Costs must be cut — owners

THE credit crunch is affecting Athletic, with managing director Simon Corney warning that the club’s owners will be unable to maintain their current level of financial support.

As they marked five years at the club - the official take-over was on ‘Celebration Sunday’, February 8, 2004 - Mr Corney gave a broad hint that cost-cutting measures will have to be implemented as the effects of the recession bite.

It is understood that Athletic’s owners may have to fill a black hole in the coffers which could be as much as £700,000 for the current campaign bearing in mind there has been no lucrative cup run or sale of players.

Chairman Simon Blitz has previously admitted subsidising the club to the tune of up to £50,000 per month.

Mr Corney said: “We are in a bit of a quandary at the moment as we won’t be able to support the club from our own pockets anything like we have done this year.

“It is a fact of life and we are already looking at cost-cutting measures as these are hard times.

“There is no way we can maintain the kind of levels of spending that we have been sustaining for the last couple of years.

“We will have to make changes. We could put up season-ticket prices - we have frozen them for the last three years which no other club has done - or cut the playing budget. We haven’t got that far yet.”

Mr Corney revealed that his conversations with other chairmen confirmed that the overall situation is “bleak”.

But he did deliver one upbeat message by declaring: “We are a well-run club and we are lucky. There could not be a club further from going into administration than we are.

“We are able to run it in a sensible manner and, yes, we have one or two assets which, if we needed to sell, could ensure the club survives for another year or two. We don’t want to do that.

“We want to keep balancing the books, but there are other clubs which are in really big trouble and I cannot believe there won’t be others which won’t go into administration.

“We are competitive and on a reasonable budget. It is not the fourth or fifth lowest, as has been mentioned.

“It started off at a lower level, but since then we have paid off certain players and brought in others which has increased it substantially.

“It is a healthy budget and one which is in the top ten in our division.”

Mr Corney added that Athletic had received two enquiries for Lee Hughes, one of which was “serious”, from Coca-Cola Championship club Doncaster Rovers.

But Doncaster wanted Hughes for less than the opt-out clause in his contract.

Mr Corney said: “We feel we have a better chance of getting into the play-offs with Lee in our team.

“The £400,000 would have been nice, but what we were offered was unacceptable.”

Mr Corney admitted it was “difficult” to turn down the offers received for Chris Taylor, adding one or two came close to the club’s valuation of the 22-year-old.

“Even then we were not keen to sell as Chris is a top lad. We all love him here and we didn’t want him to go.” he continued.

Mr Corney described it as a “successful” transfer window in terms of keeping hold of Hughes and Taylor while bringing in Dean Windass and Daniel Jones in place of Craig Davies and Chris O’Grady.