Matt Dean has interviewed Philip Day for updates on contracts, retained list, Tom Shutes, EFL meetings and updates on Vernam/Wright/Clarke.
Interview is on Facebook.

Got to say, I like Philip Day. Comes across very well, honest and to the point. Echoed by Holloway in the telegraph, it sounds as though the club is very well run, we have a plan moving forward to cope with any circumstance and decisions are made with the clubs interest at heart.
This unfortunately means that the likes of Hessenthaler are not being offered a contract extension at this time, but I guess that when the pre-season restarts and if he isn't fixed up elsewhere they may be a chance of his return.
Also nice to hear that the cuts have not deterred us from exercising the contract extension option of Vernam, Clarke and Wright and those discussions with the players will be happening next month as the EFL have deferred the deadline till 23rd June.
Interesting to note, and rather upsetting that the current estimation is that the new season will resume in October or later, but obviously the safety and well being of the players and staff is paramount.

Look forward to updates like this in the coming weeks.

UTM

It would be nice if the elusive Mr. Shutes could do an interview as well. We could then have some idea of what he is like and if he seems genuine.

Yes, well worth a listen.  Pragmatic, factual, and reassuring in the current circumstances.
Essentially it sounds like we are obviously cutting our cloth accordingly, and will at least be around and competitive when whatever LG 2 looks like starts again  :)

We’ve cut our cloth accordingly for twenty years and achieved Jack sh!t  can we for once have a real go at it .. and yes I know theirs a global pandemic 🗣

By the sounds of it, a lot of teams would have to go under before we do. When this is all done and dusted, we hopefully will be better off than most other teams in league two, which MIGHT give us a bit more clout.

Watched the interview and was left conflicted.

On a positive note I do think we'll have a football club post Covid, but then again I'd guess that at least 95% of the EFL clubs will survive if not all (not counting Macclesfield). We are in the most cautious of "safe pair of hands" like we've always been and I do get (sort of) that many fans will be happy with just that.

But where is the ooomph? Where is the blue sky thinking? Automatically into the cruise control of cutting cloth according. It's all the board have got to offer ability wise and we will always end up with the sentiment of expecting gratitude that at least the club exists. Old school pragmatic solicitor, accountant who is cost and strict budget driven and an owner who the manager calls "Squeaky" because of his tight-fistedness. Hardly inspirational or aspirational.

Some clubs are going to be pro-actively inventive building up a war chest during this hiatus knowing there's a good opportunity for immediate success as other clubs will have been weakened. Looks like we've aleady resigned ourselves to be one of the weakened ones.

I'm not that inspired by PD, I find him overly pragmatic and a bit prickly, and as always I find the way the club goes about things as being far too parochial, uninspiring and mundane.

No positive plan at all, everything spoken about was regressional. In these circumstances it's ok to look to cut costs if necessary but on the other side of the profit and loss sheet the board are woeful at raising funds or even coming up with any ideas of how to do so. Every crisis comes with opportunity for creativity and innovation by those who can make it happen rather than simply battening down the hatches. Just for once couldn't they come up with a positive idea to enable us to hang onto a talent like Jake Hessenthaler for example?

Thank god we've got IH to look forward to..

I think more than ever, now is the time for pragmatism. We have a number of players under contract and we are in talks to take up 3 options for Clarke, Wright and our most valuable asset, Vernam.

I dot t hi knots pragmatism I think it’s just the continued lack of ambition or desire to go for it. We’re all still waiting to those ‘hairs on the back of your neck will stand up signings’

One might argue that penny pinching or whatever anyone wants to call it means we will have a club post Covid but aside from clubs well and truly on their bottom like Macclesfield, almost every club will survive. Remember, this is football, Bolton were done, should’ve gone, didn’t, new owners came in and quickly borrowed even more cash to keep them afloat...

Whether the next season would be an opportunity to go for it, who knows. I’d imagine clubs with better squads who were playing much better than us will be thinking the same thing but as mentioned previously, some blue sky thinking wouldn’t go amiss. With zero football happening at present now is the time to have those conversations, reinvigorating areas of the club like the way tickets are sold and distributed, refreshing the ST’s, looking at what sells, doesn’t sell in the club shop and checking out what other clubs do. Looking at that community offer, we know it’s welcomed in the community but keep it fresh and exciting...and may be actually come up with a plan for how they’re actually going to go about and get the club moved in to a new ground, other than having a pop at a potential investor that refused to play to their tune or that the club has no idea where the money will come from and so forth...

I can potentially see Covid be the club’s new ITV digital, as mentioned in a previous post, whether it’s because Day isn’t much more charismatic than the rest of them or it’s what he’s been told to say but I felt like we’d acknowledged that we too may be one of those clubs significantly weakened by all this rather than the cutting cloth and so forth making us a tidy war chest and investment in the squad be it equipment, facilities and players...

In the here and now, with no idea about what the future holds we have gone with the doomsday scenario. We haven't just planned for doomsday so if it's announced that everything will be normal by the 1st week in August and season tickets begin to sell along with commercial revenue pouring in from the EFL and Quest etc then our budget will change to reflect that.

I agree with pretty much everything above about our lack of blue sky thinking and being innovative, it's been an issue at GTFC (and in the town) for years.

But I do take issue with the idea of building a war chest - the club has almost zero income at the moment and is still having to pay overheads that aren't covered by furloughing staff. It can't build a war chest, there's no spare money in the system!

And the idea that a lot of other clubs are building war chests is laughable, the vast majority are in exactly the same situation that we are. When the league starts again there won't be X number of clubs in league 2 throwing cash around like a lottery winner. Even clubs in the Premier league are considering offloading high earning players to save money (this morning it's reported that Southampton are doing that).

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

I agree with pretty much everything above about our lack of blue sky thinking and being innovative, it's been an issue at GTFC (and in the town) for years.

But I do take issue with the idea of building a war chest - the club has almost zero income at the moment and is still having to pay overheads that aren't covered by furloughing staff. It can't build a war chest, there's no spare money in the system!

And the idea that a lot of other clubs are building war chests is laughable, the vast majority are in exactly the same situation that we are. When the league starts again there won't be X number of clubs in league 2 throwing cash around like a lottery winner. Even clubs in the Premier league are considering offloading high earning players to save money (this morning it's reported that Southampton are doing that).

The club has got a lot more than zero income at the minute. About half the normal income and is slashing costs left right and centre while being helped with the furlough scheme, not paying rates etc. On top of that there's an extra windfall as we will receive a portion of the extra 125mill made available and in the shake down I bet there will be more to come once English football have got a concrete plan together and expected shortfalls can be quantified to a more exact figure. We may have to play behind closed doors for a season but maybe the loss in matchday income may be mitigated by 30% through i-Follow income? A big push to lay out ways for the fans to invest further in the club if they're saving money from not buying season tickets, half-time pints etc? Bond schemes, share issues etc so we're all in it together, so we can afford to keep our best players and come out of the other side stronger? We're not talking insurmountable somes GTFC will be down by. A net figure of lost income offset by lower overheads and further extra central funding will be around a million I would guess if the new season starts in October or November

And a few savvy clubs (I didn't say a lot) will be looking at ways to resume in a stronger place than most. Yes, the system at present may be short of cash of cash but why only look at the system? That's where blue sky thinking comes in. I didn't say that League Two clubs will be throwing around cash like lottery winners (Salford apart, who will be nailed on to get promoted) but an extra half a million or a million may make a huge difference to attracting players and gaining the upper hand. The problem is can the club ask the fans for help after their dismissal of Operation Promotion? Sort of burned their bridges there haven't they? So instead of just looking at the situation as a cost cutting exercise and holding onto to grim death before coming out the other side a lot weaker, our club should be looking at inventive ways to completely mitigate their losses and not just be in the same diminished state like the vast majority of the others. There is an opportunity to great a great stride forward if GTFC doesn't go completely into their shell and think that cutting costs is the only play they have..

The clubs that mix pragmatism with inventiveness will be the most prepared when the action restarts. The most laughable notion is that the best way forward through all this is for any club to think that regression along with their peers is inevitable and solely look to cut costs without trying to replace lost income with new types of income or fresh investment..

Quoted from Bigdog

The club has got a lot more than zero income at the minute. About half the normal income and is slashing costs left right and centre while being helped with the furlough scheme, not paying rates etc. On top of that there's an extra windfall as we will receive a portion of the extra 125mill made available and in the shake down I bet there will be more to come once English football have got a concrete plan together and expected shortfalls can be quantified to a more exact figure. We may have to play behind closed doors for a season but maybe the loss in matchday income may be mitigated by 30% through i-Follow income? A big push to lay out ways for the fans to invest further in the club if they're saving money from not buying season tickets, half-time pints etc? Bond schemes, share issues etc so we're all in it together, so we can afford to keep our best players and come out of the other side stronger? We're not talking insurmountable somes GTFC will be down by. A net figure of lost income offset by lower overheads and further extra central funding will be around a million I would guess if the new season starts in October or November

And a few savvy clubs (I didn't say a lot) will be looking at ways to resume in a stronger place than most. Yes, the system at present may be short of cash of cash but why only look at the system? That's where blue sky thinking comes in. I didn't say that League Two clubs will be throwing around cash like lottery winners (Salford apart, who will be nailed on to get promoted) but an extra half a million or a million may make a huge difference to attracting players and gaining the upper hand. The problem is can the club ask the fans for help after their dismissal of Operation Promotion? Sort of burned their bridges there haven't they? So instead of just looking at the situation as a cost cutting exercise and holding onto to grim death before coming out the other side a lot weaker, our club should be looking at inventive ways to completely mitigate their losses and not just be in the same diminished state like the vast majority of the others. There is an opportunity to great a great stride forward if GTFC doesn't go completely into their shell and think that cutting costs is the only play they have..

The clubs that mix pragmatism with inventiveness will be the most prepared when the action restarts. The most laughable notion is that the best way forward through all this is for any club to think that regression along with their peers is inevitable and solely look to cut costs without trying to replace lost income with new types of income or fresh investment..

I still fundamentally agree with you but you've got a lot of ifs, buts and maybes in your financial assessment.

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

I still fundamentally agree with you but you've got a lot of ifs, buts and maybes in your financial assessment.

Who is Bobby Cummings, I know Bobby Cumming (no s) could tackle.