A Spireites World exclusive interview with Chesterfield chairman Barrie Hubbard who informs Chesterfield fans about what is happening at the club right now. Read the highlights of the interview right here
Manager Roy McFarland has gone public with concerns about comments from some supporters, but it's at a time when the Clubs doing well so what are your thoughts on how the club's doing and are the complaints justified ?
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion and the last thing we would want is supporters to come to Chesterfield and sit quiet and not say anything. But we did get a bit of abuse on Saturday and I don't really understand why because we were drawing 0-0 at the time. We made a substitution and then everyone then seemed to go bananas for some reason and some of the things said towards Roy were not the best. Roy's said his piece and I hope he's forgotten about it and put it behind him, and I hope the people who said those things realise that perhaps they went a bit over the top and everything's back to normal at our next home match and its a much happier game.
The Clubs had hundreds of messages on both the message board and via emails supporting Roy and what the Club's doing, so moving on from that what is the club doing at the moment
Just to confirm I have also had a lot phone calls from supporters which I am pleased about and I am glad a lot of our supporters realise what's being done at Chesterfield and also what a good job Roy's done. This morning I was looking at the League newspaper and I noticed that only Swansea have scored more goals than ourselves in League One, which is certainly very unusual for a Chesterfield side and we are sixth from top so that's a good sign. Then you look at the young lads Roy and Rico have brought in like Alex Bailey, Derek Niven, Phil Picken, Colin Larkin, Aaron Downes, Janos Kovacs, Caleb Folan, and Barrie Roche is not very old either, all for no money at all and are not on big wages. It's fantastic really and they are part of one of the best teams we have had here for sometime so it's all very encouraging.
In terms of support, gate money is the biggest source of income and last year the average gate was a 24 year high but this year the numbers are down by comparison
The gates are considerably down on last year. This year we are averaging around 4,600 compared to 4,900, which was very very good. I don't really know why the gates are down especially as we are in a far better position than last year. I don't know if money is tight but we could do with more people through the turn stiles. It's a very important time for the club because we are currently deciding whether to bring in more players and take a bit more of a gamble and have a serious go at getting promoted. The supporters will say have a go but we have the second lowest gates in the League so I really do not know what to do. Last year we broke-even on running costs and made a profit after selling Ian Evatt. So far this season we are losing about 50k so if the decision to bring players in fails and gates do not increase then we could be in financial trouble again. I really do not know what to do for the best to be honest with you.
The Board are in a unique situation really running the Club for the CFSS and as the Club does not have an overdraft facility the Board's the banker in a way
The Football Club is around £1.6m in debt. A lot of that is from debenture holders who have to be paid back, the Council have given us £560,000 bank loan which we have to pay off monthly over 25 years. The Directors are really like a bank for the club. If there's a shortfall any month the directors put money into the club, and everyone expects that, and that's why we are running the club. But what we cannot do is put money in adlib because we cannot but the Club into further debt. So we will continue to put out the best team we can with the money we have got.
Some fans say that Chesterfield do not want to get promoted, what are your thoughts on that?
I think that anybody who says that any club doesn't want promotion is stupid because we would get extra income from the Football League and various other sources and we would get bigger gates, especially in the away end if we are in the higher division
The transfer window is open for the month, will Roy McFarland be bringing players in
The windows not that significant because we do have emergency short term loans, as they call them, where we could bring in loan players for 93 days. But ideally we would like the squad sorted by the end of January because the season may not end at the end of April. If we are in the play offs it could be mid May and we do not want loan players leaving us in early April when we might need them in May.
So how are you going to help Roy. It's seems to be a fine balance but at some stage a decision has got to be taken?
On Tuesday Roy and Rico are going to London to watch a practice match at a Premiership Club in which two players Roy is interested in will be playing. On Thursday we also have two more Premiership players joining us on trial. We are still talking to Wolverhampton Wanderers about Sammy Clingan and we are still also talking to Sheffield United about Kevan Hurst and, of course, Roy's looking elsewhere also for a striker.
So a busy week for Roy and at some point in the next couple of weeks he will be coming to see you saying "This is what I would like ", then its decision time about whether the Club afford the deals he may want?
Yes we backed Roy at the beginning of last season when we brought in Sammy Clingan, Jamal Campbell-Ryce and Mark Stallard and a few other loans players and we over-spent on our player's budget. But our gates went up, which more than covered the extra costs. At the beginning of the season we did the same again with some additional loan players but this time the gates have not gone up to cover the extra expense. So we have to decide as a board whether to have a go and gamble a bit more and then hope that the gates improve and, if that's the case, we would have been successful again.
So you want more fans to come through the turnstiles so what can the board do to try and attract more supporters?
I do not know what we can do. I am not appealing for people to come and watch us otherwise they will think we are crying wolf. This interview is for our website members so I would be preaching to the converted really. But we do need more support obviously and I cannot demand it. But what we do have though is a good set of young lads who are playing some good football and hopefully we can carry on keep on improving the side and get them playing in a new ground for a team that's perhaps in The Championship.
Chesterfield Chairman Barrie Hubbard was talking EXCLUSIVELY to Geoff Mitchell for SPIREITES WORLD
