equivalent over-investment over the next few years to get us back on track.

Quoted from Poojah

TLDR? The club has been subject to such massive under-investment over the last decade and a half that the new owners are going to have to underwrite an equivalent over-investment over the next few years to get us back on track.

Quoted from GollyGTFC

Not getting promoted wouldn't be a disaster this season. But if Bromley won the league & someone like Halifax or Boreham Wood won the play-offs then I would rate that as catastrophic because it would make next season even tougher.

Ideally we want Wrexham and one of Stockport or Chesterfield to be promoted.

Quoted from pen penfras

Going up after relegation was a big ask, but if we couldn't push the boat out with a large balance sheet, parachute payments and all the optimism, then it's only going to get harder.

Quoted from pen penfras

If they were going to do that, why wouldn't they have just paid Fenty off immediately? The loan money will barely scratch the sides of what's needed.

Maybe they had the foresight to do it this way and keep the blame on Fenty if things didn't go right. But more likely, they aren't going to be putting the sort of money in that is needed to bring us into the 21st century and nobody else has been willing to either.

Quoted from RonMariner

Relegation last season was indeed a disaster and I can't for the life of me understand why we didn't seriously splash the cash to avoid it. Bradford did, signing 13 players in January are climbing well away from danger.

Fenty had nothing to lose. The sale of the club was underway and any additional capital put in as loans would be repaid within three years anyway.

I saw some posts on here that suggest that we had £800k in the bank at the end of the season. I have no idea if that is accurate, but it it was true then the club are bigger fools than I thought. Talk about false economy.

We will lose  hundreds of thousands as a result of being in the conference again and will have to spend big if we ever want top get out of it.    

Quoted from GibMariner

Where were you, I thought we signed 13 players last January having brought back Hurst to keep us up.