| However, if interim boss Gordon Chisholm cannot get the Tangerines off the bottom of the league, chairman Eddie Thompson will have to foot a £1.3 million bill.
That emerged today as United revealed annual accounts for the period ending June 2004, a set of figures they believe clearly show financial recovery is well under way at Tannadice.
The latest accounts to be made public reveal an operating loss that has been reduced by £1.2m to just under £1.5m and a net loss cut by £1m to £1.9m.
Other healthy figures presented at a Press conference at Tannadice included a £800,000 increase in turnover and a reduction in the players’ wages to turnover from 78% to 66%.
Eddie, though, conceded that continued recovery would be determined not by events in the boardroom but on the park.
“When we announced our results for June 2003, I advised that a three-year financial recovery plan was in place and that we projected that losses would be reduced by almost £1 million in the first year of this,” he said.
“I am pleased to report that, despite widely acknowledged ongoing financial pressures affecting Scottish football, we have met our first-year targets.
“While I am pleased to report such progress, there is clearly much more to be done if we are to return the club to profitability.
“Everything, though, depends on what happens on the park.”
If United don’t get the results they need, the board believe loss of income during a season in the First Division would run to seven figures and undo much of the good work they’ve put in behind the scenes over the last two-and-a-bit years.
United would survive, but it would represent a big hit for Thompson personally and is something he is desperate to see his club avoid.
The emphasis today, though, was on the positive, and the chairman was also keen to stress a continued good relationship with bankers HBOS.
United have a long-term loan of £6m with them and also an overdraft facility of £1m, so keeping the bank “sweet” is imperative.
“We had a meeting with them about 10 days ago and I am pleased to say they are satisfied with where we are going,” added the Tangerines supremo.
United are the only club in the country who also send shareholders an annual review of activities, as well as accounts, and perhaps the most interesting figure contained in that document is the £100,000-plus the club feels the ill-fated ground-sharing proposal by the administrators at Dundee FC cost them.
That loss was calculated by taking into account the likes of the substantial reduction in gate money a boycott by Dundee fans of a Tannadice derby at the height of the furore brought about. |
