With pre-season now under five weeks away, Southend United are no closer to knowing who owns them or even if they will still exist. Concerns are evident around the football world that the Shrimpers are walking a tightrope of emotion that could see the end of over 100 years of history.
Speaking exclusively to The Real EFL‘s Jake Coburn this week, football financial expert Dr Dan Plumley, the Principal Lecturer in Sport Finance at Sheffield Hallam University, gave his views on the current plight facing Southend United.
Despite contracts being exchanged back in December between current owner Ron Martin and the consortium led by Justin Rees, completion has still not been achieved leaving supporters concerned they will still be a club to support when the new season begins.
Dr Plumley, like those supporters, has begun to wonder if the Shrimpers will see the sands of time run out before Martin and Southend City Council agree due diligence on the Fossetts Farm development which would see the club free of the 70-year-old property developer.
“I think there’s always a risk, isn’t there? And we’ve seen that with Southend and others. It really does depend on a couple of things with any owner, really, if the club is not self-sustainable, which of course Southend are not at the moment. So then you’re into questions of how much money have people got?”
Having suffered from a long running transfer embargo and unpaid tax bills which resulted in a ten point deduction last season, the arrival of the consortium brought matters up to date and gave manager Kevin Maher the ability to strengthen his squad and the Shrimpers narrowly missed out on the play-off’s.
Rees and his fellow members have so far invested over £3.5 million pounds to keep the Roots Hall outfit running but questions are now being asked how much longer they are willing to subsidise an operation they currently don’t own.
“How much money are people willing to put in to a) keep the club going because you’ve got to run the day to day operations still. And then b) turn it around in the long run. Now that’s not exclusive just to Southend, but if you look at their situation, where they’ve been and where they are now from a league point of view, obviously your revenue streams are different depending on what league you’re in and being run that way for a number of years.”
A new transfer embargo has been enforced by the National League over non-payment of financial responsibilities leaving the club in danger of missing out on their summer targets and the Shrimpers are also due in court at the end of June, a winding up order at the request of Stewarts Law over historic debts could see the club go to the wall if either Martin nor the consortium settle in the meantime.
“I think that the risk factor increasing is the best way to look at it and those risk factors are heightened in the case of Southend. And you know the biggest question is always the what if, what if the money runs out or what if somebody is not prepared to put it in. Then you’re looking at somebody stepping in and taking over because there’s still cost to bear.”
With as yet no light at the end of the tunnel supporters will be keeping everything crossed that the takeover will finally happen in good time before the season begins or once again the Shrimpers will begin the new campaign playing catch up.
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