Rovers shareholders gather tonight for the club’s AGM and to discuss the latest set of football club accounts. There’s certainly plenty to talk about.

The table below shows profit and loss figures for the first three years of Bristol Rovers (1883) Limited and the frightening fact is that during this period the club’s operating expenditure exceeded its turnover by over £2m.

With the current year likely to see further losses of anything between £400,000 and £700,000 it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that there are only two realistic outcomes of a continuation of such a strategy. We either go into administration or the ground that we’ve recently acquired gets sold off. Denis Dunford recently commented that the Rovers Board are “custodians for the future generations". A continuation of the last three years and those future generations could be having to find something else to do on a Saturday afternoon.

It is reassuring therefore to see the publication today of the blueprint setting out a strategy and financial plan for the coming few years. Not only are the club showing that they are addressing the problem, it’s also the first time I can remember the club setting out a clear plan on how they aim to progress. It will be interesting to see the details of the financial plan and to get a grasp of how they plan to get to a sustainable trading position.

Reading through the latest set of accounts, there are a number of questions which need answering with regard to why we never seem to get anywhere near breaking even (which, believe it or not, a lot of other clubs are doing).

First and foremost, while the key word of the moment is budgetary control (seemingly suggesting, frighteningly, that it hasn’t been in place previously) there does seem to be a serious issue with regard to revenue generation. In 2004 annual turnover was down 25%, or nearly £1.2 million compared with 2002.

The accounts split turnover into football receipts and other receipts. Strangely, football receipts in the 2003/04 season were down more than £250,000 on the corresponding level two seasons earlier, despite average attendances at the Mem rising from 6,565 to 7,142 during the same period. Moreover, they were down nearly 5% on the 2002/03 season – this in spite of it being stated that it was stated at last year’s AGM that Kevin Spencer and Barry Bradshaw were improving matchday commercial income streams and that “2003/04 will probably be our most successful year yet”.

Even more problematic has been the downturn in “other receipts”, which amounted to just £1.89 million in 2004, nearly £900,000 lower than the corresponding figure two years earlier and over £200,000 down on 2003.

Yes, there were some one-off factors to explain the sharp fall between 2002 and 2003, which were explained at last year’s AGM (e.g. the ITV Digital shortfall, drop in shop sales due to transfer into Supporters Club operation, collapse in income due to Internet platform provider going into administration) but the fall of over £200,000 between 2003 and 2004 is deeply concerning, especially if it includes income from the Share Scheme. Once again, you have to wonder if the lack of an experienced Commercial Manager has cost us more than it’s saved.

Finally, the expenditure on the playing squad came down by just over £500,000 between 2002 and 2004, as you’d expect from the overall downturn in player wages since the ITV Digital fiasco, but at £2.65m still seems OTT. It would be an interesting exercise to see the corresponding costs for the other teams in the bottom two divisions, but recently published figures show Lincoln City operating at about £1m less per annum than us on that side of things. Of course we need to get out of this division, but I also wonder if for the sake of our long-term future we also need to think about working on a tighter playing budget. Looking at this season’s squad you have to say that it’s top heavy with thirtysomethings, a number of whom are not contributing very much at all. Maybe the recruitment of some younger players would both get us closer to breaking even and enhance our chances of promotion? It’s worth looking at, because we simply can’t continue as we have done.

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