Perspective
 

I agree with many on here, that, John Coleman has taken us as far as he can. I do not agree, however, that he should be replaced. John Coleman has taken us to exactly where we need to be. We need Coleman to stay and keep us here, until the Club can catch up to the team. The ground still needs work and improvements, the backroom staff from chairman to janitor need to learn a professional attitude, we need more people through the gates.

All these things will take time, time we have as long as Coleman is left in charge of the team. Coleman, himself, will learn tactics, media handling and team selections, the players will learn a bit too, improvisation would be great sometimes.

I am not knocking anybody who calls for his head or criticises him for his mistakes, indeed I have done it myself. Hopefully he can take onboard the criticism and learn from it.

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And you are 11 points off the relegation places which are currently occupied by 2 teams who seem to be very bad. That has to be good news

Mind you I can understand the frustration that people feel they need to go to away matches to see better performances although that seems to be the 'in' thing for many clubs in the football league this season.

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for me the main thing about Coley is that nobody can work out what the hell he is playing at sometimes.

Left back playing at right back, a never played at left back utility man playing at left back, badly, and then being replaced by a right back, an aggressive ball winning central midfielder playing at right wing, a right footed lame duck playing left wing, and players like McGivern, Boco, Edwards chomping at the bit to get a run. Decisions like these will cost Coley his job in the end.

And imposing a media blackout???????????

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I agree with 99% of this. I think that the words "professional attitude" sum up the problem which afflicts the club at the moment. I am worried, though, by the length of time all this is taking. It should have been a steep learning curve when we returned to the Football League but it is taking far too long. The player registration fiasco seemed to typify it, and many other examples have been raised in various threads. And all the time, attendances remain a worry, as does the disillusionment felt by some fans.

Maybe the manager will learn tactics, media handling and team selection. How long will all this take? Macca is spot on in what he says.

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Read Macca's 10.20 post (re your signature congratulations by the way).

A comfortable midtable position in League 2 affording the luxury of all these intriguing and exotic permutations of players.

Stanley haven't had it this good for fifty years

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I too agree with Redash, and I'll give him the extra 1%. JC is one bloke who can keep a non-league club in the Football League. Being honest, who wouldn't have settled in August for 13th in the table at Christmas ?

I reckon people are frustrated, and saying so on here, because if we hadn't so often lost a lead, we'd be right up with the play-off hunt. But at least we've been good enough at times to be in the lead ....

Still keeping the faith, from a distance which I accept may lend enchantment :)

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Think its more a problem that the frustration is with home matches & coleys confusing & wft is he doing when it comes to decisions on the pitch, more than league position TBH. Paying to watch a half hearted stanley performance every time with exception to last week is rather dis-heartening & is effecting the gates which is essential income for the club, we know stanley can play better but why isnt JC using that to effect rather than the dismal displays we've seen so far.

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Maybe Eric Whalley has taken the club as far as he can? Maybe it's time he put the club up for sale at a reasonable price, in the hope that someone with new ideas for taking the club forward will step in.

Because, in my view, we cannot carry on forever as we are. Clubs that "punch above their weight" cannot do so indefinitely. You cannot run a football league club on 1,400-1,500 gates. And don't forget, the last two home matches were against well-supported northern clubs. If our home form continues as it is, will we suffer the humiliation of the first three-figure football league gate of the 21st century when the Daggers come? And supposing the scales finally drop from Coley's eyes and he realises that Branch and Miles are bone-idle timeservers and Williams is never going to be a football league standard defender? Will our gates rise sufficiently to stave off the inevitable? Don't forget that in the wake of our greatest ever triumph - the restoration of league football to the town - our second ever home match drew around 1,500 souls to the FES. Supposing we go on a winning run and gates rise to 2,000? Will that be enough to pay for the permanent police control room that we will have to build next year and the 1,000-seater stand that has to be in place by the end of next season and a football league playing budget too?

No, Eric has kept his promise to take us into the league. Now's the time for him to retire gracefully and let someone with a new approach take over.

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I listened to JC who gave a question and answer session in the lounge pre match. He made some sense when asked about Roberts coming back to Stanley (quote "we can't afford his wages but we would like him on loan")and when asked about Craney's future he said that another club (Peterboro??) are interested but Craney would like to stay here. I'm not sure about Coleman, is he the man to motivate the players. Has he lost the respect of some players and why oh why does he insist on playing Williams (who has had a bad season so far) and the so called professional, Branch who cost us a goal yet again being caught in possession. One thing about Coleman, most fans at Stanley can't understand a word he says so we will never know!! Happy Christmas all, and lets hope for a better New Year.

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Wynonie has it spot on. The club is slowly stagnating and it's only a matter of time before we find our level again. The only hope is for Eric to put the club up for sale at a reasonable price and see what happens.

All that stuff about selling last year was pure tripe! And let's face it, nobody is going to invest money in the club while Eric is still there.

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£3 million is what he wants for it:rolleyes:

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That's just ridiculous :mad:

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Like I said, Eric needs to sell the club for a reasonable, proper price, instead of all the silly games.

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The players included, judging by the way they've been playing recently.

Overheard in the Main Stand yesterday,
"Coleman says he'll get Stanley in to Europe....................even if he has to sing the bloody song himself."

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What an excellent and well written post this is.

To add my twopeneth to the debate... the communication from the club is shocking that aside we dont measure on the the communication scale. :confused: When was the last accounts published and when was the last AGM recorded ??? :confused::confused::confused::confused:

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That's really depressed me...because, in my view, what it means is that Eric has taken the club into the football league and sooner or later, he will be taking us out of it.

Never mind, Mrs H always did like a mooch around York. :rolleyes:

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Thats not including stock in the club shop, so add a tenner on :p

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And better still, when was the last shareholders' meeting? There hasn't been one since Eric took over.

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Do you know why ??? because we dont count :confused:

Tinpotidness :rolleyes:

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Are you a shareholder then ????:eek:

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We're a select bunch ;)

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http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f...ims-24259.html

which a couple of weeks later must have prompted this

Accrington Stanley

that was on the 6th December so they must be about due for publication again!



***edit**** link does not work properly


Club statement ( Wednesday 6th Dec 2006 )

accounts FYE May 2006

The accounts to the end of last season show a turnover of £667,846, with a small profit of £30,277. This is fantastic news as it shows that we made the return to the Football League but kept within our budget, and most importantly didn’t spend money that wasn’t coming in. Further details of the accounts for this period will be published in Saturday's match day programme for the game against MK Dons.

Playing budgets

This season we are on target for a turnover of around £1m, and once again our expenditure on player’s wages is budgeted accordingly to ensure that we don’t spend more than we have coming in. However this means the average annual salary of one of our players is half of that of the average for a player in League Two. To put it simply, this is the reason why we are missing out on the players that Coley has tried to bring in, and in recent months four or five players that we showed an interest in coming to Accrington went to other clubs who could offer more money. It is why we have young players on loan instead of experienced Football League players. Our annual playing staff costs for this financial year will still be in excess of £600k, without the salaries of the managers and coaching staff etc. If we are to stay in the Football League, and indeed continue to progress, our playing budget must rise. But before we can do this we need to make sure we can cover the increase either by improving existing revenue streams or introducing new ones.

Increasing revenue

Of course it would be great if there were people who wanted to donate money to the club to help fund an increase in our playing budget, but we don’t expect anyone to do that. All we ask is that people try to support the club in a number of small ways.

Attendances have been a little low compared to other clubs that we have competed against in recent years, however as we have never budgeted for big gates this has not affected the financial stability of the club. It does however have an impact on our ability to take the club forward, and we will continue to look at ways of attracting more supporters to the club. Our family tickets have been very successful this season and we continue to expand our work with local children with our holiday soccer schools and Saturday morning coaching sessions. Once again we would urge the people of Accrington and the surrounding area to come down and have a look at what we have to offer.

Those that do come to games we would ask to maybe pick up a programme if they don’t normally, probably one of the best in the league in terms of quality and content with plenty to read. Perhaps have a go on our half time 50/50 draw, only £1 a go, or stop after the game and have a few drinks with us in the Sports Bar. All these are small things that cost a few quid, but which are vital to the club in increasing our revenue.

Even people that maybe can’t get to matches can still support the club, we run a weekly draw with a £2,000 first prize each week, a £5,000 each month and a £10,000 prize twice a year. There are also hundreds of other small prizes, with much better odds of winning than the National Lottery! Most importantly, over 65p in every pound comes direct to the club to be used to take Accrington Stanley forwards, and also this is an income we can rely on 52 weeks of the year. Finally we have some great items to suit all budgets in our Stanley Store here at the club and in our outlets at the Fraser Eagle Store in town and at Oswaldtwistle Mills, why not get someone in your family something from the club for Christmas?

Spend your pennies with us

Every single penny that comes into the club is used to take the club forward. It would be great to have one person give us £10,000 to spend, however it would be even better to get 10,000 people to give us a £1, that way there are far more people involved and there are more people that feel a part of the club. Every time you spend even the smallest amount of money at Accrington Stanley you are helping us, not just to survive but to continue to progress.

The future

Looking to the future we are also aiming to developing other revenue streams, we hope to transform the Sports Bar to make it a more modern facility that we can use for hospitality on match days and also conferencing during the week, and we plan to add other hospitality areas to fulfil the demand for match day sponsorship. We are also expecting good news regarding grant funding for the covering of the North Terrace in the next few weeks.

Longer term we have had some initial discussions regarding relocating to another site, though these are at a very early stage and obviously any developments would be several years away. We do have to decide over the coming months though whether we spend money developing the present site or look at other options for the future.

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Its kinda funny as on Saturday night as i was waiting for my numbers to come up on the lottery, my son asked me if i`d buy Stanley if i won the jackpot, i answered yes, then we started to work out how much we thought it was worth, and we sort of came to a rough figure of around £1.5M / £2M Tops, so not sure where the other £1M comes from that he`s asking for, i cant see anyone in their right mind paying £3M for Stanley, unless they have unlimited amounts of cash at their dispossal.
I think we should go on the Dragons Den and see if we can get them to buy the club:), i think if they were allowed to go through the books though that they would come up with a far smaller figure than the £3M asking price, they`ed probably offer £40,000 for a 50% stake, as seems the norm :).
Or maybe we could all write Bill Gates a nice letter asking him to help us out, as it would be a drop in the ocean to him.

The problem is that the revenue is not there to make it a worth while investment, unless you are looking at a really long term one, even if lets say somebody like Bill Gates steps in and throws money at the club and that we end up in the Prem, realistically what do you think the gate would be, my guess is that it still wouldn`t reach 10,000 because the fan base just isn`t there.
So if we accept that, we cant really set our sights on much more than where we are now, ok we might assemble a team that could one day take us to league 1, but i think thats probably about as far as a small club like ours could reach, its not about being defeatist its more about being realistic, that is of course unless a big money man steps in and is prepared to throw money down the drain to take us higher just for the pleasure of seeing Stanley back in the top flight.

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True Haz plus the fact of the ground still needs sorting to be proper league standard by end of next year, the carpark & surrounds of the club need the surfaces relaying.

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Depressing reading and that was based on last season's gates. This season's are even worse - we haven't even broken the 2,000 mark yet. But, as you can see, the club have admitted it themselves - to stay in the league, our playing budget must rise. Presumably, the playing budget hasn't risen and will be depleted even further by the cost of forthcoming ground improvements. It seems to me that the only hope we have is to sell the club to someone who has sufficient capital to invest and fresh ideas to attract the local public. Surely Eric must see that the club is going nowhere at the moment?

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I don't really see the club being worth £500,000, never mind £3m. What assets are there? We don't own the ground, so what else is there? There's the name of course, plus the league status with attached TV rights, but what other assets are there? There isn't a large customer base and if anything, the existing number of customers is actually shrinking.

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The value of the club should be equal to or less than, the amount of money you have put in yourself, so when you sell you are not out of pocket.
I don't think it's fair to profit from a club as small as ours.

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we're worth nowhere near £3m as (as already pointed out) we have no real assets as such. The squad is worth diddly, the ground is worth nowt, Stock at Value is next to nil. The only saleable asset is the name. We have all thought for years that the name is more marketable than it currently is but that will rely on more money being spent on pushing.

Accrington could and would spend more on it's club was it shoved down their throats more. A shop in town WILL materialise but will not be sufficient without being pushed. We need to develop brand Stanley and have more partners in town willing to sell it for us. We need advertising boards around town, we need Doctor Proctor staring out of the back end of buses. These type of things will almost certainly not happen under Eric as he is not willing to spend money we don't have on something that may or may not have an immediate effect. We all recognise that we need to be looking for the fans that will come in five or ten years time and that is being targetted by the FITC team, but it needs to be backed up by other things as well. We are currently treading water with regards to these things and maybe a new owner would have a real push at them. But also a new owner may not be prepared to continuously put his hand in his own pocket to subsidise crap gates.

I think that Eric would be quite within his rights to try to make a profit on the sale of HIS club, but nobody sensible would pay more than £1m. And I for one don't want somebody not sensible. Eric will only leave Accrington Stanley in a box

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Two scenarios should be looked at:-

Club A - Who pay top wages, have a superb ground and debts of £30m
Club B - Who do not live in a fool's paradise. They work within a limited budget, and have no debts whatsoever.

Which is the most successful club - those with debts and no means of repayment, or little old Stanley? I believe Eric and the board are quite right to keep things in perspective, and not borrow money that the club cannot afford to repay in the near future.

In this, I think we are a unique club. Success in the next 5 years, in my view, would be maintaining league 2 status - We should not even think about promotion until the current foundations are firmly in place ie. more generated income via fans and corporate sponsorship. If this does not materialise, then let's be happy to just be competing at this level.

I would rather see us lose at home to Shrewsbury, than beat the likes of Leigh RMI or Barrow.:)

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You're missing the point Owd Bob. Nobody is questioning the way Eric has run the club and I'm sure we all appreciate being debt free. However, we can't carry on in the same way we are doing now, otherwise we'll end up playing those very teams you mention in your post.

If the club is going to survive in the League then it needs to operate in a completely different way than it is at the moment, and with Eric at the helm it is never going to do so. You only need to look at the statement issued by the club to realise that it can't continue to operate in the way it is doing at the moment. The club needs investment and that can only come with a change at the top. There is no way that Eric can expect investors to come forward, whilst still holding onto the reigns with both hands, as he suggested last year.

Whether anyone is willing to take over the club and invest in it remains to be seen. If there isn't and the people of Accrington won't support it through the turnstiles, then maybe the experiment has failed and we need to go back to a level where we can exist within our means?

One thing is for sure, though, the club can't stagnate and wait for a miracle. Not even at this time of the year. ;)

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It's great the club is not in debt and shows the astute line the Club has taken!
Like everybody else it is a frustration that we are constantly wheeling and dealing and it seems more apparent this Season for whatever reason:confused:
Perhaps the gaps show more in League Two than in the Conference day's, but at the end of the day we are a League Club and I for one feel very proud of that fact.:)
The Commercial side of the club has moved on this season at pace with the kitting out of the Sports Bar and transition into the Buy the House Lounge and after sampling it for myself on Saturday, I can say that the facilities and service to sponsors is very good, while it is still relatively early days I would hope it can go from strength to strength as I would hope will the Crown. So there are more revenue streams than perhaps in previous seasons but the bottom line is we still need to get more people through the turnstiles we have had the discussions many times on here with a lot of good ideas but innovation costs nothing, as Macca has said we need the club getting in the faces of Joe Public when was the last time you saw the Club advertising in the Lancs Telegraph like Burnley & Blackburn do? When was the last time you heard a Stanley Match Day advert on the radio? The flexi ticket idea is a cracking one hopefully one that will be looked at for the start of the season or by really going for it and offering Season tickets at lower prices than our bigger neighbours and look at introducing a lower pricing level for under sixteens & oaps, we made great strides by offering free admission to under twelves but I would imagine that we lose quite a few as soon as they move into the next pricing band? We need to be looking at getting as many Season Ticket holders as possible look at what Bradford did with their pricing and what it attracted in terms of Season Ticket holders and that I would have thought it is all money up front:confused:
The other option for the Season Tickets is perhaps introducing payments over a short period of time say three months (every little helps)

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Wonder if any other club don't offer this facility ?

I know of at least 1 extra ticket that would have been sold if this option was available ( and it's not me, I'm not converting :) )

We have 2 schemes, 3 months and 10 months.

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I really like your fresh-faced optimism, Google Page Ranking. What do you reckon, lads and lasses? How long before he becomes an embittered cynic like the rest of us? :rolleyes: