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Next Game: Rushall At Home In The League On Saturday 30th November At 3.00pm

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Keyte Explains Financial Position


In a long interview with BBC Hereford and Worcester, David Keyte has spoken about the financial position at Edgar Street.

"The finances around the club are coming to a head because the HMRC are taking us to court for the tax money," said the Hereford United chairman.

"We have a week now to work our way through that.

"There are no guarantees as to what will come out at the end of it but we had quite a major knock-back when we missed out on the Telecom deal that we had been working on for some months.

"Very complicated as ever with these legalities but it was running alongside, slightly behind, getting the leases of the ground.

"The Telecom deal rested on our secure tenure of the ground for the next thirty years.

"It would have given us a chance of getting to the end of the season.

"We have made cutbacks in the non-football areas, we have taken about £8K out a month since the first of December so we will get the benefit of that for the remainder of the season and I've spoken to Martin the manager and we've got to look at the football side of things as well, always harder in terms of contractual arrangements.

"But also the fact that we actually want this club to be staying in this league.

"We've been very open about the fact that this season in round figures there's been a £30K loss every month. That has accumilated, including not paying the tax in October/November.

"We're not surprised that after six months it's £180,000 to find of which the taxman now at the end of December is about £70,000.

"The discussions we've had (with the taxman) have not been acceptable to them hence the court case which is very much the end buffer that's next Monday.

"We are in a world where football clubs get absolutely no truck from the taxman.

"Our figure on the face of it is not major, still to be found, this week.

"If we did nothing there are another five months when we would expect to go down further by £30k per month.

"We have taken out costs around the club to reduce that deficit per month and we will have to take out more.

"We did budget for an average crowd of around 1950, we haven't seen that.

"Yes there will be a debate, the crowd will say we can't afford it, the football's crap, whatever it might be.

"At the end of the day that is one of the key figures at a football club as to whether or not you are going to be able to compete.

"Whatever level you are at if you only get 30,000 in the Premiership you are going to be at the bottom end, or 1700 in League Two.

"You've got to get money through the door and at this moment in the last year or two and most of it is put down to my fault, that goes with the territory, but somebody has got to sit down long enough in the pubs and say actually we ought to go and support our local football team."

Keyte was asked about next week.

"I think we can sort out the Taxman, it is how deep we can get into the costs, further into the costs to actually balance the books on particularily the low level of outside funding the Conference gets, less than £50K per club and on a lower crowd than ideal.

"To get out of this league you need to have a crowd of 2000 plus, ideally 2500 and you've got to have a playing budget of at least £600K per year.

"We're on a down, this club has had two relegations in five/six years now and the relegation from the Football League to the Conference financially is a hugh step, £700,000 a year.

"League Two clubs get in excess of £750,000, we're getting £47,000, just one League difference."

Will you need to go to court?

"We've got some pretty key meetings throughout Monday and Tuesday and I could probably answer that better on Thursday."