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What a crock of S!"£te I was told this week by one of the Bristows. Don't worry its all been signed and sealed. Will be in the media this week.
Don't panic everything is fine!!
Unbelievable.

So both the Herald Express and the Western Morning News have published articles confirming that the deal is off, and even the BBC posted a few days ago saying that the deal was at a "critical stage". Still nothing from the official website, the total lack of respect for the fans is appalling.

tommyg wrote: "Whilst it hasn’t been great news about this possible deal I hope there will be others and it is good to see yesterday that preseason plans are well under way with the announcement of the Tiverton fixture."

I saw this earlier, and just rolled my eyes in bemusement. If arranging a friendly with Tiverton is the most positive thing that has happened at the club then we are truly stuffed.

tommyg wrote:
Rather worringly, Thea has chucked £200k into the club since stepping down as chairman two months ago. That's an obscene amount of money in such a short space of time and means we're losing well over £3k a day! I appreciate everything she has done but the less I say about the below quote the better!

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I hate to say it but quite a few people on here showed their concern at the time (and later) regarding this Mr Kelvin Thomas and his ethics regarding payment. It would have been better to have put him on a 'No sale - No pay' agreement, similar to many open contracts that are used these days for various reasons ... though he might well have not agreed to that if he knew things would always be 'iffy'!!

Regarding the daily losses - it would be somewhat prudent now if some good housekeeping were done within the club, and some of the staff were trimmed.
We are going to have to realise that we are no longer a league club and unlikely to be one for a while at this rate, so do we really need fitness coaches, goal keeping coaches, assistant this & that etc?
If we are to remain non-league for long, we really need to be looking at the back-room/office staffing levels, compare ours to other mid-table and above us conference teams and you will see what I mean.

Worrying times indeed, with no sign of a white night riding a charger on the horizon at the moment.

It's looking like the only viable option in the short term to trim costs is to go part time

I do not think that is the only viable option, I know very little about this interested fans group, other than I'm led to believe Steve Breed is acting as their spokesman, they are prepared to put their money where there mouths are and inject money into the club, how much I don't know, guessing it will not be a vast amount but enough, also they want to work with the TUST, is anyone from the club taking to them, if not, why not. Self interest I would suspect.

forevertufc wrote:I do not think that is the only viable option, I know very little about this interested fans group, other than I'm led to believe Steve Breed is acting as their spokesman, they are prepared to put their money where there mouths are and inject money into the club, how much I don't know, guessing it will not be a vast amount but enough, also they want to work with the TUST, is anyone from the club taking to them, if not, why not. Self interest I would suspect.

I was saying part time if we have no new ownership.

Part time wouldn't save that much money. If you want to save £350k (perhaps more?) in one fell swoop then close the academy. If you don't want to go the whole hog, go to a much cheaper category 4 system. Seeing as we don't bring anyone through the academy anyway, and we only get worth out of people drafted in, I can see it making no difference!

Add in a reduced playing budget and redundancies for some staff there is no reason for this club to go bankrupt. Problem is, the people running the club have racked up the running costs in the first place, so do they have the brain and the balls to make these decisions?

Apologies Lucy your post did read to me as if you were suggesting the only viable option now, was to go part-time, however if we got no new ownership would going part-time help, I'm not sure it would, such a step would lead to us having accept a much lower standard of football, lower than the National league South in my opinion.

I've suggested quite a few times over the last month the club should be looking at down grading to a cat 4 youth set-up, with cat 3 you have to have a certain amount of full time coaching staff, a provide a set minimum number of coaching hours, all at a cost, and the club has to match the funding £1 for £1 received, totally agree with this suggestion, as a cat 4 set up we be some way cheaper to run.

forevertufc wrote:Apologies Lucy your post did read to me as if you were suggesting the only viable option now, was to go part-time, however if we got no new ownership would going part-time help, I'm not sure it would, such a step would lead to us having accept a much lower standard of football, lower than the National league South in my opinion.

I've suggested quite a few times over the last month the club should be looking at down grading to a cat 4 youth set-up, with cat 3 you have to have a certain amount of full time coaching staff, a provide a set minimum number of coaching hours, all at a cost, and the club has to match the funding £1 for £1 received, totally agree with this suggestion, as a cat 4 set up we be some way cheaper to run.

No worries. Tesco and many multi millionaire company's make the first cutbacks at management and head office level, so it's something we are going to do to be more prudent. This is something the club hasn't done, I hate to say it since the Bateson era.

Still nothing on .com or the Twitter feed. There are a lot of fans who don't use the forums and may not go on the HE or WMN site. They probably still think the takeover is on the brink of completion. Absolutely pathetic. Is anybody actually doing any f*****g work at the club?

Hardly surprising Kelvin Thomas was unable to find anyone to buy a club that needs hundreds of thousands just to stand still. Hopefully he has at least be able to bring some experience to the finance side and stop the club haemorrhaging money while a viable is sought.

RoadGull wrote: I hate to say it but quite a few people on here showed their concern at the time (and later) regarding this Mr Kelvin Thomas and his ethics regarding payment. It would have been better to have put him on a 'No sale - No pay' agreement, similar to many open contracts that are used these days for various reasons ... though he might well have not agreed to that if he knew things would always be 'iffy'!!

Regarding the daily losses - it would be somewhat prudent now if some good housekeeping were done within the club, and some of the staff were trimmed.
We are going to have to realise that we are no longer a league club and unlikely to be one for a while at this rate, so do we really need fitness coaches, goal keeping coaches, assistant this & that etc?
If we are to remain non-league for long, we really need to be looking at the back-room/office staffing levels, compare ours to other mid-table and above us conference teams and you will see what I mean.

Worrying times indeed, with no sign of a white night riding a charger on the horizon at the moment.

Don't got too crazy about those figures, i imagine thats the money from point of stepping down till June the 3rd or whenever it is.

Also why are people assuming that is KT fee? No details whatsoever have been released about how/how much is he paid, the rumour and stirring is just as irritating as the now news!

Do you think my TUFC number plate will be worth more or less money if/when we fold ?

These rose tinted spectacles of mine are getting really dirty...

Added in 5 minutes 22 seconds:
I can't see part-time as a viable option, at least not in the short term. All of the professional contracts in place will still have to be honoured but those players will want to leave to look for other professional contracts. We will then be stuck looking for footballers already with jobs in the local area, we would become a pub team over night. The local economy is no in a strong enough position for us to be able sign other part-timers from clubs further away, there simply aren't the jobs for them....

PhilGull wrote:These rose tinted spectacles of mine are getting really dirty...

Added in 5 minutes 22 seconds:
I can't see part-time as a viable option, at least not in the short term. All of the professional contracts in place will still have to be honoured but those players will want to leave to look for other professional contracts. We will then be stuck looking for footballers already with jobs in the local area, we would become a pub team over night. The local economy is no in a strong enough position for us to be able sign other part-timers from clubs further away, there simply aren't the jobs for them....

For reasons given above, for me it's either a full-time professional club or no club at this level.