Exclusive Interview with Geoffrey Richmond, part one

ALL these questions were asked by the fans

Why is the takeover still not complete?

I think if the supporters realised how much work that was going on in the background; the amount of midnight oil that is being burnt, the amount of time and effort that has been put in to get the takeover complete then I don’t think there would be an implied criticism of the new owners.

I’m not directly involved in the takeover personally, but I am totally aware of the effort that is going into it. The new owners are 100% committed to the takeover.

Today (Wednesday) they are paying for the entire first team football squad and football management to go over to a training camp over in Italy. The takeover will be complete before the start of the season.

It is still impossible to actually give a date when that is going to happen, but work is being done. No one would thank the new owners the day after the takeover if they said “well we signed the deal, we signed the new lease and it’s going to give us problems in the years ahead,” everything has got to be right. As soon as the clubs lawyers confirm that they are happy for the new owners to sign, they will sign. I’m here as Chief Executive and I wouldn’t be sat here at this desk unless I didn’t 100% believed that this football club would be playing football in the football league next season, starting with Bristol City away.

Why is the takeover taking so long after the fans were told by Mr Finnity that it should be sorted within days after the vote to sell was agreed?

Well that might be Paul Finnity’s views, the Administrator. If I were selling you a second hand car and I told you it was perfect, I am sure you as the buyer would take it off to the garage and make sure that it was perfect.

The club’s spokesman has never deliberately told a lie to the fans. They certainly may well be guilty of being over optimistic in the time it would take to complete it. But there has been no delay caused by the new owners or the spokesman, they have to be guided by the lawyers.

The person who is asking the question, they are very welcome to come in when the deal is completed. I will be very happy to prove to him that any lies have been told; I actually find that quite offensive that there has been a suggestion at all. But I do understand the frustration that the questioner is showing because like all of us he wants the deal to be completed.

Will the League allow Notts County to kick off the season whilst still in Administration?

We will be out of Administration with our share back in the football league prior to the start of the season. So yes.

Where do you expect the club to be in five years with regards to the clubs location, league status and the finance of the club?

Lets start of with the easiest of the three first. Finance; the whole policy and the whole ethos of the new board going forward is if the income is a pound then we will spend up to 99p of it and no more than that. Financial stability going forward is the key word.

Dealing with the status, it’s football and I’m not going to be as foolish as I was at Bradford when I stood on the pitch on our first home game and I spoke to the fans and said that in five years we’ll be in the premier league and I heard the guffaws of laughter from the stands and the cheers of the Hartlepool United supporters, but within in five years we were in the premier league.

But for something like that to happen you need a tremendous amount of good fortune, anything can happen in football. But it would indeed take a brave man to say which division we would be in, in the 2004/05 season. It could be in division three, It could be in division one or the likeliest division it will be, will be division two. But it’s football and anything can happen so to project forward five years, I would rather do the lottery.

As for the location of the club, my own feeling is that in five years we’ll be playing at Meadow Lane – we will be playing where we are at the present time. Although there are certainly discussions about a possible new stadium, which I haven’t, been involved in. That certainly is a possibility.

There has been no sign of impatience from the four players that have been training with us from the very day the players came back for training. The four players being Platt, Barras, Jenkins and Baldry. Where in each of the cases terms have been agreed, letters of intent have been given to the players. All those players will be going over to Italy to train with the team.

They will be able to be sign the very moment the club gets its share back in the football league, which will be prior to the season. At that stage that will take the first team squad to eighteen players, 14 previous players, plus four makes eighteen. The manager has indicated he perhaps will need one or two besides that.

Bear in mind that there are a couple of the youth players in addition who have already had cameo appearances last season. I think the manager is looking at a total squad of twenty one/twenty two players. But we will certainly be starting the season with a competitive side.

Will Meadow Lane be having a good tidy up and clean prior to the start of the season?

Yes.

Will the club shop be filled with a completely new range of stock and what new things will be available to buy in the club shop rather than the usual items?

Well because of the timing we are unable to place purchase orders. The administrator, for obvious reasons can’t place purchase orders with suppliers. We can’t place purchase orders until the very day we get our share back in the football league. So I think it could be late

There will be a new team strip this season and there will be new leisure ware. All of which will bear the label “Notz” - That is going to be the trade name for our kit and leisure ware.

Also, the Kop is missing seats & discoloured ones make the stadium look a bit shabby.
Will we be doing anything about them?

Dealing with the seats first of all – in condition with the safety certificate that has been issued to us for the forthcoming season. Five hundred new seats are being purchased, that is already in the budget. With respect to the scoreboard – there is no possibility for it to be re-sited. That would be far too expensive. There are a lot more important priorities.

With regard to the state of the scoreboard – I have to say although I was here on each of the three nights; I am not saying the questioner is wrong, I can honestly say I didn’t actually notice. I looked up to the scoreboard and saw the score. If bulbs need replacing I am sure we can be able to replace them

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How do the new owners propose to increase attendances when so far all we have seen is increased prices, no new faces in the playing side and a total lack of regard for the fans thoughts and questions.

Well I’ll take the last point first; I don’t think it is correct to say there is a total disregard to the fans thoughts and questions. I’ve been here three weeks and I must have had in my office here at least 50 fans during that period and spoken to at least as many again on the telephone and had twenty/thirty letters aswell. I don’t think it is right or correct to say that the club don’t care about the fans and disregard the fans. One of the features of the club going forward and one of the things, which I personally am totally committed to, is an open and constant dialogue without the fans, because without the fans there isn’t a club.

The increased prices I make no apology for whatsoever. I believe that either the purchase of a season ticket or match day admission the prices are competitive with that of the vast majority of other clubs in the division. I believe the prices in previous seasons were too low. The clubs need the income to operate it needs the income to be competitive with clubs in the division.

There is an absolute recognition of course which is accepted by all 92 football clubs, that the more successful the team is on the field, then more people are likely to come through the turnstiles. The loyal fans, the more hardcore supporters will be there through the good times and the bad times. But the additional fans generally speaking come when the club is doing well.

How do you hope to increase the attendance at Meadow Lane and create that missing atmosphere?

It’s a big stadium. It’s a twenty thousand capacity stadium with six thousand the average gate. So it would a very significant increase in the support base before we got a tremendous atmosphere. I’m delighted we do have 20,000 whole seater stadium and it’s a stadium that the fans should and are proud of. But in many ways you would get a far better atmosphere if the capacity were half of what it is at the present time.

There is no magic way to improve the atmosphere, as it would need a substantial increase in amount of the supporters. I go back to the previous answer, the only guaranteed way you can bring supporters back through the turnstiles is by the time doing well on the field.

Will the 5% discount be allowed to Lifeline Members as it has been in the past 15 years?

No there will be no lifeline discount going forward. The reason for that is this: Lifeline has currently an annual income from its members of about £160,000. That’s £104 per annum paid by approximately 1600 members. So it has a total income of around £160,000. It pays out in prize money cars and holidays a sum of £127,000. In addition to that it needs a full time member of staff to run it. And over and above that there are various other costs: credit card charges from the bank, stationary, advertising, postages etc.

So lifeline’s present level of membership is profitable but as seen from the figures above the profit is very narrow.

If we were to give 5% discount as in the past fifteen years where for the vast majority of that fifteen years the membership has been something over 2,000, we would infact be losing money on lifeline. Now I have spoken to many lifeline members and they have told me that there principal motivation to be a member of lifeline is A) to help the club, there secondary motivation is that there is some chance to win a good cash prize or a car and it comes way down the list does the 5% discount on season tickets.

We have however, retained the 10% discount on selected items in the shop. One very positive way in which supporters can help the club going forward is if supporters who are not lifeline members, to join. As each additional member at the present membership level put £104 profit onto lifeline. So each hundred members puts £10,000 profit onto lifeline. An extra 1,000 members would produce £100,000 extra profit for lifeline, which would make a real difference to the club going forward. The prize money remains the same and the administration of lifeline and all the other expenses remain the same. So what is crucial to the club going forward is an increased membership on lifeline.

I’m not too worried about the competition with the Rugby here in Nottingham! And I am used to being in a situation that I was in at Bradford where we were very much in the shadow of Leeds United – The cities of Bradford and Leeds run into each other. When I took over at Bradford there were 4,000 supporters and that increased dramatically. In those days Notts County were seen by us at Bradford, and were a significantly bigger club.

So what happened at Bradford can be replicated here in Nottingham. But I think we have got to live in the real world. I think that the thing that the new board want more than anything else, which is shared by the vast majority of supporters, is that we want financial stability going forward.

As long as the supporters are in the position don’t have to worry whether the club will be next week or next year then I think that in itself will be a positive effect on the support. There is nothing worse than the worry of the clubs future and I think that has a negative effect on the clubs attendances. In the seven of the eight years I was at Bradford the club made a trading profit - But then we had one disastrous year but I have learnt from that mistake I paid heavily for that mistake, that is what I have described previously as my six weeks of madness. But it was after survival for a second season in the premier league, which nobody in the world expected, which if I am honest included me.

I think the way to bring fans in, is for the club to be well run, to communicate well with it’s supporters, have regular supporters’ forums – which were a feature at Bradford, the answering of letters, speaking to the fans when they ring up and want to discuss something on the telephone – all of that we fans will se an immediate and positive difference to what as happened previously.

One of the things I was very keen on at Bradford was what we used to call the “schools promotion.” We used to work with the schools at Bradford and get as many as 3,000 school children at every game, that’s what we built it up to. We used to do an offer via the schools in which the teachers came free, because the children need somebody to look after them, the kid’s parents for that particularly school came for £5 and the kids came at £2. Half of the money that was paid by the school party was given back to the school for them to go and buy school equipment and half came to the club. We gained endless season ticket holders and supporters who had come along from the school party and liked what they saw; hopefully it wasn’t one of those days where we didn’t lose 5-0. So they enjoyed what they saw and came back again. A couple of other things I am keen of doing here in Nottingham is communicating with all the schools in Nottingham and area, giving them the opportunity four/five times a season to bring along a party of kids, on the basis what we did at Bradford.

Does Billy Dearden have a reasonable amount of money to spend on players?

No he doesn’t. There is no money whatsoever in the budget to pay a transfer fee. He’s got a tight budget in relation to the cost of player’s wages during the season - It is sufficient to cover the cost of the players’ wages for the squad described in an earlier answer.

Historically, have Paul Garland and Paul Walsh been involved in the take over, and are they currently involved?

I’ve never heard of Paul Walsh, I don’t know who he is. Paul Garland is somebody that I do know, and Paul Garland is involved. He has been very much together with Raj and Frank Strang, he has been the driver behind putting this deal together.

Part two next week.

Geoffrey Richmond (left) with the Editor of Notts County MAD (right), Mark Stevenson