Having spoken to somebody close to the club who was looking at finances needed to run a club like Town they worked out that Irving has been losing 100k a year to maintain the club, which is about average for a conference north side with a regular attendance of c500 people. To break even a club needs c700 average and development of commercial revenue which obviously is where they seem to be trying to get to and are then able to invest even more into the club. To give you an example the proposed stand improvement at the end of the season will cost £200k by itself- quite a lot of cash. the pitch, i'm not sure but over the last 2 seasons i reckon about £150k. One 25-30 goal a season striker is 750-1000£ a week thats 40-50K pa without all the bonus clauses and add ons. Something they have stayed away from due to trying to run a balanced account system, but something I suspect they recognise they need to spend money into the future, to achieve the objective of promotion that everybody wants.
I suspect though that your issue is not Irving, but that having Irving looks like the continued management of Simon into the future, and the potential nepotism that this continued regime may suggest if we are not achieving as much as we perceive we should be.
My continued thoughts are that we have no god given right to be above the 6th place that we achieved last season which was an overachievement with that squad. Agreed this season has been very frustrating and is an underperformance being in 9th, everybody recognises that, but we are looking at a team 9th in the table not 20th the 3point deduction was not Simon fault and also came at a bad time. Admittedly sometimes I look at the onfield tactics / subs and disagree with them. You know how i feel about 2 strikers like you. However i do think the tactics are improving and for me we just lack firepower sometimes and are missing a couple of key players to make the team a title contending team. So from my perspective there is a lot to look forward to, into the future. Let's be excited and look at what is happening at the club 1500 and 900 at the last 2 games! Incredible.
I really hope we get a decent turnout against Telford. Imagine if we were right up there now the potential in the crowd sizes, we are turning into a bigger football club, the sleeping giant is awakening!
DK what would your key learnings be from the first half of the season and what would you do now to improve? What would your starting 11/ formation be for tomorrow?