As part of continued communication from the boardroom at Cheltenham Town, chairman David Bloxham penned his most recent notes for the matchday programme for the home fixture against Shrewsbury Town
In his notes David focused on the success the club has achieved despite the financial challenges of being in the third tier of English football, and how important it is that the football club continues to make progress by developing the business side to help lead to more success on the pitch and continued movement up the football pyramid.
You can read a segment of the chairman's notes below, and remember you can read more in home matchday programmes from David and the rest of the board of directors:
Recently the EFL made available to clubs some statistics of playing budget levels. The figures are presented in a way which only allows clubs to know their own position in the “spending league” but confirmed that we operate with one of the smallest budgets in League One. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise given the size of some of the clubs in this division but it also shows the size of the task we face having won promotion last season.
The playing budget is always a difficult number to determine because as fans we would all like to be able to afford more to enable the manager to improve the team.
Our club is run on a prudent financial basis paying only what we can properly afford. We do not rely on benefactors to pay the wages and will not jeopardise the future of the club by taking unsustainable financial risks. This year we increased the playing budget to an unprecedentedly high level which we have been able to manage thanks to a structured financial approach, determined hard work and the continued support of you, our fans.
Given the size of our playing budget our overall position as a club is, in my view, quite outstanding but the challenge for the immediate future is to continue to develop the business side of the club so that we can climb not only the Football League table but also the financial one.
We recently managed to progress to the second round to the FA Cup. This was great for us all as fans as we all look forward to a run in the FA Cup and the possibility of ultimately drawing a plum tie as we did last season. FA Cup progress also helps to sustain our budget.
I hope you are all able to continue to come to as many games as possible to support the club in every way and I thank you for that support.