S,o,s save our stanley

[mabasfc]

Hi all my name is mark I'm a ACCRINGTON STANLEY supporter!! and we would like your HELP to save our STANLEY from getting wound up with cripling TAX dets.you may or not know we've started a massive fund raising campain and at the moment just over £10.000 has been raised to wourds our goal of £308k with more donations coming in all the time,as you know we are a proud passionate set of fans and noisy with it too,we need help from everyone!! to help save our club not just for the owner but for us the supporters we've come a long way in a short time,but you wouldn't find a happier bunch of fans any where win or lose we need help so if you feel you could and want to help us in our fight for survival heres a link Save our Stanley once again thank you http://www.accringtonstanley.co.uk/ please feel free to post this message on any other message board your a member of thanks again

 

[Giraffe]

A good cause, I have donated, as have these people it would seem.

Sorry to the original poster but what you have to understand about NSC is that the best way to keep a thread near the top is to post pictures of girls, good or bad, the good people of NSC will like to comment!!

 

[Springal]

Why can you not pay your tax bill?

 

[Giraffe]

Why can you not pay your tax bill?

I suspect they may have run out of money perhaps?

 

[Springal]

I suspect they may have run out of money perhaps?

Another team punching above their weight spending money they don't have then? No sympathy here

 

[Giraffe]

Not the Accrington supporters fault though is it.

Whilst our situation was slightly different in that someone acquired us to get the ground developed it is no so different as frankly if we weren't broke in the first place Archer etc would not have got anywhere near us.

 

[mabasfc]

Why can you not pay your tax bill?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The potted veiw of this whole thing at stanley at the minute is that the club have an outstanding debt of £308,000 to HM Revenue & Customs. This debt dates back to 2006 when the previous chairman was in residence and is for outstanding tax and NI.

a couple of months ago the club was summoned to the high court to discuss this and left having 'agreed' a payment plan with them. However the club were summoned again last wednesday with a view to being wound up. The new Chairman and CEO of the club attended and managed to persuade HMRC to postpone the winding up order and instead the club have been given 8 WEEKS to find what they had originally been given twelve months to find.

The bottom line here is Stanley need to find £308,000 in 8 weeks or they will be wound up in the high court and the town will lose their football club once again.

 

[Billy the Fish]

Accrington Stanley. Who are they?

 

[mabasfc]

This is a post off our forum by the supporters clud chairman..the crux of the problem I would say was that ASFC grew too fast too quick. The off the field set up was unable to keep up with the on the field set up. All of a sudden we found ourselves in the Football League pretty much quite by accident!

At this point we had:
the smallest crowds (and still dwindling) in the entire League
the poorest facilities in the entire league.
the poorest paid players in the entire league (which goes hand in hand with the first two)

One of the advantages that goes with joining the 'Professional' League is that you get a massively bigger pay out from sponsors and TV (£70k as opposed to £400k) but much of this goes towards things such as Youth Academies and Football in the Community teams. Other clubs in the league already have these set up and have had for years. Once they are established they start to become marginally profitable with sell on fee's for developed youth etc. But setting them up is slow and expensive.

As I said earlier we came too far too quick. We had six full time staff when we left the Unibond in 2003 and six full time staff when we joined the Football League in 2006. Under Eric Whalley there was an attitude of spending money on players rather than the backroom set up - we needed the better players in order to compete on the field and carry on reaping the benefits! But we didn't compete, results dipped so crowds dipped. The sponsors didn't come forward as anticipated (or were lost due to incompetence).

The straw that broke the camels back was when Fraser Eagle went to the wall early this year. They still owed us £100k at that point and as you could guess that left a huge hole on our limited budgets.

The large debt we have now is majoritively down to 2006 when we joined the Football League. This debt has slowly reduced over the last three years but late payment charges and interest have crippled it. The losses suffered last season (Fraser Eagle etc) meant that we were unable to pay it at all.

So that brought us to June. The high court and HMRC claimed the debt must be paid in full over the next 12 months and adjourned for 2 months to see what happened. The club made no payments in that period as they hadn't actually been told (but the money is in the bank to pay them). They had budgeted to pay 18k a month plus lump sums as and when. Playing budgets were cut, and huge restrictions everywhere else were made in order to find the extra 18k.

Then this week at the 2nd court hearing the HMRC claimed the full amount to be paid over the next eight weeks as they weren't happy with the clubs attempts to make sure the debt could be covered.

It may transpire that provided we can make a substantial payment (at least half?) then they will allow us to revert to the 12 month plan. But they could certainly play hard ball and wind us up for being even just a few thousand pounds short.

Football is a funny old game as they say. Nobody went out with bucket collections when a national institution such as Woolworths was in the mire did they? But football is different - even if you are not a fan. Football clubs give hope and inspiration to their many fans. They help to prop up local economies and they provide focal points for 'tourism'. They provide venues for the many and varied activities that communities need and they of course provide employment (over 100 people are actively paid a wage by ASFC).

General public generosity in helping to save Accrington Stanley is not sent to the current or previous owner or Chairman, it is sent to the 'club' which is and hopefully will be there to transcend generations. Unfortunately ASFC hasn't always been this way because in 1962 it was allowed to fall for an, even then, paltry amount of £62k. A generation or two of football fans grew up without having a notable Football Club at the heart of its community. With your help, and of all those around us, that won't happen again.

There is no certainty that these problems will never arise again. But what does need to happen (and has been happening for a couple of years tbh) is that ASFC needs to get back into the community and re-establish what I believe are core values. Love your community and it will love you. But time has conspired against us this time and that core value has to go the other way around.


Thank you all for reading and I hope you agree with my understanding of the situation.


Rob Russell
Chairman, ASFC Official Supporters Club

 

[mabasfc]

Off to the match now will catch up latter with posts,thanks for taking the time to view and your comments.....

 

[Billy the Fish]

Another team punching above their weight spending money they don't have then? No sympathy here

A bit like some people gave us no sympathy for selling our ground with nowhere to go.

Don't forget we've been hours away from being wound up by the taxman, at least we could sell Mark Beeney to Leeds. I'm too young to remember but weren't we in a similar position when we sold Dean Saunders?

 

[wolfie]

Isn't this the second time Accrington Stanley have gone bust ? (circa 1962) Smacks of carelessness to me !

 

[Skaville]

Good luck. I hope you make it. Get your fans out to the footie grounds on Saturday. I'd happily chuck a bit of silver in a bucket if anyone was collecting at Withdean.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

Another team punching above their weight spending money they don't have then? No sympathy here

Hmmm... Didn't we get to and sustain our spell in the top flight by spending money we didn't have and ended up in the hands of Archer, indirectly? Lucky we had some wealthy benefactors as we would have folded years ago without them. Some clubs aren't so lucky to get a saviour with deep pockets.

 

[Braders]

Good luck. I hope you make it. Get your fans out to the footie grounds on Saturday. I'd happily chuck a bit of silver in a bucket if anyone was collecting at Withdean.

I echo that , good luck with your plight and listening to your vice chairman ( I think ) on 6-0-6 made a fantastic impression that the club will be stronger if they can dig themselves out of this one - you guys have my full support and fingers crossed you pull through - wouldn't mind you guys in the cup actually

 

[Muhammad - I’m hard - Bruce Lee]

going by some of the posts on here, im asking myself 'how quickly do some brighton fans forget'

it doesnt matter WHY your club is in the shit its never the supporters fault, but theyre the ones who ultimately suffer. back in the dark days practically the whole football community got behind us and offered support, now we're ok...all some of you can do is think 'f*** you, we're ok now'

quite frankly, some of you make me fuckin sick.

RETARDS

 

[Stoo82]

Good luck. Im sorry as I cannot donate any money, but I will spread the word for your cause.

Fans United.

 

[Stoo82]

going by some of the posts on here, im asking myself 'how quickly do some brighton fans forget'

it doesnt matter WHY your club is in the shit its never the supporters fault, but theyre the ones who ultimately suffer. back in the dark days practically the whole football community got behind us and offered support, now we're ok...all some of you can do is think 'f*** you, we're ok now'

quite frankly, some of you make me fuckin sick.

RETARDS

Quite. Even though we have still not fully recoverd from the mess we were in. SHort memorys some people.

 

[BadFish]

Quite. Even though we have still not fully recoverd from the mess we were in. Short memorys some people.

i agree.

This is indicitive of the sorry state football has found itself in since the inception of the premier league. When a club is better of by not getting promoted, the idea of the league system is lost.

good luck with the fight to save your club. Some of our fans need to research our recent history to remind themselves of what we had to do to keep ours going.

 

[Freddie Goodwin.]

HMRC currently have targeted football clubs as a 'special project' so expect other clubs to be targeted.