Farnborough To Slash Budget

When you talk about clubs in financial trouble, Farnborough never seem to be too far from the headlines.

Since their brief dalliance with the limelight in 2003 when a Fourth Round FA Cup game with Arsenal reportedly brought in £500,000. Then owner/manager Graham Westley disappeared three days later for Stevenage, leaving subsequent chairman Vic Searle to say the club never saw any of the FA Cup money and clear up the mess of a transfer embargo left by Westley's sacking of a player and subsequent refusal to pay his owed wages.

The 2007 bankruptcy of the old Farnborough Town saw the new club spring into life in the Southern League South & West Division, but two promotions in three years saw them back into Conference South where the former club had folded.

However that is pretty much where the good times ended. They entered a CVA, owing £1.2million of debt accumulated in just six years, in 2013, agreeing to repay 100% of debt. Two years later they were reported to have paid back less than £20 and were forced to lodge a bond with the Ryman League to begin last season.

In March they confirmed completion of their CVA, paying back only around £20,000 and made repeated assurances to supporters that the club would be run the right way. Chairman Rob Prince told supporters the club had a playing budget of just £40,000 a year at the time, three months after warning that it was struggling to pay its way on matchday income.

That same warning has come again this week, with the club's Board telling supporters that it lost around £300 after matchday expenses on the latest home match in the Southern League Central division with just 189 watching the game. The club say that only around 100 paid with the remainder league and player complimentary tickets and free entry for kids.

The club, that started the season with veteran strikers Jamie Cureton and Dennis Oli on their books, says that the wage bill will have to be cut to balance the books. Cureton departed in September for Eastleigh, replaced with former Camberley striker Perry Coles, who netted 44 times in Step 5 last season.

The Cherrywood Road outfit will need a considerable boost in their finances to continue their current levels of expenditure.