Board's Plan For Survival!

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 29/05/2002

GRIMSBY Town chairman Peter Furneaux announced wholesale cost-cutting measures to save the club in a Grimsby Telegraph exclusive. Town are to ditch their Reserve team and begin a massive restructuring of the youth set-up as part of the cuts.

Senior management staff at Blundell Park have also agreed to a temporary pay cut and match stewards fees are being reviewed in a bid to make savings.

Players will lose their free weekday meals at Inn on the Park bringing a a saving of £10,000-a-year.

The 14 contracted players all knocked back the club's plea to take a 20 per cent wage cut and forego their £500 match appearance bonus worth £1,000-a-week to some players. That refusal led to real fears the club could be set to fall into the hands of the administrators as early as this week.

Furneaux said today that the new measures have created a war chest for manager Paul Groves to bring new players to the club as well as making reduced offers to the current out-of-contract players he wants to keep.

"The club is on course for survival but we are being practical and realistic and trying to go forward."

After talks with the Professional Footballers' Association, the club's players will be asked to consider a new offer of deferred payments which means that their £500 appearance bonuses could be held back until the club receive a payout from the resale of the Football League TV rights, or there is an outcome in the £178-million legal action against Carlton and Granada, scheduled to begin in July.

Groves must now approach his squad with the club's new offer but they will not be the only ones making sacrifices.

Long-serving chief executive Ian Fleming and other senior staff have agreed to take a short-term pay cut on the proviso that the money they are owed will be paid, as with the playing staff, when the club receive some cash from the TV rights - via the resale, or the court action.

"What we have to talk about is not getting rid of numbers, but a general reduction in what we pay out. That is expected to go right down to the stewards on match days. There are going to be a lot of sacrifices by people at the club," said the chairman.

"Everything will be taken into consideration. Office staff and people around the ground have agreed to the temporary cuts to help.

"If the money comes in from the lawsuit against Carlton and Granada, or if the Football League gets £25-million by reselling the TV rights, then we'll pay people back with whatever we get as our share."

Source: The Grimsby Telegraph

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