Cork City in Financial Trouble?

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Originally Posted by Student Mullet

Here's what it says in the document the clubs voted on:


My reading of that says there will be wage control next year but I could be wrong.

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Think its the license issued in 2007 (this time of year!) for the 2008 season wages (at least thats what Pats have been told by a certain sport's governing body!)

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Originally Posted by Dodge

Think its the license issued in 2007 (this time of year!) for the 2008 season wages (at least thats what Pats have been told by a certain sport's governing body!)

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But a document entitled:

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The Football Association of Ireland
Club Licensing Manual For FAI National League Season 2007 and UEFA Club Competitions Season 2007/2008

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Was issued in July 2006. I have a copy of it.

The question now arises- have the FAI read the FAI documentation?

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Originally Posted by Student Mullet

But a document entitled:
Was issued in July 2006. I have a copy of it.

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So the license for club season 2008 would be issued in 2007. That makes sense. They'll set the wage limits for 2008, in that release

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Originally Posted by Galway Harps

The question now arises- have the FAI read the FAI documentation?

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Don't be ridiculous, of course they haven't. They're too busy finding new, innovative ways of fining people to line their own pockets.

So the 2008 limits will be based on 2007 turnover- that makes sense I guess? In any case it'll be interesting to see how the wage cap is handled. It's a great idea but administering it is going to be very difficult.

So the FAI tell each club that they'll only be allowed to spend 65% of turnover for a given season- what happens if they spend more- do they get points deducted the following season? In the case that a club hits problems like we did this year and gates collapse completely is it really fair to punish a club further if that causes them to stray over the limit? It's going to be very difficult to administer fairly, but if it introduces a bit of sanity into the financial dealings in the league then it'll be well worth it.

it looks like after next season ollie will be looking for points he lost to a team who he believes spent over there budget and we will be in the same boat again

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Originally Posted by pete

20k a week is only 1 million a year & Bohs, Shels & Drogs all have larger spending on smaller crowds.

Success means that players look for higher salaries & clus need to keep their best players. I am not knocking After Derrys recent successes it will be interesting to see how much their wage bill increases next year when comes to pay reviews.

I think crowds have been down this year but i expect them to pick up next season with the opening of the new shed stand. I don't know if any other eL club owned & funded by 1 person so Brian Lennox is really just looking for others to come on board to share the burder.

I would be wary of any irish person who describes himself as a Chelsea fan as clearly only discovered football in the last few years.

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No, well we won't anyway.

We'll come in just under 1 million for the year.

We'll be more than €1m. Budget for season was €1.1m. Losing Farrelly and Can't will have reduced it, but we were still paying Farrelly wages up until a couple of weeks ago as part of the resignation agreement. Loaning out Cooney and Mr. Invisible will have reduced the budget also, but we've loaned Caffo and Leech as well as signing Paul Devlin for a while so I'd imagine the final figure will still be between €1m - €1.1m.

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Originally Posted by Luke O'Riordan

We'll be more than €1m. Budget for season was €1.1m. Losing Farrelly and Can't will have reduced it, but we were still paying Farrelly wages up until a couple of weeks ago as part of the resignation agreement. Loaning out Cooney and Mr. Invisible will have reduced the budget also, but we've loaned Caffo and Leech as well as signing Paul Devlin for a while so I'd imagine the final figure will still be between €1m - €1.1m.

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no, will defo be just under 1 million for the year. -FACT!

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Originally Posted by BohsFans

no, will defo be just under 1 million for the year. -FACT!

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I;ve seen your expenses for the last 2 years listed as 1.4m & 1.3m with loses of 300-400k.

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Originally Posted by pete

I;ve seen your expenses for the last 2 years listed as 1.4m & 1.3m with loses of 300-400k.

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so? Maybe you have, maybe yo haven't. Wage bill and expenses are two completely different figures.

All sounds very amateur to me when I hear Lennox pleading for people to come to the games. Where has all the money gone. Lennox says he budgets for every season that we will have "no success". So how did we end up in this mess?

The loss of the Shed has been a big cause for the drop in attendences.

For me personally, the matchday experience is not the same. You now have to walk all the way round the back of the St. Annes end to get in and heading off for a sneaky pint at half time is too long a walk.:D :D

Also people that used to be in the Shed end and the Corner boys are now scatered all over the place.

Interesting to see if the Shed will be like the old Shed next season.

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Originally Posted by BohsFans

no, will defo be just under 1 million for the year. -FACT!

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I'll believe it when I see it. We spent more than 900k last season and we'd a more expensive squad this season.

I heard somewhere that Cork have more full time staff than Cardiff City....anyone hear this?

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Originally Posted by The Stars

I heard somewhere that Cork have more full time staff than Cardiff City....anyone hear this?

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Yeah, thats true but thats because Cardiff are down to 20 fulltime players, which is unreal for a full time club. City are struggling this year because our squad is so small.

Good Emmet Malone (best eL journalist) article in the IT today. I must say I was quiet depressed reading it.

City spending 80% of turnover on wages which i would think isn't bad by top eL standards.
To get to 2/3 rds of turnover will need to increase revenue or cut costs.
Apparently we have gone from 1.5m budget 3-4 years ago to 2-2.5m budget now. I think this is pure speculation by Malone & cannot see how thats accurate.
Brian Lennox has put in 300-400k of his own cash into the club in 3-4 years since he took 100% control - this seems accurate enough.

I can understand why Brian Lennox may want a helping hand by others as its amazing how ungrateful some sections of supporters can be. Always surprised by some people who been supporting the eL for years thinking there loads of money available. Been following the club for 15 years & he is by a long shot the best Chairman in those years.

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Originally Posted by pete

Good Emmet Malone (best eL journalist) article in the IT today. I must say I was quiet depressed reading it.

City spending 80% of turnover on wages which i would think isn't bad by top eL standards.
To get to 2/3 rds of turnover will need to increase revenue or cut costs.
Apparently we have gone from 1.5m budget 3-4 years ago to 2-2.5m budget now. I think this is pure speculation by Malone & cannot see how thats accurate.
Brian Lennox has put in 300-400k of his own cash into the club in 3-4 years since he took 100% control - this seems accurate enough.

I can understand why Brian Lennox may want a helping hand by others as its amazing how ungrateful some sections of supporters can be. Always surprised by some people who been supporting the eL for years thinking there loads of money available. Been following the club for 15 years & he is by a long shot the best Chairman in those years.

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Totally agree with your last point - LoI fans by and large haven't a clue about the financial reality of running their clubs

Here's the IT article for anyone who missed it today.

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Originally Posted by Emmet Malone in the Irish Times

Cork City can't make numbers add up
Emmet Malone

On Soccer: Such are the economics of the Eircom League. It won't have come as a surprise to many when the demise of Cork City's challenge for a second successful league title coincided with the first rumours of belt tightening down around Turner's Cross.

Still, the warning issued by the club's chairman, Brian Lennox, last week that City could be out of business within 12 months until backers willing to provide substantial investment come forward is a stark reminder of just how fleeting the good times can be in a league where very few budget for the bad times.


Word has it Lennox, having previously been a member of a broader consortium for five years during which time he served as vice-chairman, had put somewhere between €350,000 and €400,000 into the development of the club over the first four years of his term as owner although there is speculation he recouped a portion of that figure after last year's exceptionally good season.

Reaching the Setanta Cup final and performing creditably in Europe again will have boosted the financial position but a run of costly draws in the late summer effectively killed off City's hopes of defending the title.

The upshot, of course, was that crowds and, in turn, income fell, and so, despite still being embroiled in battle to qualify for next season's Uefa Cup, the team has found itself playing in front of less than 3,000 people of late.

Manager Damien Richardson is just one of many people at or near to the club who feels the biggest problem has not been the drop in attendances but rather the failure to adequately develop other aspects of revenue generation.

He remains broadly optimistic that imbalance can be addressed as long as the progress made in recent seasons on the pitch isn't squandered and he is adamant a return to part-time professionalism, as has been suggested might be necessary, would be a disaster.

At present there is a strong, full-time first team set-up with a core of very talented players, as well as developed and successful under-21 and under-18 structures, all of which have strong management teams. All of this, however, has come at a significant price with the cost of running the club having risen from around €1.5 million when Lennox took over to somewhere between €2 and €2.5 million this year.

Some of the detail on the financial side is interesting with Lennox revealing for instance that the club has effectively had to write off some €300,000 it was owed for match sponsorships and advertisingbut, for the most part, it all sounds like standard fare for one of the country's biggest clubs.

What will cause some concern throughout the league, though, is the fact that despite having a lower wage bill than a couple of their rivals, having a more clearly defined catchment area - one that encompasses a population of around 250,000, and probably the largest support of any club in the country - successive owners have proved incapable of making the numbers add up for the club.

But then the situation is not unprecedented. Both Cork Celtic and Cork Hibernians went out of business within short periods of achieving considerable success.

It may be hard at first glance to imagine Cork City going the same way any time soon and impossible to envisage Cork without a presence at the highest level of the Irish game but the reality is that the club, which doesn't own its own ground or, for that matter, very much else, is a rather fragile organisation and Lennox, entirely understandably, has made it clear he can no longer carry the burden of keeping it intact alone.

Matters will not be helped in the short term at least, he feels, by the changes being advocated by the FAI which intends to reduce to two thirds the proportion of revenue a club may spend on wages. Lennox puts Cork City's current figure at something below 80 per cent and that of many other clubs at comfortably over four fifths.

The key problem, he feels, is that the transition period of two years before the new rules are applied is too short to allow clubs to address the problem by raising additional revenue with the result they will instead have to cut wage bills, and thus either the numbers or quality of players they employ.

City have already discovered the cost of letting popular players leave without replacing them and the next few weeks may be critical in deciding whether the squad is further weakened during the coming close season, or the early signs of decline are halted and they seek to bounce back for next season.

Hopeful rumours suggests that the property developer Owen O'Callaghan is about to get involved although so far he has gently played down the speculation.

His pockets would certainly be deep enough to enable the club to challenge for more trophies. However what would be more interesting would be whether somebody from a line of work that has been something of a sure thing for the past couple of decades could actually make a sustainable success of a business where a willingness to lose considerable amounts of money has been widely seen as both necessary and, in the eyes of the supporters at least, hugely desirable.

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Bad man-management by Damian Richardson sees Cork currently spending almost €100,000 a year on an investment that gives them no return. If this is how the club is run, then it's hardly surprising that it's in financial ruin.