Graham Kelly: New figures prompt questions over FA's Wimbledon inquiry
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Your support makes all the difference.The aroma of newly mown grass wafts across playing fields as the new season draws closer, but the stench from the Wimbledon commission refuses to disappear.
While advertising for qualified coaches in the Milton Keynes area to work on projects such as after-school clubs and girls' sessions starting this summer, Wimbledon, widely known as Franchise FC, has closed down its award-winning community schemes in the south-west London boroughs of Wandsworth, Kingston-upon-Thames, Richmond and Reigate.
New figures have now emerged which make the decision by the independent commission set up by the Association to hear Wimbledon's application to move to Milton Keynes a surprising one. Expenditure on salaries and wages in 2000-2001 of £15.1m was far outweighed by the influx of cash from television and gate money (turnover of £8m) plus net income from player transfers of £15m.
These figures are contained in the appendices to the recent Deloitte and Touche Annual Review of Finance, published on 27 June, and are derived from information supplied by the club in a draft financial statement. Its official accounts for the year 2000-2001 are still overdue at Companies House.
The club's case to the independent commission apparently relied heavily on the premise that it was in a unique financial position, supported by written evidence from none other than Deloitte and Touche. "Wimbledon's 2000-2001 operating loss," they contended, "was greater, at £10.8m, than all but two of the other 91 professional clubs in England". The figures are incomplete and do not explain how the figure of £10.8m was arrived at. But, assuming it reflects all the expenditure incurred by the club, it is still outweighed by the net transfer income of £15m.
If the rumours are true about Walmart/Asda's membership of Pete Winkelman's Milton Keynes Stadium Consortium prove to be correct, a fans' nationwide grocery boycott would prove to be a much more powerful campaign than the one recently led by Delia Smith waving her Canaries scarf outside the Carlton TV headquarters.
No doubt this is small beer to the majority shareholder of Franchise FC, Kjell Inge Rokke, currently facing corruption charges in Norway for allegedly paying maritime officials £8,000 in bribes in order to obtain an advanced pilot's qualification.
Football club owners are no strangers to controversy, but Rokke's business activities have attracted opprobrium across three continents. His factory fishing ship fought a battle with Greenpeace off the shores of Chile and his construction plans in Maryland encountered fierce opposition from environmentalists who were keen to protect the forests.
Milton Keynes is nothing if not persistent in its attempts to attract League to the city. Two decades ago, it was Luton Town they courted, when the Hatters' future was endangered by the Dunstable bypass road.
Then, on the May Bank Holiday 2001, Winkelman turned up at a Queen's Park Rangers supporters' meeting in The Queen Adelaide pub on the Uxbridge Road in West London offering £2.5m to take the then cash-strapped club to Milton Keynes. Come May 2002, and it was Wimbledon for whose project the Association commission found Winkelman's enthusiasm "almost infectious and obviously genuine".
The Government-appointed Independent Commission has asked the League to consider the Wimbledon Independent Supporters' Association's complaint "expeditiously". The IFC chairman, Professor Derek Fraser, believes that, although his body has no statutory power it will, like the Press Complaints Commission, be able to exercise considerable influence.
This inspires little confidence, for club owners rarely respond to gentle persuasion. It is clear that the FA commission failed to scrutinise the financial information which was presented and there should now be a full and transparent inquiry into how this was allowed to happen.
The FA commission freely admits it preferred the Milton Keynes option because the Wimbledon owners were threatening to withhold further funding. Because of this injustice perpetrated on the Wimbledon supporters, the FA should reopen the whole affair and, if it really means the liquidation of Wimbledon, so be it. Let the owners concentrate on their powerboating, if the Merton option is genuinely exhausted as they maintain.
Also, in view of the bleak financial picture he painted before the FA commission a matter of weeks ago, the League might like to seek some assurances from the Franchise FC chairman, Charles Koppel, that, in the event of the expected record low attendances at Selhurst Park in the early part of the season, his shareholders will be prepared to continue their backing until the end of the campaign.
They have only sold 100-odd season tickets, whereas, many divisions lower in the "tortuous" pyramid, AFC Wimbledon, newly formed to keep the name alive in south-west London, have sold over 900 for their debut season in the Combined Counties League.
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