Time for action - An open letter to Preston North End FC (Meeting & responses added).

[NorthEndNerd]

I didn’t say they had to be fair. That is my opinion. I said the National media and fans of other clubs know what the club is boring……..

We are nowhere near well run or savvy. The local media have shown how closed shop they are regarding the open letter so much so, that I won’t be listening to Radio Blackburn again. No right to reply and even the content from the letter was wrong. If you haven’t heard TV presenters say we are unambitious and other fans call us “teams like Preston” and don’t forget we get voted as the most boring club too then you haven’t been listening or have selective hearing.

Or it's just different places where we consume our media but the teams like Preston moniker is levied at us due to our shithousing I would say more than anything.

But Joanpne I completely agree with your opinion on us being a shit show and the media either being scared to say the truth or just not paying us any attention above minimal.

 

[norfolk white]

Peter said:

We have a reputation within football for supporting our football managers

Where was the support for Billy Davies, Simon Grayson and Alex Neil in the January transfer windows when we were in a very good position to force our way to either an automatic promotion place or the play-offs only for no incomings to be seen?

The January transfer window will soon be upon us. It is our job to try and facilitate the opportunity for Paul to enhance, improve and shape the squad to his needs but we must remind our supporters that money to buy players, for a club like PNE, is not infinite. In many cases we need to free up spaces within a squad to enhance the squad

In other words, no money will be made available in the January transfer window yet again.

commercial success off the pitch will directly help develop success on the pitch.…..If we were to recognise revenue rather than net income our turnover would increase by about £3m more per annum which would take the income generated by our commercial team in line with or above clubs with similar sized fanbases.

If this is the case why do we not spend as much as other clubs of a similar size fan base on new players? Other clubs seem to find the money fore the January transfer window.

through our coaching and scouting network we believe we have identified a number of players with great long-term potential for the club. As and when opportunities arise, we will seek to maximise this value.

When was the last time we made money on a sale and that money was used to strengthen our squad?

Historically we had a great deal of success buying and selling players prior to the Covid pandemic and it remains our goal to repeat this philosophy as and when opportunities arise. Because of the huge financial burden caused by Covid, the club needed time to create financial headroom to allow us to speculate on new players

Peter told us that because of COVID other clubs would be a lot worse of than us financially and some wouldgo under and we would be able to pick off their better players, what happened there?

To try and mitigate some of this imbalance we are cognisant of the need to continue to drive not just our matchday and commercial income, but to try and generate profit from player sales as and when practicable.

As opposed to just running down contracts and letting players leave for free? Again, when was the last time we sold a player at a profit?

To see the club achieve its highest ever revenue (its third in a row) and consequently its highest income levels from season card sales, matchday sales, commercial revenue and club shop revenue, is very encouraging. This improved financial performance helps to create the much-needed headroom to further invest in the club’s facilities and squad

And yet we have one of the smallest budgets in the Championship!

 

[Wisemen say]

Ridsdale is presumably comparing what each club publishes in its annual accounts (which is what I am also doing - it involves some very unglamorous trawling through the Companies House website I'm afraid).

And you're right, other clubs will also be outsourcing.

But no other club that I'm aware of is trying to effectively say "our turnover would be higher if we didn't outsource, so please mentally add on an extra £3m we just pulled from our arses if you are looking at these numbers in comparison with other Championship clubs".

Just for clarity, there is no extra £3m available to the club that somehow doesn't show on the books because we choose to account in a unique way - the extra £3m doesn't exist. It's just an estimate, appearing in this Club Comment only, of the extra turnover the club might be able to record if it didn't outsource everything.

We may as well slap on another extra £5m in the same way, and say we might have made that too if we'd managed to sell a player - while we're just making shit up.

Happy to try to claim that revenue would increase by X if we did not outsource.....no mention though of what extra costs there might be involved if it was all brought in house.🤔

 

[Yoowell]

It’s an intriguing situation as it stands.
PR has been allowed to write his response basically saying that he runs the show and his ‘position’ allows the club to compete because of his multi tasking.
If Craig Hemmings attends the meeting without him I’m sure PR would see it as a vote of no confidence.
Stick to your one demand JK and other attendees👍

 

[Bodney Rewes]

I haven't heard other fans and the media call PNEFC a joke shit show to be fair.

I've only recently seen the boring part from the Second Tier Podcast but most times in the media and from the outside we're a savvy well run club obviously some of us fairly disagree and its why people like Kieran Maguire get heat from our fanbase (fairly IMO) when he says we're a well run club and have good owners.

I've seen a few other fans call us boring before too. I've also seen a few joke about how we always finish 12th.

I find a lot of the discussion about us from folks in the media a little annoying at times. Most pundits can be quite lazy and don't really research us (or even a large chunk of the Championship or below) in-depth. They rely on just parroting stuff they've heard before. It's like how that narrative about us being "well run" has persisted for so long just because we've not been up the financial shit creek. I understood calling us "well run" in the few years after our promotion but we've stagnated so much that we're more "run" rather than "well run". The pundits/media folk don't pay as much attention to that because they don't really pay much attention to us since we're perennially midtable and we haven't had the bailiffs after us. I don't completely blame them because they've only got so much they can focus on at once and they're more likely to focus on the teams at either ends of the table. It's just a consequence of us being midtable for so long and not one of the "big" clubs.

 

[Sid Snot]

Well anything is possible with him. Really hope he is no where near the meeting and the fans others involved get proper answers this time.

I'm hopeful, but this is dealing with a well-oiled propaganda machine. Craggy and Canute wouldn't recognise the truth if it bit them in the arse.

 

[Bobbage]

I'm hopeful, but this is dealing with a well-oiled propaganda machine. Craggy and Canute wouldn't recognise the truth if it bit them in the arse.

His Aunty Kathryn being a good example of this.

 

[Thracia]

Happy to try to claim that revenue would increase by X if we did not outsource.....no mention though of what extra costs there might be involved if it was all brought in house.🤔

Exactly - Craig's attempts to redefine accountancy and what is and isn't "correct" makes him look either dodgy as hell or a numpty.

 

[Durutti]

Spinny Hendrix in action I see

"Though the 2023/24 season ended with us finishing a creditable 10th, our third successive year of improvement"

Not if you go by points. Points are in our control, the table isn't.

"Our streamlined organisational and decision-making infrastructure gives us a fighting chance in the ever complex and data-driven world of scouting new football talent. Layers of infrastructure inevitably leads to layers of bureaucracy and costs which then leads to a slower decision-making process. To compete, PNE has to be a lean and focused operation. We have to get more bang for our buck."

It can also lead to more mistakes. If you don't have people with specialist knowledge doing specialist roles, you get uninformed decision making. Quicker decisions aren't always better ones.

Will be interesting to dig deeper into the finances though, especially considering this comment:

“As I have mentioned in the past, because we recognise the net income and not the turnover achieved from our commercial and retail divisions, it is often assumed, incorrectly, that our income from these activities is inferior to our close competitors. This is not the case. If we were to recognise revenue rather than net income our turnover would increase by about £3m more per annum which would take the income generated by our commercial team in line with or above clubs with similar sized fanbases. Notwithstanding this, we continue to drive our commercial revenues forward.”

It stands out to me for two reasons:
1) "It is often assumed, incorrectly, that our income from these activities is inferior to our close competitors".

Then why are we always pleading poverty and pointing to how small our budget is? You can't talk about Premier League Ambitions and improving position in the table in one breath, small budgets and FFP in another, and being similar to close competitors in another. What's the narrative here? Where are you expecting us to be?

2) It's interesting that distinction has been highlighted. I wonder what story that is telling.

Awesome points there. Can you be at the meeting please?

 

[Tommmm12345]

I'm hopeful, but this is dealing with a well-oiled propaganda machine. Craggy and Canute wouldn't recognise the truth if it bit them in the arse.

100% agree Sid sadly.

 

[Durutti]

It completely misses the point that the reason teams do this is to get more "bang for their buck". In software development, the more money you spend on analysis and design, the more money you save further down the line.

It's surely the same in recruitment? The more money you spend on data analysis and scouting, the more money you save as you aren't blowing money on players who don't play for the rest of their contracts (Jamie Thomas, Izzy Brown etc) and you aren't blowing transfer fees on players who don't fit a team (Tom Bayliss) or on a downward spiral (Scott Sinclair).

A data analyst and a scout aren't going to cost as much as a footballer, even just on wages alone. A decent analyst and scout saves you the money on those wages and maybe improves your income if the player moves on. One Clive Middlemass is far better value for money than Jamie Thomas, Izzy Brown, Connor Wickham etc

What gets me is that, on the surface, James Beet does seem to be the new breed of highly qualified, extremely intelligent data driven scouts (with a history working on a good recruitment team at Barnsley). He seems to have been sidelined into a weirdly niche role for such lean operation.

 

[MBcha]

Without the full accounts (which have not been published, despite what they say), this spinning-like-a-pulsar "club comment" is pretty worthless.

Just as one example, they are crediting themselves that "turnover has increased from £15.6m to a record £16.9m (an increase of just over 8%). The third year in a row of record turnover."

Well, the corresponding increase in turnover in 2023 compared to 2022 (which was just over 12%), as their own accounts state, "mainly relates to ticket income from Championship and FA Cup matches and increased income from the English Football League and Premier League central funding distributions".

And indeed mainly it did - their turnover from all other sources bar these grew a puny £262,000 - take out rental income, which doesn't appear on the football club's accounts, only the holding company's, and the increase was just £158,000.

Their revenue from merchandising actually fell from 2022 to 2023.

Thank heavens for new TV deals and those bumper away crowds paying our increasingly expensive full matchday prices!

This point needs taking to the meeting this week.

 

[Jürgen Krapp]

Awesome points there. Can you be at the meeting please?

Too kind, but I fear that I don't have the experience, I'm not great at thinking on my feet, would need to have more detail at the ready and there's the logistical problem of I don't live anywhere near Preston.

Besides my vote would go to Thracia

I don't know who's going, but I have faith in JK and crew.

 

[TomPNEFC]

I've never understood the defence that "our commercial income isn't that bad, we just report it differently to everyone else". If this is the case, why are we reporting it differently to everyone else? Are we gaining anything by making us look worse than everyone else?

And also the fact other clubs outsource, won’t they report in the same way as we do?

 

[Liberation]

Not at the expense of improving the rest of the squad (defence)

If we want to challenge then we need to do both...... Unfortunately ( as we all know thorough experience ) we are unlikely to get either.

 

[TheWarehouse]

Why would the club agree to PR not being there to defend himself? As the whole agenda is anti Peter Ridsdale, he should be in attendance.

 

[Durutti]

If we want to challenge then we need to do both...... Unfortunately ( as we all know thorough experience ) we are unlikely to get either.

I think it's a starting point all this. It's good noise. Could start the ball rolling on match day protests as well. I'm really grateful to the team for putting this together and stomaching the bollocks they are about to hear that the meeting.

 

[Thracia]

Kieran Maguire on Twitter, on "controlling the narrative":

 

[Jürgen Krapp]

What gets me is that, on the surface, James Beet does seem to be the new breed of highly qualified, extremely intelligent data driven scouts (with a history working on a good recruitment team at Barnsley). He seems to have been sidelined into a weirdly niche role for such lean operation.

Because having another voice would get in the way of our 'lean' operation. Our operation that's so responsive it was the only operation in this league that failed to sign a player last January.

Thing is with the data, we'd still need a strategy. I genuinely don't know what drives our recruitment. Under this regime, we just sort of do what we fancy doing that window. Scour Ireland for a gem? Shop in Scandinavia? Sign younger EPL cast offs? Sign older experienced players? Sign injury prone players and hope they come good? Sign cheap players from Scotland? Reject EPL loans? Embrace EPL loans? We've done all of these. I get you need balance of experience and youth etc in a squad, but we don't have a young squad and our general make up of the team is imbalanced.

Moreover, I have no faith in Ridsdale to actually be able to interpret any data. I didn't trust Lowe either TBH (especially when he said he only looks at positive stats). The fact we couldn't identify any wingbacks and signed two wingers to play wingback for two successive summers would suggest either we aren't finding players who suit what we need (and therefore should stop recruiting for a limited version of 3-5-2) or we are failing to define the data or interpret it. We aren't going to get every bit of recruitment right, but you'd expect ONE permanent wing back in that time, never mind a good one.

 

[Liberation]

"Our streamlined organisational and decision-making infrastructure gives us a fighting chance in the ever complex and data-driven world of scouting new football talent. Layers of infrastructure inevitably leads to layers of bureaucracy and costs which then leads to a slower decision-making process. To compete, PNE has to be a lean and focused operation. We have to get more bang for our buck."​

"Streamlined" is obviously the spin they're giving for the rank bad company governance of having one 72-year-old man in charge of multiple key club functions, despite him being unqualified for them, leading to zero accountability when things go wrong.

We are being asked to make the mental contortions necessary to imagine Ridsdale is "a lean and focused operation".

We're actually being asked to accept a Dictator and it's the best way to go business wise.... You have to laugh. 😀