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Friday, March 28, 2014

Guilfoyle Prefers A Consortium


Experienced football club Administrator Brendan Guilfoyle has spoken about the 'benefactor' ownership of football clubs.

Speaking to the Sky Sports FL72 podcast, Guilfoyle said: "The majority of clubs are run on what is known as the benefactor model so they are funded by a benefactor, be it a company or an individual.

"The benefactor model is OK if the person has got very deep pockets. Bristol City lost £17million this year because they've got Stephen Lansdowne of Hargreaves Landsdowne funding it and he has got a lot of money.

"But if someone comes in with a limited amount of money it does get eaten up very quickly. The best model I saw (as an administrator) was at Crystal Palace where I met two potential owners who were both worth about £130million, and they found another two, but this is a club in London where there is a lot of wealth.

"The four of them own the club and that to me makes sense because if one wants out the other three can hopefully shoulder the losses together until they find someone else to come in and fill that spot.

"I like that consortium model rather than a benefactor because it seems to me more sustainable. If the circumstances of your benefactor change - he runs out of money, he becomes ill, he gets divorced - then that undermines the viability of the club."

Guilfoyle also spoke about what he normally finds at a club in crisis:

He said: "You normally get there and there's a CEO who's hopefully been there a while, who is running the club, but if you haven't got one of those because he may have only been in a short time or he's gone with the previous owner there's always a club secretary who's been there donkeys years who can tell you exactly how it all is.

"The thing that worries you is the rate at which cash is burned. The wages come around very quickly and you're looking to find in excess of £1million generally to fund the wages (in the Championship).

"You can't go anywhere to get that money so you're looking at things like selling players and invariably getting the players to agree not to be paid and to carry on playing until the club is sold.

He also spoke of his time at Luton:

"Luton Town really got to me. They got sanctioned for going into administration, they got sanctioned for failing to come out of administration without the agreement of the Inland Revenue, and then the FA weighed in with another sanction because they'd paid some agents fees through a holding company.

"They fell right down to the Conference but they're running away with it now and I was told the other day they'd found some benefactor who's a very quiet guy who doesn't even take a car to games but is putting money in at that level so hopefully they'll be back in the Football League next year."