Blyth Spartans AFC – Board’s Quarterly Report - Feb 25

It is now just over three months since majority ownership of Blyth Spartans AFC was transferred over to the Community Interest Company (CIC) established for the purpose of safeguarding the existence of the club on behalf of supporters and the wider community. From the very first day, we promised honesty and transparency about the circumstances and development of the club, and it is in keeping with that spirit that we are publishing this, our first Quarterly Report from the Board.

It is worth casting our minds back to what were the dark days of October last year. Many of the volunteers so crucial to the running of the club had resigned, and many fans were boycotting games in protest. Two home fixtures were unfulfilled. The previous owner announced that he was not prepared to put in any more money and put the club up for sale. There was a real prospect of the club entering administration, and possibly even worse, liquidation.

On 31st October 2024, Blyth Spartans 2024 CIC took over ownership of some 92% of the shares in the football club on behalf of supporters and the town, in the sincere belief that Community Ownership, with the active involvement and support of fans and the community, is the best guarantee of a permanent future for the club.

When we took over responsibility as custodians of the club, we made certain commitments to fans and to the community. We made no wild promises about storming up the leagues, and we made clear that we were not millionaire sugar daddies who'd bought themselves a new toy. Instead, we committed to doing our very best to ensure a future for the club that is permanent and sustainable; to serving the whole community; and to provide honesty, transparency and realism.

The first three months have been, for the new Board, a steep learning curve. We were delighted to be able immediately to welcome back the excellent volunteer team that has served the club so well over the years, enabling us to deliver our core function: play football matches. We cannot stress enough the importance of the commitment of our volunteers. We were also hugely heartened by the excellent attendance of 1,406 at our first home game against Matlock, which gave an indication of the potential that the club has.

We have set about learning about the club, understanding how it operates, uncovering the real financial situation and starting to build plans for the future. We have developed a statement of our vision for the club:

Our first step has been to get ourselves organised, make a sober assessment of where we are, and to put in place a structure to keep the show on the road. We have established a series of departments in the club, each with a team leader, and in turn coordinated by the Club Coordinator - a new role in the club, but occupied by a familiar face and an experienced, dependable and highly capable pair of hands in the form of Tom Wade. Tom will be the essential link between the club's operations and the board of directors.

Some of the “departments” that we have formalised already existed in practice. Our Head of Matchday Operations Colin Blackett continues to lead an effective team of tried and tested volunteers including Football Administrator Scott Gibson, General Manager Bryan Turner and Fixture Secretary Jeff Young. Paul Scott heads up a dedicated media team that has recently launched our new-look website, and we were delighted to enable Anthony Seghini, Ian Hertwick and their team to get back to business running the club shop.

Of course, there were also areas of the club's operations that required new faces and fresh blood - not least in leading the playing side, as when we took over there was no team manager in place and we were indebted to Tom Wade for stepping in to take temporary charge for the first couple of fixtures.

We were then pleased to welcome Michael Connor as First Team Manager. A Blyth lad himself who enthusiastically supports the concept of a community club, Michael came to us with an impressive track record of dedicated involvement in football coaching in the area and joined us after achieving no fewer than six promotions with our neighbours Blyth Town during 16 years with the club. Michael has since brought in Nathan Haslam as Head Coach to work alongside him.

Michael inherited a team already in a perilous position at the foot of the table and many supporters will acknowledge there are already visible signs of improvement in the team in terms of attitude, organisation and commitment, while we fight for every single point left to play for. It would be naïve however not to prepare for a scenario where we suffer a second successive relegation, and the club is already working on plans with Michael to rebuild the squad and get off to a flying start next season.

We remain confident that Blyth Spartans have a great future ahead of us as a community-owned club. Our first three months as custodians of the club however have revealed a much clearer picture of the financial position of the club. What has become crystal clear is that it is not sustainable for the club to continue to operate as it has been.

We have been open and honest about wanting the club to be the best it can possibly be on a sustainable basis, and to spell it out, that means not spending more than we can generate ourselves as a club. The members of the CIC were clear from the start that we were not millionaire fly-by-nights promising the earth, and nor were we asset-strippers seeking to make a quick buck. We are a group of long-term supporters and sponsors of the club stepping up to ensure the club's survival, and we are not in a position to bankroll a club haemorrhaging money.

That said, the position of the club that we inherited has been such that in order to keep the lights on and keep paying the wages, the current directors have between them had to make available some £90,000 from their own pockets in the last three months.

That is not sustainable, and we need urgently to close the gap between income and expenditure. There are two ways of doing that: increase the income, and/or reduce spending. Such is the situation that the club is currently in, we need to do both. We want to develop a five-year plan to rebuild this club and restore it, sustainably to former glories. We will do that, and we will involve the supporters and the community in the process of shaping what the future looks like.

But there is no avoiding the hard fact that a vital part of the future is dealing with the immediate situation, and that requires a complete reset of the club's finances.

We need to Stabilise to Survive, and then Thrive

To be absolutely clear: our best estimate is that if we carried on as before, then by the end of the season we would have accumulated a deficit of over £200,000. Even taking into consideration the £90,000 put in by members of the board, we would still be facing a gap of £110,000. We need to close that gap, and our ambition is to start next season in a position where we can balance the books.

There are some courses of action that we have absolutely ruled out: we are not going to default on any of our existing commitments. We will continue to pay our players, and we will meet our responsibilities to our community: we will not renege on historic debts, least of all to local businesses.

But to get back into the black will require a great deal of hard work, and also the support of the whole community. We will need to cut costs, and we will need to drive up our income. There is no avoiding the fact that one of the first things we have to do is to cut the playing budget. In the last three months, to meet our pre-existing commitments to players' contracts, we have had to spend 115% of our turnover on player wages. That is clearly unsustainable.

We have already started work to achieve a reduction in these commitments, with the aim of reducing the playing budget to £12,000 a month, and the news has been shared with the management team and the players. We are heartened by the response of many of the players, who have voluntarily agreed to accept a cut in their wages in order to help the club. That is a sign of the sort of spirit that we will need to get through the current conjuncture.

Sorting out the finances of the club is clearly going to be a challenging task, and we are pleased to have been able to appoint a genuine expert in this field to the position of the club's Chief Finance Officer. Dr Mark Middling is assistant professor of accounting at the University of Northumbria and is one of the country's leading specialists in the finances of football clubs. We are extremely grateful to Mark for volunteering his time to assist the club in this role.

Cutting the month-by-month expenditure of the club with immediate effect is going to be a painful but necessary measure in order to survive, but even more important will be the generation of significantly larger streams of income into the club. We believe that the initial enthusiastic public reaction to the news that the club had been saved back at the end of last October gives us justifiable grounds for optimism as to what can be achieved if the community as a whole rallies around. To lead the work of mobilising the financial support of local businesses for the club we have appointed a new Business Development Manager for the club, Steven Brett, who will coordinate a small team of volunteers in soliciting sponsorship and donations as we build new partnerships within the town and surrounding area.

If we are really to develop Blyth Spartans AFC as a thriving community club, then we are going to need the active support and engagement of the whole community, from among our fabulous existing supporter base and far beyond. Right now, Blyth Spartans AFC needs YOU.

Everyone has something they can contribute to the future of Blyth Spartans:

* Come to the games - at the time of writing we have six home games left this season; big attendances would boost the club coffers and the confidence of the team.

* Sponsor a game - sponsor a match, the match ball or the man of the match, and enjoy the great match experience in hospitality with your guests.

* Join the 1899 Club - become a regular contributor and stand to win the monthly prize draw.

* Support club events - next up is the Talk-in with Peter Beardsley on Friday, 21st February.

* Buy the club's merchandise, including the great new VIZ products.

* Donate to the club - every donation counts, they all add up!

* Volunteer - if you have time and skills you'd like to offer to help the club, in any capacity, we need you! Please email generalmanager@blythspartans.com

Putting the club onto a sound financial footing is going to be a major undertaking, but we are confident that it can be done with everyone pulling in the same direction. And for all those immediate challenges, we remain convinced that the future for Blyth Spartans is very bright indeed.

We are embarking on some significant improvements to Croft Park: we have just about secured all the funding we need to install new LED floodlights in the close season, which will not only dramatically improve the evening match experience but will also significantly reduce our electricity bills. We are also planning a major upgrade to the dressing rooms and medical facilities in the main stand too. We would like to express our grateful appreciation to those members of the local council who have supported our efforts to secure match funding for these grants: a big thank you to councillors Cath Nesbitt, Jeff Reid, Margaret Richardson and Anna Watson.

(Just in case anyone is wondering how we can do this while we're facing the financial situation we're in, it's because we have access to grant funding for ground improvements that is ring-fenced for those purposes and so couldn't be used for day-to-day expenditure or to clear debt even if we wanted to.)

Another enhancement to the club that we have lined up to start next season is the launch of a senior women's team, and in preparation for that we have appointed Linda Bush as Head of Women's Football. We will also benefit from the volunteer input and advice of Jen O'Neill, who for 25 years was editor of the leading women's football magazine She Kicks and is herself a former Blyth Spartans player.

There is one more significant announcement that we have to make, and that is central to what we see as the football club's crucial role in the community. We are in the process of establishing a charity to be known as Spartans in the Community, and we are delighted to have secured what we consider the ideal candidate to lead and develop it. Those who attended the club's recent open forum and heard him speak will have no doubt whatsoever about the inspirational enthusiasm that Clarke Carlisle will bring to his new role as Executive Chairman of Spartans in the Community. Clarke is an ex-professional footballer at all levels up to and including the Premier League, a former chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, and more recently a committed and influential mental health campaigner: we are grateful beyond words that he has chosen our club and our community into which to invest his time and talents.

Our next quarterly report will follow at the end of the season. In the meantime we remain available to respond to any questions, and welcome any constructive suggestions.