Originally Posted by
EalingGreen
There you go again.
It would only be "hypocritical" if GFC were doing what DCFC have been doing. They haven't.
For example, DCFC racked up big debts trying to buy success, then went bust leaving bills unpaid, before blithely starting again as a "new" club, as if nothing had happened.
By contrast, after running up similarly big debts chasing success (£1.7m at one stage), supporter-owned GFC avoided administration by slashing costs and selling assets in order to repay those debts. They suffered for this on the field and at the turnstiles but they stuck with it. As a result, they have broken even, or even made a modest profit in recent seasons, unlike DCFC, who have made huge operating losses only able to be covered by a benefactor.
And speaking of benefactors, O'Doherty has been pumping money into DCFC for years to keep them afloat. Whereas GFC's guy only came along last year. At the time, GFC had already reduced their debt to c.£100k and may even have cleared it completely by the time he took over (unsure?).
Of course, we don't know how his present investment will be applied, but I for one hope that he isn't up to anything like the shenanigans at DCFC, who were thrown out of the LOI for keeping two sets of books (i.e. making illegal payments to players), something GFC never did in good times or bad. One of the results of this behaviour was that DCFC were able to compete for European places/prize money, something which GFC have been denied since their own cost-cutting.
And then there's the stadium. GFC have always owned The Oval, which means they have to maintain it (obv). And with local councils imposing incredibly harsh Health & Safety obligations on football grounds, this imposes heavy costs on clubs, as well as restricting capacity to ridiculous levels. By contrast, not only do DCFC not have to bear such costs themselves, but with the Brandywell being Council-owned, it has benefitted by being completely re-built from public funds.
But yeah, apart from all that, DCFC and GFC are exactly the same...
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