Following on from the papers article on Saturday, they have published another article on the Club, this time focusing on the financial side of things and an interview with CEO Gareth Rogers.

Clearly Saints have learnt their lesson from the first half of this year when their PR was appalling, meaning that certain members of the Press could make mischief and de stabilise the club.

The idea was to cause uproar among-st the supporters and sadly for a while at least this was achieved as the club appeared to go from one PR blunder to another.

Now the club seem to have at last got their act into gear and with the good start to the season under their belts are now coming out with some positive stories from the club.

The latest article concerns the clubs financial side of things and features CEO Gareth Rogers, click on the link below to read the full article.

Saints Target Sustainable Growth

A good article and pleasing in the fact that the club is now realising that it needs to greatly increase its commercial income if it is to compete whereas its total financial planning under Cortese appeared to have been to go cap in hand to the owner rather than attempt to raise any income himself from corporate sponsors etc, hence we had the sight of empty Corporate boxes and seats at St Mary's as well as dwindling advertising hoardings as our Ex Chairman worked his way through alienating most of the local business's that had traditionally pumped their money into sponsoring the club.

Many supporters sneered at anyone who dared to raise this question, seemingly basing the clubs strength solely on its position in the league, rather than on the overall bigger picture.

Now that limited way of doing things is gone and although it will take time to bring back old corporate partners and indeed building new relationships, hopefully we are well on the road to recovery in this area.

Photo: Action Images

LostBoys added 14:15 - Oct 6 Excuse me - was he not at the club during the Cortese era while the areas he now criticises were at best stagnating or dwindling. I am happy where we are but commercial revenue remains poor - I dread to think how much the shirt problem has cost the club.
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no7saint added 14:24 - Oct 6 With the Financial Fair Play regulations and the experiences of clubs like QPR this has to be a no-brainer for any club. The last few years has seen wealthy owners of certain Premier League clubs willing to plough huge sums of money in to buy success, risking big losses that no sensible business would entertain. FFP puts the onus back on sustainability so growing revenue is key. This also probably explains a lot of departures this summer, we lost players to clubs that have huge global presence and therefore income. Even with owners willing to pay players higher salaries, FFP means they can't. With this in mind being sustainable is an imperative to be able to compete long-term, rather than cost-cutting or a lack of ambition.

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BoondockSaint added 16:35 - Oct 6 Shirt problem? The Liverpool knock-offs probably hurt sales as a lot of people refused to buy then, preferring our traditional stripes. Making our own this year probably gave us a a bigger profit margin. On a more serious note,: The mega-rich clubs are going to get around FFP. Man City has already bought teams in other leagues, such as Japan and the US. They signed Lampard to the New York team (which doesn't even play until next year) and then "loaned" him back to Man City. This way sign they can players to huge contracts, pay them as much as they want in the foreign league, then loan them back and have the Premier team only pay a portion of their wages, so it looks good on the Premier team's books. The FFP is less about fair play, and more about keeping the status quo. It solidifies the rich teams in their postion and prevents a new team cracking their club with a sugar daddy owner. If they wanted real Fair Play, they would have a salary cap.

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SaintNick added 18:06 - Oct 6 Lost Boys is right Gareth Rogers was at the club during the Cortese years, but what is becoming clear is that our ex chairman called the shots in every area, Rogers could not make the decisions, he could only advise and keep the books , obviously he was concerened but what could he do apart from resign and get another job, as countless other employees at senior management level did. The shirt problem is actually not as much as a financial issue as you would think, they buy these shirts at about £5 a time even if they had to replace every one, they would probably still be no worse off than under the deal with Adidas who would have taken at least £5 as their cut

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no7saint added 21:06 - Oct 6 Agree with Boondock re FFP preserving the pecking order, however it is here and keeping a lot of clubs lawyers busy. There are loopholes like the Man City/Lampard example, and Man Utd's £50m a year sponsorship deal with Chevrolet is an example of how they managed to fund their astronomical spending this summer. I heard a rumour that trying to match their wage offer to Luke Shaw would have taken us to the limit of what we can spend under FFP. As it turned out we got a good deal that suited us but the reality is our continued success will bring more summers like this one. Hopefully the hysteria won't be repeated, I think we're learning to adapt and thriving on it.

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