The annual fans forum was held on February 7th with owner and chairman Ian Lenagan. Below is a transcript of his presentation (italicised sections are from other speakers). Enjoy.
Welcome this evening. I'd like to say I hope you enjoy the evening, I'm
not sure that I was looking forward to it with enjoyment but they're always
good things, fans forums, we always get a lot out of them. It also gives me the
opportunity to say something at the beginning, because this is my first fans
forum where I've been in actual charge in terms of day-to-day, week-to-week
running of the club, whereas before as an owner I am getting reported figures
and what's happening as much as anybody else is.
The last six months have been quite significant for me, in as much as
I've been up to my elbows in Oxford United and I've actually got to the point
where I enjoy the game tremendously, not perhaps at Southend last weekend. But
from being a bit of an absent fan in some respects – I enjoyed it but I never
used to know the players – I actually know everybody now.
What I don't know is, I don't know many of the fans and sometimes I'm
well aware of the fact that I give off an exterior view which is not involved,
but believe me I am very much involved in Oxford United. In terms of my time,
my effort, my commitment and my enjoyment of the players and what we do. Most
of the staff who work for Oxford United know me quite well, the players know me
but the fans don't. I hope tonight is one of the opportunities where I can say
to you, I really welcome the involvement of the fans, at games or whenever I've
gone to the bar afterwards – at away matches rather more than at home. But I
would love to get to know more of you and you get to know me because you'll
trust me more, you'll believe that I have the passion for Oxford United that so
many of you have because that's evolved and developed during the last six
months.
But what I can't do is, I can't be in the newspaper or on the radio or
whatever every week, that's not my style. My style is to deal with the business
and deal with it as well as I can and to support the team passionately whether
it's home or away and I've probably come to enjoy that part of it far, far more
than I expected I would. Whilst I can't say that I've been an Oxford United fan
for 20 years, 30 years or whatever, I can tell you that I am very heavily
involved in the team and I hope that you'll get to know me a little better and
understand me a bit better because you then might appreciate some of the
decisions that we're having to undertake on behalf of the club and the team and
everyone else involved in this.
So tonight, as far as the fans forum is concerned, we're looking at a
review of the last six months. I took over on July 13th, not a very
auspicious day especially as it was Friday the 13th, but I took over
then and I've been involved for the six months since and there's been a lot of
not-so-good and there's been a lot of good as well. But today is about telling
you about all of that, to be open and honest . You might not agree with many of
the things that I've done – I hope you do. But we're here discuss all of the
issues that you want to talk about. Nothing's off the agenda.
We'll talk about matters on the field first of all. If we talk about the
first team, if this had been two weeks ago and we'd been two points away from
the play-offs we'd have been in a far more positive frame of mind, but the one
point out of the last nine has not helped matters and the fact that we're seven
points away from the play-offs now is not quite as good as it was.
The issue that's dominated in the last six months is the issue of sack
the manager or not and the issue of the playing squad and if that's good enough
and whether we should buy more and where that sits from a financial view. Let
me just comment on a number of those issues. I said very clearly what the
objective as far as Oxford United is: my objective is to get Oxford United into
the Championship within a five-year period. I said that the objective – and I
stand by it – this year is a very clear target and that as far as the manager
is concerned is to get promotion. That's what the club wants. An absolute
minimum is to get into the play-offs and we looked as though a couple of weeks
ago we might be heading in the right direction after a good run after some bad
runs before.
So where are we? We're behind where I would like us to be and I don't
want to make excuses in terms of bad luck or injuries or whatever, you know
what the reasons are as much as I do. I do know that in terms of the squad, I
inherited a squad that had a lot of long-term injuries in it and we've been
gradually working our way out of that. I took the decision back in October that
we would wait for that situation to resolve itself, once we started to get
players back, and then see what the result was.
Why did I make that decision? That was my decision and I don't think it
was the wrong decision. I'm not saying there aren't other decisions that could
have been taken but that was clearly my decision at the time. I took a view
that said if we brought in a new manager, for example, at that time , with the
injury load that we've got, that I wasn't convinced we could do a great deal
about it anyway in terms of turning around the performance. And because the
opportunity isn't there at that point in the season to replace half of the
squad. And it would have been costly. It would probably have cost around a
quarter of a million pounds to get rid of the manager and replace him with
another one and pay the compensation that's involved and then you have to
change players.
So I took the view that we owed a loyalty to Chris Wilder, that he has
done well by the club and that we would give him the opportunity for the
players to come back from injury and see what we could do then. And that nearly
proved to be the correct view a couple of weeks ago, we'll see if it proves to
be correct at the end of the season but that is my responsibility. I'll carry
the can as far as that decision is concerned.
The issue in terms of what falling attendances would cost compared with
what compensation would cost is about the same. It costs us somewhere between
£200k-£250k if we have attendance that are 1,000-1,200 lower than what there
would be. So it wasn't in the end a financial decision, it was a decision taken
along the lines of when we've got the squad back and then we'll see what we can
do. When we have the full squad available, or 90% of the squad available,
because you can never have all of it, then we have a team that's more than
capable of competing with anyone and for those of you who, like me, were at Bradford you'll understand that. And there's no doubt at
all that if we can have our team out on the field most of the time we would be
very competitive in this division which is in itself a competitive division.
But things happen. The goalkeeper getting both of his shoulders done was
unfortunate when it occurred, Peter Leven and his problems with his knee was
unfortunate and he's going to be out for another eight weeks, maybe ten weeks.
And of course we have to deal with the issues of where do we get a creative
midfielder, which Chris Wilder and myself are very, very heavily involved in,
because we've committed the money to do that, yet more money to cover injuries
but you haven't got a chance other wise. You can't compete and have whatever
outside chance we have of getting in the play-offs without a creative
midfielder and hopefully within the next ten days or so we'll see that gap
plugged. We can't plug it until a week next Friday because if we do with the
93-day rule that applies in terms of transfers and if we got into the play-offs
that player would then not be able to play in the play-offs, so we won't see
anything happening until next Friday, is that the 14th, I'm not
quite sure what the date is, but that's the salient date in order for the 93
days to allow you to be in the play-offs and we haven't lost sight of the fact
that's what we want to do.
If we look at the playing squad in terms of Oxford United we look to
have a squad of 21-22 players, plus whatever youth team players are deemed
suitable to play, or be around on the bench or fill in if necessary. For the
majority of this season we've had two-thirds of those available at best and
that's been a real problem.
We brought in Justin Richards on loan recently, before we signed him,
and we needed him to fill in the Constable area. Every time you do something
like that you have to remember the salary cap and the fact that it takes good
money. We have never once not spent the money, we've spent it judiciously and
carefully and we've looked to get the best deals that we always can when doing
that, but not once has the manager ever been faced with the prospect of not being
able to bring in the next players that are necessary.
So I hope never, ever, ever to go through a season where we start the
season with so many crippled players before we actually get to the first game
of the season and I can give you my assurance that that's not what we're going
to do next term. And we're fortunate that there are quite a lot of people –
particularly the expensive people – who are out of contract at the end of this
particular season. And we've already started looking forward in terms of the
players that we need who are fit and will stay fit moving forward. So with the
investment that we've made in the backroom staff as well, we'll have a first
team squad as fit as possible. You'll always get injuries, it's not
unreasonable to have 10% injuries, but when you start off with 25% injuries
then you give yourself something of a handicap.
But in terms of the playing squad itself and the first team, we're still
stumbling by because we've lost our number one goalkeeper and we've lost our
creative midfielder, we have people like Liam Davis with perennial problems
with his hamstring, we've got Jon-Paul Pittman not yet back and unlikely to get
back for most of the season, you know what they are as well as I do. But I'm
intimately involved day-to-day and week-to-week trying to plan, within the
financial constraints of the salary cap.
We don't have to stay within the salary cap. That's how the Swindons and
the other clubs of this world get around the salary cap, but good management
says stay within the salary cap, that's what the salary cap is all about, it's
a guideline and it's a level which says 'this is the level beyong which you
shouldn't go' and I have always worked on the basis that this is a level we
should not go beyond. But there are times – and at the moment we're very
fortunate that we've just had a donation from the 12th Man
organisation, which will allow us very easily to bring in the next creative
midfielder and pay for that for the next three, four months or so. We could put
a donation of £100k into the football club, which is a way around the salary
cap and the way that other people do it, but all you'd be doing is spending
more on wages than you should. So when you see me talking about the salary cap
and saying we can't go beyond the salary cap, there are ways of getting around
the salary cap and we choose not to do it because it's bad financial management
to do that.
And Oxford
during the course of the last three years has gone from spending £950k on basic
players' wages to £1.4 million, which is what it is now. We didn't budget to
spend that much but there's an extra £200k in there in each of the last two
years because of injuries and having to bring in emergency loan players and all
sorts as cover.
So in terms of the first team squad that's all I'll say until further
questions, apart from one issue, which is Luke McCormick, which has resulted in
quite a lot of emails to me personally and quite a lot of different views as
far as that is concerned and we're here as a board of directors tonight to
justify the decisions that we made or at least explain them if anybody wants to
question us. I think my position is very clear but I thought it might be quite
useful because you don't know the other two board members . Adrian, would you mind commenting on the
board's viewpoint on the McCormick issue?
Adrian Lenagan: We had a very long discussion for several hours
concerning all the issues between the three of us and from the beginning one
thing was clear. It wasn't a football question and it wasn't a financial
question, it was unquestionably a moral question. And I suppose it's a tragic
fact really that situations occur when ordinary people make terrible, terrible
misjudgement which have lasting ramifications and this is clearly one of those
instances. But then if you ask a group of people such as those here today what
you should do when someone has served their sentence, paid their debt, whatever
you want to call it, you're going to get as many different answers as you can
possibly think of. It's clearly a hugely emotive issue and the validity of
people's emotions is not to be questioned – how you feel is how you feel and
that's really your own business.
But I think that we three obviously don't subscribe to the view that
says that society should forget about a certain group of people, they've had
they're opportunity and that's it. We do believe that people deserve a second
chance and we have to stand by that decision and that's what we did.
Thanks for that Adrian.
So it was a decision that we took in the full knowledge of the fact that a
certain percentage of the Oxford fans would perhaps be passionately against it.
But equally there could be another group of fans who supported the moral view
that we took, the view that people should be granted another chance. A lot of
people get praised for making that sort
of decision; I was interested to see that Richard Branson had put out an edict
for the Virgin companies that they should employ ex-offenders and give them
another chance. That's what we've done. We don't expect everybody to agree with
it, I have no problem with the emails that I have received from people who
passionately believe in the other direction, but that's why we took that
particular decision.
In terms of the management and the backroom staff, I've talked about the
manager's element of it. I think we're in a good position now with backroom
staff particularly as well as the manager, with Andy Melville, Mickey Lewis and
Chris Wilder – whether you think Chris Wilder should be there as manager or
not, I think he should be at the moment, he gets his chance to do that – but I
think that that group, particularly the two assistant managers, have come on in
leaps and bounds in the last few years.
I'll introduce some people who you may not know; Alasdair Lane is our
strength and conditioning manager, Dan Bond who has shown amazing commitment to
the club in the last six months in working in a completely new area which is
video analytics. Oxford United, you may not know, are clearly the leader in Leagues
One and Two in the use of technology in sports science and the development
within the football club. We've even had Premier League people come looking at
what we do here in the Academy and with the first team squad and you should be
immensely proud of where Oxford United is.
But we won't see a great degree of benefit of that for 12 months, that's
the unfortunate thing. There's no quick fix, but in those people – and I
include Andy Lord the physio and the doctors who stand in – we have a great
backroom staff capable of taking us well beyond League Two and I'm proud of
them and I'm delighted with the way they've taken up the cudgel and taken up
the challenge in the last six months. And if any of you get the chance to go
onto and look at the websites and what it is that we do in analytics and sports
science you'll be very proud of your club, because I am.
We've always seen the youth team as something that's undervalued and
underplayed at Oxford – probably because the previous owner decimated it for so
long and by the fact that we allowed Oxfordshire-based to kids to move on to
other clubs rather than through Oxford United.
I am particularly pleased with the fact that Ty Marsh and Max Crocombe
have both played at least once for the first team this season and, to be frank,
if Max hadn't been called up for the New Zealand squad for the four weeks that
he's likely to be off in March we probably would have stayed with Max Crocombe
as the goalkeeper for the next 12 weeks. But that's a very difficult decision,
one which Chris Wilder would not necessarily agree with because if we're going
to fight for the play-off places we need to have an experienced goalkeeper. On
the other hand, I might have a view that said we have to give the young players
a chance and somewhere between the two is what we've got. It's interesting that
Ty has just gone off and got the man of the match award in a lower level game
last weekend.
And because of our injuries there's no way that we can organise
behind-closed-doors friendlies for the first six months of the season because
we couldn't risk another injury, could we? And that's the problem, we can't
even play them so someone like Max Crocombe can't seriously be thought of as a
stand-in goalkeeper because he hasn't played a game for six months. That's the
sort of problem that's been a perennial problem as far as Oxford United are
concerned, but I guarantee you that problem is solved now.
One of the areas that we are investing in heavily is the whole youth
structure and it's nice to see Richard Blackmore here tonight, for example, who
does so much in the background at Oxford United and you should give him a big
thank you, that's for sure, in terms of how the Academy is developing, how the
ladies are developing and how the education side of the club is developing.
But we are committed to bringing young players through. That is probably
one of the most important principles of the way the Lenagans approach Oxford
United. The young players like Tyrone and Max will be able to stay with us from
League Two to League One to the Championship, hoping that we do get there.
Whereas if you've got to go out and buy players every year as you move from
League Two to League One and then from League One to the next one, that's an
ongoing problem where you're only as good as the players that you buy in.
Whereas if you develop your own players you've got a much, much better chance
less expensively with a much greater commitment.
I spent three quarters of an hour with Ty Marsh on Monday, talking about
the next three years and we have an option for the next few and we're taking
those options on. But we want to sign those young players for the next three
years at least going forward, speculatively even because if we're not sure
about them we'll still sign them on because they're the future of Oxford
United.
The fact that they've done so well this year in terms of the FA Cup on
the youth side of things is great. The fact that we've got a number of players
– five, six, seven of them – who we think could challenge in a year or two
years time. The fact that we've got the development squad being put together
and the accelerator squad to take young players forward, both physically and in
terms of their skill, that's where a lot of effort, money, time and commitment
goes in as far as Oxford United are concerned.
You heard me use the phrase 'development squad' there, for example.
We've never had a development squad. Again, because this is not just me, the
other directors – Simon, a comment on the development squad?
Simon Lenagan: I think all of you appreciate that there is a gap between
playing in the youth team and playing in the first team. We're aware of that
and we think that the creation of the development squad, which is essentially
taking youth teamers and combining them with people that we're not quite sure
about, people who we traditionally would have let go. Being able to hold onto
them, keeping them together as a group and giving them an extra year and
allowing them to play 14-16 games perhaps across the season arranged by us
behind closed doors against professional opposition in the local area – we
think with the right development it would take and fly.
The problem with taking Max and Ty and expecting them to go and turn it
on like that with them not having played enough will go next year, because they
will play in the development squad 14-16 times throughout the season and
they'll be much more ready. It'll also allow us to put into that development
squad, because you can have a number of players who are above the age group,to
play some younger pros in there and mix the culture of both and allow us to see
which ones can move on.
It's a very important stage between the first team and youth team – it's
not a reserve team, it's about development, it's about seeing how they grow and
how they go after they leave the youth team. Or if they're in the second year
of the youth team and we think they are ready, to see them play at a higher
level that's not first team football. It's really important and I'm really glad
we're going to get to do that next year.
But that will cost us £100k, for example. That's £100k of development
cost, but if Oxford United doesn't do that we'll never have the young
Oxfordshire players coming through into the team. And it'll take three years
before you see the benefit of that. And in the background, whilst we're trying
to get promoted this year and we are trying to do all the other good things
that you are naturally very concerned about, we are spending an enormous amount
of time and effort trying to get the basics right, but the futuristic basics.
Nobody's got a development squad at our level, nobody's running the football
squad software at our level, we're the only ones in League One and League Two
that are actually doing that. We're way ahead on some of those things but you
won't see the benefit of it for a while. But I think it's important that you
can see some of the jam of tomorrow while looking at the mess that we've got in
certain areas at the time. Hopefully we'll see the positives of that.
The Academy – and it's confusing because we talk about the Education
Academy and the Academy as being the scholars which used to be the whole Centre
of Excellence concept. They've all been renamed as Academy now so the under-9s
right the way up to the youth team, the 19-year-olds, that is the Oxford
Academy. And Oxford United Academy has actually achieved Category Three, not
Category Four as most League Two and League One clubs are getting, but Category
Three in the evaluation that's been done by the Premier League and the Football
League in terms of how we develop young players. And that's a good position to
be in as well, apart from our facilities – and our facilities down at Horspath
are excellent and that issue will come up later on as well.
The ladies team: the ladies are actually playing on February the 24th
at the Kassam. We're using one of our two matches that we're allowed to play to
let the ladies team play against Newcastle United Ladies, who are two divisions
above us, they're step one where we're step three, but we've already beaten one
step one team in Charlton to get to where we are. But I would ask that you come
along on that Sunday at one o'clock. Watch them play here at the stadium and be
proud of what they've done, because if they win that game against Newcastle
they will play against one of the eight elite Super League teams and that's a
great position for Oxford United to have got to and I hope you're proud of them
in the way that we are.
If we look at off the field. Well, that’s not been a very good year, I
have to say, from a monetary viewpoint and an investment viewpoint.
I thought it would be useful for you to know when we identified that
there was a financial problem, because you know the amount of money that we’ve
had to put in during the course of the last seven or eight months or so and
it’s quite substantial. The problems last year – that’s the year that finished
in June of 2012, the season before this current season. I was at the fans forum
here as the owner in March of 2012 when the loss for the year was being
projected as £210k. That’s what the projections were of the loss for Oxford
United for that year. By June, when I was starting to get involved in rather
more detail, you could see it had gone up to £660k and for that year now it’s
looking like £750k loss in that one year. That’s why I’m the chairman and chief
executive of Oxford United, because you can’t afford to allow those kind of
losses to continue and a lot of things had gone wrong at that particular point
in time financially.
So that’s where most of the money has actually gone in during the course
of the last six-to-nine months, it’s paying off a lot of things from last year.
A lot of my efforts have been involved in correcting those mistakes and we’re
coming out of that now – not without cost, unfortunately, our cost.
But again in June of 2012, six months ago, having been projected in the
budget a £40k profit, it was apparent in June of that year that the projected
loss was either going to be £250k or £425k, depending on who you listened to. Either
of them were not good. Some of it was out of our hands, like the Football
League’s commercial drop in income, which was poor. Some of it was in our
hands; £200k of it is overspending on players - £300k at a push. If you’ve got
a budget of £1.1 million you shouldn’t spend £1.4 million and you certainly
should know it’s going to happen.
That’s what it looks like to me now in February 2013 in terms of what
the loss will be this year and that’s where the money has had to come from to
pay for all of that, for the problems of last year and problems with injuries
and falling attendances into this year. Now you might say, ‘last week I said
£825k’. I did, last week, but we put another £125k in on Monday because the
attendances are down, because we’re having to pay more for salaries for players
and because the betting stuff that the Football League said they were going to
deliver haven’t been delivered. They’re things that happen with football clubs
unfortunately and you have to grin and bear it – you as fans have to grin and
bear it and we as owners have to grin and bear it, we don’t enjoy it but we’ve
worked damn hard to turn it round and change it. And you’ve seen what will
happen if we don’t manage it properly, with people like Swindon. Swindon were
looking archetypally perfect in terms of going up through the leagues until you
actually see the reality of what overspending can actually cost.
So balancing the cost against your income – and I’ll come back to that
issue in terms of next year because before you buy your season ticket you might
like to know what’s going on in terms of wages next year, that makes a big
difference in terms of how good the team’s going to be next year. I also have
to ask the question myself of what are the attendances going to be? Are we a
7,000 average attendance club or are we a 5,500 average attendance club? And
I’ve got to second-guess that for next year, in terms of deciding what we do
from a financial viewpoint. The answer is if you’re winning you’re a 7,000
average attendance club and if you’re not you’re a 5,500 or maybe even less –
sales of tickets for this coming weekend are pretty awful. Nut the economic
situation is difficult, the McCormick issue might be putting people off, the
seven points away from the play-offs might put people off but I’d like to
debate the question of what do we spend on wages next year in the next few
minutes.
That’s where the £1 million has gone, it’s gone to pay off debts – we
had £200k worth of loans that I didn’t know about that we’ve had to pay off
over the course of the last 18 months and I don’t believe in being in debt.
That’s one source of it, but there are others.
We’ve way overspent on injured players, having to bring in players. I
don’t mean the Michael Duberry type position, which was a complete misfortune
that in the close season he got a problem with his neck sleeping in his bed at
home, that’s the kind of situation where you have to bring in a Michael Raynes
and carry the cost of doing that. But it’s all the other stuff that has been
over-the-top.
Again we couldn’t do a lot about Firoka and the fact that they charge
and charge and charge for everything, much as we negotiate it down. They’re
property people, that’s what they want to do, they want to make money out of
the property.
We’ve lost £100k in the commercial arena by not meeting our forecasts
last year, where the forecasts were just unreal or unrealistic for the business
that we could do from a sales viewpoint. We now have far more realistic
forecasts. I’m not saying that was anybody’s fault, because it’s very difficult
to reduce forecasts, but you have to be realistic in the way that you look at
it.
Attendances cost us £200k because they’re down below where they should
be.
£100k on the community. We built up a debt of £100k by not paying people
for the community operations. We’ve paid that off in one fell swoop, so that’s
£100k wiped out. And now that business is developing extremely well. They’ve
got a salesperson of their own and Richard driving it forward, so we’ve got a
good base going forward.
That’s all negative, but the positive is the cup runs secured another
£300k extra, because we budgeted not to get beyond any level in the cups and by
getting through in both of the cups that’s what it meant, it meant over £200k
of additional income, most of which was spent on players and other things as we
go forward.
So that’s the financial position as far as the club is concerned. It’s
been a difficult 12 months, it’s been a disappointing 12 months, but I am
completely confident that we know exactly where we are. We bridged the gap
because that’s our problem to do that and in that respect you haven’t got
anything to worry about. It’s a soft debt and the club hasn’t any debt other
than to Lenagans, none whatsoever. I don’t think there’s any more loans that
can pop up from anywhere, I’m hoping to God there aren’t anyway!
Commercially, we have changes in commercial staffing. Owen Clark’s been
doing a good job for us in terms of driving forward the commercial side of it,
but we haven’t been able to address a lot of the requirements, particularly the
requirements of marketing and commercial sales, because we’ve been too busy
dealing with the ongoing problem of who’s doing what because of changes of
management and everything else, but you’ll see an advert come out shortly for a
sales and marketing director for Oxford United, because we have to get on the
front foot in terms of marketing and everything. Where people like Chris
Williams or Martin have been willingly covering the gap at the moment but we
need to move forward now and we will see about doing that shortly.
Attendances are disappointing, but attendances are affected by the
different problems we’ve had. By the economic situation as it is at the moment,
by lots of matches together. We’ve been very unfortunate from the way the
fixtures have actually dropped, we didn’t get a good fixture at Christmas and
New Year in terms of being able to make money, it’s been a bit of a pain, I
have to say, but I’m not surprised at where we are. I’m not blaming things on
any of the Oxford fans, I’m praying and asking them, please come back and
support because it does the team good as well as the finances good. But
relative to £1 million it’s not that over-significant, the attendance drop –
but then nothing is, compared to £1 million, is it? And I hop never to be there
again with Oxford, that’s for sure. But attendances are what they are.
The training ground: we’ve had newspapers trying to say we’re going to
lose our training ground and ‘did you know that Cowley Sports and Social have
been given notice’ and whatever. We are very good at working with BMW in
partnership and working with the local authority in planning forward future
years to ensure that Oxford United maintain if not improve the level of
training facilities that we’ve got and I am 99% confident that that will
continue and that we will end up with better and better and better facilities
in partnership with those two organisations. So we have no problem about the
bowls club being given notice or the sports and social club who have been
struggling for years and sadly they have to finish in 2015, but nothing’s at
threat in any way at Oxford United.
Stadium issues: the non-issue of London Welsh was well publicised in the
press a month or so ago. We get on extremely well with London Welsh, the
chairman rang me up to apologise for the stories that had been run, for the
fact that a loose conversation from an ex-employee of theirs had caused us some
embarrassment. But the position as afar as the stadium is concerned is that
Kassam is now getting twice the rental that he was getting from us before and
there’s no way he’s going to sell the stadium to anybody so long as he’s
getting £1 million a year of income. So it’s a non-event for at least the
period until London Welsh either decide they’re here forever, or until London
Welsh, God forbid, are unable to sustain themselves in the Aviva Premiership or
financially. So we’ve marked time for at least 18 months.
We’ve been encouraged to actually set up a group of people, an advisory
group, to help us look at all the alternatives around the stadium side of
things and it’s quite likely we will do that in the near future. But there is
no sharpness, there’s no immediacy. And you will recall that I said at my
opening session that we don’t need the stadium and conference centre to be
financially sustainable. None of this is dependent on the stadium or conference
centre, the way we are. We can actually move forward through the leagues as a Football
League club renting the stadium. But we’d like to buy it and I think that at a
point in time that might be a possibility, but it’s less of a possibility now
than it was 12 months ago – in particular because he’s getting twice the rental
that he was getting before and the numbers don’t work at £13 million and we’re
not going to buy it at £20 million are we? And if he’s getting twice the rental
with the market as it currently is, that’s where we stand.
As far as the Education Academy is concerned, again Oxford United has an
Education Academy with all these people in and we have the youth team going
through advanced apprenticeships and gaining qualifications. But in addition we
believe that Oxford United is in a position to get 16- and 17-year-old from
Premiership and Championship clubs, so we’re attracting them to Oxford via
education. So we’ve got a one-year under-17 group of people who are
ex-Championship and ex-Premier League players who are not getting contracts at
that higher level and who want a second chance. And the second chance is that
they do a year at Oxford United, they get qualifications whilst also trying to
get into our youth team and get a contract at the club – that’s what the
under-17s are for. The semi-elites, the 16-19-year-olds – we have 50+ of those
– go on to education and BTECs, level threes, that earn income for our club,
give us jobs for our coaches and spread out into the community every year over
50 young men and girls who are committed to Oxford United and may play for other
clubs, whether it’s North Leigh or Woodstock or wherever. And finally the
developmental squad, which Simon’s already talked about.
And now it’s time for questions……..
Q & A to follow...maybe.
The League Two season is
now ten games old – a point which is widely recognised as the time
to review the start we have made to the season. By this point in the
season the table has begun to take some shape, promotion contenders
and relegation candidates materialise and patterns have begun emerge.
