Not that it matters much but I was interested to compare the Droylsden and Witton attendances from last season.
Dorylsden’s average home attendance in the Blue Square Premier was 252!
Witton’s average home attendance in the Unibond Premier was 488!
Now when it comes to maths Neil is far better qualified to make comments on the viability of this than me, however if their get receipts are £2,500 (based on £10 tickets) once a fortnight I fail to see how you can have a playing budget in excess of £1,500 per week (allowing for additional monies received on top)! Admittedly they will get a share of the Blue Square monies (rumoured at around £75k per season) but it would appear to me that if the person putting the money in changes his mind then it starts to get rather interesting! If they are paying players £300/£400/£500 per week then they at least need to double the crowds and hope to be competing near the top. Amazing their home crowds were so low given the traveling support in the top flight of non-league, but there again who on earth would want through choice to go to Droylesden (huh huh)!
I suppose on the basis the Chairman is the manager he is unlikely to sack himself but at some point he may have had enough. They will need to hope they are not in the bottom half by Christmas. With Telford, Fleetwood, Southport all attracting bigger crowds it will be hard to compete.
Please put me straight (as I’m sure you will), but isn’t there some sort of ratio between income through the gates and the amount of wages you are allowed to pay? Didn’t Chester have to get rid of some players to get under a wage ceiling a couple of years ago?
Thatched, I don’t know everything (just most things)!
If there is not such a ratio then the would be a strong argument for one. This of course is typical in other sports but I am not sure that it is a fixed ratio in Unibond football.
Very good question though and one for the chairman.
At this level, i don’t think you could have a ratio based on money taken over the turnstiles. But certainly a ratio based on total income would make it a more level playng field.
As with most things there are difficulties in achieving something like this (it would encourage clubs to be more commercial if it was based on overall revenue).
I think the big benefit of this is that it would go some way to stopping the number of clubs that go under due to overspending.
Quite right with the figures Toneee, i was using greenie’s crystal ball in predicting that last year’s low will become next season’s average. It is still very poor whichever way you add it up!
